Read Upon A Pale Horse for Free Online Page B

curt pants as he pushed himself to move faster, stoking his internal furnace to stave off the creeping dread that flowered at every pause. He was one of the only idiots walking, most preferring to be insulated from the elements by their cars, cocooned in privileged comfort while morning shock jocks bayed mean laughter at their own jokes. As one block became ten, the sense of heightened surrealism he’d felt at the hotel increased. Was he really on his way to his brother’s funeral?
    Memorial service , a voice in his head reminded. There wasn’t so much as a fingernail to bury – a certainty now, judging by the morning TV reports on the search results, or more accurately, non-results. Any vestiges of the unlucky passengers had been consumed by the Atlantic, swallowed up as though they’d never existed. An image of a shark shaking a torso in its clenched jaws flitted through his thoughts and he pushed it aside, preferring a vision of his brother, smiling, sitting by the fireplace in his apartment, cradling Becky from behind, a decent budget-Bordeaux only half-finished in his Costco goblet. A shock of his usually unruly hair hung roguishly across Keith’s brow, giving him an air of nonconformity he studiously cultivated – his differentiator in a gray city of cookie-cutter bureaucratic wonks. It had always amazed Jeffrey that Keith had taken a government job. With his skills and brain he could have done virtually anything, gone anywhere.
    None of which ultimately mattered. Not now.
    He rounded a corner and saw the red brick façade of the funeral home, an unctuous affair with colonial pretensions that was slightly wrong in the neighborhood – the brickwork too even, the wood accents on the windows and above the doors too clean, too precisely milled, too freshly painted, an artifice of antiquity created to lend an air of solemnity to an always-unpleasant farewell. Several tinted-windowed Lincoln sedans were parked nearby. Another pulled up as he approached and disgorged a couple about Keith’s age clad in expensive black, the woman’s face haughty and pale, the man’s puffy with the tell-tale effects of frequent debauchery.
    Jeffrey waited until they entered the building and glanced at the time – he was five minutes late, which was close enough. Hopefully he could get in and out with a minimum of fuss, saying his last words and slipping away like a phantom before anyone could smother him with sorrow and pity. He’d come up with a fitting eulogy on the plane and committed it to memory. Short and sweet, and if he garbled any of it, it wasn’t like he would ever see any of the attendees again.
    An attendant, suitably solemn, greeted him at the door and guided him to the assembly room, where twenty or so people sat on folding chairs staring at a photograph projected on a screen in front of red velvet curtains. It was a recent snapshot of his brother, by the looks of it on a boat, blue water and stainless steel railing in the background. Keith was grinning at the camera, a twinkle in his eye, merriment writ large on his features as the wind tousled his hair. Jeffrey felt his throat constrict and he struggled to swallow at the sight – there Keith was, another moment Jeffrey hadn’t shared with him, participant in a life that he knew little about.
    He moved to the front, where most of the seats were empty. Becky caught sight of him and stood, then hugged him awkwardly, tears in her eyes as he reciprocated, his arms around a woman who was in truth largely a stranger. She snuffled against his jacket and then pulled away, searching his face for something he couldn’t give.
    “You made it. I’m…I’m so glad. It would have meant a lot to him,” she said in a hushed whisper as she led him by the arm to the chair next to hers.
    “Of course I did. Nothing could have kept me away.”
    “I’m so sorry, Jeff. It’s…it just doesn’t feel real. Like it’s some kind of horrible dream.”
    Jeffrey nodded. “I know the