Drop Dead

One

Nadine Barbault eyed the Cemeteries of New Orleans calendar as she rolled a small toy hearse around the miniature tombstones, coffins, and scythes littering her desk. The calendar was stuck to her cubicle wall with a thumbtack shaped like a skeletal hand, June 21 circled in red.

When she became the Herald ’s obituary editor, Nadine had decided to leave everything as it was for one month. After all, Tom, her predecessor, had been in the role for over twenty years before it was time for his own story to appear on the section’s back page. People were used to how he’d run things. It was better for Nadine to hold off before making changes—out of respect for the dead if nothing else.

Now the waiting period was over, and although she hadn’t yet decided what to do with the section, a woman who had outgrown her goth years could only deal with so many ankhs. She put the hearse down and picked up a miniature of Dante’s death mask from a long-ago Herald reporter’s trip to Italy. Palazzo Vecchio—La Commedia was written on the bottom in thin Gothic script. She couldn’t believe a man as dedicated to the dignity of the obituary had enjoyed all this funeral tat. Then again, Tom had also worn bow ties, so all bets were off.

“Hey, Lady Death.” of her colleagues tossed out the casual greeting as he passed, and she gave him the frosty stare she’d worked hard to perfect. He shifted his shoulders and winced. “I mean Nadine.”

That was better. She returned to her scheduled decontamination.

Into the trash went the death mask, where it landed with a satisfying thud. Next was a dusty, never-lit vulture candle in a garish purple. She brought it to her nose and cautiously sniffed to find it emitted the faint smell of lilies, far preferable to a more realistic carrion. Still, into the bin it went.

She was about to tear down the calendar when a stern voice came from over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Nadine’s hand stopped. The disturbance in the force had summoned Irina Skoll, keeper of the Crypt, the Herald ’s in-house research library, and its first defense against change of any kind.

Irina moved to the side of the desk—located at the back of the newsroom and near the window, as if to separate the frenetic pace of the living from the slower gait of the dead—and pushed up her glasses to give Nadine her full and unwelcome attention. Under Irina’s gaze, the invulnerable persona Nadine had cultivated for work crumpled like an old discarded draft. Irina’s soft, drapey clothes and puffy hair covered an uncompromising terror of a woman. The entire newsroom had fond memories of the day Daniel Starr, the editor in chief, had suggested that perhaps, in the interests of saving half a floor of space, Irina digitize the Herald ’s library. The two had gone literally toe-to-toe, Irina’s head tilted almost horizontally to meet the gaze of their six-foot-tall boss. Daniel had been the one to back down that day, an act never repeated at the Herald , and it had cemented Irina’s reputation as a woman not to be messed with.

“Hello, Irina. It’s time for me to clear out this space.” Nadine tried to channel cool unflappability and gestured to the desk with what she hoped was authority and ownership. “Make it my own.”

Irina bent down with surprising grace, the deep scent of iris wafting from her pink shawl, and plucked the vulture candle out of the trash. “This was a gift from Maxwell Levins in 2008,” she said. “A piece of newsroom history from one of Canada’s preeminent columnists. He said it represented the establishment’s perspective on his work.” Irina’s glasses magnified her pale blue eyes, mesmerizing Nadine like a mouse in a snake’s sights.

“I thought it might be nice to organize the desk.” Oh, pathetic. She thought . It might . She straightened her shoulders and firmed her voice and language. “None of this is good for my focus.”

“A professional can concentrate in any environment. Are you not a professional?”

“Um, yes?” Dammit, her voice rose at the end. Farewell, intimidating poise.

“Good. Then it’s best if the mementoes of lost friends stay, don’t you think?” Irina put the candle on the table and glanced meaningfully in the trash before leaving. Chastened, Nadine reinstated Dante to his place of honor near her monitor.

It would only take minutes before news of her ignoble defeat made the newsroom rounds. Inmates of the Herald affectionately called it the Crier for the speed at which gossip traveled.

Keeping a stony expression on her face as she rammed down her irritation at Irina’s interference and her own spinelessness, Nadine pulled up an editing task she’d been avoiding all morning. It was an obituary Daniel had strongly recommended she run because the deceased was a good friend of the Herald ’s owner. The assigned writer had struggled mightily to find meaning and impact in a life that apparently revolved around cruises, galas, and being obliviously rich. His email noted that the woman’s nickname had been Pandora, because she couldn’t keep a secret and had ended several marriages thanks to her reckless gossip. This provided some much needed color, but I decided not to include it , he wrote.

Nadine tapped the toy hearse against the desk. Surely the woman must have done something else of interest—like have sex with Mick Jagger. Didn’t everyone do that back in the day? She sent a note to the writer before moving on to her other duties.

After a quick scan of the Herald ’s death notices that thankfully didn’t list any young parents or children—those were guaranteed to make her choke up, and she couldn’t have that at work—she opened her bookmarked tabs to search for stories that might be worth a full obit.

Would you read about a woman who ran away to join the circus and later became an animal rights activist? she texted Lisanne, her best work friend.

Probably , replied Lisanne.

She legally changed her name from Katherine Brown to Lady Lionheart. She also tried to adopt her pet iguanas and named them in her will.

How many iguanas?

Nadine checked. Six.

Then unequivocally yes , wrote Lisanne.

It would be a change to run an obit on someone like Lady Lionheart, or the world’s only talking mime, who she’d read about yesterday. Too bad the Herald ’s reputation as a capital- S serious newspaper meant Nadine’s obituary subjects had to meet certain parameters and tended to be people who wore gray suits and white shirts rather than matching outfits with lizards.

Not that it mattered. She would do her best, but this was only a temporary stop to lick her wounds. Soon, she would be back to her old job on the politics team, covering real stories, ones that mattered.

Nadine pushed away a skull-shaped plastic chalice from the Paris catacombs and forced herself back to her work. It was time to call the widow of a self-proclaimed philanthropist who was always happy to support a hospital as long as they named a wing after him.

***

There were many things Nadine loved about her apartment. The controlled rent was a big plus, as were the long windows where she used to luxuriate in the perfect sunbeam on weekend afternoons and the rare days she was home before sunset.

What she didn’t like was her familiarity with the shadows that crossed her laminate floor at three in the morning. Lately, she’d been up so often in the early hours that she could map out their patterns in her sleep.

If she could sleep.

Which she couldn’t, too consumed with worries about strange sounds outside her window and the what-ifs her body repressed during the day to release in a slow, steady whisper at night.

Nadine lay in bed, eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately not to pick up her phone. It would distract her from the fact that she wasn’t sleeping but keep her scrolling mindlessly for hours. She didn’t have hobbies anymore. She had social media.

Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d made the right choice to take the obits job. The role was a metaphorical career graveyard in the eyes of most of her colleagues, although she’d done her best to save face by emphasizing that she took it to get experience as an editor. It was better to lie than have them suspect the real reason she needed a change. No one could know she was having trouble handling the pressure of her reporting job, so the ice queen of the political team had to become Lady Death. There was a grim cyclicality to it.

When the sun was up, it was easier to pretend her new obits job was something she chose. At night, it was hard to deny the knowledge that if she hadn’t moved roles, she would have self-destructed from the stress of dealing with how her life had changed after the death threat. A forced choice was no choice at all.

She buried her face in her pillow. She could count sheep. Do a body scan. Think of beaches and waves and playful dolphins.

Or give up and get a cup of mint tea, which was relaxing despite tasting like garden scraps.

She hauled herself out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen. As her hand hovered over the box of tea bags, she caught sight of her liquor shelf. A whiskey would do more good than tea. No, a hot toddy. Her English grandmother had sworn by them, as well as a rye and ginger at five in the afternoon on the dot, a glass of wine filled to the brim when cooking and another with dinner, and then a nightcap.

Huh. Maybe Grandma had a problem. Or she was onto something.

Nadine added whiskey, honey, and lemon to some microwaved hot water, then checked her phone as a message came in from Raj, the night web editor. Hey, on the off chance you’re awake, did you hear about Dot Voline? Dead.

She read the message twice before she absorbed the words. Dot Voline was dead?

Dot Voline, the literary icon.

Dot Voline, the recluse.

Dot Voline, whose classic book River’s Edge Nadine read in her twelfth grade English class. It had been late October, and the school had turned on the furnace to get ready for winter when a surprise heat wave swept over the region. The warmth pressed down on teenage Nadine until she’d propped her head in her hand to strategically shield her drooping eyelids. Her gaze had fallen on Dot Voline’s lines about love and self-knowledge, jolting her fully awake.

Then Angelika knew, with all of her thirsty heart, that there would always be doors in her life. Logan was one of them, a portal to a place she had yearned for. Yet he was not the destination. That distant landscape lay within herself and would stretch as far as she needed

For the first time, Nadine had understood words had the power to suggest thoughts she had never contemplated on her own. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say Dot Voline was part of the reason Nadine became a journalist.

And now, according to Raj, she was dead.

Corroboration was the blood of life, so Nadine took a sip of the hot toddy, squished the bear for more honey, and settled down with her laptop for some old-fashioned internet sleuthing.

The first discovery was the most convincing, a short statement from Owens and McPhail, Voline’s longtime publisher, linked from their social media. We are saddened to announce that after a long battle with cancer, world-renowned author Dot Voline has died peacefully at her home in Toronto. We mourn the loss of Canada’s first lady of letters.

Tributes poured into the social media post, the likes growing as she watched. Wasn’t anyone sleeping these days?

Nadine leaned back. The publisher said she was dead. A quick search showed Dot Voline had eschewed her own personal social media, so there would be nothing there. She chewed her lip, tasting lemon and whiskey fumes. Voline was probably dead, but that wasn’t for sure dead. She found the number for her contact at Owens and McPhail and called. No answer, so that wasn’t helpful. It was the same for the Herald ’s arts editor. Ideally, she could get this confirmed from another party, but she was willing to bet Owens and McPhail wouldn’t make a mistake about their top author, and Voline had been ailing for years.

If Nadine had gleaned one thing from staff meetings, it was that Daniel was serious about making sure the Herald was first with breaking news. To be second to announce the death of a star like Dot Voline would be unforgivable, and she had already shown her belly by requesting the transfer off the politics team. She couldn’t risk any other doubts about her capabilities.

Stress mounting, she checked again. Some night owl at the exceedingly trustworthy Canadian Literary Review had posted condolences. She glanced at the Spear website as well as a few other competitors. There was nothing yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Thanks to the modern office’s lack of boundaries between work and home life under the guise of flexibility, Nadine could access the Herald ’s content platform from anywhere in the world, including her kitchen counter. She was sure she’d seen Voline’s file when she’d scanned the advance obituaries with a mix of professional and morbid curiosity, wanting to know whose lives Tom had found necessary to write up before the big event.

There it was, Dot Voline’s life compacted into 2,178 words, with a photo of her receiving her first Governor General’s Award. The obit was fine. All she had to do was add the date and cause of death, currently held with TKTKTK .

To come. To come. To come. Like death comes for us all.

Nadine paced around the counter. Back on social media, comments and condolences continued on the Owens and McPhail post, complete with replies acknowledging the more important commentators. It was only midnight on the West Coast, meaning the British Columbia media might scoop her. Breathing in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, Nadine checked the Herald ’s own social media pages, then stopped breathing altogether as she read the comments. Why hadn’t the Herald posted the story? Was the Herald against Dot Voline? Against literature? Were women writers less worthy of respect? This was unacceptable. Were they against Canada ?

She considered calling Daniel but wavered. Her gut said she should, but if she came running to him for guidance on every little thing, she would erode any faith he had left in her. She looked at his contact on her phone, and her chest tightened. The story was good, and it was important to be first. She had to trust herself to make the right choice and show him she was confident in her judgment.

Her phone dinged. Raj again. Well?

Nadine took a deep breath and ignored the little worm of doubt because she was running out of time. It was her call. I’m going to run her obit.

You need any help from me? My shift ended five minutes ago, and I don’t want to look at another screen until tomorrow. I say tomorrow but technically it’s today. I should never have asked for my hours to be moved back.

Nadine was editing the story to include the cause of death. You go home. I have it covered.

It took less than a minute to get the Herald on record as the first media organization to tell the world the brilliant Dot Voline had passed away. She clicked to the Herald ’s website to ensure it loaded properly, sipping the cooled toddy with the sleepy satisfaction that came from a job well done.

Then she went to bed and fell blissfully asleep.