Kay read the notice announcing the wake in the morning paper, while drinking a very bitter coffee. The deceased was known to her by name only, but it was an old and familiar name, attached to an aristocratic line that Kay respected. A fever hospital in her small hometown, in fact, shared the name. She had been treated there several times as a child, and her sister had died there, not a year old, from a rheumatic disorder.
Having never before attended a royal wake, Kay was surprised to find on this particular occasion a sense of feudal obligation welling up inside of her. She had recently moved to the city, and knew no one.
From her closet, Kay gathered her most solemn ensemble—black suit, black gloves, black jacket. She stuffed these inside a sack and carried them to the office where she worked, in a very tall marble building downtown. All morning, Kay rearranged duplicates at her desk with the sack by her feet as a grave reminder.
At lunchtime, she brought the clothes to the cleaners. The woman behind the counter requested an additional fee for expediting service, which Kay was only too ready to provide. Afterwards, she hurried back to her office. There, she closed the door quietly, and proceeded to make a series of calculations—if she were to leave the office by six, she would have enough time to pick up the clothes, dress, and buy flowers.
Her plans established, Kay resumed shuffling the duplicates on her desk. Gradually, she grew aware of a knocking on her door that had persisted for some moments. She opened it, and three subordinates asked her to come out of her office and look at the long corridor, where their desks lay in a row. A trail of ants crawled along the floor, disappearing into a crack in the molding.
The sight of the ants unsettled Kay. She could not help but link their appearance with the occasion of the wake. She scolded the associates, and instructed them to bleach and scrub the hallway for the rest of the afternoon.
Kay left the office at precisely six o’clock. She rushed to the cleaners, her mind preoccupied by the image of ants in the molding, and she walked too far. This was not unusual for Kay—she was prone to elaborate, intricate visions of concealed kingdoms, and often found herself lost as a result. Upon realizing her mistake, she doubled back, but when she arrived where she believed the cleaners stood, she found instead an abandoned diner, its windows boarded with gray planks of wood. Baffled, Kay retraced her steps. It took another twenty minutes of wandering before she located the cleaners.
There were no other customers. A man behind the counter awaited Kay. He wore an exceptionally high collar and apparently had been drinking. The rest of the shop looked the same as before, yet Kay experienced the unnerving feeling that it was not the same—that it was a facsimile.
“Am I in the right place?” she asked, looking around. The posters on the walls, which Kay seemed to remember as being faded, were shiny and new. They depicted a series of well-dressed men and women posing stiffly in front of the ruins of an ancient villa.
The man in the high collar inspected her ticket carefully. Appearing concerned, he left the counter without a word, walked over to a small door that led deeper into the laundry, and opened it. Crouching, he disappeared inside, and the door shut behind him.
Kay waited. Now that she was at rest, she could feel the minutes ticking by. Outside, it had grown dark.
Kay rang the bell once. Twice.
Finally, exasperated, she went behind the counter intending to knock on the small door. Before she could do so, however, it opened and issued forth the woman Kay had previously dealt with. The woman was out of breath, and in her hand she clutched a rubber hose.
“I’m sorry, madam,” she said. “There’s been an unfortunate misunderstanding. But we are preparing your clothes as we speak. If you could wait a moment longer—fifteen, twenty minutes at the most.” Behind the woman, Kay could hear the hiss of steam and, faintly, human groans.
“Where is the man that took my ticket?” she asked.
“The man you are referring to is being disciplined.”
“Why?”
Kay’s question confused the woman. “Because he overlooked your order,” she said. Then she passed through the small door, once again leaving Kay alone and unsatisfied.
Unbidden, Kay recalled that she hadn’t been allowed to attend her sister’s wake. Because, her mother explained, the undertaker had botched the job.
Now, Kay noticed the streetlamps had come on. From the next block, she heard the bell of a trolley approaching. The bell suggested the presence of people, and a desire to see them rose in her—she exited the shop, and followed the sound around the corner. To her surprise, the diner she had encountered earlier, which had appeared shut, was now lit, the door open and the clamor from within reaching out to the sidewalk.
Kay peered inside, and was struck by the crowd that had materialized. The booths and the long counter were full of customers, and a harried staff stepped about, managing all the business.
There was one empty seat at the counter, and Kay squeezed in between two men, one dressed in an orange apron and hard hat, the other in an ill-fitting business suit. The man in the business suit worked on her floor at the office, but Kay did not know him.
“What will you have?” asked the waitress. She had long, nearly white hair and deep-set eyes, and there was something premonitory in the stoop of her shoulders. Kay was reminded of someone.
“I don’t have much time. A coffee and a plain, buttered roll, please.”
As the waitress turned, Kay could not help staring at her due to the resemblance—but to whom? She could not seize upon the referent.
When the food was presented, Kay ate quickly and efficiently, devouring to the last crumb the fresh, buttered roll. It tasted delicious. She laid a five-dollar bill on top of the check, and was about to leave when the waitress placed a hand over hers.
“Ma’am?” she said. “I’ve just been informed your clothes are ready. You can go through the back if you’d like.” She indicated that Kay should follow her along the length of the counter, where she raised a hinged section near the cash register.
“Through here.” The waitress pointed down a hallway running toward a single door at the end.
Kay followed the path suggested by the woman’s long finger, walking past the bathrooms and cigarette machine, and arrived at the door. She tried the knob and it was hot, and turned with difficulty. When Kay looked back, she could see the waitress on the other end of the hallway, still looking at her.
Kay had never seen her sister’s dead body with her own eyes. She had been five, and too young. For years after, Kay had clung to the belief that Catherine was still alive, and had been sent to finishing school in Austria, to be raised in secret as an heir to the throne.
Kay pushed through the door. As she adjusted to the dimness and humidity, she realized that the passageway had led her to the back room at the cleaners—she recalled the sound of the machines, now lying dormant in pools of condensed steam.
“Miss! Miss! Over here,” cried a voice. The man in the high collar emerged from the shadows, waving her over. His left arm was in a sling, and there was a fresh bruise on his face. “Your order, miss—it’s ready so, you see, it was worth it in the end.”
Kay followed the man into the lobby of the laundry. Her clothes, sheathed in plastic, hung from a stainless steel pole rising from the floor. Kay passed a hand underneath and felt the fabric. It was warm to her touch.
“Are you satisfied?” the man said.
“Do you have a dressing room I can use?”
“Our fitting room,” the man said. It was an area set off on the wall, opposite from the posters of the ruined villa, with floor-length curtains that drew around her in a semi-circle, and a tall mirror. Kay hung the clothes and tore off the plastic, and she could see that the laundry had done a superb job. The shirt and pants were immaculately pressed. The gloves smelled fresh. The jacket shone.
When she emerged, the shop was deserted. There were groups of pedestrians on the street now, and several cars drove past, honking. The location of the wake was near the park, only three blocks, and as she approached the church, Kay could hear the rising tide of murmured voices and whispers in the night air. When she arrived at the corner, she was relieved to see that a long line of mourners stretched around the block. Above them, the three spires of the old church rose, trisecting an enormous moon—a seal so ancient and magnificent it moved Kay to tears.
The people in the line thought she looked radiant, and that she must be a distant cousin of the royal family.
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Photo credit: gregoniemeyer / Foter / CC BY-NC