“No,” she said, “I have another idea. Come here.”
I approached her nervously. What did she have in mind? I paused about halfway through the kitchen as she took a long drink from the bottle, then wet her lips slowly with her narrow tongue. She moved over to me. Or perhaps sidled would have been a better word. Either way, she had a fairly hungry look in her eye, one that would have caused my physical body to react a certain way, no doubt.
“Just shut up for a few seconds,” she said.
“But I didn’t say anything.”
“Then turn off your damn brain and relax.”
“I’m a ghost. How much more relaxed could I be? Besides, I don’t have a brain—”
“Shh!”
Now she was standing before me. Her eyes roamed my face with interest. She reached up and touched my hair—or tried to.
“Your hair is slightly mussed,” she said.
“Yeah, well, I was asleep when I died.”
“I want you to do something for me,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. I just stood there in the kitchen, looking down at this woman I had gotten to know so well over the past two years. A woman who was my only connection to the real world.
“Shh,” she hissed again. “I want you to draw energy from me. You know how to do it, and I give you my full permission. I want to see you, James. All of you.”
She had never given me such permission, and rarely did I draw upon the energy of others. Not sure why I didn’t; again, call it ghostly etiquette.
“Do it,” she said. “And just shut up. But first…” She drank deeply from the bottle and licked her lips again. “Okay, now do it.”
And so I did. I reached out and held her head in my hands. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Energy—her energy—crackled up my arms and through my body, spreading to all my extremities. Her eyelids fluttered wildly.
A moment later, I made a full appearance.
She opened her eyes and smiled at me—and nearly fainted. In fact, she would have fallen to the floor had I not held her up.
“Don’t let go,” she said.
So I continued holding her head in my milky-white hands, continued drawing energy from her.
“Kiss me,” she said throatily. She opened her eyes and tried to smile—and nearly fainted again. “Do it now, you dope.”
And so I did.
Holding her face in my hands, I leaned down and pressed my semisubstantial lips down onto hers. Her lips, soft and wet, were coated with a thin film of beer. As I kissed her, more energy passed from her to me. A lot more energy.
Too much.
Finally, I pulled away from her. As I did so, a thin elastic thread of ectoplasm stretched from my lips to hers and snapped off in a puff of cotton candy as I carefully lowered her to the kitchen floor.
I stepped back, and two things happened simultaneously: she slowly regained her strength, and I slowly disappeared.
But before I faded altogether, I fetched her a pillow from the couch, slipped it under her head. When she opened her eyes again, she looked up at me weakly and smiled.
“So how did the beer taste?” she asked.
I grinned down at her, licking my lips.
“Wonderful.”
10
Pauline came back slowly.
Making a full appearance was rare for me. To do so, I needed the full compliance of the living. Most of the living rarely complied.
I was still reeling from the kiss. Her lips had been so soft against mine. I could still taste the alcohol on her lips. I could taste something else, too—her lipstick. And her perfume was more than just a phantasmal hint.
It was the real thing. And she had smelled so damn good.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting up, blinking hard. “You were bad. I told you to kiss me, not suck the life out of me.”
“My bad,” I said.
She sat up on the Pergo floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. Dust bunnies, stirred up from the recent commotion, flitted across the floor like mini gray ghosts. I said nothing, although my thoughts turned to my wife, who was living two floors above us and a hallway or two down.
“You didn’t cheat, silly,” she said.
“Feels like cheating.”
“We’re just friends experimenting. Like I did back in college, only you’re not a sophomore cheerleader with sexuality issues.”
“Still, I should be kissing her,” I said.
“She doesn’t know you exist,” said Pauline gently. “Besides, James, she remarried, remember?”
No, I hadn’t remembered. These days I was forgetting more and more. Then again, perhaps that was a memory I wanted to forget. Good God, my wife had remarried?
I felt as if someone had sucker punched me in the gut.
Pauline stood on shaky legs. “You’re going to be okay, kiddo. I promise.” She headed straight to the fridge and pulled out another bottle of beer. “Now, I actually had some news to tell you.”
“That is, before we got distracted,” I said, and suddenly wondered why I was feeling so awful. But I couldn’t remember. Something to do with my wife, I think. I shrugged off the feeling.
“That was a hell of a distraction,” said Pauline.
“Did your news have something to do with me finding a way out of here?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So how do we do it?” I asked.
She grinned at me. “I’m going to need a pair of your socks.”
11
It was past midnight, and my daughter was sleeping soundly.
I stepped into her bedroom through her closet door, noting that she appeared to have a new winter coat inside the closet, although I couldn’t quite remember if it was new or not. At any rate, it certainly seemed new.
Damned memory.
She was sleeping on her back, with her head turned slightly toward me. Thanks to a nearly full moon, the light inside her room was especially bright.
I noted that she had recently added a life-size poster of Kobe Bryant slam-dunking a basketball, feet hovering unnaturally above the court, tongue sticking out, face contorted in the sweaty throes of competition. I was uncomfortable with my nine-year-old daughter having a poster of anyone in the sweaty throes of anything.
She was growing up.
I hated that.
And she was doing so with a new daddy now. The man himself was kind enough, yes, although he really didn’t give her enough time or attention. She was always an afterthought, always an obligation, and she deserved much better. So much better.
She deserved me.
“I’m doing my best, baby doll,” I said to her sleeping figure.