The Ghost in Love (7 page)

An hour ago Ben and German had met outside Danielle's apartment building. It was a sunny day and both of them wore baseball caps to keep the sun out of their eyes. Ben had given her the yellow hat months before. It moved him now to see her wearing it and know she still used it. Pilot didn't react much on seeing Ben. He wagged his tail three times and then looked at a Labrador retriever puppy that was passing on the other side of the street.

German waited for Ben to explain why he'd asked her to come. Instead, he gestured for her to follow him to a park nearby. They sat down on a brown bench and he told her his story. Astonishing as it was, it didn't take long. After he had finished, she looked at him as if she had never seen Ben Gould before. She could not hide either her amazement or her dismay. He had expected that.

“That's mad. Benjamin, that is totally insane.”

“I know it sounds like that, but it's the truth.” He spoke quietly and with great conviction. He knew she was going to take a lot of convincing.

“Ben, this is creepy. You're scaring me now.”

“Imagine how
I
feel! All I'm asking you to do is go to her apartment with me and see for yourself. Don't take any of it on faith. See for yourself.”

She tugged on the brim of her cap. “You've said that twice.”

He nodded. “I'll say it again: Go see for yourself. Knock on her door and watch what happens. I'll be right beside you.”

They continued talking. The more she listened, the more confused she became because he was so convincing. It was without question the craziest thing he'd ever said to her, and Ben wasn't given to saying crazy things. But the way he described this, it became increasingly hard
not
to believe him.

“Who is she?”

“Just some woman. A stranger.”

“How do you know her?”

“I
don't
know her, German. That's what I've been telling you: I have never laid eyes on this woman in my life.”

“You're telling me that one day this just started happening with a stranger you've never met?” Her voice was wary and weary.

“Yes.”

She brought a hand up to her bottom lip and kept it there while watching him. German once thought she knew this man well, but what he had just told her changed everything. It explained why he had ended their relationship. And why he had been acting so oddly for months. It explained everything and nothing. She wished to the bottom of her soul that she had never heard any of it.

“What am I supposed to do with this, Ben? What am I supposed to do now?”

“Meet this woman and see that everything I've told you is true.”

She stood abruptly and walked away, pulling the dog behind her. Ben watched for a few moments and then followed. In front of the apartment building, German stopped and said without turning around to face him, “What should I say to her?”

“Tell her you want to talk about her accident. Say you're a journalist doing an article on posttraumatic stress. Or that someone in your family—”

“I'll handle it,” she said curtly, throwing up a hand to cut him off. She didn't want to hear any more. She only wanted him to shut up.

When German rang the bell, Ben stood beside her. When Danielle opened the door, she looked directly at German and only at her. The expression on her face clearly said she saw only the woman and her dog.

“Hello. Are you Danielle Voyles?”

The first time it happened to Ben
was the night months earlier when they saw the man stabbed at the pizzeria. After talking to the police and giving their separate testimonies, the couple went straight to a bar and drank themselves back to an uneasy calm.

Both of them liked sitting at a bar, never in a booth. High in a corner of this joint was a large flat-screen television mounted on a wall. It was tuned to a sports channel. They drank and talked and tried to regain their composure after witnessing the harrowing event earlier in the evening.

Now and then Ben looked up at the television to see what kind of game was on. A time or two his eyes lingered there while German spoke to him. It didn't bother her. They had known each other long
enough now so that she knew he could be looking away but still listening carefully to her. It was one of her boyfriend's idiosyncrasies and didn't bother her.

The next time he glanced up at the television set, he frowned. Because instead of the Roma versus Lazio soccer match that had been on the screen moments ago, now there was a close-up of a glistening pink open mouth. It was undergoing extremely graphic oral surgery. Ben's first reaction was to exclaim, Hey, look at that! But he knew German hated blood or gore and they'd already witnessed a stabbing tonight. Narrowing his eyes for better focus, he continued staring at the TV.

At the same time that he was looking at the television set over the bar, Danielle Voyles was looking at a TV set in her living room. Both of them saw exactly the same thing: an oral surgery videotape. Danielle was a dental assistant who prided herself on being up on the very latest developments in the field. While recuperating from her operation, she spent a lot of time studying videotapes of oral procedures that her boss, Dr. Franz, had made.

While Ben watched in disgust, Danielle watched, ate cheese popcorn, and sipped from a can of Dr Pepper. Ben had been drinking vodka but suddenly his mouth filled with the distinctive tang of cheese popcorn. Which was then flooded away by the thick sweetness and bubbles of the soft drink.

The entire occurrence lasted only seconds. When it was over he thought some part of his frazzled brain was playing tricks on him after the shock of the stabbing incident earlier. But in fact it was just the beginning.

In the days that followed, Ben Gould experienced more and more snatches of Danielle Voyles's life. Each time it happened, it was as if he literally
was
her for short periods of time. He saw through her
eyes, tasted whatever she put in her mouth, and knew her every thought during the seconds he was inside her. Danielle was never aware of any of this. It was completely one-sided.

Frightening, fascinating, but always frightening again, he learned who she was, what had happened to her, what she believed, dreamed, and feared. He could not stop the experience from happening again and again. He would be standing at the kitchen sink in his apartment, drinking a glass of water. With no warning he'd suddenly be standing in front of a mirror looking at the reflection of Danielle's face, seeing it through her eyes. While she applied lipstick and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, thinking about what to do that day, he experienced all of Danielle: what she saw, what she perceived, what she thought. At the same time, he remained separate and apart and always Ben Gould too. Just as suddenly the experience would stop and he would be back in his life. It had happened to him many times since the night of the stabbing. He told German Landis all of this while sitting with her on a bench in the park across the street from Danielle's apartment building.

This was what had made him increasingly odd and remote when they lived together. Of course, the freakiness of the experience impacted on his behavior toward German. Finally it became unbearable for her and she confronted him about it. But by then Ben was so afraid he was going insane that her alarm only exacerbated things and made him pull further away from her. A short while later she told him she couldn't stand their situation anymore and moved out.

Soon afterward, Ben went to Danielle Voyles's apartment for the first time. He knew her name and address because she had taken out her driver's license one day to prove her identity when cashing a check. He rang the bell and she answered but saw no one there on opening the door. She shrugged and closed it. He rang the bell again
and she opened again, this time frowning. Seeing an empty hallway, she took three steps out into it to hopefully catch a glimpse of the prankster. When she did, Ben slipped around her and entered her apartment.

It did not surprise him that he was invisible to her. Previously he had tried every way he could imagine to communicate with Danielle while inside her. He had talked, whistled, and sung, but nothing worked.

“Hello,” he said to her now in a normal voice from two feet away.

She closed the front door, shook her head, and went back to the program she had been watching on television.

“Can you hear me? Can you see me?”

Oblivious, she picked up the remote control and pressed the button to raise the volume.

Ben put his two index fingers together and blew an earsplitting whistle. Danielle pointed the remote control at the television. The bored expression on her face confirmed she'd heard nothing.

Hands in pockets, he walked around her small home looking at things he had already seen before, but only through her eyes. The apartment consisted of a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom so small that it could barely fit a sink and a shower. He made the tour in only a few minutes. Danielle had big-furniture-and-stuffed-animals taste. Each room was painted a different vibrant pastel shade. There were eleven stuffed animals scattered in various strategic locations. She owned a very good fountain pen that she used frequently to write long letters to friends. She hung her hand wash in the bathroom. She was an indifferent cook. In the silverware drawer were two knives, two forks, two spoons, a white plastic ladle, and a red Swiss Army pocketknife with lots of blades. She used them to cut bread and meat.

In the living room was an overstuffed yellow couch from a discount furniture store. Next to it was an almost matching yellow Barcalounger chair that she liked to sit on while watching TV.

After touring her apartment, Ben stood beside the couch with arms crossed, watching this woman for the first time from afar. A few days before, he had looked up her telephone number. He called and tried to talk to her. But when Danielle answered the phone she did not hear his voice. She heard nothing. After waiting a bit just to make sure there really was no one on the other end of the line, she put the receiver down. She thought about that now while watching her TV show: the phone call the other day when no one was on the other end. The doorbell rings today but no one's there. This sort of thing never happened to her. Were the events somehow connected?

The ghost found it all very amusing. Standing nearby, Ling watched both people closely. Mr. Gould was now getting a taste of what it was like to be a ghost. No fun, was it? Ling was invisible to both people. Ben was invisible to Danielle Voyles.

“You really can't see or hear me? This is insane. You
have
to know I'm here,” Ben said, and then instinctively reached out to touch her, but his hand stopped halfway and dropped.

“She'll never see you,” Ling said in a voice that Ben could not hear. “She can't.”

There was a can of Dr Pepper soda on the table next to her chair. Ben wanted to grab it, shake it in her face, and shout, “Look at me! I'm right here.” But if he did that and she saw only a floating can, the gesture would frighten her, nothing more. He didn't know this woman and had no desire to scare her.

At a loss for what to do, he crossed the room to the window and stared out at the street. Once when he was inside Danielle, she'd done the same thing, so he was already familiar with this view. While
standing there he turned several times to glance at her. What could he do about this? Why was he invisible to Danielle Voyles? And why was he able to see the world through her eyes?

Ten minutes passed. Eventually she got up and went to the toilet. Ben took advantage of her absence and slipped out of the apartment. As he closed the door behind him with a barely audible click, he looked up and saw an old woman down the hall entering her apartment. She glared at him, her look saying, I know very well what you're doing, mister: I see you sneaking around. Not until she'd entered her apartment and closed the door too loudly did he realize this old woman
had
seen him.

And now here he was again in Danielle's living room. Only this time his ex-girlfriend and their dog were there, and those two could see him just fine. German and Danielle had been making small talk for a while. Ben had completed his latest tour of her apartment and was sitting next to her on the couch. German sat on the yellow chair, not knowing, of course, that that's where Danielle preferred to sit.

“Do you know a man named Benjamin Gould?” She kept looking in Danielle's eyes to see if they registered Ben's name or the fact that he was so near to her. They did not.

“Gould? No.”

“You've never heard of him before?”

Danielle paused and looked at her hands, thinking, but in time shook her head no.

“Don't ask her that, German! I told you, ask about her accident.”

Once again Danielle did not hear Ben speak. Back in her bedroom a telephone rang. “Could you wait just a minute while I answer that?”

German smiled. “Sure.”

When they were alone again, Ben demanded, “What are you doing? Of course she doesn't know who I am—I already told you that!
You've seen how she reacts: she doesn't know I'm here. How the hell is she supposed to know who I am if she can't see me?”

“What is this, Ben? What's going on?”

“
I don't know!
I swear to God I don't know. That's why I wanted you to come here and see it for yourself. This is what ruined us, German.”

Returning a few minutes later, Danielle saw the tall woman talking animatedly to no one. Her head was turned to the right while she gestured with one finger and spoke to the emptiness next to her. Danielle tried to mask her surprise with a neutral voice.

“I'm sorry, but that call was from my mother. She's coming by in a few minutes and I have to go out with her. Maybe you can come back some other time.”

German stood quickly and pulled Pilot toward the door. “No problem. I'll call and we'll set up another date.”