[2015] The Ghost Slept Over

by Marshall Thornton

  I walked up to the house with Cal. The sun was setting and there were still a few flurries in the air. I managed to get a better look at him than I had at the airport. The jacket was in good shape, but the T-shirt he wore underneath had been washed a hundred times, the jeans were faded and frayed at the hem, and his shoes were scuffed and worn down. Suddenly, he reminded me of a character out of Dickens. I wondered if that was an accurate way to think about him.

  Unlocking the front door, I led Cal into the house. To our left was a guest closet and a small lavatory; on the right, the kitchen which opened to the large, expansive living room. A stairway clung to an outside wall and led to the second floor where there were two bedrooms, the smaller used as an office. That floor ended over the dining area and the living room soared over two and a half-stories. The cinnamon colored drapes, which had been custom made to fit the enormous front windows, probably cost more than Cal Parsons had made in the last three years.

  “It’s very…Mac,” Cal said. I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment.

  There was one more thing to bring up before I left. “So, in his will, Mac stipulated that he be cremated and his ashes poured into Lake Marlboro.”

  “Okay. That sounds easy enough.”

  “Except for the ice.”

  “What ice?”

  I nodded toward the view. “You can’t really see it right now but Lake Marlboro is covered in ice.”

  He looked out the window at the very dark view and said, “Oh. Then we’ll just dump the ashes on the ice.”

  “If the will said spread his ashes then we could do that. But the will specifically say ‘pour the ashes into.’”

  “But you wrote the will, can’t you just change it?”

  I blushed a little. Though I couldn’t remember exactly, I imagined that “poured” was what Mac said and I’d simply written it down. Clearly, I should have thought things through. I explained, “I can’t change the will without a signature from Mac and he’s, obviously, deceased.”

  “Can’t we just do it however we want to? I mean, he’s not going to sue us.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I really…couldn’t.” Ethics I was good at. Anticipating unpleasant ramifications, apparently not so much.

  He shrugged. “I suppose you could do it without me. Next spring.”

  “I suppose, yes. Let me give it some thought.” Of course, that made me wonder…“So, do you have any idea what your plans are? With the estate I mean?”

  Cal smiled at me, somehow pleased with himself, and said, “Yes. I want to sell it. Sell it all.”

  And then, strangely, a door on the second floor slammed shut.

  Chapter Three

  The Complete McCormack Williams

  I met McCormack Williams in 1992. CDs were beginning to kill off cassette tapes. VHS had definitively crushed Beta. People still used floppy discs, for God’s sake. No one had heard of the Internet—or at least, I hadn’t. It was a different world, truly. I walked into an audition at a tiny theater called The Blackfire in Sherman Oaks. I remember thinking I looked incredibly hot in my black motorcycle jacket, white 501s, and a too-tight Act-Up T-shirt. Political consciousness was trendy that year, so I looked the part, though I have to admit I never went to a demonstration or even a meeting. It must have worked for me, because when I stepped onto stage and looked out at the house, the four people auditioning sat up and took notice.

  Of course, I zeroed in on Mac right away. He was in his mid-thirties, had floppy brown hair combed over one eye, impossibly long arms and legs which he draped over the seats around him, and a smile that was inappropriate in public. Sitting near him were the director, the casting director, and the stage manager. I was introduced to them, but I can’t tell you a thing about them. All I could do was stare at Mac.

  They were casting Mac’s play Babylon’s Children, which was about a couple of guys who went to acting school together then get caught up selling coke in the Hollywood Hills with disastrous results. As it turns out, it wasn’t one of Mac’s better efforts. Fame and fortune came later—after he met me. Unfortunately, my surprising attraction to Mac didn’t help my audition and I tanked. I did not get the part. Or even a call back. For about a week, I fantasized about him pulling my resume out of the stack and calling me socially, all right, romantically. But then, slowly, I forgot about him.

  A few months later, my twenty-second birthday rolled around and a friend from college took me out to the Spike on Santa Monica Boulevard. My friend bought me several drinks and then abandoned me when a boy who claimed to work at CAA, though he probably just worked for a messenger service they used, picked him up. Left to my own drunken devices I ended up, several hours later, at Exile—a tiny little stand-up sex club in Silver Lake I’d read about in the back of Frontiers.

  It’s difficult to describe the club’s décor, partially because the lighting was so dim it was hard to see. Everything was painted black and covered in camouflage netting; a wire fence created an entrance, while oddly-shaped half-walls crept out of the shadows. Electronic techno played monotonously. I couldn’t tell what theme they were going for exactly, other than bad porn. This type of club had sprung up after the baths were mostly shut down in the eighties. By eliminating private rooms, and anywhere to store your clothing, the clientele was encouraged to stick to hand jobs, blow jobs, and aggressive frottage. Most of what went on at a standup sex club was safe, or at least safer. Not that the occasional exhibitionist didn’t bend over and get fucked—usually drawing a small crowd—but, the owners could at least claim to be promoting safe sex practices.

  I was standing in a dimly lit corner trying to decide whether I was in the mood to give a blow job or get a blow job when I noticed Mac walk in. He scanned the dingy room and when he saw me he seemed to light up. He even smiled. But then he turned and walked away. I thought about following him, but worried that I’d be making a fool of myself. Maybe he hadn’t lit up when he walked in. Maybe someone had just opened a door. I watched as men walked by me, no longer having much interest in them. I wanted to look for Mac. I wanted to see what he was doing.

  Then, unexpectedly, he stood next to me. I began to say “Hello” but he pulled me into a kiss. A probing, passionate, life-changing kiss that made me weak from head to toe. I pulled away and caught my breath.

  “Should we leave?” I asked, hoping he lived nearby.

  “Oh, I’m not fucking you tonight. I’m drunk and when I’m drunk I’m a shitty lay.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “How about I spot you a few points?”

  “No, I’m here to have lousy, forgettable, anonymous sex. I wouldn’t waste you on that. You are about deep, emotional, let’s-remember-this-moment-for-the-rest-of-our-lives kind of sex. I wouldn’t dream of throwing that away.”

  He began to walk away.

  Frustrated, I said, “Don’t just leave. How do I find you again?”

  Mac swung back toward me and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He handed me a little white business card with his name and phone number on it.

  “Now, go. Go let some vaguely attractive young man suck you off,” he said, though it didn’t make me very happy. “Enjoy being single. I plan to put a stop to that very soon.” Then, before he walked away, he gave me the same smile that had ruined my audition.

  I was in some kind of shock, I suppose. He planned to put an end to my being single. I loved the idea. I walked out of the club on a cloud. I even forgot to let anyone fellate me. The next afternoon I called him and within forty-eight hours he was making good on his promise of incredible sex. I wish I could say that I was twenty-two and inexperienced enough to mistake competent sex for amazing sex, but, sadly, that wasn’t the case. Few of the men I’ve slept with since have been able to live up to that first night with Mac.

  So it was odd to find myself, some fifteen years later, standing alone in Mac’s living room staring at his things, wondering… Why had he bought the Francis Bacon print? It was vaguely disturbing, though it
looked like it might be signed. What about the ivory box on the coffee table? Did it mean something or was it just expensive and decorative? Did he even pick it out, or had there been a decorator? Was there a mortgage on the house itself? And did that matter since I clearly had the cash lying around to pay it off. Mostly, I wondered, “Why me?” Why after a decade and a half had he left everything to me? Hadn’t there been anyone else? I mean, I’d had one someone else after another someone else since we broke up. Hadn’t he had any someone?

  Something odd occurred to me. I’d had all of those someones. None of whom had been as memorable as Mac, nor as frustrating, nor as hideously painful, nor as purely evil. Which was a good thing. Absolutely a good thing.

  Then why didn’t it always feel like a good thing?

  I took my gym bag up to the master bedroom and plunked it on the king-sized bed with the delicious looking bedding. Even from across the room I could see that the sheets had scandalously high thread counts and that everything was stuffed with down. An entire flock of geese had likely died to make Mac comf—

  Suddenly, I grabbed my bag off the bed. Had Mac died there? I wasn’t sure. Hadn’t asked. Shit. Probably should have. I peeked into the bathroom. It was more likely that he’d died in there. In the bathtub. A sanitary, convenient place to die, and one frequently chosen by suicides, right? The room had marble everywhere. The floors, halfway up the walls. Nice marble, too. Black and shiny; the tiny bit of wall that wasn’t covered in marble was painted glossy black. It was a pretty cool room to, you know, die in. And marble cleaned easily. It didn’t absorb…death.

  I took a quick peek into the medicine cabinet. Someone had made the bed and cleaned up the, well, the scene wherever it had been, but they’d left all Mac’s prescriptions in the cabinet. There was a half full bottle of hydrocodone. Apparently, this wasn’t what he’d killed himself with; or, if it was, he hadn’t needed to take the entire bottle. I pulled it out and took one. It seemed like a good idea. The flight had been long followed by that uncomfortable ride with Mac’s lawyer. He seemed to be somewhere in his mid-thirties, sandy-colored hair, cute definitely, but about as stiff as the marble tile in Mac’s bathroom. And just as paid for, I imagined.

  And then I laughed a little.

  I wasn’t high yet, obviously, but just having swallowed the pill helped me relax. Yes, it was good that I was getting all this money. And by all this money, I mean, wow, a boatload of money. It sounded like a boatload. Three million, the lawyer had said. Brokerage accounts and bonds and several properties and a retirement fund that sounded absolutely stuffed with goodies. It was too good to be true. And things that are too good to be true usually are. It was stressing me out. Part of me, a big part of me, simply couldn’t believe that some nasty reality TV show host wasn’t going to pop out and tell me it was all a mean joke. Like I was on a show called The Un-Millionaire.” Where they give you everything and then snatch it back just to watch your reaction. I went out and lay on the bed to wait for the pill to take effect.

  Mac had been thirty-seven when I met him. Fifteen years my senior. He’d been a struggling writer for quite some time. He’d gotten an agent and taken a stab at sitcoms but that didn’t work out, largely the agent’s fault according to Mac. Babylon’s Children had been his first real foray into theater. And he’d only done it to get a job in television. But, in writing it, he discovered that he really did like plays—and it didn’t get him a TV job so, why not? Babylon’s Children had been moderately successful so he was able to get another play produced at another small theater. Then another. After that he wrote something he thought was really good, Daily Specials, which was about an unhappy gay man who manages a restaurant and makes the lives of the people who work for him miserable. He held out for an off-Broadway opening and managed to get one. The play was a grand success, partly because the main character was an absolute villain in the first act and a repentant, sentimental hero in the second. It created quite a controversy. One of the important New York papers wrote an article about it called “Are Gays Too Mean?” And that made the play standing room only.

  And that was it. Mac decided to move to New York. Well, what I thought was that Mac had decided we’d move to New York. While things moved quickly forward for him, he signed with an excellent agency, he wrote another play (one that I didn’t think was quite as good as Daily Specials), and got it set up to premiere on Broadway, which even then was quite unusual, and he got to rewrite a screenplay, though he could only meet with the producers over the telephone. They wanted a New York writer and it would have ruined the whole thing if they knew Mac was still only a few blocks away.

  I packed up our stuff, well, my stuff, and yes, I know that his wanting to keep our stuff separate should have made me suspicious. It didn’t. I was twenty-five. If I didn’t want something to be happening I simply pretended it wasn’t. Not the best approach to life, I know. Anyway, movers arrived to take us to New York and, in front of me, Mac instructed the movers to only take those boxes marked MW. The boxes marked CP were staying.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him after I’d pulled him into the bathroom.

  “We’re breaking up,” he said calmly.

  “We’re what? No, we’re moving to New York.”

  “I’m moving to New York. You’re staying here. I’ve paid an extra two months of rent so you’ll have some time to get on your feet.”

  “I’m…no, you can’t do that.”

  “Why can’t I do that?” he asked. His voice was annoyingly reasonable.

  “Because…we’re in love.”

  “Yeah,” he said, frowning a little. “That’s the thing. I’m not in love with you anymore.”

  “You’re not—? When did that happen? When you were fucking me last night? Did it happen before or after you came?”

  “It happened months ago. I’m not in love with you, Cal.”

  “Were you ever in love with me?”

  “Yes. I was. And it was lovely.”

  “So, you just fell out of love with me. Like you fall out of a tree?”

  “That’s funny. I may steal that.”

  “You’re not answering the question.”

  “I fell into love. Why can’t I fall out of it?” He got a look on his face, which I knew meant he was making a mental note of that line, too.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Tell me why?”

  “I just did. I fell out of love.”

  “People don’t do that.” I don’t know why I thought that. People said it often enough. It just never seemed true. There had to be reasons. Reasons they were avoiding. Reasons Mac was avoiding. “People don’t just fall out of love.”

  He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. “Read my lips…I’m not in love with you.” Now, there were two problems with that statement. First, the tangential Bush reference was annoying and poorly chosen. The thankfully former president had said, “Read my lips…no new taxes.” Then, when elected, reneged on the promise. And second, I was sure Mac was lying.

  I went with the second problem. “You’re lying.”

  He shrugged a shoulder carelessly, and tossed out the ultimate argument ender. “Whatever.”

  And that was it. We sniped at each other until the movers hauled Mac’s belongings out of the apartment, and then he was gone. It was over. Well, sort of over. For the next several years, there were occasional angry, painful, passionate letters (from me), and relayed protestations of disinterest, innocence and boredom (from him). Once a mutual friend called me and said, “Whenever your name comes up, Mac just rolls his eyes and says, ‘Cal just doesn’t get it.’”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “I get it just fine.”

  Except, of course, I didn’t. Or I did. I could never be sure which was true.

  Mac’s bed felt deliciously comfortable and the pill had begun to take effect. I was starting to float, drift really. I closed my eyes and wondered if I could float up to the ceiling. Then I felt the bed move. It tipped a little to the right, as though
someone had just sat down next to me.

  My eyes jumped open. There on the bed, inches away from me, sat Mac. He looked good. Almost exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him. I wondered how that was possible. Fifteen years had passed. Did he have some really good plastic surgery? Then I remembered he was dead. This was a dream. I was dreaming about Mac.

  He leaned over and whispered, “It’s not a dream.”

  That didn’t prove much, though. Dreams didn’t have to admit they were dreams.

  Mac patted me on the thigh and said, “I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  * * * *

  I woke at dawn, still dressed in the clothes I’d flown out from Los Angeles in. I had stumbled into the shower, turned the water on as hot as I could stand, and was trying to understand Mac’s very expensive cleansing system; scrubbers, exfoliants, rejuvenators, conditioners, and plain old cleansers; which were for skin and which were for hair and in what order—when I remembered the dream. It was annoying. In the dream, I’d been almost glad to see him. And I didn’t want to be glad to see him. Too much had happened. Of course it doesn’t matter, I told myself. Mac was dead. I’d never see him again. And I had all his stuff. Maybe it was time to forgive and forget. Or at least forget.

  I slid the glass door open, thinking again how nice the bathroom was and that it was really too bad I’d be selling it. Of course, I could buy myself a condo in Los Angeles. Maybe I’d look for one with a marble bathroom just like this one. Or maybe I’d have a bathroom done up this way. Pictures might be a good idea. I should take some. I wrapped a plush towel around my waist, and was about to go look for my phone when I looked up and there was Mac standing in the bathroom doorway.