The Ghost in Love (30 page)

Like a mirage, this striking machine was parked on the street. It looked absurdly out of place there, especially because it was parked between a small Hyundai and a pea green Toyota Camry. An old man walked by, saw the red racer, and did an exaggerated double take. Ben, German, and Pilot stood together at the top of the same stairs where Stewart Parrish had recently sat.

“Why is it here, Ben? Did you bring it? Why are we even out here looking at it?”

“Because I need it to show you something.” He walked down the steps and over to the Ferrari. “You know a lot about these cars, right, German?”

Back at the top of the stairs, she crossed her arms and shrugged noncommittally. “I know some things, yes.”

“You do; you used to talk about them all the time. You love racing. Okay, so do me a favor: Get in this one and start it.”

“
Start
it?”

“Yes, and if you're able to figure out how to do that, then please drive it around the block a few times.”

German said nothing but looked at her ex-boyfriend as if he were being silly. “I don't know how to start a Formula One car! How would I know? And you don't drive a thing like that around the block, Ben. It's not a scooter. It has a thousand horsepower. Zero to a hundred in three seconds, remember?”

“Pilot?”

“What?”

“Do you want to try?”

“Try what?”

“Driving this car.”

“What does ‘driving' mean?”

Both humans realized dogs only know how to ride in cars, not drive them. The word isn't even in their vocabulary.

“Never mind.” Ben walked around the gleaming machine, touching it here and there, kicking a tire, squatting down low to see what it would be like to sit in there. “How do you even get into the thing? The cockpit is so small and narrow.”

German said, “They take out the steering wheel first. The driver gets in and he reattaches it. The seat is custom made to his body. It has to be a perfect fit because of the g-forces exerted on him when he goes around curves during the race.”

“Really? Every driver has a custom-made seat?”

“Ben, why are we here? What's going on?”

Standing up, he put a hand on the thick silver roll bar. “This is the fastest and most technologically advanced car in the world. It goes three hundred miles an hour. It's the best, right, German?”

“Yes. For what it is, it's the best.”

“But neither of us knows how to even turn on the ignition, though we've both been driving for years and you're a big fan of racing. Even if we did know how to
start
it, chances are we'd get into an accident in five minutes driving it because we couldn't handle the power.”

“Especially not on a city street,” she added. “It's not meant to be driven anywhere else but on a racetrack. They're useless as regular cars. It's
not
a regular car. It's like the difference between a propeller plane and the space shuttle.”

“The space shuttle—I like that. Still, it's ironic, isn't it? The greatest car in the world, the automotive ne plus ultra, can't be used
as a car. They're only good for one specific purpose that, like, only a hundred people on earth know how to do.”

“So?” Where was he going with this? What did this have to do with their situation? She was getting impatient.

Ben patted the roll bar again. “So—imagine one day you went out to get your car. But instead of your three-year-old Ford, somehow overnight it had turned into
this
: the greatest, fastest, meanest, most powerful car in the world. But you have no idea of how to even start it, much less drive the thing.

“Still, there's this incredibly important place you must drive to right now that's a hundred miles away from here and there's no other way of getting there but with this.

“But you can't even get into the car because you didn't know the steering wheel has to be taken out first. But somehow you work that part out and climb in. Next you have to figure out how to turn the motor on.
Then
you have to drive it those hundred miles without killing yourself. Zero to a hundred in three seconds, German. How do you even give it gas without crashing into a tree?”

“You
don't
—you call a cab. Or you rent a car. I don't know, Ben. What is your point?”

The Ferrari's engine suddenly started by itself. The sound was huge, brutal, and high at first as the perfectly tuned machine revved fast. Then it dropped down into a sexy, popping, throaty, uneven
vroom-vroom
. It idled that way for half a minute and then turned off without warning. The silence that followed was thick and almost tangible.

Ben put his hands behind his back. “Cool trick, huh? Makes you think I know how it works, but I don't. I don't have a clue. I don't know anything about this car other than what you told me. I can turn on the engine but that's all. How did I do it?
I—don't—know
.” He
looked at the Ferrari for a long time. Instinctively, German knew to keep quiet until he spoke again.

“This is exactly what happened to me: One day I went to get my Ford but this Ferrari was in the garage instead. One day I fell down and hit my head. I was supposed to die but I didn't. Instead, I woke up and became . . . like a racing car.

“Do you understand, German?” He touched his mouth. He wanted to speak clearly. He wanted to tell her everything exactly as it was.

“I think so. I don't know, Ben. Tell me more.”

“You understand Pilot now because I made it possible. Pilot understands us because I made that happen too. Me. I did it, German. Some part of me, some
where
in me, knows how to do things like that now. It knows how to go into Danielle's head and look around in her life as if it were a furniture showroom. It knows how to make a ghost appear. My own ghost, even when I'm not dead. It knows how to bring Ling here. And how do I do all that amazing stuff?
I do not know
. That's the trouble: I don't know.” Incongruously his face broke out in a smile. He tossed a hand in the air in total frustration. “It's like a part of me turned into this thousand-horsepower Ferrari. But I don't know how it works. The rest of me doesn't even know how to turn it on, much less drive it without crashing. I know this much.” He held up two fingers half an inch apart. “I know how to start it and turn it off.”

“When was the first time these strange things happened to you, Ben?”

“The night we saw that guy stabbed. In the bar we went to afterwards. That was the first time I went into Danielle's head.”

“And you really believe you created this Stewart Parrish too?”

“I don't
believe
it, German—I know it. You saw what just happened.”
He patted his leg to remind her. “Stewart Parrish, the verzes, Ling—all of it was my doing. But I have only the vaguest idea how I did it or why.”

“Where did this car come from?”

Ben pointed to his chest.

“Then make it go away now. Show me.”

He shook his head. “I tried. I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I just told you: because I don't know how most of this
works
. I don't know how I work anymore, German. I made the car appear”—he pointed to the Ferrari—“but I don't know how I did it or how to make it go away now. I just kind of think in a certain way and then sometimes what I'm thinking happens, but most of the time it doesn't. It's completely out of control.
I'm
out of my own control.”

“It's like Ling said when she was cooking,” Pilot said.

Ben and German turned to the dog. Pilot described how Ling would stretch out her hand when she needed something while cooking and the object would appear there. He also told them about asking the ghost if she were to envision an elephant in her hand, would it materialize, too, and she had said yes.

“How did she do it?” Ben asked.

Pilot shifted his feet and closed his eyes to recall her exact words. “She said,‘When a person dies, then they're taught the real structure of things. Not only how they look or feel but the essence of what they really
are
. Once you have that understanding, it's easy to make things.”

“It sounds like you're repeating her.”

“I was. I have a good memory.”

“You remembered word for word what Ling said?”

“Yes. If I want to remember something, I do.”

“That's amazing, Pilot.”

“It's normal. All dogs have faultless memories. Haven't you ever noticed?”

“Uh, no, not really.”

Hearing that, Pilot realized again how obtuse human beings were to the really important things in life.

Ben started to speak but stopped halfway when an idea blossomed in his mind. “You remember everything?” Walking around the Ferrari, he started back up the stairs toward where the other two stood.

Pilot said, “If I want to, yes. Well, not everything, because that would be boasting, but—”

“Do you remember the day I fell down and hit my head? The day I got you from the animal shelter?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember everything that happened when I fell down?”

“Probably. I'd have to think about it first. Gather my thoughts.”

When Ben was halfway to them, Pilot said, “On the day you fell, you were wearing purple socks.”

“I don't own purple socks, Pilot.”

Undaunted, the dog insisted, “You were wearing purple socks. I saw them on you when you were lying in the street.”

Ben stopped to think that over. Did he own purple socks? Oh, yes, he did: his mother had sent him a pair of thick wool ones that he'd forgotten about because he almost never wore them, they were so loud. He kept them only because on her periodic visits, Mom inevitably asked about the clothes she'd sent. Did he like them? Did they fit? If he didn't wear some of them at least once during her visits, she pouted. The rest of the year her gifts hibernated in the back of his closet or dresser drawer. The day he bought Pilot was very cold
and it was snowing hard. Of course he had worn heavy wool socks that morning. He'd just forgotten until now which ones.

“You're right, Pilot. But can you remember if I said anything when I fell? Or when I was down? Maybe something strange happened to me when I was on the ground.”

Pilot smelled something. He smelled sex/youth/freedom/sex/food/running/playing/sex—all together. In other words, he smelled a female dog in heat close by. Despite being smart, eloquent, and able to communicate handily with human beings now, Pilot was still a male dog. He ran off after that ambrosial smell without another thought.

“Pilot! Stop!”

The female dog was near. Near enough to transform every quick breath of air he inhaled into desire. The more Pilot breathed her scent, the more he wanted her. The more he wanted her, the more the rest of the world—humans included—faded away. Pilot dashed toward the only thing that mattered at that moment.

Helpless to stop him, Ben watched the dog run away. However, with his newly gained knowledge, he understood immediately why it had happened. Pilot's memories of the day he hit his head might provide answers to important questions. But a commanding part of Benjamin Gould did not
want
him to know those answers. It had created Stewart Parrish from old fears. It had killed the verz that lay under the tree. It had prevented Ben from talking to Danielle in the Lotus Garden when she was about to divulge who was to blame for their difficulties. Part of Ben Gould had deliberately blocked or hampered him ever since he survived what should have been that fatal injury.

He
was the bad guy: Benjamin Gould was his own enemy.

After watching Pilot disappear down the block after the phantom
female, Ben told German everything he knew about what was happening. He kept the account as honest and short as possible.

Seconds after he'd finished, a car pulled to the curb directly opposite them on the other side of the street. The driver looked vaguely familiar, like a stranger you once sat next to on a long bus trip. As the hours passed, you two had a long chat. By the end of the trip, your good-byes were heartfelt. I know that face, don't I?

“Hello!” the driver called out to them. His car was navy blue, nondescript. The man was too. His face was so plain that it was as if they had seen it a hundred times before on a hundred different men.

He got out of the car and, after checking both ways for oncoming traffic, crossed the street and walked right over. Both of them watched him while thinking, What now? He was dressed in a brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, gray corduroy slacks, and black jodhpurs. Forty-something, he was tall and paunchy, and most of his hair was gone.

He came toward them smiling and it was a nice smile, not fake or professional. This man looked genuinely glad to see them. German turned to Ben and raised one eyebrow.

On reaching the stairs, the man bounded up them like a game-show host at the beginning of the program. “Remember me? No, you probably don't.” He was all energy and good cheer. His whole demeanor said it was really okay if they didn't remember him.

Speaking for both of them, German said a shy no.

“That night in the pizza place? I was the guy who got stabbed.”

He had a bottle
of very good wine and three glasses in his car. After they had talked about that horrendous night, silence gradually fell between them. That's when he went to get the wine. For quite a while afterward they just drank his Bordeaux in a now much more
companionable silence. He seemed to be a great guy. When German asked his name, he said they should call him Stanley.

“
Stanley?
Is that your real name?”

“No. My real name is the Angel of Death, but that's quite a mouthful. Stanley is easier. Stan, if you prefer.”

“You're really the Angel of Death?”