Falvo's

The rental came to a halt in Mount Washington, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a cold sunny day. Families walked dogs in front of small apartments and ramshackle row houses. The car was littered with remnants of fast-food dust and cigar innards. I parked behind a large SUV and saw the pierogi place that the GPS had brought me to; its blue and white stripey awning seemed more like an ice cream shop than a restaurant. There was heavy glare from the chrome sign of the movie theater across the street to the right.

I spoke with the portly woman at the counter who was not particularly ethnic, nor seemed like she had very many "firsts" left in life. I watched as her swollen arm, with a feathery tattoo and some Bible verses, fished for an old sorbet tub in a rolling freezer, popped the lid, and pulled out a half dozen frozen dumplings—quickly drowning them in a large vat of oil.

After a while she plopped the stuffed cabbage and the dumplings down in front of me, making that school cafeteria sound of plastic sliding across a tabletop. The tray was a bright firehouse red with a slab of parchment paper atop and a bleeding oil ring. She'd done well with the caramelized onions and sour cream. After I paid, she pointed to the bathroom, which was, "Through there and up the stairs.”

The back looked more like someone's residence. I passed a carpeted doorway strewn with colorful plastic children's toys as a young girl played with a Spider-Man villain toy and a kids' movie played faintly.

I gave little effort to my parting words. Sort of like words that you never bother learning how to spell because you hope to use them infrequently. Words like "diarrhea" or “benign."

Across the street I saw a man somewhere between a limo driver and a Genovese underboss, ripping a Seneca menthol cigarette. His bald head caught all of the afternoon's glare.

"Man, can I take a photo of you?"

"Sure, why not," he retorted.

His age made him more approachable, but there was something about him that was tougher than woodpecker lips.

"So you's just passing through, or?" he asked with an exhale.

"Working here for a few weeks. I came to see the neighborhood."

"Oh yeah?" he said, almost shocked.

"What else should I see up here?"

"Well, there's this point, off Grandview Ave—you can see the whole town. I think it's uh, Kearsarge and Grandview, but I'll tell you something." He held back a little.

"Yeah?" I asked, like a child hearing a ghost story.

"The Brusco family opened this here funeral home in 1949. We've been open ever since. Not like some of those other ones here in Yinz that use that name. This is the real deal.” He boasted while pointing.

Entranced by his voice, I had been oblivious to the fact this was a funeral home.

"I got something a whole lot better to show you," he said. "You know I run this place. Now you can say you got a picture of Mr. Falvo in front of his funeral home next to the fucking Botticelli statue there."

He pointed once again to the white Greek cherub statue by the entrance, then came over to shake my hand.

"It's a pleasure, Mr. Falvo," I offered.

"Let me ask you something," he said.

"Yeah?"

"You want to see some stiffs?" he asked with a smirk.

The doors were incredibly heavy, almost a dead weight. I followed Mr. Falvo in through a badly lit carpeted corridor.

There was a gift store of sorts to the left with all types of images: coffins, flower arrangements, gravestones.

"That's boring. Come here.”

I walked through a small chair arrangement and joined him toward the far wall. A waft of mothball and soot lingered in my mouth. On the wall hung a crinkly old image of a chubby priest in a brown robe followed by a flock of sheep on a dirt road. There was another painting of a pompous terrier with raised ears.

I began to feel the pierogis stewing in my gut, the oil and dough expanding like oats left in milk.

At some point, people stopped wearing photo lockets around their necks. Now we etch the dead into our skin with blown-out script and announce them on our bumpers—birth years and death dates reduced to vinyl and ink.

Dusk lingered outside the window. Although still light, there was a visible moon doing one of those upside-down crescents like the Turkish flag. Blue television light peeked from the windows.

Falvo said, "They come here figuring they'd eat free, save money, avoid rent. Hell, they even get a free makeup job thrown in. Now the only thing they don't have much say on is their outfits—we decide on that. Well, with the family, of course." He paused. "What would you wanna be wearing?”

I dressed like a collision of Sam Shepard and Juelz Santana, but I knew he might not recognize those names.

"Nice suit'd be fine,” I offered.

We passed one more office where I noticed a bulky woman rummaging under a desk. She smiled, a sliver of purple hair dye up front—that color that suggests she drinks Rolling Rock beer, drives a massive SUV, and has more than likely been involved in a fistfight at a hockey rink.

An old woman was bent over the casket, her chin sharp against the soft light as she worked the dead one's face.

As we stepped into the room Falvo asked me again,

"From New York aye?"

"Yeah." A bit thrown by how unfazed he seemed.

"What do Brooklyn and pantyhose have in common?"

I pondered briefly and looked at him for an answer.

"Flatbush!"

It did make me chuckle just a bit.

As we reached the old corpse, another woman was working on her makeup, standing to the right of the coffin. My eyes darted to the old dead woman's crackled, half made-up lipsticked lips. The sight made me wince.

"Hey, give us a minute, would ya?" Falvo said to the makeup lady.

She scurried off down a hall.

"This is Mrs. Parnassus. Or shall I say, was." Falvo laughed his way into a smoker's cough.

He slowly got close to her and reached for her chin.

"She's got a sweet soft chin," he said, lifting her lifeless head and turning it side to side the way an elder might do to a young kid.

The blasé manner in which he handled her startled me. Mr. Falvo proceeded to pick up her hand and asked if I wanted to shake it.

I held it briefly, examining the bloodless veins, paler than a geisha's forehead. Then the weight of her soul’s absence set in, and I gently dropped Mrs. Parnassus' hand and took a few steps back.

"The service is next Thursday," Falvo said, as if I had asked him.

He spoke now in motion.

"You ever seen a dead body before, kid?"

"Yes," I lied.

"There's another guy back there." He pointed off. "Younger. Think he was a boozer.”

Mother always told me that if you love your job, it never feels like work. Morbidly, Falvo bounded about his sanctuary with the gaze of a child watching wildlife.

For a moment it felt beautiful, then quickly I became more uncomfortable than a theater full of people on acid watching Vietnam War footage.

I didn't need to see the other “stiff,” as he put it. I knew it was time for me to be off.

I walked up to him and gave him my firmest squeeze of a handshake.

"Good luck with Mrs. Parnassus," I said, and thanked him for the tour.

“Anytime," said Falvo.

As I scooted my way out, I smelled the mold rising from the carpeted floors. Plastic-wrapped red and white peppermint candies gleamed in the glass bowl.

"Angel Eyes" by Frank Sinatra played faintly in the lobby as I drew open the heavy doors.