The Shrouds

Grief is rotting your teeth.

I think I tossed off...

I was dreaming

Grief is rotting your teeth

Is that medically feasible?

The teeth do register emotion.

They react.

Here's the proof.

Bone density is tanking.

Teeth are getting mobile as|golfcarts.

Not good.

So...

not exactly rotting.

Layman's terms.

Your wife was a beautiful woman.

Lovely person

You still have her dental records|here I guess?

X-rays of her mouth in your computer?

I still do.

Do you want JPEGs?

No, thanks.

Okay, but any time.

if it helps.

So what do I do about the grief thing?

Dentally speaking.

So your ex-husband is an architect?

We're still good friends.

I'm still living in the house that he designed.

We built it together.

And you've been divorced for?

Oh, twenty years

More.

And you're okay living alone or... you don't?

Well, I would have thought that

our mutual friend might have briefed|you on that.

Dr. Hofstra, who kindly engineered this blind date.

He thought our teeth were a good match.

Well, not so blind these days.

Google.

I'm sure you saw photos.

I saw some of you.

And interviews.

You can still hide things from Google.

Really?

So you're not a producer of industrial videos?

I still do that from time to time

And what do you do in|between the times?

Well, I own this restaurant|for one thing.

Really?

Well that's very illuminating.

Is it?

You own a restaurant in a cemetery.

That says something, |don't you think?

I'm part owner of the cemetery, too.

It's... it's kind of a showcase for|my business...

Does that say more?

Well, I think that the... um... decor|in here says something,

Although I'm not sure what.

Those, uh, ominous metallic ninja things...

Those are the shrouds.

Shrouds?

You mean like burial shrouds?

Yes.

I invented them.

Have you heard of the Shroud of Turin?

I think it pre-dates your restaurant|by about 2,000 years.

Maybe 700 years.

But it's pretty definitely a fake.

My shrouds are not fakes.

And your wife... she was okay with|the cemetery business?

How dark are you willing to go?

I'm okay with dark.

When they lowered my dead wife into the|ground in her coffin,

I had an intense visceral urge|to get into the box with her.

It was... so strong,

I couldn't stand it that she was|alone in there

and that I would never know what|was happening to her.

It wasn't a literary or an intellectual thing,|it was

right here pulling me. Hard.

You never considered cremation?

No.

She was Jewish.

And you're not?

No.

Some Belarusian Eastern Orthodox thing.

Actually, I was born over there somewhere.

But anyway... I'm a non-observant atheist.

So, she was Jewish.

So for the Jews, the body must slowly disintegrate

so that the soul which is obsessed with that body,

which loves that body

which hovers over that body and is|reluctant to leave it

which has seen the world only through|the eyes of that body

has time to gradually let go of that body

say goodbye to it and then ascend to Heaven.

And did your wife believe that?

She said she wanted to lie beside|me in death.

And will you?

I have a plot next to her.

Oh... you know that's really intimidating

for any woman who might want to|come into your life now.

You won't be surprised to hear|that she's buried right here,

just outside.

Would you like to see her grave?

A Jewish cemetery?

Non-denominational.

Or, maybe the religion of high tech|so you notice.

And little screens in all of the headstones.

Cute.

Cute?

Well, sweet, in a third-world kind of way.

Really?

Yeah. In some countries I've noticed|that it's the custom

to have an image of the loved one|pasted onto the gravestone.

It's kind of tacky, but touching.

And the images are usually horrible|and faded and fly-specked.

So the screen, they were your idea?

Yes.

What, like those digital picture frames

that give you a slideshow?

Not exactly

This is Becca.

Hmm. Double, like you said.

She's waiting for you.

So how do you activate the screen?

Uh, just hers... I assume, for now.

I'd like to see her.

Would you?

Well, you fire up the Gravtech app

And with that you control your special screen.

Of course, everything's encrypted

Pun intended.

You can't enable any one else's screens,|not even Gravetech.

What you're seeing is Shroud Cam.

It's basically a kind of an enveloping camera in her grave.

Really, it's more if an X-ray, MRI, CT scan kind of thing

in the form of an embracing wrapper,

what they used to call a winding sheet.

My God, that's really her.

That's an image of your wife's decaying body.

Yes, the classic wide-angle view.

But this newest upgrade of the app now|enables high-res zoom.

You're going to be the first|great citizen to see it.

Newer resolution, deeper penetration,

Something we've been working on for a long time.

And look, now you can do a virtual 3D rotation

in any direction.

Can you see?

I can see what's happening to her.

I'm in the grave with her.

I'm involved with her body the way I was|in life

only even more.

And it makes me happy.

It has drained away that fluid of grief

that was drowning me, killing me.

oh... ummm, Karsh.

You're a lovely, interesting man,

just like our mutual friend said.

But...um... really?

Would anybody mind if I...uh... smoked?

What?

So another bad date last night?

She put off by your desperation like the last one?

I'm out of practice.

It's been decades since I had to seduce a woman.

I'm never really sure whether I'm flirting or not.

That's what you get for having|had a successful marriage.

I don't have that problem.

Should I give up trying to find a girlfriend

or should I just sink gracefully into|terminal asexuality.

You'll never replace Becca.

I'm not trying to.

I did love that body.

Which you provocatively said|was a lot like mine.

You have her body.

I have my own body.

Is this really your life now?

Dog grooming?

I love dogs.

Yeah, but you're an actual veterinarian.

No.

Can't you love dogs through surgery?

That business side of things was making|me anxious. Beyond anxious.

Now I just make dogs beautiful,

and their owners thank for me it.

Never an argument over|what constitutes beautiful?

Nah, the occasional asshole.

I banish them immediately.

Well... speaking of surgery...

Were we?

I mentioned it.

Okay... yeah...

Your sister.

Ah... that's what we're gonna talk about.

You used to say that they were killing|your sister in the hospital.

And you used to say that I was just paranoid.

In fact, you kicked me out of her room

everytime the doctors came to visit her.

You were making it impossible to get any|information out of them.

You were so overtly hostile.