Prayer for the Dead by David Wiltse Page A

character that he suspected some part of her would always remain a girl.
    And she liked him, she clearly liked him. He was no expert, but he could see that. He wasn’t entirely certain how it made him feel to have her respond to him so unambiguously, but he was certain he hadn’t misread her feelings at least. There had been mistakes in the past. Dyce had allowed himself to become infatuated with girls who did not reciprocate, girls who ultimately weren’t worthy. Such episodes always left him feeling ashamed of himself for being so gullible, and renewed his resolve to remain alone. But he was not mistaken about Helen, that much was certain. She had remembered his name, she had thought about him—she had told him that!
    Working in a state of distraction as he thought about his meeting with the girl, Dyce prepared himself for what he had to do. It was time, in any event, whether he had resolved to stop or not, whether he now had new interests or not. The man had been dead for three days, and it was time to get rid of him. His coloring had begun to change and the odor, despite repeated washings, was getting hard to ignore.
    Dyce lit the incense that he had placed in saucers around the room. He did not like the smell of incense, but it was more effective than the modern deodorizers and Dyce didn’t approve of using aerosols anyway because of the ozone layer. The incense, however, added smoke to the already-murky aspect of the room and gave the whole proceedings an oriental feel which he thought was inappropriate. It would take several days to air out the house after he was done, which meant removing the soundproofing from the windows, a step that made Dyce nervous even when there was nothing to hide. Disposal had always been a problem.
    The man’s body was surprisingly heavy in comparison to his ethereal appearance. He should have weighed no more than a ghost, but his body seemed to struggle against Dyce’s strength as he carried it to the bathroom, as if it wanted to remain in the place where it had spent the last ten days, alive and dead, or as if the body was resisting the final insult that awaited it in the bathtub.
    Setting the showerhead to a fine spray, Dyce adjusted the pressure so that the body was enveloped in a lukewarm mist. The trick was to make the water warm enough to aid in the dissolution of liquids but not so hot that it would bum Dyce, who would be working in the mist. With the water running, Dyce filled his thirty-gallon, restaurant-sized stock pot halfway and turned the stove burner to high flame. If his tuning was accurate, the water would be aboil by the time he needed it.
    When Dyce returned to the bathroom with his knives, the mascara was running down the man’s cheeks and coloring the stream of water that swirled down the drain. In the brighter light of the bathroom, the lipstick on the man looked harsh and cheap and shameful, as if he were a transvestite who had been caught in mid-transformation, frozen forever in his gender confusion. Dyce felt a moment’s disgust as he regarded the man. He was not worthy, after all. Dyce had been wasting his time admiring the beauty of the man. He felt momentarily soiled and ashamed, as if he had just discovered he had made love to a harlot with a virgin’s mask. You are better than this, he told himself. You deserve better for yourself, and you must stop acting this way.
    He undressed, kneeled, and leaned into the shower’s spray. Droplets formed immediately and dripped from the blade of the chefs knife. Filled with resolve to make this the last time, to change his life and live in a better, purer, more self-sufficient way, Dyce set to work.
     
    Helen was frantic. She knew she shouldn’t do it, she knew it was precisely the kind of thing that drove men away, but she couldn’t help herself She actually said it to herself, I can not help myself, as if it were permission. She liked to think of herself as someone who was swept along by irresistible forces,