Jack’s with anchovy olives, Leo’s a twist of lemon. Leo’s eyes glistening as he’d look up at the black waiter with the beard who had been in that movie Pretty Baby and called them the funeral dudes. Leo would say, “Henry, why don’t you do it again, the same way. Would that please you?” Leo settling in. “It would sure as hell please us, Henry.” Then later on have the artichoke soup and the oyster loaf.

Mario came along the bar with the martini, placed it on the cocktail napkin in front of Jack.

“What I don’t understand, how you can do that every day of your life. Fool with dead people.”

Jack picked up the martini, about to say that for one thing the dead never complain or give you a hard time. But he stopped and thought a moment and said, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” He sipped the martini, put an olive in his mouth, chewed it a few times and took another sip. Jesus, was that good.

“I heard you don’t put any panties on the women, when they’re in the casket.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“I don’t know, I just heard it one time.”

“We dress ’em right down to their socks. Shoes are optional, but everything else.”

Mario picked up Jack’s glass to place it on a fresh cocktail napkin. “You ever get like a real good-looking girl, I mean with a great body, you know, and you have to do all that stuff to her?”

“Now, it doesn’t sound so bad, uh?”

“I still wouldn’t do it.”

“You know what the worst is? You look at a body that came in, all of a sudden you realize, Jesus Christ, the guy was a friend of yours.”

“Brings it home, uh? Somebody you know.”

“Even if you haven’t seen the person in a while. Like this guy today. I see him lying there, I don’t believe it. Not only is the guy dead, he’s eight years older than the last time I saw him. You know what I’m saying? He’s a different person. I look at him, guy named Buddy Jeannette, I know him but I don’t know him. I don’t know where he’s been, what he’s been doing.”