Wishes

Chapter One

Later, it was said that Berni was the best dressed corpse any of her set had seen in decades. Not that many of them admitted to having lived for much more than a couple of decades, and, what with the wonders of plastic surgery, none of them needed to admit to the exact number of years.

They filed by the expensive coffin and looked in admiration at Berni. There wasn't a line in her face. Every pit, wrinkle, even some of the pores had been shot full of collagen. Her breasts, filled with silicone, even in death pointed skyward. Hair expensively colored, eyelashes permanently dyed, nails manicured, waist tucked into a youthful twenty-three inches, her body clad in a six-thousand-dollar suit -- she looked as good in death as she had in life.

There were sighs of admiration from the people attending, and hope that they would look as good in death as she did. Only two people shed any tears at Berni's demise, both of them men. One man was her hairdresser. He was going to miss Berni's business, but he was also going to miss Berni's wicked tongue and all the juicy gossip she passed his way. The other mourner was Berni's fourth ex-husband, and his tears were tears of joy, because he was no longer going to have to support the army of workers it took to keep a fifty-year-old looking twenty-seven.

"Going to the cemetery?" one woman asked another.

"I would like to, but I can't," said the second woman. "I have an appointment. Emergency, you know." Janine, her manicurist, could only give her a time slot today at two, and she had to have her broken nail repaired.