“Not real. Not real. Not real,” she muttered, squeezing her eyes shut.
“But what is real, Julia? This elevator? Your favorite shoes? Isn’t it all a construct?”
Well, that certainly sounded like Nick, casually philosophical in a way that ended conversations.
“I meant you weren’t real,” she said. “You’re dead. I buried you. It wasn’t that fun.” Nick laughed at this and Julia could see right through his open mouth to the mirrored elevator wall behind him.
“Touché,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the facts. You just had a full on panic attack in front of a potential client and saw a ghost and what were you worried about? Your job, that’s what. Success.”
“That’s not true!” she said.
“Don’t kid yourself,” Nick said. “You have this idea that you’ll use real women in an ad campaign but it’s not because you care about changing the ridiculous bar for what’s considered beauty. You think it will create buzz. Right?”
“That’s my job,” Julia hissed.
“That’s what the German soldiers said in World War II.”
“Are you going there? Really? Wait. Don’t answer that. Why am I having an argument with a figment of my imagination?” When were they going to reach the lobby? Out on the snowy street, in the freezing cold, surely this apparition would disappear?
“That’s insulting,” Nick said.
“I’m no longer addressing you because you don’t exist.”
“Fine. Be that way.”
The elevator glided to a stop and the door opened on the festively decorated lobby. Julia smoothed invisible wrinkles from her pants and marched toward the exit. Out on the street, she continued on a pace, stepping gingerly over the homeless man blocking the corner.
Unfortunately, Nick continued on with her. “That man back there,” he said. “Did you notice him?”
“Not real. Not real. Not real.” Fortunately, on the streets of New York City, a woman could mutter to herself all day long and no one would pay her any mind.
“Of course you didn’t notice him,” Nick said, answering his own question. “You stepped over him. Do you know how many times you’ve done that? Do you know how many times other people have done that?”
It was cold out here and Julia had no coat, no gloves, no hat. She stuffed her fingers in her ears just like a child but somehow his voice stayed in her head.
“Too many people,” he said, again answering his own question. “Let me tell you, Julia, I’ve changed. I see things very differently now.”
Julia pulled up short and a pack of Russian tourists plowed right into her. “Of course you’ve changed,” she shouted. “You’re dead!”
“Hey lady!” one of the Russians yelled. “Look what you’ve done!” He’d spilled a steamy peppermint latte all over his expensive coat when they bumped and now assaulted her with a string of Russian expletives.
But this being a not so good day, she grabbed the rather large man by the lapels and yanked him close to her. “I don’t care about your stupid drink,” she hissed. “There’s a moralizing ghost following me and I’m going to be fired.”
The man held his hands up, signaling surrender. His friends backed away. When the Russians started to think you’re crazy, well that wasn’t good. Julia ducked into the subway mostly to escape. Her ears burned from the cold and her fingers were numb.
If up on the street was winter, down on the subway platform was tropical. All around her people sweated in their heavy parkas. The cold bits of Julia’s body began to tingle as they warmed. She stomped her feet and rubbed her hands together, furtively glancing left and right. But the subway seemed to do the trick. Nick was nowhere to be found. Maybe ghosts don’t appreciate extreme temperature fluctuations? In any case, she said to herself, it was probably the wine last night. Or the take out. Or her lack of sleep. Or lack of exercise. Or lack of interest in either.
Or maybe she was having a nervous breakdown? That was an interesting thought. Unfortunately, she’d left all her worldly possessions, including her cell phone, on the conference table at the Beauty Now! Headquarters so she couldn’t quietly Google the symptoms that went along with losing one’s mind.
As Julia squished onto a One train headed downtown, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the grimy window. And staring back was a woman as ghostly as Nick.
CHAPTER 3
Back at her apartment in the East Village, things did not improve. Lady Di blocked the vestibule as usual. She liked to say she was the real Lady Di, having run away from the madness of Buckingham Palace to live incognito on the mean streets of New York City. But really she was a homeless lady of indeterminable age, who looked nothing like Princess Diana and who mostly just blocked the doorway.
“Excuse me,” Julia said, climbing over her.
“The palace is so lovely this time of year,” Lady Di mused from under a heap of dirty blankets. Her British accent was flawless. “I miss it. Perhaps I’ll return?”
Julia didn’t even bother to answer her. She slammed the door behind her and ran up the three flights of stairs to her apartment.
Inside, Nick was in his usual place on the expensive leather recliner but now Julia could see the pretty striped pillow right through his torso. This was jarring. Where were his internal organs? Or did being dead mean you no longer needed them and existed just as a shimmery outline of your former self?
These questions made her hands shake. Quickly, she uncorked a nice Pinot Noir and chugged it straight from the bottle. Little red rivers of wine ran down her chin but she didn’t stop until half the wine was gone. A loud burb followed.
“Excuse me,” she said wiping her face on the back of her white oxford shirt. Red wine stains didn’t come out but who cared? She was being haunted.
“How sophisticated you’ve become in my absence,” Nick said as she sat down on the couch, clutching her bottle.
“It’s your fault,” she said.
Julia Orchard had met Nick Hunt at a swanky New Years Eve party hosted by an investment banker friend who happened to have the most amazing Central Park West apartment. They found each other by the sushi spread and the rest, you might say, is history.
Friends were not surprised when they married the following year. Julia and Nick have a certain shallowness in common, they whispered. It’s a very good match. It was true they liked the trendiest restaurants and thousand dollar shoes and vacations in St. Barts, but did that make them bad people? Not necessarily. They were perfectly happy attending charity balls as long as they weren’t asked to work a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. And so it went for two years. It’s impossible to understand the inner workings of a marriage you aren’t actually participating in, but friends tried anyway.
“They accessorize each other,” was the way one person put it and that seemed accurate. Was there love or affection or desire or did they just look good together?
However, as time passed, this idea that they were somehow skin deep began to trouble Nick. He even went so far as to ask Julia if she really loved him.
“Of course I do,” she’d said. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
He asked because he was experiencing a strange emptiness way down low in his belly, as if something were missing. In fact, he was standing on the corner of 34th and Broadway contemplating this emptiness when a cab jumped the curb and hit him. The doctors said death was instantaneous, that Nick didn’t suffer. And so the Widow Orchard came to be.
Back on the couch, Julia chugged the wine, eyeing her companion. “What are you doing here?” she asked. Again, she was talking to a figment of her imagination but the wine made her feel better about it.
“You have to change your ways,” Nick said.
“What are you, the ghost of Christmas Past?”
“Not hardly,” he said. “But I’ve seen things. And I’m here to tell you things have to change.”
“Change how?” she said. “I’m perfectly happy.”
“Just look around,” Nick said
. “The world is in serious trouble.” In the two years they were married the most serious topic broached was where to have Sunday brunch, followed closely by what they should wear to Sunday brunch. The world was for their pleasure. It was not something that required deliberate tending.
“And?”
“Every one person makes a difference,” he said. “There’s power in simple gestures of kindness. I see that now. I didn’t see it before.”
“How can you see anything?” Julia yelled. “You’re dead!”
“Details,” Nick said, waving her off. “It’s too late for me, that’s true.” He waved a ghostly hand through the air as if to prove this point. “But not for you.”
Julia didn’t like where this conversation was going. The basis of their marriage had been fun. If it wasn’t fun, they didn’t do it. Why was Nick upset about that now?
After his death, Julia spent a full year mourning him. True, her mourning felt vague, as if she couldn’t quite get her arms around it. This led to comments about how well she was managing. She looked pretty good for a young woman who had unexpectedly lost her husband and their potential future. But when the year of mourning ended, Julia got on with it. She had work to do and people to see and restaurant reservations. Life marched on.
In any case, Julia was beginning to suspect the second coming of Nick would not be brief. Her dead husband looked downright comfortable in his old chair even if he was see through. Julia started to laugh. This was awful. And tomorrow she’d probably get fired for literally running away from the Beauty Now! people. And she didn’t even have her cell phone. How was a girl in modern society supposed to exist without a cell phone? It would be interesting to take a picture of Nick and see if he showed up. But maybe she was confusing ghosts and vampires? Would garlic scare away a ghost? Her laugh developed a slightly hysterical edge.
“What’s funny?” Nick asked.
“I’m sitting here talking to you,” she said. “That’s pretty funny.”
“I don’t know why you’d think that,” he said.
“Are you for real? Wait a minute. Don’t answer that.”
“You should eat something with that wine,” Nick said.
“Don’t give me advice,” she said. “Please.”
“Okay,” he said. “But you need to sober up because we have things to do. And there’s a time limit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Today is the twenty fourth of December. Christmas Eve,” he said. “By Christmas morning, you need to have righted two wrongs.”
“Are you kidding me with this?”
Nick looked grave, if a ghost could look that way. “I wish I was,” he said quietly, “but no. I’m not kidding. Two wrongs corrected by sunrise Christmas morning.”
There was something in his voice that gave Julia pause. While she very much wanted to leap from her seat and run out of the apartment, she remained. “Or?”
The shimmering glittery outline of a door appeared beside Nick. It seemed formed from a thousand Fourth of July sparklers. And although it was beautiful, beyond the door was a darkness deeper than any Julia had ever seen. And the darkness seemed to have form, something dense and alive. In short, it was terrifying.
“Come on,” Nick said. “Time to go.”
“In there?”
Nick nodded.
“No way. Forget it. I can’t.” But even as she resisted, her body floated toward the door and, screaming, she fell right through it.
Ass over teakettle, she plunged through the thick blackness. She wondered if this was what bungee jumping felt like and then she wondered why anyone would do such a thing on purpose? What the hell was going to happen when she landed?
“Nick?” she howled. “Where are you?” But her acceleration slowed and her feet came to rest on something solid.
In the distance was the shadowy outline of a house. As it drew closer, Julia saw a classic New England center hall colonial with candles in the windows and a wreath adorning the front door. The house twinkled with warm light and inviting energy. She felt herself smile even though she was mostly terrified. Through a pane of glass, she saw a towering Christmas tree bedazzled with white lights and red bulbs. Underneath the tree were dozens of elaborately wrapped gifts. It looked like a holiday card or a scene from a Lifetime Christmas special.
“Oh,” she whispered, “it’s so lovely.”
There were people inside, too, dozens of them, all dressed in their winter best, smiling and talking. Children ran among them, dodging in and out of legs, laughing. There was champagne and clinking glasses and heartfelt wishes of Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The smell of delicious food filled the air. Did she know these people? Yes. Some of the faces looked familiar even if she couldn’t quite place them. Everyone in this neat package of a house was happy and just outside the window, Julia felt their happiness as if it were a thing she could reach out and hold. The sensation was sharp and bright and made her gasp.
Inside, the fireplace mantle overflowed with framed photos. Most of them were unclear but the one in the center was definitely the photo from her wedding day with Nick, the same one that still sat above the fake fireplace in her apartment. What was it doing here? There was a woman standing in front of the fire, a small blond child attached to her leg. She stroked the child’s hair absently while she talked to someone. She smiled and laughed and abruptly, Julia realized she was staring at herself. She reeled back from the window.
“Nick! What the hell? Is that me?” Inside, a well dressed man approached the woman. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed the top of her head. When he turned, she saw him full on. It was Nick.
“Oh my god,” Julia whispered.
“Yeah,” said Nick, appearing beside her. “So there’s that.”
“What does it mean?” she asked.
Nick shrugged. “A possible future,” he said. “One of many.”
“But you’re…alive,” she said.
“You’re a quick study,” he said. “Time to move on.”
But Julia didn’t want to move on. She wanted to drink up this moment. She wanted to roll around in it like a dog in the grass. A tug on her arm and she let go of the window ledge and fell backwards, once again bungee jumping in the dark without a rope. This time the landing was less smooth. She bounced a few times on a hard surface before coming to rest in a heap.
“Are you trying to kill me?” she shouted, disoriented from the fall.
“That was a little rougher than I expected,” Nick said, floating down beside her. “Sorry.”
“You’ve never done this before?” she said, crawling around on her hands and knees.
“Not exactly,” he said. Before she could quiz him further on his qualifications for guiding her through these very vivid hallucinations, another image appeared in the distance, moving quickly toward her. But where she somehow knew the last image would be warm and welcoming, this one made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” Nick said. “You have to look, Julia. You must.”
She tried to close her eyes but they refused. When the image arrived, she had no choice but to see it. There was nothing terrible on the surface. It was her apartment, a little rundown, a little dusty. There were Chinese take out containers on the coffee table and the low hum of the television in the background. And there she was, standing by the window, watching a light snow fall on the empty street below. She was older, with the same crows feet she’d seen on the women in CVS. Her mouth turned down at the corners as if frowning were it’s natural resting position. Her whole body sagged, not from age exactly but from the weight of something greater.
On the mantle over the unlighted fireplace was the framed wedding photograph of her and Nick. It was Julia’s favorite because while Nick looked fine she looked amazing. It was a nice picture, which did not help explain why, in this scene, it filled her with dread. Here she was, middle aged, and the only photograph she had o
n her mantle was a wedding photo of her dead husband. There was nothing else.
The sting of regret, the thing that made her shoulders sag, hit her hard in the chest. There was so much emptiness, a bottomless loneliness that devoured everything in its path. Julia stumbled backwards. She reached to hang on but there was nothing to grab. She was falling again.
CHAPTER 4
“Oh my God!” Julia awoke on the couch with a start. She hadn’t moved an inch but her heart raced as if she’d just crossed the finish line at the New York Marathon. The clock on the wall indicated two minutes had passed. “What the hell just happened? What was that?”
“Potential futures,” Nick said from his comfy chair. “Like I said.” He appeared to be examining his cuticles even though he didn’t actually have cuticles.
Julia stood abruptly, forgetting about the wine bottle clenched between her thighs. The bottle flew into the air and landed on the white shag carpet bought just last year. The carpet was perfect, so retro hip that when she first rolled it out, it filled her with happiness. But it was not the happiness that wrapped around her at the house filled with Christmas revelers. No. That was something different. A blood red stain spread slowly across the carpet.
“Bummer,” said Nick. “Although I never would have gone with shag in here personally.”
Julia left the bottle where it fell. “What are the two things?” she asked quietly.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said with a ghostly grin. “But here’s the trick. You have to think of them yourself. That’s part of the deal.”
“But how?” Julia yelped. “What if I don’t choose the right wrongs?”
“Oh damn.”
“What?”
“I forgot to read you the fine print,” he said. “I’m supposed to do that at the beginning, like Miranda rights but, you know, more of disclaimer in this case.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“So you right two wrongs but if they’re not the correct wrongs as determined by forces beyond your ability to understand in your present state and so one and so forth, you still might end up an old lady in out of fashion clothes, all alone in this dusty apartment with no one who loves you or who you love.”
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