Summary

In "Before You Melt Into the Sea," the narrator works at Eden Ice. Eden Ice "provides artistic alternatives to burial and cremation, one of the many 'new death' companies that became popular after the plague" (243).

The narrator became close with one of his clients, Mabel. Mabel wanted to use Immortal Ink LLC to preserve herself (244). Throughout their communications, the narrator and Mabel got to know each other. After Mabel's death, the narrator had difficulty letting go. He gave Mabel's mother her "remaining bone debris," which Mabel wanted scattered in all the places she "had planned to visit one day" (247).

Over the next year, the narrator's coworkers asked him about Mabel, but he "never said anything" (247). Yet he often thought about what Mabel meant to him. He remembered things she said. Sometimes he walked around...