Ticket Thirteen, Hold the Mayo¶
The third time the door creaks open late, I’m squinting at a shelf of unclaimed urns, their labels bleached by time. The man who walks in smells like cheap cologne and wet concrete. His name’s Harlan, but everyone calls him Salt—since he’s always saying things like, “Life’s a wound, and I’m the salt in it.” He owes the funeral home three favors and a new coffin liner, but here he is, leaning on my desk like we’re old friends.
“You’re late,” I say, though the clock above the file cabinet stopped at 3:17 two years ago.
Salt grins, showing a gold tooth I didn’t know he had. “Funeral for Margo Lune. You got the program?”
I don’t ask how he knew I’d be here. The side office smells like lemon disinfectant and old paper, and the only reason I’m still in this job is that I can find anything in under five minutes. Lost death certificates, misplaced embalming receipts, that one time a family insisted their grandmother’s diamond earrings were hidden in the ceiling tiles—they were.
But Salt isn’t here for the dead. He’s here about the ticket.
I can feel it burning in my breast pocket: a deli number ticket, #13, crumpled and stiff with age. The kind you take at a deli counter, but this one never gets called. I’ve watched six people take it from the dispenser by the front door, all of them walking out mid-number because the machine just… stops. Like the whole building holds its breath when that ticket’s involved.
“You gonna give it to me?” Salt says, voice honeyed. “Or do I gotta tell your boss about the van?”
My boss is a corpse in a suit, Salt. But I don’t say that. I say, “The van’s mine.”
“Is it? Since when?” He leans closer. “You think the city’s gonna keep paying you to babysit empty halls? You think Margo’s funeral’s the last one they’ll let you handle?”
The ticket pulses. Not really. But my fingers twitch like it does.
I pull it out. The numbers are smudged, but the words underneath are clear: Hold the Mayo. Some joke from a deli that closed before I was born, probably.
“I’ll trade you,” I say. “The ticket for the favor.”
Salt blinks. “You want out that bad?”
I don’t answer. My memory is flawless, so I know exactly how many times he’s said those words to others: twelve. Eleven ended in tears. One in a broken nose.
He extends his hand. I put the ticket in it.
It glows.
Not light—you couldn’t call it that. More like the air around it gets tired, bends downward. Salt’s eyes go wide. He tries to drop it, but his fingers won’t obey.
“Shit,” he whispers. “What the hell is this?”
I don’t know. But I do know that the machine by the front door just whirred to life for the first time in a decade. Number 13 flashes, bright and unapologetic.
Salt staggers back, the ticket still clutched in his palm. “You set me up.”
“Nah,” I say, standing. “You set you up. I just stopped stopping you.”
He opens his mouth, but I’m already walking toward the door, toward the number that’s finally calling.
When I look back, Salt’s kneeling, the ticket glowing like a wound in the dark.
I step out into the humid evening. The van’s still mine. The city’s still falling apart.
But for the first time, I don’t have to remember where anything is.
I just follow the numbers.