Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

Roy Earl’s face, reddening anew. “So I got one more issue. A question. Or, a favor. Something.”

  “Mysterious. Hit me, beau.”

  “It’s about that long-legged sister of yours.”

  Seventy-Two

  Creedence

  Chelsea, on the road, so excited and anticipatory she’d swallowed half of one of Eileen’s generic Xanax taken by the matriarch every night for many years now.

  Mama, gulping down pills left and right. Hiding in the pantry or the laundry room where she thought her daughter wouldn’t see her. Sick as a dog after the first of her new treatments, trying to hide in the bedroom with ‘a headache.’ Continuing the charade.

  Creedence, damned if she’d bring it all up now. She wasn’t going to sit there dragging the truth out of the woman. Mama would have to decided to come down off her high horse and talk about her illness on her own. That she hadn’t, well…

  It probably meant the cancer wasn’t nothing to worry about anyway.

  Confused.

  About Mama.

  About Billy.

  But going through with it.

  Also wondering, incessant, how he could want dumb redneck Chelsea Wallis—Rucker—when he had Melanie, a hottie from a good Charleston family who lived in a big house on the battery or one of the marshes, as she imagined every person did who told her they were from Charleston.

  A woman like Billy himself, from a family with money.

  Who seemed to love and want him.

  What was this foolishness?

  And yet, Chelsea, pressing ahead: Preparations, an expenditure of money on what constituted an almost a total makeover—clothes, mani-pedi, hair trimmed and straightened, the wearing of teeth-whitening stripes that seemed to have accomplished nothing overnight but leave a funny taste in her mouth, new makeup, at last taking a hand mirror to trim her bush, nice, neat and all-but bare like the girls in the NSFW videos she’d discovered one day in the browser cache of her computer at work.

  Buddy’s doing, probably. His way of flirting. Since hearing about her leaving Dusty, Buddy, he’d been preening and prancing in front of her every chance he got. It was pathetic. Dusty: The Sequel was hardly the title she planned to rent from the Blockbuster Video of her future romantic life. She had put in her notice at the dealership anyway. With the holidays coming and school in the spring, it was time to cut that tie. Uncle Hill had been glad, but also cried.

  Parking her Ford Focus in the hotel garage, she sat for a long time listening to Doober Dougie talk up the daily ‘Floyd at Four’ block of classic tunes. This time the tracks all came from the one with the man on fire.

  She remembered Devin listening to Pink Floyd, how Mama had a fit. “That’s drug music,” she’d say, screwing up her face. “I don’t know why y’all can’t listen to the Beach Boys like we done. Good enough for us.”

  Getting out of the car and straightening the mid-calf length wrap skirt purchased at American Apparel, she eyed her shoes, also new, sexy slides; sheer shimmery control-top pantyhose, nude, the good smooth kind, in the egg. Makeup for the legs, girls!

  Pantyhose. But, girls didn’t wear hose anymore. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a woman wearing them. Maybe at the First Baptist Church in Edgewater County, when she and Dusty had taken a notion to try to start going, which hadn’t lasted. Bunch of stuck up old biddies, looking down their noses. Eff that. She got it, though—hose felt like being stuffed into a sausage casing. But the pooch of her stomach and pale, freckled stems looked better. All that mattered. She would tease him by peeling them off slow.

  The naughtiness, compounded:

  Chelsea, lying to Hill Hampton about why she needed the afternoon off. Her cover story? That she’d be going to campus to fill out papers for the spring semester, and to look for an apartment, all of which she also told Devin and Eileen, who all fussed in their own way about her going by herself. As though she weren’t a grown woman. Stupid and silly.

  Guilty, though. Uncle Hill had beamed with pride. With love. So glad for her. That she was going to make love with some guy, a near stranger, to be honest.

  Um; not.

  Stomach flittering with butterflies, she hurried stiff-legged down a glass-enclosed walkway connecting the garage to the hotel. Caught a glimpse of herself in a reflection. The distortion made her look fat.

  Inside, the hotel lobby loomed huge and open, with an atrium rising up several stories. Voices echoed. Connected to a large office building next door, everywhere she looked was busy, buzzing with activity—a Wednesday afternoon, people all scurrying around having important matters at hand. It felt like being in the city.

  Would wearing hose make her look like a rube? Not a woman she’d passed had had on stockings.

  Creedence, panicked, rushed into the public restroom in the hotel lobby, ducked into the first stall. She slipped out of her Candies—her come-fuck-me’s—and slid off the hose, tried to stuff them down into her tiny clutch. Spastic and hurried and flustered and cussing up a storm, she ended up shoving them instead into the waste slot.

  Her heart, pulsing inside her breastbone; breathing, difficult. For the first time in years feeling like she wanted to drink a wine cooler or a light beer, but on top of the zannie, probably a mistake. She could smell her feet, or so she thought. The whole bathroom stunk. Her stomach hurt.

  Were they going to—what, exactly?

  Sit and talk, first? Watch TV, maybe order a movie? Billy loved movies, didn’t he? Wasn’t that still his jam? She would have to learn to talk about movies the way she had NASCAR with Dusty. Going uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

  And next?

  Have room service?

  Drink champagne?

  Slow-dance to jazz on the radio?

  A bouquet of flowers? A candy-red heart of chocolates, the finest money could buy?

  Was this a movie?

  No.

  Condoms at the ready? One kept in his wallet like Dusty used to carry?

  She should make sure Billy uses a condom, right?

  Or is that bad? Like, unsexy?

  And what would he be wearing, how would he smell, what would he do.

  To her.

  With her.

  With that mysterious, thick peterpiper of his.

  I am going through with this.

  Right?

  Sitting in the stall a long time, waiting for the right answer, she felt sleepy, queasy, dizzy. A vibration of uncertainty gripped her like an electric current. Tension flared in her stomach—what was the word for this? She felt it every time she lied, or thought about Mama being ill, or meeting Billy in the middle of the afternoon. In secret. She mulled.

  Seventy-Three

  Billy

  Billy, stomping around the hotel suite.

  Beside himself with frustration.

  Pissed as fuck.

  Beyond ready to go, for an hour now.

  But Creedence, late.

  And now? The ever-loving cell phone, ringing ringing ringing off the goddamn hook, so to speak, once again. Not Creedence—first it’s Dad, then it’s Melanie, then it’s Dad again.

  No way I’m talking to them, or listening to messages or concerns or remarks, none of it. This is my fucking time here.

  His time to shine.

  And Libby’s, too, once she got her ass up here.

  Or, Creedence. That’s right.

  Walking into the hotel room bathroom, lifting the lid on the toilet, he cursed with irritation: The phone in the pocket of his robe, ringing yet again.

  Melanie.

  Dropping the small metal bullet into the toilet with a wet plunk; pissing on the phone as his ringtone gurgled under the water—‘Dark Star.’ Flushing with a confident, satisfying flick of his wrist.

  No time for calls or Dark Stars—Libby was late.

  Shit. Not Libby. The lovely, lithe Creedence, still as engagingly youthful and coltish as when she’d been there ready and willing, but whom Billy’d spurned. Time to make up for this oversight, thi
s slight. Past time.

  A pastime.

  Remember—no accidents.

  In the bedroom of the suite, he had spent the first minutes she’d been overdue by obsessive checklisting: candles and incense; the bubbler already packed to the hilt with the blue-ribbon cultivated named-strain nugs, despite the fact that with each passing day he seemed to be losing interest in smoking pot; a fifth of Crown and a bottle of fine New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in a chiller, in case Creedence didn’t want whiskey guzzled hot right out of the bottle; a box of chargers and a cream canister, waiting to be filled with nitrous oxide but not cream, Billy convinced she’d be into some wah-wah-wah, how-high-can-we-try, pussy-pounding gas-fed excitement; should anyone find themselves feeling the slightest bit uptight, on the night table within easy reach lay available a tube of Slick 69-brand superlube; and finally, Melanie’s silk kimonos, laid out side by side waiting and ready for when they’d need to take breaks, to peel grapes and feed one another, the two of them recovering from having ascended to a new level of passion and sexual satiety.

  Or: Billy, needing bleach, a shop vac and a bag o’rags.

  Nah. Control.

  This? This was love.

  Billy, using every inch at his considerable disposal to show her how much love he had to give; and that he knew where to put it.

  “Fly high like a bird up in the sky.” He sang shuffling around and waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more. “That’s what she’s gonna do. Soon as she arrives.”

  Seventy-Four

  Creedence

  Chelsea had gone into the hotel elevator, headed up to the suite, but moving as though underwater: Bailing on the whole plan at first, changing her mind, fear of missing an opportunity. Worrying about her ability to discern the right decision. How all might be different if rich Billy Steeple had fallen in love with her when back he’d had the opportunity.

  Her head, foggy.

  Couldn’t think straight.

  Billy. If only he’d made love to her that night, gentle, patient, she would have shown him how special she truly was. And all would have been different.

  Melanie.

  Poor Melanie.

  The doors, opening. Standing still, arms straight down, frozen, staring at the brass sign on the wall pointing out the room numbers. Seeing that to the left lay the room in which she was to go have unapologetic, mysterious sex with the man of her dreams.

  Making no move.

  Finally, a tone bonged and the doors slid shut, the lift awaiting instruction.

  Chelsea, breathing a sigh of release—not sexual but spiritual, almost. Feeling as though changing her mind about the tryst the first correct choice she’d ever made.

  So much out of her control—animal extinctions, warfare, religious hatred, the garbage, the plastic piling up in the ocean, people getting checks from the government who didn’t deserve them, what really made the towers fall on 9/11, when they would find the WMDs in Iraq to justify us bombing the shit out of them. Here, though, a situation under her control—her own destiny. She could screw Billy Steeple. Or, she could look for an apartment, wander around campus, get used to the layout.

  Billy, if he loved her—and she believed him, yes she did—would wait. Would do this right. He’d understand. She’d call him, soon as she was back home. So he couldn’t talk her out of her decision.

  Smiling and relieved, she chose L—in this case, not Lobby but Love, done right, taken and explored and nurtured in due time. Billy, worth the wait; Creedence Rucker, equally so. Would give her time to get to the next book in Oprah’s monthly club: intimacy tips for partners new, as well as established.

  The elevator, descending smooth and true and safe. Thinking through the eventual explanation to Billy of this decision and hoping for his understanding and friendship, and later, a long life together, married, loving, a new family. That’s right, a baby born in love not deception, and cared for by him and all his money. As she would be.

  And, to show her Mama, bless her soul, she could get get somewhere in life on her own. If there was still time. Once back on the road home to Edgewater County she called him to explain, but couldn’t get an answer.

  Seventy-Five

  Billy

  The little blue pills he now needed to perform kicked in. But still no Creedence.

  Billy, striding heavy-footed around the hotel suite suffering a tree-trunk, pulsating and purple with hot insistent blood, jutting out of his robe frenzy, clusters of panic attacks. The sweats, a rubbery feeling in his knees. After, mind you, he’d already eaten two of the Viagra gel-tabs he kept at hand to deal with a steeplemeat maintenance problem plaguing him. Troublesome, but with all the stress of drunkenly agreeing to wed Melanie—he had no recollection of the conversation—certainly to be understood.

  Damn this complicated nonsense.

  To the Rucker wench’s credit, she hadn’t answered her phone because he hadn’t called it, couldn’t do so—his own unit, with her number stored in its memory, now flushed and useless; when the first drink of whiskey had loosened his bowels earlier, he’d gone and taken a power dump on top as well. No longer an option.

  Time to go for a Blackberry anyway, one of those smart phones. Billy, needing all the help he could get. Hardy-har.

  In the silk robe, forlorn and flopped in the lounging chair in front of the flickering television, tumescent to the point of pain, Billy knocked back the Crown, shot after shot. Cracking a creamer charger, another, another, each a rush into the canister; triggering and inhaling and holding the cold nitrous in his lungs like a hit of the finest cannabis.

  Close to unconsciousness, he caught himself, barely, before pitching forward onto the coffee table. His senses returned. He cracked more chargers.

  Do it do it do it again.

  Convinced at last his girl wasn’t coming because of cosmic intervention—Libby (Creedence) was surely dead, killed, arrested, or otherwise detained—he relaxed. Billy, unable to ascertain a reason why she’d choose to miss out on a chance to be Steepled conclusively and with extreme prejudice, why Libby would abstain, demur, defer; clearly a car accident.

  Creedence, you mean.

  And that’s in poor taste, that car-wreck bit.

  “Understood.”

  Chugging the Crown, bubbling the liquor, once, twice, three times a drunk lady; crack, whoosh, an iced wind rushing through his throat, wah-wah-wah like approaching sirens, the hallmark N2O auditory hallucination.

  Euphoria, sweeping through him; his vision, doubling.

  Billy, faceplanted, awakened on the carpet of the hotel room smelling the sour, salty fungus-feet of those who’d trodden these floors before him.

  Billy, resigned and angry but unable to leave—not with wood like this; folks in the lobby, they’d be impressed, no question, but they’d put him away for capital crime-level indecent exposure.

  Switching on the television, he thumbed the remote and selected from the porn menu an adult premium choice twelve-hour package. Billy, throughout the long night, sat as the cold light of the pornography played; he pulled at himself, desirous of a release that despite several ejaculations not only never quite arrived, but neither ameliorated his painful erection.

  After guzzling the rest of the Crown he bolted for the bathroom to puke up hot liquor, his everhard dick bumping against the cold porcelain of the hotel toilet. He passed out there, like in San Antonio. Woke up to a hard-on. Wept with frustration. A cold shower at last reduced the purple organ.

  At home the next day, amidst calls from others he found one from Creedence on his voicemail. Saying, no no, now, this is too much, too fast. Let’s hang out, instead.

  Seriously?

  Maybe have you up here to Mama’s for dinner one Sunday. Call me soon. I love you.

  Cowardly cunt.

  But messages, oh my brothers, the others he had, these, a problem: To his annoyance, grief, amazement and mild chagrin, Billy, discovering the reason for all the calls: his grandfather had been rushed to the hospita
l, had been frantic. Asking for him, of all the man’s relatives, to come to the bedside. Pleading for Billy, Billy, Billy, he kept saying—all this I leave to him. All this I leave to him. “I must see my grandson.”

  In any case, overnight the old man had died, with Billy now far too late.

  This call with his father, furious, reporting to his irresponsible son, who could come up with no good excuse other than he had lost his phone, that it was beyond him how in this most important of moments, he’d been AWOL. “But it doesn’t surprise me either, somehow.”

  Billy, listening and nodding. Yes yes, he said. So sorry. See you in a couple of days for the memorial.

  Melanie, a wreck already at Billy’s daylong disappearance; his father, apoplectic and bereaved, taking out his anger and grief on his wayward son; and Creedence giving him the high hat—what a farce.

  But that was that re: the family largesse; the money at last his, the world at his feet, crouching, kneeling and slurping and wearing Steeple-logo kneepads, the universe wet and willing-ready to provide deep throat times infinity plus one.

  The moment, at last at hand. A long slog, this.

  Libby, you, my dear, are an idiot. You and your myopic Sunday dinners at mother dear’s table. You wait for another Billy to come along. Just you wait. Free advice? Go fuck yourself instead.

  Seventy-Six

  Devin

  As part of ongoing therapy, self-directed, Devin considered various methods of confronting the past which didn’t involve standing over Libby’s grave to play out some ridiculous scene like in one of her damnable cinema-plays.

  Billy’s wacky routine in Columbia, now that had left him dumbstruck. The boy needed to dry out.

  What could Devin say. Fucking hypocrite.

  Best to ignore Steeple. Let him work through his own crud.