A Kiss Before Dying

by Joseph Grant

Most people visited New York City to sightsee, take in Times Square, a Broadway show, go to the Opera or Ballet, see the Empire State Building, pay their respects at Ground Zero shop along Fifth Avenue or maybe have a pretzel off the street; locals knew that outside the Garden were the best to be found in the City, the touristy ones at Rockefeller Center you could break diamonds with, but Agatha was not in Midtown the to do any of these things. Agatha, long depressed in her life, work and relationships, she decided death to be her vocation as she had been sleep-deprived for weeks and chose New York City as her place to die. She had read that a growing trend among major world cities was to visit them to commit suicide and to a life-long follower of someone else’s tune, Agatha thought Manhattan made perfect sense, in the City that never sleeps that she would find her eternal rest. On her last night in the most expensive and fashionable room she could find in the city, she had a lobster dinner, a bottle of Cristal by Louis Roederer and a pedestrian tiramisu for dessert. She would top this off with a drink at the bar, before topping herself, she reasoned, might as well go out in style, she smiled as she finished her dessert and then made her way towards the zinc bar. As Agatha sipped her cosmopolitan, she never expected the man of her waking dreams to suddenly sit down next to her, smile charmingly and ironically say: “Hi, I’m Blake, what are you doing for the rest of your life?”

6S

Joseph Grant, whose full catalog is here, is the first featured author in our "Six Sixes" series.