One Ghost Per Serving (17 page)

Everything was right with the world in this brief portal to 1998. Willa was his again, completely his. Eric dug his fingers into Willa’s hips, and she leaned forward to put her hands on his chest as she moved against him. 1998. He hadn’t crossed campus from the law library to the main library, hadn’t taken a free sample bottle of POUNCE! from a fellow student manning a kiosk by the cafeteria. He hadn’t drank it, hadn’t been infected with a spirit who possessed him and took over his life for eighteen months.

Eric lost himself in Willa, was intoxicated by the taste of her mouth, by her skin that smelled of light sweat and her clean, almost masculine perfume, and the same glycerine soap he knew she had used since she was a teenager, and he tried to stay in 1998 as long as he could. This lasted until he couldn’t and she climbed off him to get dressed and said, “Are you out of food yet?”

He pulled up his pants then pulled on his shirt. “Almost. And thanks. Thank you, for making all of that.” It was quick, and it was over, and they were back to the status quo, which he hated.

“Have dinner with us tonight.” Willa fastened her bra and pulled on her shirt.

“With you and Mark?”

Will narrowed her eyes in reproach. “With me and Taffy.”

Hope burst and fizzed and tingled in Eric like popping candy. Maybe their status quo had changed. In his mind, he was ready to move his stuff out of the Princess that day.

Eric stopped by Ed’s house in the evening to drop off some groceries for Willa, who was still trying to clear up that grocery delivery problem.

“Where’s your mom?” Eric asked Taffy, who was sitting on the counter reading
Perfumer & Flavorist
. Next to her on the counter was a bowl of boiled edamame. He took Taffy’s leg just above her high-top and shook it like someone’s hand.

“Mom took her class on a field trip today,” she said, turning a page. “I think they toured an air chiller or something in the city.”

Eric sanitized (per Taffy’s insistence) the groceries and put them away. Then he stood around for a few minutes while Taffy read. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go.” He took his keys, hesitated, then went to leave out the side door. Taffy didn’t look up.

“Oh, Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you help me install a new thing on my bike?”

Taffy’s question made Eric feel like he had stepped out of black and white into glorious Technicolor. Maybe things were turning around.

Taffy’s bicycle had a number of features that most bikes didn’t. There was one thing Eric knew that he and Taffy had in common, and that was suspicion. Taffy’s suspicion, however, extended to restaurant workers, food that wasn’t boiled, crowds that she presumed were on the precipice of turning into a mob, and animals, any one of which could be patient zero for an emerging zoonotic disease that that would make the Spanish flu seem like an outbreak of lice.

Taffy wanted to be prepared, and an important part of that was her bicycle. Its frame could emanate an intense glow. Parts of the frame flipped up like a Pez dispenser to access stored beef jerky, red licorice, a fishing spear, a dental care kit, and a breathing tube in case she had to drive her bike into the water. The seat contained a parachute and the handlebars offered storage for iodine pills, MREs, chewable vitamins, and candy. In between the handlebars was an air bag. There was a button near the handlebars to release a fluorescent spray out the back to mark any attackers. And those were just the features that Eric knew about.

“I want to install a nozzle by the horn,” Taffy said.

“Easy enough,” Eric said. “To spray what exactly?”

“I’ve been collecting the digestive saliva of the
Belostomatidae
for months.”

Eric kneeled down and held the frame. “Right. Maybe we could start with something a little … easier?”

Taffy thought about it.

“I also want to cover the frame with a peel-off coating.”

Eric didn’t ask questions (though he almost asked if it was fruit, like a flat fruit leather) and helped Taffy, mainly by handing her things. She got so focused that she tended to detach from conversation, but this was nothing unusual. At one point Eric smiled.

“What’s funny?” Taffy said.

“Hm? Nothing, why?”

“You smiled,” Taffy said. “You don’t look as worried.”

“I’m happy helping you right now.”

Taffy gave him a look. A suspicious look. “Maybe. But you’ve been eating nothing but yogurt lately.”

Eric started to say something, thought about it more. “I’m not sure how those two things relate to each other.”

“The large amounts of probiotics you’ve been eating have increased a certain receptor of a neurotransmitter in your brain that decreases anxiety,” she said.

Eric thought of Willa in her office, her scent, the feel of her skin, and how
that
decreased his anxiety, but then with a Herculean effort of will, banished the images until later. “Is it so hard to believe that I just enjoy your company?” Which he did.

Taffy applied a new section to the frame. “I guess not. But one of the possible consequences of eating so much yogurt is a change in behavior.”

“So if I smile, I’m like a gassy baby,” Eric said.

“Yep.”

They worked in silence for another few minutes.

“Hey, Dad? I thought you were still friends with Mark,” Taffy said.

Eric studied the bike bell he was holding. “So did I.”

“Because he’s not your friend.” Taffy shot him a pointed sidelong glance.

Eric nodded and put the bell on the shelf. “I know. Wait, how do you know?”

Taffy applied a length of coating. “He’s been coming over a lot. He tried to get me to go to that petting zoo restaurant at the park, so, obviously, I can see through him. But I’m pretty sure Mom does too. I mean, how could she not?”

Eric laughed. “What’s he going to do next, order
queso fresco
for you at a Mexican restaurant? Take you to a farm where you hand-feed the animals then eat unpasteurized cheese? Make you go to some ratty hole-in-the-wall and order eggs benedict and an egg salad sandwich?”

Taffy actually giggled, a double rainbow on a spring day to Eric.

Willa and Taffy were on his side, and they could get the house back. They could be a family there again. Everything was going to be okay.

Eric deliberated in front of the Princess’s narrow but full-body window: full suit, or just collared shirt and tie? He looked good in a suit, but put the jacket back on the hanger. He was meeting Willa and Taffy for dinner in the next town over, one closer to the city and known for its theater, so he should dress for the theater, just in case, but not look like he was trying too hard. Or should he go for trying too hard?

He went with his best and only choice: gray shirt and tie, charcoal pants, black belt, black oxfords. He shaved, applied aftershave with a light touch, and put his wallet in his pocket as he resolved to pay for dinner. If he had to take on another job or sell his plasma or sperm or be a medical test subject or work off the dinner washing dishes after Willa and Taffy went home, he would.

The money he had left after buying so much yogurt and fuel made it painful to even buy flowers for Willa. But he found her favorites, tulips, and if hurt this much to just buy tulips, then dinner was going to feel like minor but unanesthetized surgery. He tied the tulips to the bike.

Eric didn’t like going to nice restaurants. He had been to some before in school, but he preferred to eat at home – now, his bus – or at Sammy’s. He didn’t like that the only people who received good service at fancy restaurants were the customers who liked to throw their money away on overpriced drinks and entrees, and that if you didn’t buy a whole bottle of wine, the server treated you like you smelled a little off.

Eric got to the restaurant early, but Willa and Taffy were already seated. Willa was still wearing her clothes from work, but Eric knew she liked to change in her office for dinner. As a concession to her equally strong-willed mother, Taffy wore a simple dress, but with fluorescent orange ballet sneakers. Willa thanked him for the tulips, but put them on the floor and didn’t waste any time. With a look, Willa had the server across the room at their table in seconds, pad in hand. Eric loved how she could do that, but was disappointed that the flowers were already on the floor.

Taffy looked at the ceiling with the disapproving appraisement of a Fire Prevention Bureau inspector. “There aren’t enough sprinklers in here.”

“We want the pre-theatre menu,” Willa told the server, who snapped to attention. “The pre-theatre menu includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert, guaranteed within twenty minutes.”

Willa ordered for all of them, and Eric and Taffy toed the party line.

“Are we going to the –” Eric started to say, but Willa cut in. “Taffy, tell your Dad about your new friend.”

Taffy shrugged. “He’s more of an acquaintance.” At the lift of Willa’s eyebrow, she rolled her eyes. “He’s in my social studies class.”

“You like him?” Eric said, despondent that he was losing his daughter even more now.

“I like someone else.” Taffy crossed her arms and that was the end of that line of conversation.

Eric moved in with the delicacy of a zoo worker in the tiger cage. Best to divert Taffy’s attention from the subject at hand. “I need your –” not expert, he thought, could be construed as condescending, “
opinion
on a foodborne infection matter.”

Taffy’s eyes brightened with excitement but she tempered it into a cool consideration. “Sure. What do you wanna know?”

Eric’s peripheral vision was caught from the window. Rex pressed up against the glass like Mildred Pierce.

“Uh –” Eric regrouped. “Symptoms. Say someone has an infection. How long would it normally take for symptoms to show up, and then how fast would things, uh –” Rex dropped slowly down the window, face smearing into a Munch scream. “Get bad?”

Taffy drummed a breadstick on her plate. “That depends on the infection. Usually there’re symptoms within several hours, but with certain infections the incubation period can take days or weeks.”

Willa excused herself to the restroom.

“And if someone wanted to put a substance into a food container, how hard would that be?” Eric asked. He had seen Taffy’s journals in the mail, and flipped through them once in a while just to see what she was reading. She would know something.

Rex emulated dry-humping a woman who passed him. Eric shook his head. What would it be like to be a normal person? Someone who hadn’t been possessed by a spirit who refused to leave or act his age, especially at an important family dinner?

“Nanotechnology.” Taffy sipped her bottled water with her own straw. “You can embed nanomaterials in the packaging, or the food. It’s pretty cool. Someday they’ll be able to tell if the food has gone bad. Or they can use it as nanotextured food, like yogurt.”

Eric almost knocked over his water glass. “Yogurt?”

Will furrowed her brows.

“Yeah.” Taffy tapped her finger and looked off to the side. “Nano-emulsions. Or they can use it for nanocarriers or food additives. Like flavors.”

“What do you mean by nanocarriers?” Eric asked.

“Delivery systems, Dad. You know, to … um, encapsulate any kind of nanomaterial in food, even something like,” she held up Willa’s clear carbonated drink. “This pop. It’s a whole big thing.”