The Undertaker

Looking back on it all, if I knew then what I know now, the smartest thing I could have done was exactly what the grease-ball told me to do — forget about it. But if I had listened to him and went home and went to sleep, I would never have made it to Columbus or Chicago, I would have never met Sandy, and my life today would be infinitely poorer.

CHAPTER TWO

Columbus, Ohio: a funeral in the cornfields…

The drive from Boston to Columbus wasn't all that hard, not if you are used to long, boring drives by yourself and you have a large thermos and enough rock stations to keep you company. It was Interstate all the way and I reached the eastern suburbs of Columbus around noon. I stopped in a friendly Marathon station in Pataskala for a refill, a $2.00 Central Ohio road map, and a visit to the restroom to change clothes. This was the second day for the Rolling Stones T-shirt and I thought something more formal might be in order. Unfortunately, being from California, the most formal attire I owned was an old, blue blazer with gold buttons. All in all, it added just the requisite touch of restraint and class to my faded jeans, a green and yellow Polo shirt, and docksiders. I didn't bother with socks, since it was my own funeral and there wouldn't be anyone there I cared about offending anyway.

Like most Midwestern cities, there was a circular beltway around Columbus. Looking at the map, scenic Pataskala was on the rural, far-eastern fringe of the city at about 3:00 on the clock dial. The town of Peterborough, where the funeral home was located, was up at 12:00, followed by a right turn up into the next county. The funeral was at 2:00 and I didn't think it would take very long to drive up there. As I rolled out of the gas station, I pulled out my cell phone and figured I'd better give Doug a call and let him know I was taking the day off.

“Sharon? Hey, it's Pete Talbott. Is the boss in?”

“No, he's having another “out of body experience” with the venture capital guys in the conference room.”

“Again? Jeez.”

“Money. Ain't it the pits?”

“Yeah, the root of all evil. Say, did he get the subroutines I e-mailed him?

“Oh, yeah, I think you saved the corporate ass with that one.”

“Good, tell him I'm taking today and tomorrow off.”

“What's up, Petey? You finally get lucky?” she asked in a husky voice. “It's about time.”

“No, Sharon, I didn't get lucky.”

“Too bad, ‘cause God knows you could use some. Me? Unfortunately I'm married, but you blow in my ear sometime and…”

“Sharon, I had to go to Ohio, for a funeral.”

“A funeral? Oh, sorry. Me and my mouth. Whose is it?”

“Mine.”

“Okay, be that way. But when you get back, I want you to meet my friend, Doris.”

“Your friend, Doris?”

“I'm serious. With Doris, you don't even have to get real lucky, Petey, all you got to do is show up. And you really do need some R&R.”

“Sharon, I gotta go,” I said as I hung up. R&R with her friend Doris? As if that was what I really needed. But it was the same way back in LA. No matter how far or how fast I ran, it couldn't be far enough or fast enough to get away from all the misguided, unwanted help from my friends’ wives and my wife's friends, all of whom thought that if I just had sex with another woman, I would get over the loss of Terri. What one had to do with the other I'd never understand. What I needed was Terri back. I didn't need to get laid.

These days, one urban beltway looks about like another. The traffic might not be as thick as it had been back in LA, but if you've driven past one suburban office building and big interchange shopping center, you've driven by them all. I steered the Bronco around the long, looping beltway until I found the Cedarville Road exit and got off. This was a broad commercial street with strip malls and a gazillion fast-food restaurants, banks, and gas stations that took me north through the suburbs, ex-urbs, and no-urbs until the development turned into cornfields. That was where I found the small town of Peterborough, Ohio. Town? It was more like a wide spot between the cornfields, where a couple of two-lane country roads crossed up in Campbell County about eight miles north of the beltway. Still, this was a beautiful, early-summer afternoon, all hot and humid, and the cornfields were a radiant, green, the farmhouses looked refrigerator white, and you could almost imagine that kinder and gentler America the politicians get all teary-eyed about, when they aren't railing about “values” or the moral quagmire of California pop culture. Me? I was never into the County Fair scene with all those hot sweaty animals, hot sweaty people, ferris wheels, cotton candy, and corn dogs. I kinda liked the moral quagmire. Besides, driving around the beltway had shown me that “kinder and gentler” rural Ohio appeared to be having its problems too; they were paving over the corn with strip malls, big-lot subdivisions, and mini-marts just like the rest of the country.