Good Mourning by Elizabeth Meyer

nothing made me feel like I was doing a good job more than when clients opened up to me.
    I’ll never forget the look on Nico’s face when he stepped out of his car and saw many of his father’s Lamborghinis lining Madison Avenue. I hadn’t slept in three days and was basically running on caffeine fumes, but it was totally worth it for that moment. His eyes welled up with tears, and as friends and family walked up the street toward Crawford, they touched the cars delicately, like Mr. Wheels’s spirit was revving within their V12 engines.
    â€œYou outdid yourself,” Nico said when he saw me. He wiped both his eyes and looked out onto the street with a huge smile on his face. It was like the cars, a herd of Italian stallions, had come to pay their respects, too. I gave him a hug and led him inside. There was one more surprise.
    Normally, the main attraction at a wake is the guy in the casket. That’s the person everyone comes to see—the life of the death party, so to speak. But I had something extra in mind for Mr. Wheels. At the front of the room, I’d arranged to have his $100,000 model Lamborghini brought in from his home and enclosed in a glass case. (I left out that a small piece of paint had chipped off the side of it as the deliveryguys carried it in. “This insured?” one of them asked, the blood rushing from his face. I didn’t really know but nodded and waved him on in.)
    â€œYou can’t have a Lamborghini funeral without any cars in the room,” I said. Nico put his hand on my shoulder and nodded in approval, unable to speak for the first time since I’d met him. It was a perfect moment.
    As the last guests made their way out, Nico approached me and asked if I’d ride along with him in the procession to the cemetery. “But first,” he said, “we have to drive by Dad’s house.” It’s Italian tradition to drive the body by the deceased person’s home, which I knew from my mother’s side of the family. I was honored Nico would ask me to tag along in his limo, and even more excited to see the procession of Lamborghinis driving through Central Park on their way to the Bronx and eventually into the New York suburbs.
    â€œJust tell whoever’s driving Dad’s cars that they better watch for potholes,” said Nico. I grabbed my walkie-talkie and lowered my voice—my attempt at sounding more authoritative—to relay the message to the twenty Crawford employees standing outside in suits and earpieces. “See? No bullshit,” said Nico. “Dad woulda liked you.”

    WHEN I WALKED into Crawford one morning and heard that the adult son of a foreign billionaire had died, I initially assumed from drugs or alcohol. I vaguely knew of him (I’llcall him Dr. Feelgood)—he was that old guy at the club, the one dancing on a table at four a.m., an hour when the lights came on and even the young girls in stilettos and sequined dresses were ready to call it a night. Not Dr. Feelgood; he was calling his pilot, telling him to prepare his private plane for takeoff—it was time to continue the party in a new time zone. It didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that he had perhaps partied a little too hard. But when I looked at his folder, I saw that he actually had been sick for a while—he just hadn’t told anyone.
    I was about to go down to the embalming room to see Bill when Tony called me into his office. “I’ve got one for you,” he said.
    I walked in and took a seat, hoping that he’d ask me to work on what was sure to be a hell of a funeral. I didn’t want to flat-out ask, though. Tony seemed to appreciate my connections and knack for dealing with our clientele, but I had the feeling that if I got a little too comfortable, he might become territorial. A few days before, a client (who happened to be a friend of a family friend) called and asked for me by name.