The Ghost in Love (14 page)

Gina lived on Cinnamon Street, which Ben had always thought was the coolest address in the world. As an adult, on hearing a song called “Cinnamon Street” by the pop group Roxette, he was genuinely offended. It felt as though they had stolen that name from his memory. “Cinnamon Street” was not the name of a second-rate rock song to Ben Gould; it was an essential place on the map of his life.

At the end of the neighborhood the street dipped down and began a long curve to the right. The houses thinned out there as the road entered a small forest that led to the town elementary school. Street lamps lit the way. Just behind one of these lamps towered three giant elm trees that marked the beginning of the forest.

The white body lay beneath these trees.

On seeing it, Ben and Ling ran over and squatted down close by. Lying on its side, the animal looked asleep. Its eyes were closed and, strangely, those eyes appeared a good deal smaller now; they had
shrunk. All four of its paws were curled in toward the body. The violet images on its white skin were fading. Soon every single one of them would be gone. Ears had sprouted on its head where a dog's ears are. Whatever this extraordinary being had been, in death it was transforming now into a dog. If anyone were to find its body by the side of the road, they would naturally assume the poor pup had been struck by a passing car. Probably trying to cross the road at night and unlucky. Just another road kill, nothing more.

“Where are the rest of them?”

Ben didn't care about the white animals at that moment: he cared about the bum. “I want to know where the guy is.”

When she stood up, Ling lost her balance and began to teeter. Throwing back her head, she reached out a hand to steady herself by gripping Ben's shoulder. Once she was okay again, she continued looking up.

“What if he's still around here?” Jumpy at the possibility, Ben stood, too, and looked around the area in the false harsh light of the street lamp.

“You don't have to worry about him anymore.”

“How do you know? If the guy can stab your friend and then kill one of these cute things . . .”He looked at Ling and waited for an answer. He hoped she had one. He hoped this ghost would say something in her nice manly voice that put his mind at ease.

Silently, Ling pointed up. She pointed toward what she had seen a moment before when she lost her balance. Ben's eyes followed the line of her finger but were off in his perception. He saw only trees and a lot of darkness.

“What? What am I looking for?”

“In that tree, there. Up towards the top.”

In that tree towards the top was a bright orange man's shirt—an
unforgettably loud orange. Although empty, it was still buttoned all the way up. The shirt was caught on two branches. With no wind blowing, it hung between them like a glowing flag or a caught kite.

If it had been daytime and they had walked around to the other side of the thick tree, they would have seen a pair of empty pinstriped trousers dangling from a lower branch. On the ground almost directly below the pants was one heavy work boot.

“Whoa! Was that his shirt?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure, Ling?”

“I'm sure.” Her eyes did not move from the tree.

“What did they do to him? Where'd he go?”

The ghost shrugged; it didn't care. “Whatever they did to him, he killed one of them first.”

What lay on the ground nearby looked like nothing more than a dead white dog now, some kind of boxer/bulldog mix.

“I've heard about them, but this is the first time I've ever seen one. I'm almost positive it's a verz. That bunch of them came to protect you, Ben. They camouflage themselves as dogs until you need them and then they turn into that.”

“Who sent them?”

Ling shook her head. “Honestly, I don't know. I know my bosses lied to me when they explained why they wanted me to come and keep an eye on you. Now verzes are here to protect you . . . I'm out of my league, Ben. Sorry.” The mixed tone of despair and bitterness in her voice indicated she was telling the truth.

Ben asked, “What's a verz?”

After so much excitement that night
, even the cocker spaniel was tired. When the adults gently pushed the dog out of their bedroom and
closed the door, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and made his way to Gina's room at the back of the house. Billie knew he was always welcome to sleep on the little girl's bed.

As usual her door was open because Gina didn't like the dark. She asked her parents to leave her door open at night so she could see the light burning at the end of the hall. She also liked it when Billie lay next to her. But the young dog was restless and almost never slept a whole night through. At some point he would invariably hop off her bed, walk through the house, drink some water, and sniff things; only after a satisfying walkabout would he climb the stairs again and get back into bed with the girl. Sometimes he did this more than once a night. But Gina was used to his fidgeting. She slept through the dog's comings and goings.

Walking into her room now, he leapt up onto a corner of the narrow bed, balled himself up, and prepared to sleep. But then he felt his stomach needed biting, so the dog raised his head again and went to work. He nibbled and licked as dogs do, stopped, and then went right back to it.

If there had been a light in the room and someone were looking closely, they would have seen bewildering things on a small patch of the animal's skin. About the size of a coin, very faint lines, designs, and drawings covered the dog's right inner thigh near its anus. But these markings were mostly hidden under fur and in an obscure place on the dog's body. Hardly anyone ever saw them because, unless you looked hard, they were almost impossible to see. But Stewart Parrish saw them and seconds later he was running for his life.

Satisfied with the biting work he'd done on his stomach, Billie curled himself into a dog ball and fell quickly to sleep.

German Landis did not like
to shop. She did not like walking into any store and having to choose. She didn't like being put on the spot. As a result, whenever she was forced to do it, she either came with a detailed list in hand of things to find or an exact idea of what she wanted.

German did not go to stores to shop; she went to buy. One size 34B white cotton bra, please. A half-gallon of orange juice and a dozen eggs. Two tubes of Winsor & Newton burnt-sienna paint. The day after her showdown with Ben Gould, she looked in her small refrigerator and knew at a glance that she must go to the market.

In the time that they had lived together, one of the things Ben taught her was that whenever you are upset, cook something delicious and difficult to prepare. Even if you end up giving it away or throwing it in the trash after you are finished, the effort and mental concentration required to make it will take your mind off the problem for a while. She'd watched him do this twice. Both times he emerged from the kitchen with a marvelous meal and a more peaceful heart. The food tasted great, but what she revered was Ben's way of resolving difficult personal issues. German loved physical work.
She loved using her hands. She loved being with a man who, instead of brooding or sulking, put his hands to work when he was troubled to make something fine and worthwhile.

She decided that's what she would do now: buy some staples for her everyday needs and then some white beans, ham, chicken breasts, and garlic sausage for his cassoulet recipe, one of her favorite meals. German reasoned that if she made a big one, she could eat it for the rest of the week.

While dressing and preparing to go out, she thought of Ben's story about the time he ate the best cassoulet on earth in a small village in southern France. The name of that town was Castelnaudary. He pronounced the name so beautifully when telling the story that German made him repeat it twice just so she could hear the catch and roll of the word in his voice. She didn't want to think about him now but that was almost impossible. Joy, real joy, comes so rarely in life that we mourn the death of it a long time. In the beginning of their relationship she said to him, “Where have you
been
? Where have you been all this time? It feels like I've been holding my breath for years, but now I can finally let it out.”

They were lying naked on the couch when she said this. To her great surprise and consternation, Ben got right up, walked into the kitchen, and started making her cassoulet for the first time. When she entered the room a few minutes later, bewildered by his having disappeared from her arms just like that, he started describing Castelnaudary and the time he had eaten this dish there. His back was to her while he spoke. When he turned, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears but he was smiling. “This is the greatest meal in the world, German. I have to make it for you right now. It's the best way I know how to show how I feel about you.”

Only two weeks after she got together with Ben Gould, German told her closest friend in a nervous, giddy, and spooked voice that she thought she had found
him
. “My God, I really do think I found him.” Her friend asked, “What, is it the sex?” German protested: “No, no, it's the
guy
. That's the incredible part: it's the whole guy. Even his hands are perfect. Have you ever met a man with perfect hands?” Her friend said, “Hands? Oh boy, you're in deep.”

Because she was adventurous, German had experienced a large number of failed relationships over the years. She was at the age where she knew her chances of finding someone who sent both her heart and her hopes off the scale were rare. But then, one day in the library, there he was.

“I
don't
want to think about him now. Okay?” She said this out loud and very firmly, although no one was around to hear. German had a habit of doing that when she'd made up her mind about something. For her, saying things out loud made them final.

She missed Pilot. She missed taking his leash off the side table and asking in a normal, un-doggy voice if he wanted to go for a walk. She missed having another being in her life, especially now that once again the world felt so alien and large.

The supermarket was a short walk from her place. When German's life turned sad or strange, she tended to notice more of what was going on around her. She was the first to admit that when she was happy she drifted around in a dreamy cloud of inattention. Simply because there was enough in her head to keep her busy then: she did not need anything else to think about. But today was
a day after
and not a good one: the day after Ben's malicious tricks and surprises. A day after the galling realization of how wrong she'd been about someone she had once genuinely loved.

Walking along, she saw a young woman standing on a corner, waiting for a traffic light to change. When the woman glanced over, her eyes were filled with equal amounts of suspicion and defeat.

German passed a forlorn-looking garage with no cars in the stalls or up on the hydraulic rack being repaired and none at the pumps getting gas. The only person around was the owner, who stood in the office door wiping his hands on a filthy rag. He glowered at German as she passed, as if she were to blame for the failure of this place and his disappointment.

Down the block the supermarket loomed, all bright windows and movement. Its parking lot was crammed with people and cars. Shoppers came and went pushing metal carts in and out of the store, to their cars, to the side, down the street toward home.

German was an inveterate snoop into other shopping carts. To her mind what people chose to buy said a great deal about them. She had often accompanied Ben to the market only because food shopping was such a pleasure for him and his enthusiasm was infectious. If she had not known him and were looking in his cart, she would have thought this man was either an interesting fellow or a food snob—or both. He never bought more than a few items at a time, usually only what he was cooking that day. His cart might contain capers and fresh dill, an eggplant, a bottle of ouzo, and two fat lamb chops he had given the butcher detailed instructions on how he wanted cut.

“Stop thinking about him!” she repeated too loudly while stepping onto the new black asphalt of the large parking lot. But German always thought of Ben when she went to a food market. There was no way to avoid it.

She picked up her pace and, zigzagging through both the parked and moving cars, crossed the busy lot toward the building. Often when Ben got to the door of a market he would stop and just beam
in anticipation of the treasure hunt he was about to have inside. German noticed these things about him and they touched her. He could be so delightful. Even if it was over between them, why would she want to push away small, perfect memories like that?

Two Cub Scouts had set up a card table near the entrance. They were selling tickets to a raffle. As she passed they looked at her hopefully, but it was in vain. German never bought raffle tickets or lottery tickets or entered any sort of contest. She believed fully in luck but had her own theory about it. She believed luck chose you: it came to you but you could never go to it or win it or seduce it. Luck was stubborn, picky, and frequently recalcitrant if you bugged it too much with requests. It was the prettiest girl at the ball who could have her pick of partners. Woe to the boy stupid or vain enough to walk up and
ask
her to dance. Luck had come to German a few times in her life. For a blessed time she believed finding Benjamin Gould was the best luck she ever had.

The supermarket doors whooshed open automatically and she stepped inside. As usual, entering that cavernous place made her feel both physically small and incompetent: all the food displayed in there, the variety, the delicious possible combinations of ingredients that she was incapable of conjuring because she was only a mediocre cook and had no talent at it. Even when she tried her hardest, whatever German Landis prepared usually ended up tasting like airplane food. It was one of the things she had so enjoyed about living with Ben: he gladly did the cooking. She savored every bit of it and happily cleaned the dishes afterward, a job he detested. It was one of those small ideal arrangements, a perfect pact, that comes naturally in a successful relationship. How often does that kind of accord happen in life, especially with a new partner? How often are our weaknesses solved by the strengths of others, and vice versa?