The Haunting of James Hastings

by Christopher Ransom

  ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Is there anyone who would want to mess with you that way?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyone you used to work with, an ex-girlfriend, delinquents in the neighborhood? You know, some kids stole all my patio furniture once. I searched the neighborhood for a week and then Arthur went up to mount a satellite dish and found it all on top of the garage.’

  She’d lost me on that one. I stopped hearing her when she said ‘ex-girlfriends’. I was thinking about Lucy Arnold. The girl ‘friend’ I still hadn’t called back. She had at least one reason to be mad at me, but would she really lash out by burying Stacey’s shoes in the yard? I doubted it, but you never knew in this town.

  Annette sensed she had hit upon something. ‘What?’

  ‘I thought of someone, but she’s not like that.’

  ‘Was she your girlfriend?’

  ‘No, not really. Just a friend.’

  Annette laughed, and there was on top of the laugh something of a sneer. ‘You might want to chat with this “friend”. I’ve seen our half of the species do some pretty nasty stuff after a break-up.’

  ‘We didn’t break up.’ I didn’t want to discuss Lucy now. ‘Forget it.’

  She fell quiet. I asked if she minded if I smoked. She suggested we go out back. I followed her, and as I lit up she took one for herself. We smoked and sipped more Cabernet. It was around ten, the night warm, the hum of the near but invisible freeway soft around us. I felt sated, sober, normal. Annette looked glossy in her buzz, dreamy-eyed. We stood beside each other and every few minutes she would lean into me, our shoulders pressing into each other.

  ‘So why do you stay?’ she said, looking over at Whitey. ‘I only ask because that’s a lot of house for a single guy.’

  ‘Just having a hard time deciding where next, I guess. This is a lonely city now. Or maybe it always has been. I’ve never felt like myself here, but I don’t want to go home. They’d all be trying to make up for lost time, wanting to talk about it.’

  Annette stubbed her cigarette on her heel and flicked it into the bushes, the little litterbug. ‘If you think Los Angeles is lonely, you should see my place.’

  I waited.

  ‘It’s one of those gated developments in some made-up town, out by Palm Springs, but not very Palm Springs.’

  Hadn’t she said her husband worked in Century City? ‘I thought you lived in Los Angeles.’

  ‘We did, a few years ago. I couldn’t stand the traffic, so we bought a place in Sheltering Palms and Arthur kept an apartment in town. He commuted in Sundays, back out on Friday evenings.’

  ‘Must be nice out there. Quiet, clean.’

  She stared up at the stars, what few we could see. ‘Most of the houses are abandoned now, with all the foreclosures. It’s another ghost division.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Ghost division. That’s what the paper calls them now. Catchy, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s really gotten that bad?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. It’s worse in Florida. Las Vegas, Phoenix. But there are some here, too. I saw a thing in the New Yorker about these entire developments across this country right now that are, like, evacuated, and I said, oh, swell, that’s where I live. It’s like they didn’t stop building until every single penny dried up. I didn’t even realize ours was emptying out. Not that it was ever really full. Sheltering Palms was mostly investment properties, second and third homes, and those got dumped first. The people who are left, they’re in denial.’

  ‘Stuck, huh?’

  ‘One of my friends, Rick Butterfield, he’s an ex-cop. He has one of those unmarked cars, got it from an auction, the kind with the spotlight. He drives in circles around the neighborhood all night, shining his light into the empty houses. Sometimes he goes snooping around inside, to see what’s left behind.’

  ‘Sounds like a real charmer.’ We should set him up with Lucy. We could double-date.

  ‘He’s not so bad, I guess. He means well. And I love the house. I’m trying to find a way to save it, but Arthur’s insurance doesn’t cover . . . well, obviously they don’t pay out on, you know, suicides.’

  ‘He didn’t leave anything, asset-wise?’

  ‘I’m finding out more and more everyday his money - our money - was all tied up in bad deals. He put it all in real estate, most of it in Sheltering Palms, which his company was helping to underwrite. He was a broker for four years and suddenly thought he was Don Fucking Trump.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  She shook her head. ‘I just need to hold on for a few months until I find a job. Another year or two, they’ll all come back. That house will be worth a million, a million two again and I can sell it. But I don’t know if I would go back and live there. Too empty, out there in the hills. The last couple days, I realized how much I missed this.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘People, neighbors, civilization. Five minutes from the grocery store. Bagels.’

  Civilization killed my wife. ‘Well, now you have the Ten for a backyard.’

  She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans. We looked at each other. Calculations were made. I decided to quit while I was behind.

  ‘Thank you for dinner,’ I said. ‘I was worried this would be—’

  She got up on her tiptoes and kissed me. It didn’t last too long but it was soft and warm, with just the tip of her tongue. When she lowered her heels, her hand dragged down my chest and hooked over the waist of my pants. She looked down and tugged my belt once, as if securing a piece of luggage.

  ‘It’s been a long time for both of us.’ She said this matter-of-factly, not in some hushed seductress tone.

  ‘Four days?’ I said.

  She slapped my arm. ‘Being with someone.’

  ‘Less for you.’

  She began unbuckling my pants. ‘Arthur and I weren’t a real married couple for years. I lost him a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about them any more.’

  She was somehow clumsy and innocent, like a girl playing doctor. Her parents and teachers hadn’t told her this was a no-no. Then she kneeled on the concrete patio and my fly fell open. I glanced around, feeling exposed. Oh, Lucy? Lucy Goosey? Are you watching me now?

  ‘Inside, maybe?’ I said.

  ‘No. This is better.’

  I swayed on my feet. I closed my eyes. I thought of Stacey, but Annette wasn’t like Stacey in this act. Stacey had been very straightforward yet sensual, intimate, with a measure of shyness. Annette was conducting a little piece of performance art. She understood that men are visual, that visual is another thing in this. For her it was less an act of love or even affection than a challenge to outperform all the others who came before her, to wipe away memories of the last or best one. She used me like a wand with the power to restore youth, and I felt pervy for watching but could not look away. I was hypnotized by her freckles, her blonde hair, her skin almost translucent, a little blue vein that ran over her temple, under the surface of her skin, to her forehead. She was warm, alive, her hair so white . . .

  I covered my mouth with my arm. She turned her head as I ejaculated into her hair. I shuddered and sank to the ground and she began pulling me around, on top of her. She bunched the back of my shirt and dragged me up, then down, her fingers scratching behind my neck as I found her with my mouth.

  She didn’t move much for a minute or so, and then she began to arch her back. She said, ‘Mm-hm. Yes, that. Do it how you used to.’

  I raised my head in shock. I blinked at her. She continued to roll her hips, then realized I wasn’t doing anything. She sat up and looked at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I tried to smile. ‘What did you just say?’

  She gave me a confused expression. ‘I didn’t say anything. You don’t want to—’


  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said, embarrassed now. Must have imagined it. Had to have imagined it.

  I kissed her stomach and she leaned back, relaxed. I moved lower, it got better. She was sweet and smooth, like kissing a salted cantaloupe. I did it the way I used to, because when you have been with the same woman for fifteen years that’s about the only way you know how and she clamped her thighs around my head, moaning through it and shaking, ending with a sigh. I crawled up, absurdly proud, and we lay breathing, looking up at the dimmed stars, the whole hot mess cooling quickly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I forgot the Scotch. Sort of lost control. ’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said.

  I wanted a cigarette and a cold beer. I did a slow sit-up, then stood to pull my pants off my ankles and buckle my belt. I was facing my house, toward the door to my kitchen. I had left the patio light on, which shone down on the walk that led to the garage and the alley beyond. Standing just outside this cone, in a black patch of grass, was a boy of eight or ten. His face was pale and featureless, a blurred mask under a crop of dark hair. He was maybe thirty feet away, wearing a dark jacket over a white dress shirt and tan slacks, the outfit of a boy who attends private school. He was standing motionless with his arms at his sides, watching us with blacked-out eyes. His mouth sagged open in an oval, but he produced no sound.

  ‘Holy shit.’

  Annette clutched my leg. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I glanced down at her. ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘Is someone there? James? What is it?’

  I scanned my backyard, and hers, the driveway. The boy was already gone.

  15

  For the next week the list of things my neighbor Annette Copeland and I did not do grew longer. We didn’t date or sleep together or have sex. We didn’t talk on the phone, email, text or hide from one another. Instead, we pressed against the membrane between our homes, spotting each other in the yard while we went about our business. I threw away Stacey’s shoes, filled in the holes, mowed the lawn. Annette brought home an umbrella table to spruce up the patio, plus a kettle grill and a sideboard on wheels.

  It was just a rental for her, but she really seemed to be pouring herself into it. A few days after the patio began to look like a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog set, I heard her speaking to someone in the yard, followed by the beep-beep-beep of a truck reversing. I looked out the porthole above the landing to watch her waving a flatbed truck down her driveway. Annette was decked out in her cut-offs, a form-fitting tank top, gold-tinted Aviator shades and a blue paisley bandana around her head. She had donned new orange calfskin gloves, and her feet were anchored in heavy brown work boots, also new. I couldn’t see her thumb, but it sure did seem to be turning a bright shade of green.

  The truck bed was loaded with trays of flowers and vegetable starters, more plants in plastic pots, annuals of every color, plus bags of mulch and fertilizer. While her driver-helper (she told me later his name was Mel Larkin, a chemistry teacher turned casualty of the California budget crises whom she’d hired in the Lowe’s parking lot) unloaded these to the back patio and skirt of gravel around it, Annette returned to the Mustang’s trunk and began unloading the hardware. A shovel, a spade, a rake, hoses, sprayers, feeders - everything you would want if you woke up one morning and decided to create an instant garden.

  ‘Chicks dig flowers,’ I said to the window. ‘It’s like a domestic spring fever.’

  Two days later she had cut a twenty by ten square in the grass, tilled and mixed the soil, put everything in, then roped it all off with green mesh and wooden stakes to keep the vermin out, the woman gone territorial.

  In the evenings, we waved and made faces at each other from our front porches, she on the phone, unwinding with wine, me smoking or grabbing the mail. We had entered a test of will power. Come see me anytime, but don’t pressure me. I need to settle in, you need to sober up. Here’s a plastic box of leftover lasagna for you - eat up and think of me. Yes, that was me who trimmed your juniper bushes yesterday while you were out shopping. Thank you. Don’t mention it, I hated the fucking things. I see you, I want you, but I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. You’re watching me? Or am I watching you? Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the Kenneth bear bite.

  I slowed my drinking to a trickle.

  I got nervous again. I wanted her, I feared her. Push-pull, push-pull.

  Why had I let myself get into this again? The point where you don’t know how much is too much, too little. Is this what regular people go through in regular life, all the time? No wonder people snapped it off the minute it got difficult. Breaking up is easy. Sticking around after the quick score is hard.

  I was falling, but was I falling for her or the idea of her?

  After a week of this dancing around the obvious, I went back to her. She answered the door in the same cut-offs and paint-stained t-shirt she usually wore. She looked piqued. I had intended to invite her to lunch, but seeing her in the same clothes and this sad little house gave me an idea.

  ‘Are you busy?’ I said.

  ‘Not really. What’s up?’

  ‘I thought you would like to come to the Farmers’ Market with me for lunch.’

  ‘Oh, I just had a sandwich,’ she said. ‘But I’ll keep you company.’

  ‘What kind of sandwich?’

  ‘Bologna and mustard.’ She forced a measure of enthusiasm. ‘My favie.’

  My favie. That was one of Stacey’s. Not the bologna sandwich. The childish way of abbreviating things. She was always ending words with -ie, and sometimes -y. When I cooked pork chops, they became porkies. When the house got cool in winter and she wanted me to fetch her sweatshirt, she would say, ‘Honey, will you grab bluey on your way back from the kitchen?’ This is how we came to name our house. We were the only white couple on the block, the house was white, Stacey named it Whitey.

  ‘We need a break from this scene,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s get some dessert.’

  She grabbed her purse and slipped into a pair of sandals. We took the Audi up Arlington, through Hancock Park, then over to 3rd. We parked and waded into the patchwork maze of tents and shops and restaurants that make up the odd mecca next to CBS Studios known as the Farmers’ Market. It was a weekday, which one I am not sure, but I could tell by how little foot traffic was there. I bought a cheese crêpe at the crêpe stand and Annette ate most of it, as I’d guessed she would. She looked a little gaunt from her gardening, but she seemed happy, grateful to be out doing something. There were a lot of trinkets and tourist t-shirts, not much in the way of good shopping. While Annette perused a newsstand I bought a large iced tea and a gyro at another counter. We shared the pita sandwich as we walked from the Farmers’ Market into the more upscale, adjacent Grove shopping promenade.

  ‘Are you looking for something?’ she said. ‘Or are we just walking?’

  ‘Just walking.’

  We were holding hands and it did not feel awkward to do so in public. Up ahead, the fountain spurted in synchronization with piped music and a dozen or so people watched it as if it were Old Faithful. A man in plaid shorts and a yellow piqué shirt took a photo and urged his children closer, as if he wanted them to climb in and bathe with the coins glittering beneath the pool’s surface.

  The Anthropologie store was coming up on our right. I used to call it the Apology store, thinking they should apologize for charging $350 for a blouse. But their bohemian couture interpretations never seemed to go out of style and made just about any woman look good. I thought Annette would not be able to resist slipping in to browse. Stacey hadn’t been able to, and as we neared it I couldn’t help feeling like the goose walking over Stacey’s grave.

  Annette hadn’t noticed the store, but at the last second she turned toward the window displays and her pace slowed considerably. She stopped. She made a little sound like a purr crossed with a sigh.

  ‘You want to go in?’ I said.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’r />
  She let go of my hand and was swallowed by the colorful fabrics. I walked aimlessly while she dug through racks of dresses and blouses. The details changed but the fashions had not. Everything seemed to be of the same calculated vintage on display two years ago. I thumbed a beautiful pair of gray huaraches on a pedestal, the leather wraps thick as rulers. The tag said $650.00. I walked on.

  I circled around the cashwrap counter and glanced back at Annette. She was holding up a yellow sundress with blue and pink flowers on it and I could almost see her through it. She looked at the tag, threw her head back and returned the dress to the rack. I sidled up to her testing bolero sweaters in front of a mirror.