She barely remembered driving across town. When she stepped up to her grandmother's small porch, someone had dumped a box of pumpkins by the door.
"You're lucky I don't have my shotgun by the door," Grammy said, opening the front door. "What's going on? Who died?"
Dori held up her hand for Grammy to give her a moment. Through the white noise in her ears, she tried to think of where to start. What bugged Dori was not that she’d just spoken to a dead man; although in truth, yes that was weird. The thing that got her was that she wasn't afraid of seeing him again. He hadn't threatened her. He’d freaked her out, but he hadn't done her harm. Her gut told her she could trust him.
"Maybe you oughta come in and sit down," Grammy said. "It's cold out here."
Dori looked at her bare arms, prickled with goose bumps. The yard had grown dark as the sun sank behind the fog bank. A thin layer of mist hung in the air.
"Did you fight with your mother at lunch?" Grammy asked.
"What? No." Dori realized she was pacing again. The dogs watched from under the tree. "How did you know we-"
"Well then, what the hell is wrong with you? Did you get fired?"
Dori stopped pacing. She shook her head no.
"You can stand out here all night by yourself. Or, come inside. Joan Rivers is gonna be on QVC."
"I don’t know," Dori said, her voice shaking from the adrenaline rush. She held up a fluttering hand and then shoved them both into her pockets. She needed to get warm and think this through.
"Well okay-" Grammy started to close the door but Dori stopped her, walking into the warm house that smelled like cinnamon from the candles glowing in the fireplace.
She flopped down in Grampy's lumpy and stained recliner.
"You got ten minutes till Joan starts selling her jewelry."
"Okay," Dori started, and then her mind veered off into ten different directions. She opened her mouth to say one thing and then shut it thinking maybe she ought to start with the first time she'd seen Vicente in the window.
"Mija, you're scaring me," Grammy said.
"I have a ghost in my house." There. She said it. Now she waited for Grammy's reaction.
"I knew that."
"No, I mean a ghost who just a few minutes ago walked into my kitchen."
One of Grammy's penciled eyebrows lifted. "Was he a good-looking man?"
"He was a Hispanic male. Between 25 and 30 years old, five nine and approximately 150 pounds."
"Ay yi yi, you sound like a cop."
"I am a cop."
Grammy shook her head as if she'd been reminded of something unpleasant. "So we bring some candles, La Virgen, maybe some sage and you'll be fine."
Dori pulled her feet under her and wrapped herself up in the chenille blanket draped over the back of the chair. "I don't think that's gonna work."
"Well, I know someone who can help," Grammy said. "He’s an ex-priest."
"Before you go any further, why is he an ex-priest?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to embarrass him with awkward questions," Grammy said, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV.
Dori shivered in her blanket cocoon. Grammy believed her. But just in case, she asked, "So you really believe me?"
"Of course I believe you." Grammy thoughtfully tapped a black and orange finger nail to her chin. "Whatever you do, you can’t just leave him there."
"I can’t exactly pack him up in a box."
"He was a human being once, mija. Maybe he appeared to you for help."
"He asked me to find someone," Dori muttered.
Grammy tilted her head. "Hold on. Did you say he talked to you?"
She nodded and both of Grammy's eyebrows went up as high as they could go.
"You always say you see Tío Fermin."
"I only smell him. That's different."
Dori's heart started to shrink. Grammy thought she was crazy. But she wasn't. She really had talked to Vicente, just as she now spoke with Grammy.
A shudder rang through her as she thought about the symptoms for PTSD, which included hallucinations. What if it had all been in her head? She'd dealt with people who lived in fantasies complete with make-believe husbands or wives, friends and even enemies that were out to get them. Unlike her, they usually slept on the sidewalk and kept all their worldly goods in a shopping cart.
"So what else did he say?" Grammy asked quietly.
Dori stared down at the ends of the blanket she'd twisted together. "Nothing. I mean, I thought I heard him say something, but it happened so fast you know."
"What happened so fast?"
"I came home and I saw him."
"And you talked to him?"
Dori cleared her throat and burrowed deeper into the recliner. "Like I said, I heard him."
"Mmm hmm."
Dori could tell from her tone that Grammy was looking for a way to chisel out more details. She tried to tamp down the doubt rooting deep inside her. She thought of the Lexapro waiting in her medicine cabinet. Maybe she could go a day or two longer and see if this whole Vicente thing was real or not.
"Okay well, let's get back to practical matters," Grammy said. "If Gavin starts working on that house of yours, el fantasmo might get cranky. So let's get this taken care of before it gets out of hand."
"I can't do that."
"Do what?"
Dori stopped herself from telling Grammy that Vicente had asked her not to send him away. "I got Gavin's bid. I can’t afford him."
"How much is he?"
"Eighty thousand."
"In my day, I could've gotten that in one weekend," Grammy said with a proud sniff. "Marijuana wasn't illegal then. Your Grampy and me were farmers. You might say we were organic before it became fashionable."
Unless Dori raided the drug closet at work or took up her grandparents' version of the American Gothic, she could never afford Gavin even if she wanted him.
"Let me call my sources. Don’t you make that face at me! You want a ghost around your house or not? Cuz he'll be watching the likes of you in the shower."
"Why don’t you think I’m crazy?"
"You want me to? I got lots of experience in dealing with your Tío Fermin’s ghost, that little pervert. I know he was staying around to see me naked. Did I ever tell you he tried to seduce me back when your daddy was still a little boy?"
"Is that why he mysteriously drove off the road?"
"No! Your grampy fought man-to-man. If he was gonna mess you up, he did it with honor." She sighed like a dreamy teenager. "I felt sorry for Fermin being your Grampy's baby brother and all, so I didn't say nothing. Fermin was puny, you know, and he thought as an older woman I could make a man out of him."
Dori flattened out the twisted blanket ends, hoping she'd successfully diverted Grammy away from her encounter with Vicente. "If anyone could, it would've been you."
"Damn right. Maybe that’s what you need!"
"Need what?"
"A young boy you can make a man out of."
"Been there, done that."
"With who?"
"All the guys I’ve dated. That’s the problem with them these days. They’re boys masquerading as men. They don’t make them like Grampy anymore."
"Mmm, true," Grammy said sadly. "So, you staying the night?"
Dori thought about her dark, cold and now haunted house. "I'll stay and watch QVC with you."
"You hungry?"
She nodded. "But you stay put. I can help myself."
"So, let's think like your grampy. What are you going to do tomorrow?"
Dori counted on her fingers. "I'll get up, workout, go online to research my house to see who lived there and then find a contractor I can afford."
Sitting here with Grammy, she almost felt like she did on the bike; she could breathe. Her shoulders no longer felt shrink-wrapped under her skin. The edge wore off from her encounter with Vicente. She started a mental to-do list starting with verifing that someone by that name had died in her house. T
here were records and old news clippings that could be researched.
"Good girl." Grammy turned the TV back on and sat back. "Man, I wish I'd bet you a hundred bucks that you had a ghost. I woulda won."
"If you had, I never would've told you."
Chapter Eleven
One moment Vicente was in the middle of talking to Dori. Then the next, he stood now at the window watching her talk to another man.
He tried to orient himself. The house's shadow lay across on the ground. If he remembered correctly, the house faced west so it was now morning. Had an entire night or a week passed since he talked to her in the kitchen?
Dori looked up at the house, but she didn't see him. He smiled, feeling himself take form. Even though his body was long dead and probably nothing more than dust, he sometimes felt the sensations of being inside it. He could see and hear. He could feel emotions, especially the ache of having been lost to those he had loved so many decades ago.
He used to wonder if they'd found his body somewhere and buried it proper. He doubted it but still, it would be nice if someone had placed flowers on his grave.
Dori's voice rose in anger. Vicente leaned closer to the window, sensing the exchange between Dori and this strange man intensify. She walked away, the man calling after her. She flung up her hand in dismissal and something clenched where Vicente's heart had once been. The gesture was so reminiscent of what he done to Anna.
The man stared after Dori, shook his head and then walked away, fading from Vicente's view.
Curious, Vicente turned from the window and then he was in the downstairs hallway. He stayed put, waiting for Dori to walk through the door. She was tough and he admired that. When he got in her face, she barked at him like a man. No crying and screaming and hand-wringing like most women.
But he needed to play this carefully. If he scared her off, who knew how much damn longer he'd be stuck in this bullshit purgatory.
He looked down the hallway, remembering what this house had looked like on that last morning of his life. The once pristine marble fireplace now sagged into the floor of the dingy hallway. The mirror he looked into was long gone.
Then, as if it he went back to that morning, Vicente saw himself as he had once been: hair disheveled and face rough from having missed his barber's appointment. But his body still carried the languid heat from the night before. When he stood before the mirror that morning, he had been thinking of Anna and her ferocity when he pushed her out the back door.
He blinked and the memory vanished when Dori slammed the door. She stomped through the kitchen. "Doll? Who the hell does he think he is calling me doll?" she muttered to herself.
"I wouldn't and I'm already dead," Vicente said, appearing behind her.
Both her feet came off the ground. Dori turned to see him standing in the butler's pantry, arms crossed with his shoulder leaning on the door jamb.
"You handled him pretty good. You made him feel about this big." Vicente pinched his thumb and finger together to illustrate.
She looked him up and down. At least this time she wasn't climbing up the stove to get away from him. "Is that how I make you feel?" she asked.
Vicente laughed and shook his head. "Nope. And you can put down your dukes. It won't do you much good."
She looked down at her fists and then opened her hands. "Oh, right."
"What did he want?"
"Who?"
"The man you were talking to."
"You saw us?"
"I wouldn't ask otherwise."
They stood there a moment, not quite sure how to proceed. "I called him to come look at the house. He said I should level it and then work with him to subdivide it."
Vicente tensed. "And?"
"I told him no thanks."
"And he wouldn't give up."
Her eyes narrowed. "He told me I was making a stupid decision."
"See now, I know how to respect a strong woman." Vicente deliberately drifted his gaze down the length of her body and then back up, hiding the fear of what would happen if she'd leveled the house. Where would that leave him?
Dori crossed her arms as she lifting a skeptical eyebrow. "I've had bigger and better than you," she said.
"But nothing like me." He then crossed the room in the blink of an eye, standing close enough that he could make out the freckles sprinkled over her cheeks.
Dori flinched but she stood her ground, meeting the challenge in his eyes. She even lifted her chin.
"Man, you're tough," he said. "No wonder you're not-"
"Not what?" Dori asked.
"Afraid of me," he said easily.
She made a face as her shoulders slumped down. "I'm more afraid that I'm crazy and you're not really here and I'm actually talking to an empty kitchen."
"I'm here," he said suggestively, and she couldn't help but smile.
She walked around him, moving towards the dining room. "All right then, you need to answer some questions. You never gave me the day you died or the time or place you were born."
"I don't want you to find me. I want you to find Anna."
Dori paused in the doorway. She looked at him as if she wasn't quite sure if he was made up. He couldn't say he blamed her. After a moment, she nodded to herself as if she decided he was the real deal. She walked out of the kitchen and he quickly followed.
"Where are you going?" he asked, making himself appear to walk alongside her. It felt more normal that way.
Dori noticed. "Would it be easier for you to float or something?"
He glared at her, but she lifted her eyebrow as if she'd lost her fear of him. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. To be feared was a necessity in his line of work; it allowed him to easily control people. "I don't need a tour of the house."
"I know, but my notebook is in the living room." She hesitated before asking, "So where do you go when you're not here?"
He abruptly halted in the middle of the hallway, feeling the pull from the front parlor. "I don't answer stupid questions."
She turned and met his eyes. He held her gaze, familiar with this power play. Dori looked over his shoulder and just when he thought he'd won, she asked, "Is there someone else in that room?"
"What room?" he asked, knowing full well what she meant.
"The front parlor where you died."
"I don't know." He slipped his hands in his pockets as if he could hide the fear and rage reaching out for him. She wouldn't help him if she knew he'd been the one in there who'd wanted to kill her.
"If you think my questions are stupid than find someone else to hunt down your girlfriend."
He wasn't going to back down and neither was she. Truth was he didn't know where he went. He had no control when he woke up and fell asleep. All he knew was that he'd been consumed with pain and humiliation when he was in the front parlor and he sure as hell didn't want that again.
"Come on," she said with that superior grin women had. "Let's sit down."
Even though he didn't technically have one, he nodded his head. She led him to the room she'd made for herself. The sofa and the chairs appeared more comfortable than he remembered from his time. A flat box hung from the wall and he wondered if it was some kind of mirror. She'd stacked novels and magazines on a kidney-shaped table. He wanted to jumble them up just to see what she'd do. A rug lay underneath and brightly colored pillows rested on the sofa.
He made out the indent of her shape in the corner of the sofa next to a reading lamp. This was a comfortable and private space. As the tension eased, he thought about how he'd been rolling in dough and lived in some swell places. But he never had his own personal place like this.
She sat in her corner and dug a notebook out of a canvas bag that was a smaller version of what citrus pickers had used in the fields. His lips curled as a brief memory of that time in his life sparked to life. The only thing that had made the humiliation bearable was Andy's laugh. Even though it was against the rules, no one could shut that guy up.
Vicent
e lifted his trousers and sat on the chair next to the sofa. He missed Andy. He hoped he didn't end up like him.
"Okay, give me some facts I can use," Dori said, bringing him back to the present. "Tell me what you know of Anna: her date of birth, when you knew her, when you last saw her, where she lived-"
"I never knew her birthday. She was a year younger than me."
She brought up her chin. "How can you not know her birthday?"
"My memory doesn't work like that anymore."
Dori placed her pen in the fold of her notebook.
He didn't know where to begin. Her questions stirred up flashes of memory and feelings: an image of Anna's face, the smell of the eucalyptus trees in the barrio and the wet, salty breeze against his cheeks.
"The first time I saw Anna was the morning I woke up on a bench."
National City, 1925
The roosters hadn't crowed yet and late-blooming stars still sparkled in the sky. His old grandmother slept sitting up, with Eugenia's head on her lap. Vicente's legs ached as he straightened them from the ball he'd curled into.
They had travelled two weeks from Douglas, Arizona to National City, crammed into the back of a truck and then on a bus with others like them who'd received letters from California promising work and a place to live. It happened so fast after the last time their father showed up drunk, demanding to see them. The old lady said it would be the last time. Vicente took his little sister, Eugenia to lay a clutch of flowers on their mother's grave. Without a word to their father, who was either down in the copper mine or spending his paycheck across the border, they left town to meet the old lady's nephew who worked for the railroad.
Up till then, they didn't know they had other relatives. Their mother died when Vicente was four and Eugenia almost two. Their grandmother had packed them up after the burial. They never lived with their father who visited on the rare occasions he was sober.
The sun beat down on them across the Arizona desert; dirt scratched their eyes and shriveled their throats. In Yuma, the old lady paid a man to write a letter to her nephew, even though Eugenia and Vicente could've done it for free. She didn't like them to know anything: her nephew's name, his address, or even the town they were going to.
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