Rock N Soul (9 page)

“Yeah,” I said, yawning. “They said that like two minutes into the episode. It took you the whole time to figure it out?”

“I thought there would be a twist or something.” He rolled his shoulders and clapped his hands together. “But oh well. That was pretty good. What’s the next episode?”

“Are you serious?” I groaned and pulled the blanket over my head. “We’ve got to stop for the night, dude.”

“Why?”

I lowered the blanket enough to be able to see him. “Because we’ve watched four episodes in a row after I did a full shift at work, and I’m
tired
.”

“Oh.” He looked around the room. “I’m not.”

“You’re a ghost. I doubt you’ll ever get tired again. But I’m human and I need to go to sleep.”

He stood and wandered through the room. “What should I do while you’re sleeping?”

“I don’t know.” I reached up and rubbed my eyes with my fists. “And honestly I don’t really care, as long as you don’t stand there watching me sleep all night long.”

“I have nothing to do.” His mouth did something pouty that was almost cute. Almost.

“Well, entertain yourself. Find a book or something.”

“I can’t turn the pages.” He frowned even more deeply.

“Fine, then watch TV,” I suggested. “I’ll put in some earplugs, and it’ll be fine.”

“Can you just push Play and let me keep watching?”

I rolled my eyes and yawned again. “Sure. But when it times out on you, don’t expect me to get up and push Play again.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

I didn’t really believe him. He hadn’t proved especially trustworthy so far. But still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I pulled up the next episode, then pressed Play. “Okay. I’m going to bed.”

He sat back down on the couch and nodded. “Okay, sure. Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah. Good night.” I walked over to my bed, put my earplugs in to block out the sound of the TV, and lay down. Normally I would have rubbed one out and gone to sleep with my hand down my sweatpants, but I was sure Chris would have noticed what I was doing and that was just weird to think about. So instead I just burrowed under the covers and let out an involuntary half moan of pleasure as I stretched my limbs at the end of a long day, then fell asleep almost immediately.

It felt like only a few seconds later when I opened my eyes and saw sunlight filtering in through the small window in the living room. I sat up and rubbed my face, then had a brief moment of panic that I’d gone deaf before I realized that I still had the earplugs in. I gingerly pulled them out.

“Good. You’re awake. I need you to push Play.”

I blinked at Chris slowly. “You’re still here.”

“Of course I’m still here,” he snapped. “And I am bored out of my mind, dude. It timed me out like five hours ago and went back to whatever channel you had it on before. Which was an infomercial channel, if you’re curious. So I’ve pretty much just been sitting here not-watching-you-sleep for forever.”

I snuggled back under the covers. “Whatever,” I said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Oh no you’re not.” Chris jumped up and crossed the room to sit on the bed beside me. “You’ve got to entertain me, man.”

“Go away.” I put the pillow on top of my face to block out the sight and sound of him. “It’s my day off, and I can sleep in if I want to sleep in.” I thought about getting my earplugs and putting them in again, but that would require me to put my hands back into the icy world, so it didn’t seem like a priority at the moment.

“No,” Chris said, loudly enough for me to hear him through the pillow. “Get up and push Play at least.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered.

“No,
you
fuck off,” he snapped. “Come on, man, I’m going crazy.”

I pulled the pillow off of my face and glared at him. “You’ve been alone with your thoughts for five hours and you’re already losing it. That’s kind of pathetic.”

“I’ve been alone with my thoughts while a big freaking poster of a nondead me stares down at me,” he said, then eyed the poster and grimaced. “And let me tell you that Eric is not exactly someone I want staring down at me either.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Fine. I’ll put the damn show back on if you promise to leave me alone for another four hours.”

“You’re the most boring person I’ve ever met.”

I frowned at him. “You know, for somebody who can’t use a remote, you’re being an awfully big bitch to the one who
can
.”

He tilted his head, then nodded. “You’re right. Please could you play the next episode for me?”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Now that you’ve made it totally impossible for me to go back to sleep, I’m going to get up and then we’re going to go find a psychic.”

“A . . . psychic.” He wrinkled his brow. “What good is a psychic?”

“Well, I figure maybe they can tell us what we need to do,” I said. “To help you, you know, move on.”

“Maybe I don’t want to move on,” he muttered.

I’d heard him just fine, but I scowled at him anyway. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said, louder this time. “Never mind. A psychic. Sure.”

“I don’t even know where to find one,” I said. “But I have some hippie friends who might know.”

Chris stood and nodded, frowning slightly. “Fine. I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Worst-case scenario, it’s a waste of time. But we have to figure out
something
before I get really super freaked out by you watching me sleep.”

“I
wasn’t
watching you sleep,” he said. “I told you that. And anyway, you were all tucked down under your covers and so even if I wanted to watch you, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything interesting.”

“By ‘anything interesting’ you of course mean my cock,” I said, swinging my legs out from under the covers and testing whether I could feel the cold wooden floors through my double layer of socks.

“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I mean, big famous rock star like me totally feels the need to ogle a bellboy’s micropenis.”

“It’s probably for the best.” I stood up and went to my chest of drawers to get clothes for the day. “I wouldn’t want you to be jealous because yours is nonexistent.”

“Whatever, dude,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “Lots of people know better than that. Who knows, maybe even Carmen. I lost track of all the groupies I’ve fucked a long time ago.”

“You didn’t do Carmen, trust me,” I said. “She never said anything and you can bet that if she’d done you, she would have literally never stopped talking about it.”

“I make everybody sign a confidentiality agreement,” he said, grinning.

“Yeah, I really don’t think that would have mattered to Carmen.” I wadded my clothes into a ball and carried them over to the TV. “I’ll change the episode for you and then I’m going to go take a shower.” I pulled up the next episode and pushed Play. “And I swear to God, Chris, if you come bother me in the shower, I’ll go out and buy a Justin Bieber album and put it on repeat all day long, and there will be nothing you can do to stop it.”

He grimaced. “Noted. Go ahead.”

I stood there for a second, watching him settling down on my couch to watch yet another episode, and then turned around and went to take a shower.

Madame Destiny was an older lady dressed in stereotypical psychic-gypsy attire, complete with the mystic do-rag on her head. She even had an honest-to-God crystal ball sitting on her table. The dark room was hung with tons of tapestries embroidered with dragons and Celtic symbols and pentagrams and all sorts of pagan-type illustrations while she bustled around, muttering something about auras and life force and shit. I tried to speak a few times, but she shushed me and said that the spirits needed a moment to acclimate themselves to my presence.

“I’m pretty acclimated, dude,” Chris said, peering into the crystal ball. “Did you know you make little grunting noises in your sleep? It started out being endearing and then it just got really fucking irritating as the hours dragged on.”

I shot him a dirty look but didn’t answer because Madame Destiny would have scolded me for talking. Not to mention she probably would have thought I was crazy. Better to explain the situation first.

Finally, after another awkward few minutes, in which Chris continued to bitch about my sleep grunting, Madame Destiny fluttered back over to her chair, across the table from me. She did a weird waving gesture with her hands and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.

“So, young man,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. “What brings you to Madame Destiny today?”

I wanted to do the belligerent disbeliever thing and tell her that a psychic would already know why I was here, but I figured she got that a lot, and I hate being predictable. So instead I just smiled at her and said, “I’m being haunted by a spirit.”

“I see!” she said, leaning forward with a big, toothy grin. “And you’d like to know who the spirit is and what he or she wants from you?”

I paused. “Something like that.”

“Ah,” she said, running a hand lightly over her crystal ball. “I sense . . .” She closed her eyes. “I sense that this spirit is . . . male?”

“Yeah. Listen, I know who it is.”

“Please be quiet and only answer my questions with a yes or no,” she said, somehow managing to use a stern schoolteacher voice while her face remained relaxed. “I sense that this is a man who meant a lot to you. Perhaps a father figure?”

Chris snorted. “A father figure? Is she even
trying
?”

I
did
shoot him a dirty look this time since Madame Destiny still had her eyes closed. “No, I don’t think so,” I told her. “Listen . . .”

“Silence, please,” she snapped. “Yes, I see it now. Not a father figure. Someone
you
felt fatherly feelings for. Someone you felt you needed to protect?”

“No,” I said. “Listen, Madame . . .”

“Ooh,” Chris chirped, “I just wrote a new song. It’s called ‘This Lady is Mentally Unbalanced and/or a Charlatan’ and it goes like this . . .”

“Chris, if you don’t shut up I’m going to punch you,” I growled.

“Chris!” Madame Destiny echoed triumphantly, like she’d figured it out on her own. “Was Chris your brother?”

“Yeah, you know what? I’m just going to go.” I stood up. “Thanks anyway.”

She opened her eyes. “Don’t walk away from this. Time is short, but all is not lost. He still has a chance to tell you that he loves you. To show you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure I know
exactly
how he feels about me.” I grabbed my scarf and wound it around my neck. “And he’s not my brother.”

She glared at me. “My fee is nonrefundable.”

“Keep your lousy ten bucks, then.” I turned around and stalked out of her shop, stepping back out onto the street and heading for the next address on my psychics-for-hire list.

“Can you afford to just leave ten bucks with her, or will that cut into your ramen budget for the month?” Chris smirked, matching my pace and walking close beside me.

“Stop being a dick.” I frowned. “I’m trying to help you and you’re just giving me shit.”

“Fine, fine. Where next?”

“Lady Hazel,” I said, pulling out the list to confirm that I was walking in the right direction. “A few blocks from here.”

“Is she perhaps . . . a witch?” Chris asked, then gave me that look you give people when you’ve just told a joke and are waiting on everyone to laugh.

After a couple of seconds, I decided that I must have missed the punch line. “What?”

“Like . . . witch hazel. Get it? Because her name is Hazel and she’s into, you know, new age stuff and shit.”

I rolled my eyes. “You were a pretty good bass player, but it’s a good thing you never tried to branch out into stand-up.”

“What are you talking about? I’m awesome at comedy,” he said, smiling.

I eyed him suspiciously. “What’s got you all chipper?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Well . . . actually, it’s being out in the sun.”

I stared up at the sky. It was frigid, especially in the wind, but there wasn’t a single cloud anywhere and the sun was pretty nice. He had a point there. “I guess the sun is okay.”

“It’s weird,” he went on. “I guess you don’t realize how much of a night owl you are until you get up early to go find psychics with a bellboy.”

“I’m pretty much a night owl too, you know,” I told him. “I have late shifts most of the time and I’m almost never up this early.”

“Well, I guess this is unusual for both of us, then.” He walked through a cast iron streetlight pole and puffed out his chest, smiling over at me.

“It’s not really impressive that you can walk through stuff,” I pointed out. “You
are
a ghost, after all.”

He gave me the stink eye. “I can’t have sex or play my guitar or eat ice cream ever again. Let me have my small pleasures.”

“Touché,” I said. “So . . . I think this is it.” I stopped in front of the store, which was almost identical to Madame Destiny’s except more . . . orange.

“I don’t know about this plan,” he said, raising one eyebrow while lowering the other. “I think these people are probably all con artists.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, “but I don’t have any better ideas.”