I step out into the blood-warm night to smoke a cigarette. It's the slowest suicide I know besides getting up everyday to live my life. Clouds sit fat and heavy looking close enough to touch. The moon is somewhere behind them and they glow, faintly. They cover the whole sky except for one big hole where a god must have punched through on its way back to heaven. I'm no Christian, but I don't blame him for leaving. Anyone would leave if they got the chance.

I don't worry about death. There isn't much else worth more thought and I give it plenty every time I go out on a case. A slow death is all right with me. The quick ones don't give you enough time to say goodbye but it ain't like you got much time to regret that either. In those last moments when I know I've bought it, I suppose everything will seem so beautiful. Paying attention is good in my line of work but really I try to notice these things because on that last day one of them might be the most beautiful of them all. Maybe even one of the ugly, pitted memories that hunker down in the base of my brain and only pop up their head to kiss me goodnight or to blow laconic breaths at the trailing smoke.

I drop my cigarette out into the dead grass. It doesn't catch; it'll never catch. I grind it under my heel like an accomplice. The hole in the sky is smaller. Gotta get while the gettins good.

I want to kill myself a little more but the phone rings. I heave myself through the window and back into my office. I'm annoyed but that's good because whenever I get a call this late I don't have to feel bad about not being polite.

Nobody's ever paid me to be polite.

I snatch up the phone on the fifth ring. "Grim Reaper here, what do you want?"

"...Grim? What? I-I'm sorry, this must be the wrong-"

"Lady, it's a joke, and the best I got at this hour. I'm Jim. What do you want?"

"I'm...I need your help, uh, Jim."

"You got it. Come by my office."

"What? Now?"

"Would you be calling me right now if this was something that could wait?" There's a scuff while she puts her hand over the receiver. I hear another voice, maybe a guy. There's no response from her. I pull out a cigarette and kiss it between my lips. She takes her hand off.

"Okay. At your office?"

"At my office. Just let yourself in." She's quiet. I hold the phone up to my ear with my shoulder and fish in my pockets for a book of matches. "Ma'am, I'm sure I can help you. I just don't like the phone so much."

"All right." She hangs up, click. I leave the phone off the hook and stick it in the top drawer of the desk so I won't hear that droning alert. The drawer below that contains a broken revolver and a fully functioning bottle of Faust's Single Malt Scotch. I find them to be equally reliable.

I start towards the window and catch my reflection. I didn't shave today and around my eye is still yellow-green from my last satisfied customer. I straighten my collar and adjust my thin black tie. My reflection grins back at me; a shorn-headed brown guy who looks like he hits the bottle as much as the gym. Cigarette dangling from my lip, I salute. "James Reaper, Private Investigator, reporting for duty sir!" I give him the finger and clamber out under the heavy blanket of night.