The proprietor of the funeral home knew his salt in business: that was what they said about him behind fanned faces. The olive-skinned chap was gregarious, it was certain, and his demeanor was unusually never dour, even on a rainy eve. It perplexed the city people that he owned, of all things, the local funerary establishment.
            Eight years ago, he had opened its doors, proclaiming it the “finest final resting place around.” This much was true, for prior to his home, there was only an old church and a small, hole-in-the-wall shack of a funeral home down the street a ways. He named it the Ivory Rose, oddly enough, emblazoning the title in marble stone above the temple-front porch of the building.
            The architecture of the funeral home was barely altered from the original design leftover from its previous usage and original construction; it had served, some fifty-odd years back, as a small library. Thirty years ago it had shut its doors and the building had remained vacant and sealed shut until the new owner reopened it as the Ivory Rose Funeral Home.
It was fairly successful and profitable to the owner. It served about ten to fifteen funerals a month, most if not all coming from the ancient church that redirected its funeral processions to the new funeral home as soon as it opened, to lift the burden of such undertakings off its own back. The owner of the Ivory Rose and the head priest at the church knew each other from childhood, it was rumoured, so in a way it was a joint business venture for them. The priest had lent him a sum of money to help get the funeral home on its feet, and, in turn, the funeral home director sent him a check, a couple months later, for funding of reconstruction efforts in the church.
            The proprietor employed a bare-bones staff, for one to save money and for two because there was a shallow pool of workers in the city. He had a maintenance supervisor with a team of three workers under him for the cemetery upkeep, and a custodial engineer team of three for most extended manual tasks; a caretaker for the funeral home itself, who directed a pair of part-time workers for arrangement, decoration, and the such; the owner knew a caterer who he was fond of referring to his customers, and the local florist supplied him with a continuous amount of flowers and plants to keep the home “alive,” as he would describe the effect. It was a comfortable business, and the owner had done an efficient and neat job of setting it up to smoothly operate.
            The owner, himself, was the one who greeted visitors at the door, dressed in a prim suit and tie. He wore a dark mauve jacket most days, with a bright, white dress shirt beneath, and alternated his selection of ties from a seemingly endless wardrobe of navies, royals, plums, and grapes — he was immensely fond of blues and purples, not-so-secretly. He tended to wear deep gray slacks or outright black ones, with polished, Italian dress-shoes; he strove for a professional yet sombre attire to match his clean-shaven, well-trimmed appearance.
            His hair was parted to the side, combed and slicked back with flower-scented gel; above his lip, pointed mustachios curled up in their waxed sheen. His treated skin shone in the fluorescent lighting of the funeral home, always soaped with a medicinal, aromatic wash, twice a day. He wore a powdered, pine-smelling deodorant, and dabbed a “mountain air” brand of cologne on his wrists and neck. His clothing was duly laundered on a regular basis, and his pants and shirt constantly carried the odour of the fabric softener with which they were dried. Once every other day, he put foot powder in his shoes to keep them sterile, and sprayed the insides with an anti-fungal aerosol. At the end of the day, his guilty indulgence was to bathe in oils and minerals that cost him more than a few pretty pennies, as well. The proprietor was a man who believed in physical hygiene to a degree of religious zeal that matched his friend’s, the priest, fervor for God.
            He was not, however, a vain man, and never spent overly long in front of a mirror or thought too highly of his looks. Strangely, despite his charm and gentlemanly decorum, he remained single and rarely saw women out to dinners or dates. Most of his time was given away to the funeral home and its management, something for which he bore no remorse. In his past, it had been his experience that women were more trouble than they were worth, always costing him countless expenses and more than a little put off by his business of dealing with the dead.
            It tended to be the case that women were attracted to his sharp, good looks and his aura of warm pleasantry and kindly charisma, but lost interest once they found out about his line of work, more often than not. He was a frugal man, too, and did his best to skimp out on anything too luxurious or frivolous for anything, which no woman he had ever met respected. He didn’t associate with many women, either, and tended to be lacking in relevant conversation and possessed no interesting repertoire of witticisms or political jabs; in short, he was nice, he was handsome, but he was cheap and dull, which is the report local gossipers gave. The proprietor knew this, but didn’t care too much about it.
            One day, though, a woman came to him, recommended by name, with a request for service whose name was Lisa Jerusalem. He was struck by her pitiful tale of tragedy that brought her in need of his business, and swung her a fine deal on a package viewing and funeral. She was quiet and seemed, at least to him, contemplative and careful, which he found attractive and a change from the boisterous, scatterbrained chatterboxes he had politely entertained in the past. A widow with a tainted heart, it stirred that part of him that every man had: the desire to be a hero and saviour to some damsel in distress. That was why he cut her an irregular discount.
            The proprietor had nobody to talk with, really. He lived alone, he devouted his time to the Ivory Rose, and his socialisation was purely professional or forced. The tribulation in his heart he felt about Miss Jerusalem was kept secret and festered quickly in its rage of indignation and claustrophobia. Although he had met her a week ago, he felt with a strange conviction . . .
 
“Wait, wait, what do you mean you have nobody to talk to? My friend, do you so quickly forget about me?”   

[Editor's Note: The last remaining entry I ever wrote in the series of stories I had been putting up . . . Not that I didn't like the stories, nor did I lose interest in writing, so much so as I lost the particular kind of free time I had been using to write them. I intend to pick them back up, one day, and revise the old ones . . . Not sure when, of course.
For the curious, my working title for these is Chronicles of Nowhere, and it was pretty much an experiment in my ability to piece together a story by just creating characters and situations. There isn't any outline for the story, and it was never decided (in my head) whether to shoot for a novel or novella.
I have pieces of entries for this story sitting around to finish, as well, but none even close to being worthy of calling 'Drafts.']