The Ghost in Love (4 page)

“Howdy,” he said to her, but his eyes were caught by what was in the draining bathtub. He stared at it instead of his splendidly naked girlfriend. Because the bathwater was the color of sand. Ben's eyes widened but he did not say a word. German and he were so new at living together that he was still embarrassed she might hear the sound when he was peeing in the toilet. Consequently, he wasn't about to ask now why the water in the tub was solidly beige after she'd just bathed there.

“What's up?” She looked over her shoulder at him and said the words around the toothbrush in her mouth.

Ben blinked uneasily several times and, mustering a strange high voice, chirped, “Not a thing!” Then he exited the room fast, closing the door behind him.

The ghost stepped down from the toilet seat and followed him. Ling walked through the closed bathroom door and into the narrow hall outside. The dog was lying on the floor there, waiting for the woman to reemerge. The two looked at each other. The ghost smiled at the dog and said, “Hiya.”

Pilot looked at it but didn't respond to the greeting.

Ling didn't care and walked down the hall.

Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They're there but they're no big deal.

Ling's first thought had been to follow Gould awhile and observe him. But then the ghost changed its mind and chose to have a look around the man's living quarters instead.

Ben worked as a waiter in a restaurant. He was good at his job and genuinely liked the work, but he did not earn much money. That was okay, though, because there was not much he wanted beyond what he already possessed. In that respect he was a contented man.

His apartment was bare, but not the dismal, depressing bare of the impoverished. Rather, it was the home of a person who doesn't care much for belongings. He liked food, he liked books; he owned one nice suit and a decent sound system. His parents had given him several pieces of sturdy nondescript furniture years before that fit just fine into his lifestyle. The well-crafted wooden bookcases in the living room he had built himself. Covering the floor in there was a faded red-and-black Persian carpet that he'd bought for eighteen dollars at a yard sale and then paid fifty dollars to dry-clean.

German liked Ben's apartment because, although sparse, it was obvious her new boyfriend enjoyed and took good care of his few possessions, polishing wood that had never been polished before on a scarred old school desk he'd bought at the Salvation Army. Or hand
mending a large hole in the Persian rug that had been neglected for years. In the center of the living room table were three beautiful large black stones that he'd found in an Italian river. His two pairs of shoes were always polished and lined up by the front door. One peek at the selection of books in his library said that whoever owned them had an inquisitive, wide-ranging mind.

The ghost walked to one of these bookshelves now to check it out. There were an inordinate number of cookbooks, but Ling already knew that Gould loved to cook. His dream had once been to become a great chef. But he was neither talented nor patient enough and in the end had to admit it. He possessed the enthusiasm and dedication necessary but not the creative imagination. A great cook was like a great painter: they saw the world as no one else did. Further, they had the requisite skills and talent to both manifest that vision and share it with others. Ben eventually accepted the fact that he didn't after several wholehearted attempts, including a yearlong stint at cooking schools in Europe. That was why he ultimately became a waiter: if he couldn't make his living cooking exquisite food for others, at least he could always be around it.

“Why are you here, ghost?”

Ling had not heard the dog come into the living room. Turning around, it saw the animal staring from a few feet away.

“Hello. My name is Ling. What's yours?”

“I honestly don't know. I've been called so many different things in my life that I have no idea what my real name is. These days it appears to be Pilot.”

“Pilot? All right, then, that's what I'll call you.”

Before the dog could respond, Ben Gould walked into the living room and over to the bookshelves. After stroking the dog on the head a few times, he squatted down and ran a finger over the spines
of his books until he found what he was searching for:
Serious Pig
by the great food writer John Thorne. Ben wanted to read one of Thorne's essays to German.

When the man had left the room again, Ling asked, “Do you like living here with these people?”

Pilot considered the question before answering. “Yes, I do. It's been a very nice change for me.” But the dog got no further than that because a scream suddenly exploded from the bathroom. The door flew open with a wall-denting bang and still-naked German ran out with both hands over her mouth.

“Ben!”

The dog, the ghost, and the man all hurried down the hall to find out what the problem was. When German saw Ben she took one hand away from her mouth and pointed back toward the bathroom. Her eyes were frantic and unfocused.

“In the bathtub. The water's
brown
and there are
fish
in it!”

Ling's shoulders relaxed now because it knew why the woman screamed. Sea serpents have unimaginably filthy mouths and tongues due to the vast array and number of disgusting things they are constantly eating. Dirt takes a holiday in a sea serpent's mouth. That accounted for the brown water. And scores of small fish cling to a serpent's body. Ling assumed that a few of these fish had made their way into Gould's tub after the monster's brief appearance there.

Pilot didn't understand anything the woman said, but her voice was high and screechy. When it came to humans, this was not a good sign. Not good at all. When they used that hysterical tone, it usually meant a dog was either about to be smacked or else ignored way past feeding time.

Ben didn't know what to do. He'd already seen the sandy-brown water in the tub a few minutes before. Ever the gentleman, he'd chosen
to remain silent. But now he was being summoned to look at it in German's presence. That meant he was going to have to ask his new girlfriend embarrassing questions he really did not want to ask. In addition, there were now fish in the tub.

Ling was curious to see how Gould would handle this.

The dog walked over to the woman and tentatively leaned against her bare leg to test her mood.

“Ben?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to go look or not?”

“Yes.”

“But you're not moving.”

“Oh, yes . . . yes, I am. I was just thinking if I needed to bring anything in there with me. I guess not. I'm going right now.” Defeated, he flapped his arms against his thighs and knew there was nothing else to do now but go.

Sure enough, his bathtub was half-filled with water the color of café au lait, and two very small black fish were swimming close enough to the surface to be visible.

German stood pressed against his back. With one hand resting on his shoulder, she, too, peered into the water. Feeling her warm breasts and body against his back, his head filled with sexy images of what he would love to do with her right now instead of staring at dirty water and fish in his bathtub.

All his life, Ben Gould had a thing he did whenever he was in trouble. For a few seconds before having to face facts and figure a way out of a fix, he would fantasize a perfect instance in a perfect world where he did not have to deal with whatever was threatening him.

For example right now, before opening his mouth to comment on the turmoil in his tub, Ben fantasized that instead of being together
in the bathroom, he and German were sitting together at the kitchen table. She would still be naked, of course, adding a delightful intimacy to the moment. Laughing merrily, she would say, “The looniest picture just came to me. I was looking into my cup and imagined for a moment that the coffee was water in your bathtub. And there were
fish
swimming in it! Isn't that bizarre? Where did that cuckoo idea come from?”

Ling was closely monitoring Ben's thoughts. It wanted to see how the man was going to handle this matter. At the same time, the ghost knew the whole situation was artificial and unfair. How could you fairly judge a human's ability to reason based on something as preposterous as what had just happened to him?

“No, this is wrong,” Ling said out loud, and with a flick of its mind made Gould's fantasy into reality. Ben and German were suddenly sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. She was waiting for his response to her vision. She was naked with her elbows on the table, holding a coffee mug in her hands.

Shocked by the abrupt change from the bathroom to here, Ben grabbed hold of the table with both hands as if to stop himself from falling.

“Ben?”

“Hold it a sec. Just one second.” He stood up and without another word hurried out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bathroom again. This time the tub was empty. There was no tan water with fish or sea serpents in it. German entered behind him, still holding her coffee cup. She again leaned up against his back.

“Hey, what're you doing?”

“Um. I wanted to see if there were fish in the tub as you said.”

“That's sweet of you to look, but it was only a crazy idea I had, Ben.”

His mind doing somersaults, his eyes darted everywhere around the bathroom, looking for anything in there that might tell him more about what had just happened.

Its head resting on its bent knees, the ghost sat in the empty tub watching them.

The theater was in a terrible section
of the city. You wouldn't want to go there under any circumstance. Vagrants slept sprawled like the dead in doorways. Dogs howled, whores growled, beggars scowled in the most menacing way. The look in their eyes said, Fork over or I'll get you. One troublemaker got so up in Ling's face that the ghost reached out and touched him gently on the tip of his runny nose. The man fell to his knees, so crushed by searing pain everywhere in his body that he didn't even have the ability to scream.

The inside of the movie theater was much nicer looking than Ling had expected after having just been outside. It was a well-preserved time capsule of the 1950s. A giant, brightly lit refreshments stand smelled of freshly popped popcorn and melted butter. A skinny, pimply kid at the door took your red ticket and, after tearing it in half, gave you back the stub. Comfortable wide velvet seats had so much legroom in front that you could almost stretch your legs all the way out after sitting down.

Standing at the back of the cavernous theater, Ling counted seventeen people in there waiting for the movie to begin. Most of them were men still wearing coats. One fat woman sat way off to the side. She had filled the seat next to her with many plastic bags full of dubious stuff.

The Angel of Death was sitting almost exactly in the middle of the theater with a brimming bucket of popcorn in his lap and a very large paper cup of orange soda. The angel had materialized on earth
today as a middle-aged man. Bald and portly, he wore wire-rim glasses over mild blue nondescript eyes, and was dressed in a green Shetland sweater, an old tweed sport jacket, and green corduroys. The angel looked sort of professorial, but the kind of university professor who teaches something European and difficult to understand, like the historical development of hermeneutics or Foucault. When the angel saw the ghost walking down the aisle, he waved. “Ah, there you are, Ling. Sit down. You're just in time.”

The ghost sat down next to the angel. After refusing an offer of the popcorn bucket, it said, “I'm extremely uncomfortable being visible to people. A man outside just came up to me and—”

“I know,” the angel said indifferently, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Tough. It's important for you to experience what it's like to be human now and then.”

“
Why?
I'm a ghost. Knowing what it's like to be human only clouds the issue.”

“And that's good! You could use some clouds in your sky. Some clouds, a little rain. Maybe even a snowstorm or two . . .”

Ling had no idea what the Angel of Death was talking about.

The lights in the theater began to dim.

“You are about to see one of Carole Lombard's best films:
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
. It's the only comedy Hitchcock ever directed.” The angel took a long drink of soda.

“Who's Hitchcock?”

“Have some popcorn.”

“No, thank you.”

In the fading light, the angel turned slowly to Ling. For several moments his eyes became enormous, pinwheeling fire everywhere.
“Have some popcorn.”

Ling dutifully took four kernels out of the bucket but only held them in the middle of its palm.

“Eat them.”

The ghost put one kernel on the tip of its tongue and left it there. It was salty and buttery and full of edges.

“You don't like popcorn?”

“No, sir.”

“Chew it slowly. Listen to the different ways it cracks as your teeth break it down. Taste the flavors. Feel the consistency change as you chew.”

The ghost did as it was told but the popcorn tasted only of a bad butter substitute and far too much salt. Ling loved other human food but popcorn was gross.

Up on the screen the movie credits had begun to roll, accompanied by a rousing soundtrack.

The angel said, “I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.”

“Do you watch a lot of movies?”

“I have my favorites. Anything with Carole Lombard in it or Veronica Lake, and of course Emmanuelle Béart.”

“No men?”

A male voice boomed from behind them, “Will you two pipe down? I'm tryin' to watch the pitcha!”