I am thinking about the time I used to clean funeral cars. A guy I met had just come back from the navy, and the funeral home was his family’s business. 

Because I thought he was hot, and life can often be perverse in that way, I agreed to help him clean funeral cars for 3 dollars a car. There was the limo, the hearse, and the flower car—a black Grand Camino. 

We never talked about who had died and how. We just had to make the cars shine again. Vacuum the dirt and graveyard gravel out of the car mats. Wipe off the tears, and trash the crumpled tissues. Sweep the broken petals and stems that had fallen from floral baskets out the back of the Grand Camino. And then the hearse. Well, since no one usually has to be in a hearse alive, it usually only needed a simple once-over. 

I wouldn’t say I didn’t think about the dead, or that I didn’t feel the strange weight inside of each car. It’s a muted energy that stays after the ceremony—like static pulsing across a turned-off television screen. It was simply my job to wipe the static away, and so that is what I did. 

We flirted and laughed through most of it, made crass jokes, talked about our day—all the while making sure every speck from the previous funeral made it into the shop vac. In the end I would have 9 dollars, and at that time, it was about enough for a cheap six-pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes. 

People say a hearse is the cleanest car you’ll ever see. I am here to tell you that the smell of formaldehyde does not wash off. Or maybe it just clings to the air inside the long blind curtained rear like old pickle stink inside a jar. Either way, I pretended the smell didn’t retch the back of my throat. I pretended like I was fine with all of it—the way I’ve always pretended to be fine with most things. I just wanted to impress him. One night, he dared me to get into the back of the hearse and lie down, and I did. 

And that is all I remember about the time I used to clean funeral cars.