The Ghost in Love (6 page)

“Let me down. Let me down here.”

Ling obeyed but kept both hands near the angel just in case.

“Listen to me, Ling. I have to go. This should never have happened. I had no idea—It never should have happened.”

The ghost didn't know whether to wait till the angel was finished speaking or interrupt to ask if there was anything more it could do.

“I don't know if I'll be coming back here or if I can help you anymore, Ling. This whole thing is crazy. It never should have happened . . .”

The angel vanished without another word.

German Landis now lived
in a dark, clammy dump that she hated and wished she had never seen, much less rented. But when she broke up with Ben and moved out, she'd been frantic to find a place, and this apartment was the only one immediately available in her price range at the time.

German was bad in desperate situations and this awful abode was convincing proof of that. She wasn't aware of it, but almost every time she opened the door to the apartment and switched on the light, she hunched her shoulders and grimaced in preparation for what she was about to see. Once inside, she sometimes walked around singing “Hateful, hateful, hateful” to the walls, the cabinet, and the freestanding cardboard-gray fiberboard closet. Her bright blue couch looked so forlorn and out of place in this dank, depressing dungeon. More than once she had apologized directly to the piece of furniture, promising that she would get them both out of there as soon as she could.

Even the dog seemed to skulk around the apartment, tail and head down whenever he came to visit. But who could blame him?

To compensate in a small way, German bought Pilot the best dog food in the market. When she opened the cans, it smelled so good that
she once took a small taste. Not bad. She'd also bought two dog bowls the same color as her couch. They sat next to the refrigerator in her telephone booth–size kitchen. Although their merry blue brightness was a nice attempt, they failed to lift the mood of the apartment even one inch. What on earth
could
in a place like this? She was living in a basement apartment with two small windows and a concrete floor that was always cold. Feeble sunlight leaked into the place almost by accident and never very much, never enough. How could it?

Like some dubious creature in a Kafka short story, German was living now below ground level. She had bought six lamps at IKEA and kept them all switched on all the time whenever she was at home. Her apartment was so unlike Ben's, with its four tall windows facing east and the bright morning light shining in through them, the worn but warm blond parquet floors, and that funny old Persian carpet Pilot liked to lie on. In stark, ugly contrast, her new home was the kind of place where you went to hide or mope or worse. As soon as you felt better, you fled and never returned.

The house itself was adorable, and that's what she had fallen for in the first place. If you stood outside and looked at it only from the street, you thought, Gee, what a charming place to live. The owners were an old lesbian couple named Robyn and Clara who were tightwads with lots of money but resented having to spend any of it. The house was painted a cheerful yellow every few years, and each window aboveground had a flower box. But the paint was the cheapest they could find and all of the flowers were anemic pansies grown from seeds in an envelope you can buy at any nursery for $1.49.

German's apartment, the pièce de résistance of the owners' stinginess, had for years been used only for storage. Even now it sometimes smelled of damp and mold, at other times of the ghosts of old magazines and soggy cardboard cartons that had lived down there undisturbed
for decades. The women resisted throwing anything away, especially if they'd paid good money for it—even if it was years ago.

The only reason they fixed up the basement was because their accountant informed them that if they did the renovation, they could rent the apartment but not pay tax on the income from it because both of them were now over sixty-five. Within days of that revelation, out went the magazines and boxes and in came the tenants, although none of them ever stayed very long.

Both of the old women were quite fond of German Landis, but they made no attempt to make either her apartment or her life there nicer. They also liked Pilot because he was quiet, grave, and well behaved. They didn't even mind it when the dog sat on the small patch of grass in front of German's door, taking the sun. They wished Pilot were a little friendlier and more appreciative when they pet him, but you can't have everything.

On returning from Ben's that morning, German slid the key into the lock and unconsciously began to hunch her shoulders. The telephone in the apartment rang. She almost tripped over the letter “D” because she'd put it down on the ground so that she could work the key.

Waiting patiently nearby, Pilot looked up at her but his expression was blank. All dogs' expressions are blank, but there was something in Pilot's face that usually told her what he was thinking. Or at least she thought so.

German got the door opened, kicked the damned “D” out of her way, and walked quickly in to answer the phone. Pilot followed her. The first thing he did once inside was lift his head and sniff the air to see if any new interesting smells were about. Then the dog walked over to his food bowl to check on its status. Now and then tasty leftovers from German's meals appeared there.

Slightly breathless she said into the receiver, “Hello?”

“We have to talk.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. Unconsciously she put her other hand on the phone for support. “Ben?”

“We have to talk.”

“I was just there. Why didn't you talk to me then?”

He sighed loudly but nothing more. She waited for him to continue.

“That stupid film was on television.”

“What film?”

“The old comedy with Cary Grant and the dog, Mr. Smith. What a ridiculous name for a dog. It's so
clever
.”

“You mean the movie where he shares the dog with his wife after they break up?”

“Yes.”

“That was silly and not funny. We both thought so.”

“I agree, but the guy on TV said that it was one of the ‘great classic screwball comedies.' It was just on. As soon as you left, I turned on the television and that damned movie was playing. Ironic, huh? You walk out the door with our dog and that thing just happens to be playing on TV. Listen, really, we have to talk.”

The movie didn't just happen to be on TV. Ling ran it on purpose to make Ben feel bad because the ghost was so angry with him for his idiotic behavior toward German. The two of them were sitting now at the kitchen table looking directly at each other. Ben didn't know that, of course. He just thought he was alone in the room, talking on the telephone to the woman he would have given half a universe to have back in his life again.

German answered decisively and the tone of her voice carried more than a little irritation. “We've talked about everything, Ben—over and over. There's nothing more to talk about.”

“Yes, there is. There are . . . things.”

She shook her head and bit a thumbnail. She frowned. She wasn't having it. Not this time, not anymore. “
Things?
That doesn't help me much, Benjamin.” She was tired of his elliptical way of speaking, especially about things that really mattered. This subject exhausted both her head and heart.

But on the other end of the line Ling knew that something very big was going on. The ghost was paying full attention now. Would Ben Gould do it? Would he actually tell her?

“We really do
have
to talk, German.”

Now it was her turn to sigh. He was beginning to sound like a broken record and it was strange. “You've already said that several times, Ben. But we've talked everything out till it's exhausted, you know what I mean?” She tried to keep her voice measured and kind, but it was difficult.

“No, this is different. This is very, very different from what you think. Can I ask for one last favor? Just one? Do I still have enough points for one favor?”

She looked up at the ceiling. “What?”

“I want you to meet me somewhere. Would you do that?”

“When? Where?”

“One eighty-two Underhill Avenue in an hour. Would you do that? Would you do it for me for what we once were?”

She hesitated, startled by the way he worded the sentence. There was no good reason to say no, so she reluctantly agreed. But unhappiness was very plain in the sound of her voice. She would walk Pilot over there because Underhill Avenue wasn't far from her apartment. At least they'd get some exercise. “All right, I'll be there.”

“Thank you, German. Thank you very much.”

Since the accident
that should have killed her, Danielle Voyles had taken to reading the Bible. She did not make a big deal about it. Few people outside her family and some friends even knew she was doing it. Every morning before breakfast she read at least five pages. Then she closed her eyes and thought over what she'd just read. Thought hard. Danielle had never read the Bible straight through. The experience so far was mostly a combination of hard going or boring, but she was going to finish it. And when she was done, she wanted to read the Koran next. Until the accident, she hadn't spent much time thinking about God or the larger issues, but she was sure thinking about them these days.

One day Danielle and her boyfriend went on a picnic. They had been fighting a lot recently and needed some quality time alone to work things out. Otherwise they both knew their relationship was in big trouble. The picnic spot was a half hour's ride away by turnpike. The day was beautiful and the road was clear. When they were halfway there, Danielle saw something out of the corner of her eye. When she turned her head to look, she saw a small single-engine plane nosediving into a rocky field very close by on the side of the highway.

Afterward Danielle said the only thing she remembered were the sounds. First she heard a long loud
wooooom
as the plane made impact with the ground. Then the sound of different kinds of metal and glass smashing, snapping, and crashing. That's all, but it was a huge blessing because of what happened next.

Shattering on impact, the exploding airplane shot hundreds of burning fragments of metal, molten rubber, and everything else like bomb shrapnel in every direction. Some of it reached the road because it was so close. Two pieces hit their car. Part of a wing strut struck the front, tearing off a headlight and bending the fender. The second piece
was the three-inch top part of a stainless steel ballpoint pen lying forgotten on the floor of the plane. Like a bullet, it shot through the car window into Danielle's forehead just above her right eyebrow.

There are wounds that should kill us but don't. Wounds, diseases, terrible accidents. When asked how that is possible, the greatest experts on earth can only examine the survivor, shrug like the rest of us, and smile uneasily. Miracles do happen sometimes.

After studying the grave head wound Danielle Voyles sustained in the accident, doctors were certain she would die no matter what they did for her. In an extremely dangerous six-hour operation, the large piece of pen was removed from her brain. None of the medical team expected her to live through the night.

Half a year later she was sitting on an exercise bicycle in the living room of her apartment, pedaling slowly but steadily while reading an article in a magazine about finding inner peace.

When the doorbell rang, she looked up in surprise. She was not expecting anyone because it was Saturday and she'd made no dates or plans. Getting off the Exercycle, she pulled up her sweatpants, which had a tendency to droop whenever she worked out. Walking to the door, her mind was still half in the magazine article, half wondering who might have come to visit. Danielle was a friendly woman. She opened the front door without thinking that whoever was on the other side might harm her.

Standing there was a very tall woman in a yellow baseball cap, holding a leash with a dog at the end of it. Danielle had never seen either of them before.

“Hello. Are you Danielle Voyles?” the woman asked, and smiled hesitantly.

“Yes, I am.”

“My name is German Landis. I'm sorry to disturb you like this, but I'd like to talk to you about your accident, if you don't mind.”

“My accident?” Danielle reflexively reached up to touch the deep indentation and cruel purple scar on her head that would be her companions for the rest of her life.

“Yes. Can you spare a few minutes?”

German was not alone. Benjamin Gould stood next to her, but Danielle did not see him. She
could
not see him. She did not see him for the entire time that this tall woman visited.

She did not hear Ben when he spoke in a normal voice to German, telling her what questions to ask and, before Danielle answered them, what her answers would be, word for word. She did not see him wandering around her apartment, peering in open drawers, opening the refrigerator, and then saying loudly, “Yikes!” when he saw how little was in there. She did not see him when he sat down close to her on the couch so that the two of them were directly facing German.