One Ghost Per Serving (30 page)

Eric slowed to a stop at the home of the Mighty Ghost Slugs, the collegiate stadium with a new pair of seven hundred-ton chillers with variable drive something-or-other.
He could remember that part, but not the start time for Willa’s tour. Three Nidus Monolithics delivery trucks had parked at the stadium’s loading dock. Stadium workers came out with pallet jacks.

Rex phased out of the bus. Eric idly wondered if Rex was going to possess a stadium worker, a guy like him, but why would he? He was probably just tired of being in the bus. Eric didn’t have that luxury. Eric turned towards Josh. “Let’s try and get into the stadium, see where the food is being taken.”

Eric locked up the bus and they headed for the open side door. Their scruffiness worked for them; he figured anyone who saw them would assume they were vehicular equipment operators. They walked through the door and into the concourse area.

“So what’s it like, being married to Professor Fellier?” Josh asked.

“Well, I don’t call her Professor Fellier.”

“No, of course not.” Josh snorted a laugh.

“What’s it like being married to Willa?” Eric thought about it. “She’s protective in the same way a caveman or mob boss is protective.” He waved that off. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. She’s a good mother, and she likes to do things for people, but tempers that with a distance. It’s like her office is on top of Asgard or in a parallel universe.” Like Taffy, he thought. They were so alike, the two of them. It was as though she sprang from her mother’s brain like the warrior goddess.

A line of workers streamed out of the door they were watching and streamed back into the stadium with boxes containing smaller boxes of Quantal Organic Yogurt, which they took through a door Eric presumed was a refrigerated pantry.

“She loves to work, and she loves to teach you guys. It’s hard to give her up for all that.” Eric kept his eyes on the workers. “But I’m really proud of her.”

“That was a fair assessment,” a female voice said from behind them.

“Willa?” Eric said.

Eric’s diminutive wife stood at the front of a dozen ardent and straight-postured HVAC students.

“We’re on our tour, remember?” Willa raised her brows. “Two seven hundred –”

Eric spoke with her. “ – ton centrifugal chillers with variable frequency drives.”

She grinned. “Exactly.” She turned to her students. “And what else was replaced with a variable system?”

One of her students raised his hand. He was wearing an
Olaf
,
Live at the Mighty Ghost Slugs
t-shirt – either to support his classmate, Josh Konga, or to make a meta statement about their current location, or both. “The chiller plant itself was converted from a variable primary chilled system to a constant flow.”

“Wrong!” Willa said, the vocal equivalent of one jackhammer cycle.

Eric focused a few feet lower to check for involuntary urination on the student’s pants.

“Uh, oh God … I meant – I mean – from constant flow to a variable primary chilled system.”

Willa was quiet. The student was pale and nervously wiped at his hairline.

“We’re going to talk to the designer and a few other project team members,” Willa continued, addressing her class but also Eric. “They’re going to walk us through the features and the savings they’ve realized since replacing the chillers, the condenser water pumps, and more. But first, does anyone want a snack?”

“NO!” Eric said, too loud.

“What do you mean, no?” Willa looked at Eric like he was nuts.

Eric froze and tried to force himself to think. Willa wouldn’t back down until she got her way. She would make this a battle royale of wills until she dominated and won. His only recourse at this point was to distract her with something more pressing or to divert her attention to an acceptable alternative. His saving grace was time and audience: she had limited time for the tour, and was leading a large group.

“They’re displaying yogurt right there,” Willa gestured to the concession stand. “We should just –”

“Remember the mailers?” Eric’s body was in fight-or-flight mode. Willa herself was lactose intolerant, but she could take a pill, and if anyone in her class ate one of the yogurts, that would be very bad. On top of that, Willa would probably blame him, then take Taffy to southeast Asia. Then she would change their identities, so he wouldn’t even be able to travel who knows how many miles to search desperately for his wife and daughter, who no longer loved him or even liked him just a little bit or even recognized him anymore; then he would contract a viral hemorrhagic fever from bats in the python cave he would have to take shelter in because he wouldn’t be able to afford even a hostel; then finally, die alone, buried in an unmarked grave in the jungle where he would quickly decompose, already forgotten.

Willa paused. Her voice rivaled the stadium’s new centrifugal chiller with its Freon content. “
Those
mailers?”

“Yes,
those
mailers.” Eric was conscious of how weird he must have looked to Willa’s students. “The people who sent those mailers are the same people who promote,” he pointed to the stand and two confused employees, “
that
yogurt.” That would be enough. Willa held grudges. Those photos of Taffy at school had scared her more than anything.

She walked over and picked up one of the yogurts. “They’re not marked. Is the contest over?”

Eric nodded, eyes wide.

“When do you know?”

“Soon.” Eric also picked up a yogurt. He noticed Rex in his peripheral vision and tried to unobtrusively gesture for him to come over, which he disguised as a scratch. Willa’s class must have thought he had a fungus when he had to gesture again for Rex to hurry the hell up already.

“You need me to control your lady for you?” Rex said, smirking.

Eric held up the yogurt and suddenly felt like he was in one of those bizarre one-act plays he saw in college. “You’re right. These lids aren’t marked anymore.” He shifted his eyes to Rex then back to Willa.

Rex picked up a third yogurt, then touched a fourth. “That’s because these aren’t imbued with commerce spirits. The only thing they’re imbued with is probiotics.” He chuckled weakly at himself.

“Oh,” Eric rubbed his chin, unsure.

“What?” Willa raised her hands.

“Nothing.”

“Well, we have to go.” She took a few steps away back to her students. “Who can tell me what the stadium did with the refrigerant detection system?”

One of the students raised his hand. “It was upgraded to meet ASHRAE 15 requirements.”

“Good. We’ll learn more about that in a few minutes.” She put her hand up in a goodbye to Eric and led her class down the hall, low heels clicking, knee-length skirt swishing around her slender legs, her shoulders back.
Ed would be so proud of her
, he thought. “Isn’t she magnificent?” Eric said, mostly to himself, then turned to Rex. “This isn’t the place. That Cynosure sonofabitch
knew
I would come here, and had these yogurts delivered on purpose.”

Eric ran through the delivery door, swerving around pallet jacks and carts, out to the bus. “Where’s Josh? Dammit.” He ran back to the delivery trucks and flagged down a Nidus driver in one of the incredibly loud reefer trucks.

“You a lumper?” the driver asked.

“Wow, you guys really have a thing about lumpers, don’t you?” Eric looked up at the driver’s window. “No, I’m trying to follow the delivery of some yogurt. I think it’s bad.”

Rex barked a laugh. “Understatement.”

“Hold on a minute, now.” The driver held up a hand. “I think we’ve got some more drop-offs to do.” He moved his finger on the trackpad. “Looks like a few of us are heading to 332 Aululate Street, Jamesville. Two trucks already left a while ago. The freight,” he checked the bill of lading, “is twenty thousand units of Quantal Organic snack boxes, each of which contains Quantal Organic Yogurt, Organic Fruit Lemurs, Organic Jalapeno Chips, and Organic Cheese Wedges.”

Eric went cold. “That’s Taffy’s school. He was screwing with us. That’s where he’s sending the infected ones, to Taffy’s school.”

“Whoa, the
infected
ones?” The driver shut his laptop and put on his sunglasses.

But Eric was already gone.

“Rex, where’s Josh?” Eric felt the familiar sensation of burgeoning panic, like he was in one of those dreams he kept having where he desperately needed to get somewhere and couldn’t, which was actually the case.

“Your forklift friend?” Rex examined his fingernails. “Don’t know.”

Eric went back into the stadium and saw Josh, who had his back to him.

“Josh, we’re going,” Eric said, relief flooding into him. When Josh turned, Eric saw he was eating one of the Quantal Organic Yogurts. At Eric’s expression, Josh’s eyes widened. “What? Is my fly down again?” He looked down and put a hand to his zipper.

Eric took the yogurt and threw it in a large trash bin with a near-fastball throw.

“Hey, I wasn’t done with it yet!” Josh said.

“You haven’t really been paying attention, have you?”

Josh shrugged. “What? It has beneficial bacteria. You know, probiotics.”

Eric wondered if he should try to induce vomiting in Josh. He would just have to keep an eye on him.

“I can’t get there in time,” Eric told Rex from outside his bus, where Josh was resting.
“Even if I had a McLaren F1, I couldn’t get there before the delivery trucks do.”

Rex looked idly around, then up at the drifting clouds.

“What?” Eric stopped pacing.

Rex squinted.

“What!”

Rex did a little shrug with his hand and tilted his head toward a lifted shoulder. “If getting there fast – really fast – is what you want … I can, you know, do that.”

Eric took in a long breath. “And you would have to …”

“Possess you again.”

Eric took a few steps away then laced his hands over his head. Rex possessing him again was the only way Eric could get to Taffy in time. She could eat one of those snack boxes and take in one of those commerce spirits. What if it were one like Rex, one that wouldn’t leave? He couldn’t let that happen. He would rather die than let that happen to Taffy. But what if he let Rex re-possess him and he wouldn’t leave? Wouldn’t Rex prefer inhabiting an actual body, instead of being tethered to the general area of one?

He didn’t have a choice.

“Okay.” Eric turned back. Rex started forward.

“Wait!” Eric tried to be quick while using a scrap of his legal training. “Ground rules: First, you can’t stay longer than it takes to get to Taffy. Second, if Taffy is safe, and I define ‘safe’ to mean no longer in danger from ingesting a spirit, commerce or otherwise, then you must vacate the premises, i.e. me. Third, don’t do anything that will piss me off later. Sign here and wait for my final OK.” Eric took a pen from his pocket and gave it to Rex, gesturing toward his arm.

Rex signed Eric’s arm, then pointedly looked at his watch.

“Why do you even
wear
a watch?” Eric asked.

“Time’s a wastin’.”

Eric got a deja-vu kind of sensation. He didn’t make a decision that first time – he was just a hapless, distracted, thirsty guy who took a free sample of POUNCE! and got possessed by a powerful spirit for eighteen months for his trouble. But he had a decision to make now, and he suspected he should go ahead and make it before he had a panic attack.

“Go ahead.” Eric shook out his arms and cracked his neck to the side in preparation.

“What? Really?” Rex acted like he was surprised Eric was actually going to go through with it.

“I know I’m strong enough to kick you out if I have to. And I –” Eric took a deep breath.

Rex circled his hand in a speed-up motion.

“I trust you.”

Rex staggered back a step.

“Just get it over with.” Eric glanced at his watch then closed his eyes. He opened one eye in a squint. “Oh, and watch Josh. He ate some Quantal just now.” He closed his eyes again. “Ask him if he’s up to driving the bus over to Taffy’s school.”

“Anything else?” Rex said. “Plant watering, dog feeding? Maybe picking up your mail?”