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ice sculptor that had been hired for her wedding felt his business would now be irredeemably hurt by his association with her abysmal affair. He was demanding restitution. As Amy argued the finer points of getting jilted in a dive deli and understanding better than anyone alive the meaning of “irreparable social disgrace,” Professor Heimlich entered her workspace in search of a snack.
    Spotting the new box of treats Hannah had gifted earlier, he craned his neck around the increasingly agitated Amy, reaching behind her as he tried to get to the biscotti. To spare herself further humiliation, perhaps of having the old man land in her lap, she handed the box to Heimlich, who happily snatched it away and ran off.
    Even later that day, just as Amy was wrapping her conversation with the ice-hearted ice sculptor, Professor Heimlich began dancing wildly around in his office. Amy didn’t notice Heimlich dancing and she didn’t notice as he began gesticulating wildly, flopping about back and forth, this way and that. And at the very moment that she slammed down the phone, she did not notice Heimlich’s dramatic crash to the floor. The loud clamoring his fall generated got her attention, to be sure, and she looked back at the phone for a moment in pure disbelief that she had slammed it down so hard as to make such a sound. Then she realized that it had emanated from Heimlich’s office. So loud was the crash, in fact, that it had attracted everyone in the English department to Heimlich’s door, and also some anthropologists. Including Hannah.
    Amy ran into Heimlich’s office to find him lying on the floor, a half-eaten biscotti clutched in his wiry, Band-Aid-wrapped fingertips. She wasn’t even aware that Hannah had followed her in until she spoke.
    â€œThis is bad,” was all Hannah said as they pondered what do next over Heimlich’s prone and lifeless body.

4. Amy Has a Most Unusual Day

    From the outside, the Aberdeen Funeral Home looked like your typical old-time funeral parlor—a “home” complete with a wraparound porch and cheery gingerbread. It had once been the home of the Aberdeen family, who had converted the downstairs into a funeral parlor, and for generations, it had hosted numerous mourned and mourners in the many “Rest and Reflection Chambers” that could be found in the sprawling Victorian space.
    Except there were no Aberdeens here anymore. Gus Aberdeen, son of the third-generation owner of the facility, who was also named Gus, had never been able to muster much passion for the preservation and showcasing of the dead. So, the day his father passed away, Gus placed a call to The Bloomquist Group, the nation’s leading purveyor of all things funerary, and asked them to make an offer on the business. Before the body of the elder Gus had itself been preserved and showcased, the younger Gus had accepted their offer.The day after his father’s funeral, Gus and his wife and three kids packed up and headed to North Carolina.
    Now, thanks to the “vision” of the Bloomquist Group, the Aberdeen Funeral Home was a bustling business, known to boast: “We Host the Most on this Coast!” In an effort to remain true to the home’s original condition, actually a mandate of the local zoning board, the outside of the home had been left pretty much intact. The inside, however, was left to Bloomquist to do whatever they chose. And they became mad with the freedom of all of it.
    Now gone was the sweet flowery wallpaper, the soothing pastels of matching walls and carpets. The Aberdeen of the twenty-first century, instead, featured special rooms themed to the passions and proclivities of the deceased, including among others, a Winter Wonderland Chamber, a Stadium Chamber, and the one in which survivors of one Dr. Fredreich H. Heimlich now gathered: The Graceland Chamber.
    True to the spirit of the Memphis mansion of Elvis Presley, The Graceland