One Ghost Per Serving (25 page)

“You would remember if you tried,” Rex said. “You were there too.”

“You think so?” Eric packed his words with sarcasm.

A knock on the window caused both of them to turn and look at the window. He Who Cleans House waved, then held up his arm and pointed to an imaginary watch.

“It was like you were on auto-pilot.” Rex nodded to the sprite and briefly put up a finger to indicate they wouldn’t be much longer. “But you were still there. Don’t you think I’d know?”

Eric held on to the yogurt and pressed his wristbone against his forehead, then made a circling motion. “Keep reading.”

“The important thing is to keep your focus.”

Eric ate more of his yogurt. “No, this is bad. Willa and Taffy don’t need me to embarrass them again.”

“Willa and Taffy are impervious to embarrassment,” Rex said with a scoff. “Find me anyone who cares less what other people think than those two. Maybe someone who’s dead.”

Eric tossed the container. “I know, but even if they aren’t, they deserve to read about their husband and dad doing something great, not what he did during his eighteen-month blackout period.” He made a frustrated groan when he realized he had thrown out the foil lid. He peered into then rummaged through the garbage can. “Let’s not forget that someone’s been rolling boulders between me and this contest, or have you forgotten about how I was nearly taken in by federal agents, almost mowed down by a helicopter –”

“
So
derivative of
North by Northwest
,” Rex shook his head in disapproval. “I would have went with
A Fish Called Wanda
, with the really slow bulldozer.”

“I was attacked by other customers,” Eric continued, “taunted by a spy plane, and who knows what else that I don’t even know about? For what, trying to win this contest? Working to help support my family? Making web videos? Obviously I’m some kind of monster that should be run out of town with fire sticks.”

“You know what?” Rex smiled. “I’m gonna take you out tonight.”

Eric angled up out of the trash bin, holding the foil lid. “So you can take over my body again? You’d probably do a better job than I would anyway.”

“I’m gonna get you out of this downward spiral,” Rex clapping and rubbing his hands together. “Remember what He Who Cleans House said at the meeting?”

There was a long pause as Eric went over in his mind what the sprite said. “Uh, that you can be the most thoughtful, conscientious household sprite in the world and still operate in an uncaring, ungrateful environment?”

“No.”

“That you can help with dinner and do crisp hospital corners but all you get in return is a lot of screaming?”

“No.”

“That we have a karaoke assignment?” Eric said in a quiet voice.

Rex put up a hand in a high-five. It wasn’t returned.

While Nathan worked on boring financial stuff that DZ didn’t want to touch with a lion-taming pole, DZ wrote his speech to graduates of his alma mater.
He had transferred there after spending his freshman and sophomore year studying
Comity and Diplomacy through Snorkeling
at the Université de Monte-Carlo.

DZ was especially enthused about the section dealing with his senior year, when he began working on increasing food sales by imbuing commerce spirits into beverage containers. That summer at the promotional agency inspired him with the unexploited possibilities, and finding ways to promote foods and beverages was in his blood, after all.

He met his first enchanter at the campus Snorkelers Society.

DZ and the enchanter worked on the spirit-imbuing process together, but the process was unstable. They were only able to get the occasional spirit in the occasional bottle, and incidences of both were random. DZ wanted a consistent, reliable way of imbuing one of the same type of commerce spirit in every single bottle. But he got so bored with overseeing the damn thing that he went out Jet Skiing while the enchanters worked in the lab. He sat back and took a moment to reflect on how much fun he had and wondered whether he could get a deep-water Jet Ski moat installed around the house. Maybe he could pay a few retired Japanese freestyle champs to teach him aerial tricks. They could stay at the house for a summer. But he would have to put it on his personal card and not the corporate one or Nathan would burst a vessel.

In his first test run, DZ handed out free samples of a new drink called POUNCE! outside of the law library of his school. The nanoparticles would bind and absorb the spirit and carry it into the organism, like a virus vector. According to the enchanters, one of the POUNCE! bottles contained an encapsulated spirit, but it wasn’t the type of commerce spirit they had hoped for.

DZ oversaw the process himself, and could have sworn he heard something coming from the bottle as the enchanters finished imbuing. He thought he heard someone say, “Hey, this vessel doesn’t feel like the most bankable action movie star in the world. And it tastes like lemon-flavored soda.” Apparently, the vessel was an unpleasant surprise to whatever spirit the enchanters worked with, but DZ marveled that the enchanter, whose name he didn’t catch, was able to imbue a spirit of this age and power into a bottle of carbonated beverage.

DZ saved the draft copy of his speech. He wondered which of the unlucky bastards who took a sample ended up drinking that spirit. Whoever it was, he or she was probably destroyed within minutes. No human could absorb a spirit like that and live, at least not as anything but a carrot.

Eric’s legs felt like cast-iron as they pumped the pedals of his bike on the way from Jamesville Tech to the back lot of the Fireworks Superstore & Convenience Center. He could have been wearing a 1940s-era dive helmet for how heavy and weighed down he felt. He was putting all of his effort into getting back to the Princess, because the slower he went, the more he wanted to stop and sleep by the side of the road in a fetal position –
maybe behind that plastic zebra
, he thought as he passed it.

Eric was barely able to get across that empty back parking lot, open the door to the Princess, and put his bike on the hanger inside, but he was operating automatically from the time he turned into the front lot. It was a little like being possessed: his body was functioning just as it normally would, but he wasn’t really there. His phone rang while he was raiding the fridge.

“Hello?” he said through a mouthful of yogurt and granola.

“It’s Donald from Anon-o-Boxes, Jamesville’s Premier Private Mailboxes and Pet Cleaning Service. That overnight letter you mentioned just arrived.”

Eric caught some granola in his throat and coughed. He held the phone at arm’s length while he grabbed a ginger ale and drank until he could talk again. “Seriously?”

He stashed the yogurt back in the fridge, looked around the bus while he breathed hard and ran his hands through his hair. “Wow,” he whispered, then grabbed his bike off the bus.

“Eric. Eric. Eric. Eric. Eric. Er –”

Eric flailed, arms slapping away whatever kept saying his name, then fell back asleep.

“Eric. Wake up. Eric. Eric, wake up.”

“No, I’m back in college,” Eric mumbled, still half asleep.

“You’re not back in college,” Rex said. “You’re living in an old bus. You work as a shot boy amidst douchebags and taxidermy, but not, alas, taxidermied douchebags.”

“Gross …” Eric pulled the blanket over his head. “Go ‘way.”

“I need to take you somewhere,” Rex said, shaking Eric’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Eric rolled back and forth to get Rex to stop shaking him. “Go away.” Eric hit at Rex from under the blanket. “I just wanna sleep. I won. Can’t I sleep now?”

“What do you mean, you won?”

Eric rubbed his eyes. “I got the letter. I’m a
potential
grand prize winner.”

Rex barked a laugh. “As if anyone else spelled PUDDING. Out of all the lids you had, there was just one ‘G’ and three ‘P’s.
Potential
, my ectoplasm.”

Eric sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. “I mailed the affidavit of eligibility, the liability and publicity release, and the, uh, W-9 form. Now I have to wait.”

Rex shook his head. “Waiting is for suckers. Now c’mon. You’ve enjoyed a luxurious two hours of sleep and now it’s time for cake,” Rex said cheerfully, smacking the blanket.

Eric fought off the blanket and sat up.

“You look like you’ve been sleeping on a bus,” Rex said.

“Very funny.”

Rex gave him directions that Eric half-listened to, then phased out of the bus.

A piss, a clothes change, a hair brushing, a teeth brushing, a shave, and a face washing later, Eric was ready to go an undisclosed location to have some cake. He had almost no money left, so Eric was not opposed to some free cake, especially when he didn’t supply it.

That’s where he was, life-wise.

Eric didn’t have the physical energy to ride his bike, so he winced and took the Princess. He really needed something that was fifty miles to the gallon, not this fuel-sucking beast that got him a bunch of ‘Hey, Princess’ and ‘Hey, Princess Patsy’ and ‘How you doin’, Princess?’

Rex’s directions led him to The Gutbucket, a small bar sandwiched between a Wholesale Meats shop and a storefront called Welding Stuff. Across the street was a church that was having a Ham & Turkey party on the coming Sunday.

“I’m not eating cake at The Gutbucket.” Eric stopped at the door. “Nor am I eating anything here with meat.”

“Noted.”

Eric got the door. “Please, disincarnate entities first.”

Entering The Gutbucket made Eric feel like Jonah entering the inside of a fried onion, ninety-cent-cheeseburger, beer-loving whale.

“It’s closed, Rex.”

The lights flipped on, illuminating a room full of spirits from the sponsor meetings and some he had never seen, plus a few human sponsors. They greeted him and waved. The ghost of Christmas past and He Who Cleans House held up a banner that read
Happy Birthday Eric
. The banner was very crooked.

“My birthday isn’t until March third,” Eric said in a low voice.

“I thought you needed this now,” Rex said, also in a hushed voice, steering him to a big cake on a table. It read
Happy 32 Eric
.