Hospital Europeen Georges Pompidou

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

“I know enough first aid to get by,” Ortiz said. His flippant, ambivalent voice caused Georgette to raise a slow eyebrow. Wasn’t sufficient first aid knowledge required of cops and PIs these days, anyways?

“Good for you.” She muttered with false enthusiasm.

Ortiz had stopped helping with the clean-up, which was fine, considering all the objects were retrieved and safely put inside her kit again. But she still organized, almost obsessively to give her hands something to do.

“So, did you always want to be a medical examiner? Or was it the healthcare benefits that made you choose to spend your days talking to corpses and cops?”

“I’ve wanted to be a medical examiner since I was tiny—five maybe. My dad’s a mortician, and my mother is—well, was, she’s retired now—a cardiologist. So it’s just sort of something I grew up with, I guess you could say. Health and death went hand in hand in my house.”

Quite literally. Her father, who was surrounded by corpses, and her mother, who dedicated herself to saving lives would hold hands, and until they divorced, Georgette had seen it as some kind of magic portal that, should it be touched, would explain to one how death worked and if life continued after you died. But she was always afraid to touch this portal, watching it from afar. But the portal got smaller after a while, and only revealed itself every now and again as time pressed on. And after the divorce, she never saw it again. It became a distant memory that, even to this day, she rarely remembered to dwell on. Maybe one day she’d write it down and tuck it away to the inner most parts of her desk to be found later, creating a moment almost as magical as the portal itself. Because, often times, finding lost memories on crumpled up paper was beautiful, and far more exciting than losing them forever.

“What about you? My clumsiness seems to have swallowed your answer. How long have you been a private investigator?” she repeated her question from before she knocked the sewing kit down. The information might prove useful later.

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

Santiago wondered what sort of little girl dreamt of growing up to be a medical examiner. Maybe she wasn’t so different from the little girl who dreamt of being a mob boss, or the little boy who thought gang life was a ticket out of poverty. Someone with a hard edge and a bit of naïve romanticism for the grotesque.

Or one freaky girl.

Santiago wasn’t sure he wanted to know just how freaky Georgette was, but the thought crossed his mind briefly that she was probably much bolder than other girls he knew.

“I’ve wanted to be a medical examiner since I was tiny—five maybe. My dad’s a mortician, and my mother is—well, was, she’s retired now—a cardiologist. So it’s just sort of something I grew up with, I guess you could say. Health and death went hand in hand in my house.”

Family business. Perhaps not so freaky—not so interesting—as Santigao had thought. Or mayne that was jus this nature, looking for something to be off about her since everyone else he knew was half-crazed anyways.

“What about you? My clumsiness seems to have swallowed your answer. How long have you been a private investigator?”

Santiago should have known he could only avoid interrogation for so long. He wondered what to say, what sounded best. How not to blow his cover…

“I used to work with gang rehabilitation,” he said without missing a beat. “You know, getting people off the streets, into programs, jobs, schools.”

Fact: Santiago Ortiz was not lying. He didn’t mention those people had been friends—or, in one instance, the niece of a friend—and himself. That would have ruined everything. But it was close to the truth. Not even wrong enough to be called a lie.

“This is my first gig since then,” he confessed. An almost-truth for an almost-lie. A fair, karmic trade if there ever was. “Gotta start somewhere.”

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

“I used to work with gang rehabilitation. You know, getting people off the streets, into programs, jobs, schools.”

Georgette raised her eyebrows, impressed. It was admirable, certainly. Getting people on the right track before they had a head on collision was the kind of thing that, fortunately, kept more dead bodies off her table and kept more people living long, happy lives. She smiled in veneration, leaning into her elbow on the cold, smooth metal table.

“This is my first gig since then. Gotta start somewhere.”

Georgette nodded. “Right, and what a good place to start. Good for you. It’s great what you’re doing.”

She felt her eyes wandering to the refrigerating metal cabinets where patients lay cold and dead. Maybe that man Ortiz looked for would show up. And selfishly, morbidly, she hoped he died. Not out of any vendetta or hatred for the stranger, but because it would give her an excuse to see him again. “If I see your friend, you’ll be the first to know.”

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

Georgette bought the partial truth and Santiago felt clamminess grip his stomach. He didn’t usually feel guilty. Not even a sting. But he felt slippery right now, like he was just a little bit unworthy of the admiration in Georgette’s smile. The only gang rehabilitation he’d seen out successfully was his own, and even success was dubious.

“If I see your friend, you’ll be the first to know.”

Friend. Santiago’s mouth twitched to a ghostly half-smile. If she only knew. Was Lorenzo Santiago’s friend? Did it matter? These days, Santiago was just about the only friend the other man had.

“Thanks,” he said. He met Georgette’s gaze and the half-smile became a full one. “I’ll see you around.”

--

Some people had a favorite bench in the park to pass the time. Others, a spot along the Seine or a special table at a café to do their thinking. Santiago Ortiz pitied these people for their boxed-in thinking. While they had their conventional, crowded locations, Santiago preferred the near isolation of the local morgue. He’d been doing his best thinking, sitting in their break room or else lingering in the fringes of the postmortem operating theatre.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

In actuality, Santiago had come back every couple days to the hospital with the hopes of catching a glimpse of Georgette Duguay. It made him feel a little bit creepy—voyeuristic, even—but he liked to watch her work. Strike up conversation, every now and again, all under the guise of looking for Lorenzo Reyes. Well, it wasn’t a guise, so much as an excuse. He really was trying to find the man. But he was almost certain he wasn’t going to turn up in this particular morgue, as Santiago’s luck had never been particularly good.

That was why he created his own luck.

Today, Santiago had been silently watching Georgette work on examining a dead man. A German immigrant, Max Delbruck. Fifty-ish, single-car accident. Hit a light post. Fell asleep at the wheel or something. Santiago couldn’t remember the details. Instead, he focused on Georgette’s hands. They were slender, even with the bulk of gloves to cover them, and they glided over her specimen—client?—deftly, precisely. Santiago envied her a bit, not only for being good at her job, but for loving it. His “real” job was hardly a source of joy these days. In his mind, he told himself he was only working at the Garnier undercover, since Lorenzo had last been seen there. He almost believed it, sometimes, but that didn’t change the fact that the whininess of his coworkers was suddenly highlighted. Especially compared to the solitude of working a case alone, or the stillness of Georgette’s operating theatre.

His eyes moved up to her eyes, which weren’t looking at him, but rather at Delbruck. She was focused; interested. Keenly. Something was alight in her eyes that Santiago noticed was missing from his own when he went over set designs, costume renderings, and set lists. This was a woman who’d found her calling early enough in life to be satisfied now. Santiago wished he had the benefit of finding the right fit.

She’d known what she wanted to do since she was five years old, too. She said as much, the first time they’d met. And while they hadn’t talked much about childhood—if at all—since then, Santiago thought it spoke to something in her character. Determination.

Never mind that she wasn’t queasy about the underbelly of life. No. If you mistook Georgette Duguay for a hard-boiled, no-nonsense cadaver queen, you’d be dead wrong.

Dead. Wrong.

He thought about sharing the pun, but realized that she would need context. Santiago was thinking about her, which was probably unprofessional.

Not half as unprofessional as he could be.

After all, to say she was a “pretty girl” was a gross understatement.

In the last couple years, Santiago’s weak spot for redheads had somehow shifted to brunettes. He didn’t understand the shift himself, but there it was. And if he said his thoughts about Georgette Duguay were always chaste, he’d be a lying son-of-a-b*tch.

Not that she’d given him much a reason to think anything particularly unchaste. They’d met in a morgue, discussing the potential death of one of Santiago’s oldest friends, and she’d said her refrigerator was his refrigerator. Unless you were particularly skilled at innuendo, there were no lines to read between.

Santiago, though, was learning what every good sleuth knew by heart.

The devil was in the details.

When they met, she’d been brusque with him; it took only a few seconds for her tune to change. It had given way to teasing, joking, fun. A good sign, if you believed in signs. She gave him—a stranger with a (forged) badge-- free reign of the morgue, she laughed at his jokes, she made equally cynical observations about life and death…

And then there was the incident with the sewing kit.

No medical examiner, however young, was clumsy. It was against job requirements. You had to be careful, precise. You couldn’t just knock over supplies or let your hand slip. Georgette had done just that. Whether it was because he made her nervous or because she’d sought to prolong their conversation didn’t matter. That had been a deliberate move on her part. A whoops-clumsy-me move that was laden with more meaning than a dozen sexual innuendos. She was curious about him, as he was about her.

Right now, Santiago leaned against one of the refrigerators. He’d brought her a folder of information on the case he was working currently—a list of murders from the last six months with a vic resembling Lorenzo’s profile—with hopes that maybe they could riddle things out after she finished on Delbruck. But, his thoughts weren’t on that. Clearly.

“At the risk of sounding unprofessional,” he said, not looking up from the folder. “I’m sick of making excuse to come to the morgue just to talk to you. Maybe I could take you for drinks or dinner sometime.”

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

As of late, Georgette found herself slipping into work earlier and earlier, often times unlocking the doors to the morgue before the sun had even sent its rays to spread across the sleeping city of Paris. And each morning, she found, to her surprise, Santiago Ortiz, ready to come in. She wondered, each time, just how long he had been waiting, but never asked. She simply unlocked the door for him to let him in. Every day, she asked if he had found his friend yet, and his answer was always some accented variation of ‘no’.

It was disheartening, but there came a time when Georgette began to wonder if he was here to look for his friend, or here to look for her.

But, of course, Georgette could have been over thinking it. She was not about to let herself insert emotions into a man that weren’t there, wasn’t about to pretend he was there for anything other than business, professionalism.

So Georgette worked, buzzing around the morgue like a worker bee while Santiago looked on, occasionally helping when she asked for it. But as he watched, she couldn’t help but feel his eyes on her back, trailing down, and to keep herself from locking eyes with him, she had to convince herself he was looking away.

As they moved about the room together, they made polite, professional small talk, their voices testing the waters, still stiff with unfamiliarity, but light with gentle sarcasm.

That was, until, “At the risk of sounding unprofessional, I’m sick of making excuses to come to the morgue just to talk to you. Maybe I could take you for drinks or dinner sometime.”

“Maybe,” Georgette said casually, hiding a smile. She had been wrong not to trust her instincts about him and his intentions here. “That might be a possibility.” She twisted an s curl around and around her finger until it turned purple and had a heartbeat to call its own. “Make an ‘and’, not an ‘or’ thing, and I might be a little more inclined.”

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

Santiago didn’t have time to date. This was insane. He was working—technically—three jobs and stretching himself in ways that made even the most deft social contortionists look amateurish. And yet…

Santiago hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in well over a year. His dating life consisted of fleeting encounters in bars that usually ended after a couple of drinks and dances or in a stranger’s apartment where he made excuses to leave without breakfast. Santiago was too serious, too intense for relationships. He was too much of a liability. Too risky. An ex-gangster, a murderer, a thief, a monster.

And yet.

Was it wrong to want someone around? Someone he wasn’t indebted to, someone who liked him for his morbid jokes and half-smile. Someone who didn’t know his history or his baggage. Someone that might be interested in him for whoever he was these days.

Probably. It was also probably more melodramatic than Santiago meant it.

He wanted—deserved—to have a good time with a beautiful girl. Pretty women didn’t look at him often. Or rather, when they looked, they didn’t touch. He might as well have “Bad Boy” tattooed on his forehead. Nice guys may have finished last, but Santiago Ortiz wasn’t even in the running. He was the best friend. The ex-boyfriend. The good lay that one time. The moody, punctilious boss. No one’s lover. No one’s love.

But Georgette didn’t know that. She saw, when she looked at him, Detective Santiago Luis Castaneda-Guadalupe Ortiz. She saw a guy who was on a case, who did the right thing, who didn’t need his past to make him worth talking to. Frankly, Santiago needed a good time with someone who didn’t judge—had no standard to judge him by.

And if she said “no”, Santiago wouldn’t need to care. After Lorenzo was found, he’d stop frequenting the morgue anyways. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, nothing to lose.

Still, he felt suddenly small. Young and green, fifteen years old and watching Gisele kissing Joaquin. Or foolish and out of sync, watching Rachel walk out of the Garnier. Hope was not a natural emotion for Santiago Ortiz. One did not subsist on fools’ dreams.

“Maybe,” Georgette said casually. “That might be a possibility.”

Santiago was never good with maybes. He watched as she twisted a mahogany curl around her finger. Nervous? What right had she to be nervous? Did she have a boyfriend? A husband? A line of suitors long enough to wrap around the building three times?

“Make an ‘and’, not an ‘or’ thing, and I might be a little more inclined.”

“Just a little?” Santiago asked. Confidence, real or faked, dripped from his smile. “I’ll make it an “and”, if you make that “a little more inclined” a “yes”.”

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

Georgette didn't date on the job, and in a sense, Santiago was her collegue. Inactively helping him search for the body of a dead man was still considered working. Georgette could remember the last time she dated at work. Dinner conversations were about how the decay of a dead woman's toenails was abnormally faster than that of the rest of her body, possibly meaning another cause of death they had yet to look at. Even Georgette lost her appetite, because few things went worse with fillet mignon and white wine than and elderly woman's toenails.

The boss had caught them on the office desk after hours and quickly dismissed her boyfriend, giving him little more than a pink slip to compliment his green resume and eyes. But Georgette was smooth and quick, talking her boss into letting her keep her job. She was, after all, the only female employee, and sexism wasn't exactly a glowing attribute of a boss. Since then, she had short-lived flame that tended to flicker out somewhere between his bedroom and meeting the parents. There was no doubt in her concious mind that Santiago Ortiz would be no different. Once his friend was found, he'd surely be gone to find someone else, either in a case or in a relationship. And Georgette couldn't hold it against him. He was a man, but more importantly, he was a human-being. It was human instinct, right? Date where it's convenient.

“Just a little?” santiago asked with a wider smile than Georgette had ever seen on his face. He surely seemed cocky and confident. She let out a humored puff of air, a simple substitute for a laugh. “I’ll make it an “and”, if you make that “a little more inclined” a “yes”.”

"Seems to me," she said slickly from behind the safety of the table, "that you like making deals, Monsieur Ortiz. Okay, I'll bite. Yes."

[The Exodus]

OOC: Possibly a wrap up? BIC:

Santiago Ortiz

Santiago was used to being confident. On his stage, on the streets, he walked a little taller. Now, standing in Georgette’s morgue, he felt slouchy and nervous, probably because real private investigators didn’t ask out the medical staff. He’d never been a fan of detective shows or mystery novels, but his only brushes with real world police told him that they may have been sleazy, but they didn’t let sleaze get in the way of their job. Santiago wondered if he was in the same category as Joseph Dubois, who had once asked Rachel out while working on her case. Still, he smiled anyways. Sleazy or not, no one liked a coward.

"Seems to me," said Georgette coyly from behind the safety of the table, "that you like making deals, Monsieur Ortiz. Okay, I'll bite. Yes."

“Let’s save the biting for a second date,” Santiago teased. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

It had been three weeks since Santiago’s first date with Georgette Duguay. It had also been three weeks since they’d last spoken. It wasn’t that Santiago hadn’t meant to call, it was simply—

He hadn’t meant to call at all, actually. He was bullshitting if he said otherwise. Georgette was a stunning woman. And she was interesting, funny, and any man would be lucky to have her. But Santiago knew within twenty minutes that he probably wouldn’t call her. Calling implied commitment. Calling said, “I can’t stop thinking about you. I had to hear your voice.” Calling was sentimental, sappy, traditional, and desperate. Santiago didn’t call because calling meant that he was looking for something more and in Santiago’s experience, something more consistently ended in him telling the girl it was over in a catwalk because he wasn’t made for the old ball and chain.

And yet, the longer Santiago went without calling, the more haunted by Georgette he was. He could easily set Myron up on a date or for a one-night stand, but each time Santiago bellied up to a bar beside an attractive woman, something in him balked and told him he’d let a good thing slip like smoke through his fingers. He did that a lot, actually, letting good things go.

So, instead of spending his time bar crawling or pining after girls in tight dresses, Santiago spent much of his free time loitering in the catacombs. He was still making his comprehensive map of them and exploring tunnels that were both dangerous and uncharted. He hadn’t been down there long today, though, because Georgette flitted into his mind during his first hour there. He’d gotten twisted up in some knot of chambers and dead ends. And in one of them, laid out on top of all the other bones, was a perfect human skull. The pronounced brow said it was likely a European male, but Santiago supposed that the fact that it was a skull in the Parisian underground might as well have told him that. He couldn’t find the rest of the body; the bone fragments it laid upon were not easily discerned. And suddenly, Georgette popped into his mind as the only other person who would truly appreciate his find. Santiago, without really thinking about the morality or legality of his actions, scooped the skull up and placed it into his backpack and went off in search of an exit. Once above ground, he made his way to the hospital. The secretary who had been rude to him the first day was holding a pen in her mouth as though she was a small child pretending to smoke. She smiled widely at him.

“Ah, the prodigal date returns!” she said. “Should I tell you to piss off or let Georgie do that herself?”

“I would like to see Georgette,” Santiago said. “I have a body to discuss with her.”

The secretary snorted. “You had your chance to talk about bodies with her.”

Santiago rolled his eyes. A team of nurses wheeled a gurney through the doors and he followed them through, ignoring the secretary’s protests. He walked down to the morgue and took a deep, bracing breath. He wouldn’t be surprised if Georgette slapped him in the face. That in mind, Santiago knocked on the door and waited for a response/

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

It was a slow day, especially for a night in Paris. The nights had been just about this stagnant for the past month, with the occasional geriatric patient who died of natural causes like cardiac arrest or cancer. People, Georgette supposed, just weren’t dying like they used to. It wasn’t that these people’s lives, or rather, deaths, weren’t important. It wasn’t that at all. Each person had a story, a family, a soul, even. That was the reason she got into this business in the first place, but death was so beautifully intriguing to Georgette, so poetically tantalizing that to not have it in her office was not only an insult to her paycheck, but a sad withholding of art, of something so darkly beautiful. Georgette spent her days, it seemed, drumming her fingers along the stainless steel tables, waiting for death. Not her own (though this utter ennui mixed with the heat might just cause it), but the death of a person who’s hourglass had run dry, and in turn the death of this nadir in her work week.

As Georgette drummed arhythmically on the tables like a heart with a dilapidated valve, her nails, which had gotten longer than desired, clacked, making the percussive sounds echo and bounce around the metal surface. She had almost allowed it to sing her to sleep, a metallic, morbid lullaby, when a pounding sounded at the door.

Georgette’s brown eyes flew open and she stretched from the position she had held, chin perched on wrist, legs crossed over themselves, and made her way to the door. Smoothing out her brown tresses, she opened it to see Santiago.

She gave a wicked smirk. “Well, look who it is. I wasn’t expecting to see you again, my good sir. Unless it was on my table naked. And, well, dead. Come in. Make yourself at home.” Not that this place was very homey to anyone put her, but she let him slide in all the same as she propped herself up onto a table. “To be honest, I thought maybe you’d forgotten me. Looks like I was happily mistaken.”

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

Santiago didn’t like to gamble. It was stupid to place wagers and bets. Santiago took enough risks just by taking his shirt off at the gym and exposing his gang insignia tattoos. And yet, this was a gambling game in a way. Santiago was betting that Georgette would remember him and remember him fondly. Of course, there would be no fun at all if the odds weren’t stacked against him. And despite thinking gamblers—especially gambling addicts—to be morons, Santiago did love a good challenge. Adrenaline flooded his stomach as footsteps approached the door. It swung open to reveal a somewhat startled looking Georgette.

The surprise only lasted on her face for the breadth of a second. Her dark, large eyes went wide and her bow-shaped mouth parted as though she had expected almost anyone else.

And then, as quickly as the surprised look had come it melted into a smirk. That was the Georgette Santiago knew and had a funny sort of fondness for. Her eyes sparked devilishly and Santiago couldn’t help but to think this “challenge” wouldn’t be so hard to overcome after all.

“Well, look who it is,” Georgette purred. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again, my good sir. Unless it was on my table naked. And, well, dead.”

Santiago smirked back confidently and yet something sharp caught in his chest. Georgette certainly wasn’t the first woman to wish him dead. She probably wouldn’t be the last. Even still, he’d thought things were going well. Evidently, Santiago wasn’t getting off the hook for not calling that easily.

“Come in. Make yourself at home,” Georgette said. Santiago followed her into the room. Georgette propped herself up onto the empty metal table. “To be honest, I thought maybe you’d forgotten me. Looks like I was happily mistaken.”

“Forget about you?” Santiago asked, coming to stand in front of her. Slowly, he slid the straps of his backpack off his shoulders. “What kind of man forgets a girl like you?”

He slung the backpack onto the table beside her as gingerly as he could, hoping that her present didn’t smash.

“I brought you something,” he murmured, twisting so that his mouth was near the side of her ear and he could rummage through the bag. “I saw it and I knew you just had to have it.”

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

“Forget about you?” Santiago asked, standing before her in a proximity that reminded her of the soft, sweating bodies pressed together in a shimmying dance at the night club he had taken her to all those months ago. She smiled not at the memory, but at the scent of his smoke and mint breath as it drew out to caress her hair and face. And just when Georgette convinced herself he was about to do the same with his fingers, he proved her wrong, his only movement being what was needed to slip his backpack off to rest beside her at the table. “What kind of man forgets a girl like you?”

One that’s afraid to call, I suppose. Georgette thought, fighting off the bitter taste in her mouth. She didn’t want to be angry with him; he was too good to run away from a girl like that, tail between his legs. Forgetting would be too convenient, too cowardly. That wasn’t the Santiago Georgette had met in this very spot last winter—that morbid, grotesquely handsome stranger who was just strange enough to keep Georgette wanting more.

“I brought you something. I saw it and I knew you just had to have it.” Santiago said, reaching into his bag.

Georgette felt a pang of something like excitement coupled with dread. The sentiment was nice, thoughtful, bringing her an unsolicited gift. But sentiment was a sticky trap that was too alluring to avoid entirely, but too dangerous to actually touch. Just as Georgette reached to touch sentiment, it snapped on her finger, injecting her finger with poisonous regret.

“Oh?” she asked, trying her best not to sound too curious, her body tingling as Santiago’s breath traced the outline of her ear. She reached up, entwining tufts of Santiago’s dark hair with her pale fingers. “Should I close my eyes?”

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

The skull was smooth under Santiago’s hands. It was cool and sleek, whole and perfect. He smiled and suddenly, his legs went numb as Georgette’s fingers skimmed the tops of his ears, picking at his hair gently. He wondered if it had really been that long since a woman touched him like that or if Georgette merely was that good. He imagined that if such an innocent touch could make his mind fuzzy, anything else would be ecstasy. He wondered what it would take to move beyond innocence with Georgette, how long he would have to suck up for not calling before she kissed him, let him touch her. He might need a full bodied skeleton to take her to bed.

“Oh? Should I close my eyes?”

“That’s usually how surprises work,” Santiago teased. “Go ahead. Close them.”

When Georgette’s eyes were shut Santiago pulled the skull out of the bag. Then, standing between her legs, he held the skull between their faces and in front of his own. He smirked from behind it. The skull smelled earthy, but not nearly as stagnant as he expected. He had to hold it with both hands to ensure it didn’t come apart.

“Voila,” he murmured. “Your present, carina.”

[Lets_Eat_Paste]

Georgette Duguay

“That’s usually how surprises work,” Santiago teased. “Go ahead. Close them.”

Georgette let her eyelids fall, heavy on her brown orbs, her lashes tickling her own cheeks as they lightly brushed Santiago’s face.

Before her, she smelled the hints of something familiar, masked by the scent of wet ground. Flowers, maybe? A plant? She didn’t quite have the heart to tell Santiago that she wasn’t exactly a flower person. As a woman whose business was in death, keeping things alive was bound to be a weakness.

“Voila. Your present, carina.” Santiago’s smooth voice said, and Georgette opened her eyes.

There, before her was Santiago, his face a skull. In the close proximity, Georgette’s eyes adjusted to see that it was not a costume, but human skull. She smiled toothily, taking it gingerly in her hands. “Thank you,” she said, her focus not on the sentiment of thanks, but on the excitement of receiving and analyzing her gift.

It was practically Shakespearean, hauntingly beautiful, getting a skull as a gift. “I love it,” she said at last, though it didn’t quite make up for the lack of calls. “You’re really not like most men, are you?” Most of the other guys she had dated bestowed her with gifts of pink fluffy bunnies or chocolates. But Santiago was different. With just one date and a handful of wonderful meetings, he knew her mind almost intimately, was familiar with a few of the morbid twists in the macabre labyrinth of her brain. And that, Georgette decided, was an even better gift than the perfect skull.

[The Exodus]

Santiago Ortiz

Thank you,” Georgette said, taking the skull into her hands and examining it. “I love it.”

Santiago felt weight fall from his chest; weight he hadn’t realized was there. He knew no other girl who would “love” receiving a human skeleton as a gift. But Santiago always thought traditional gifts were pointless. Any woman could buy herself chocolates. Flowers died within a few days and had to be thrown out. The skull was that of a dead man’s; and as long as it remained well preserved, it would outlast both Santiago and Georgette. He wondered if that made it a more romantic sentiment than he initially intended or if Georgette wasn’t the sort to read too deeply into these things.

He wondered when he became the sort to read this closely into gift giving.

“You’re really not like most men, are you?” Georgette asked, still studying the skeleton.

Santiago’s lips curled up into a smile. Usually when a woman said that to him it wasn’t a compliment. He tried it on for size and decided he liked the way it sounded. Santiago planted his hands on either side of Georgette’s hips.

“I know,” he said with a playful grin. “I should have come in here with a dozen long-stemmed roses. I was this close to getting them.”