Belle shook her head. “I loved this place. I had made it a home, but I feel it’s now part of something else, something I can’t touch or have any more. So I don’t want to come back.”
“I felt the same way about my little house,” Jewel said, nodding.
“We’ll make a new home,” Nancy said, nodding.
“And since everything is free,” Belle said, “I’m looking forward to that.”
Belle figured out what she wanted and packed the clothes into the ghost equivalent of one of her rolling luggage bags that she usually carried on planes. She made sure she had a couple pair of shoes, then changed into Levis, a silk blouse, and tennis shoes.
Since no one could see her, there was no reason to dress up for traveling as she normally did.
Finally, after taking the ghost elements of some of her favorite jewelry, she said, “I’m ready.”
Nancy led the way out of the bedroom, followed by Jewel. Belle looked back one more time at her bedroom. It was just a bedroom. No real memories in it and honestly, she was glad to be leaving it after what her creep of an ex-husband had done recording her in it.
She stopped in the bathroom and packed a few personal items, then left her suitcase in the small dining area and went to the kitchen. There, on a top shelf she pulled down a white sauce dish about the size of a child’s shoe. It had been her grandmother’s.
The real one stayed on the shelf. She only held the ghost one.
After a moment she put it back and the ghost one vanished back into the real one.
“Guess there are some things that are better to just leave.”
She headed to the living room where Jewel had got Tommy moving. He really looked groggy.
Nancy was looking at Belle, worried.
She came over real close and asked, “Are you going to be all right?”
Belle looked up into the wonderful concerned green eyes of her best friend and nodded. “I think I will be. Let’s go get you packed.”
Nancy nodded and hugged her, and to Belle that felt wonderful.
And comforting and right.
Jewel and Tommy went out the door first, followed by Nancy.
With one last look around, Belle said, “It was nice while it lasted.”
Then she turned and headed out of her apartment without a look back.
The slug of her ex-husband had managed to make it another twenty steps toward his car and was lying on his back sobbing.
Belle just broke out laughing as a cop car showed up.
She wondered how the idiot was going to be able to explain the secret surveillance cameras in his pocket. She knew that every time he tried, he would break into uncontrollable sobbing.
Jewel and Tommy, arm-in-arm, went past the slug. Then Belle, arm-in-arm with Nancy, walked by the creep.
She couldn’t think of a better way to leave that jerk.
Then Belle shouted ahead to Jewel. “Thanks. And I hope you teach me how to do that at some point.”
“Be glad to,” Jewel said over her shoulder, laughing.
They walked down the sidewalk toward Nancy’s apartment as the sobbing of Belle’s ex-husband echoed through the otherwise quiet neighborhood.
TWELVE
Jewel and Belle helped Nancy get packed, then the four of them walked three blocks over to a stoplight on a major street. To Jewel the late afternoon was starting to feel cool. After three months in Vegas, she had forgotten what being chilled felt like. And she was only wearing her jogging clothes, which were fine when exercising, but didn’t provide a lot of protection when just moving normally.
When a large white SUV with a man driving stopped to wait for the signal on the big intersection with mansions and large trees on four sides, Tommy moved out and slid in the driver’s door and took over the guy.
Then Tommy instantly jumped back out. “He’s headed in the opposite direction we need, and the guy is in a hurry to catch a family dinner.”
Jewel nodded. They didn’t mind hopping rides with people, as long as it didn’t cause them trouble.
They waited for two more lights before a man in a large white van stopped at the light and Tommy tried again.
After a moment, the man gave them a thumb’s up.
“Now that’s still going to take me time to get used to,” Nancy said, indicating that Tommy was now controlling the man behind the wheel.
Jewel understood that. It had taken her months to get used to some of this, and she wasn’t sure if she still was yet.
Jewel quickly helped both Belle and Nancy get into the car with their bags, tossing the bags through the sidewall of the van.
After she was sure the two women were in place in the back seat, she slid into the passenger seat just as the light turned green.
“So someone’s going to have to give me directions,” the man said, his voice sexy and his smile wonderful. The guy was dressed in a three-piece gray suit and wore a blue silk tie
“Wow, who is this guy?” Jewel asked Tommy.
“Local news anchor headed for a boring gathering of charity fundraisers out near the airport. He doesn’t know where this hotel is.”
“Glad to help on that,” Belle said from the back seat. “Just stay on this street and get through town to start with.”
Ten minutes later they were jumping out of the van at an intersection near the hotel. Tommy didn’t want the guy to be seen in the parking lot of a hotel since so many people would recognize him. So Tommy had him pull over and pretend to be talking on his cell phone until all three women were out with their bags.
Then he climbed out.
The poor guy looked at his dead cell phone, shrugged, put it away, and started back into traffic.
As the four of them turned and started toward the hotel, Jewel finally realized that she and Tommy not only were still in their jogging clothes, but they had no supplies at all. No bathroom stuff, no change of clothes or underwear or anything.
“You know,” Jewel said to her partner as they walked ahead of the two women down the wide, tree-lined sidewalk, “You and I need to do some shopping and get a few things to make it through the night and to wear tomorrow.”
Tommy laughed, glancing down at his blue sweat pants and tan t-shirt. “Good point.”
Jewel turned to the two women. “How far is that mall from here?”
Belle pointed to Jewel’s right. “About four blocks. Easy walk. But not sure when it closes.”
“Easier shopping after closing,” Jewel said. “No people to dodge that way.”
“Oh,” was all Belle said.
Nancy just laughed. “I’m starting to like this new life, or death, or whatever, even more.”
“Let’s get rooms first, then food, then clothes,” Tommy said.
“A perfect plan,” Jewel said, looking back over her shoulder. “Sound good to you two?”
“We’re just following and learning,” Belle said.
“But I am getting hungry,” Nancy said. “And I think I need to pee. Is that normal? Do ghosts pee?”
Tommy laughed and said nothing.
Jewel remembered wondering that same thing.
“I’m afraid most everything stays the same in this state,” Jewel said.
“And what happens if the lid is down?” Belle asked.
Jewel laughed. “You pee in the sink.”
“Oh, great,” Belle said.
“It’s ghost pee,” Tommy said, laughing but not turning around. “No one will notice.”
“What about periods?” Nancy asked.
Jewel laughed. “So far, that hasn’t been part of this new state of being.”
“Oh, thank you for small miracles,” Nancy said.
“Small!” Belle said. “Hell, that’s a major plus to being dead in my mind.”
“I’ll second that,” Jewel said.
“Amen to that,” Tommy said.
THIRTEEN
Belle watched as Jewel went through the counter at the front desk of the suites hotel and into the woman working
behind the counter. The woman looked to be about sixty, with a haircut right out of the nineteen-sixties. She had on slightly too much make-up, especially red lipstick. A moment later the woman was typing on her screen, clearly looking up reservations.
The big lobby around them was comfortable, decorated in brown tones, with high ceilings, a wide staircase leading up to a mezzanine level, and a number of seating areas with cloth couches and chairs. A huge stone fireplace dominated one side of the big room and the light brown carpet looked thick and comfortable.
After a moment, Jewel stuck her head out of the desk clerk and looked at Belle and Nancy. The woman suddenly looked like she had two heads, since Jewel’s head came right out of the woman’s shoulder. That was creepy-looking, actually.
“You two want to share a big suite?”
“Sounds great to me,” Nancy said.
“I’d love it as well,” Belle said. After the day, she really didn’t want to find herself alone in a hotel room. Having Nancy beside her would be perfect.
Jewel nodded and her head disappeared completely back into the woman’s shoulder.
In another thirty seconds or so, Jewel appeared completely, leaving the woman standing to one side of the computer doing what she had been doing before.
As Jewel walked back through the counter to them, she said, “I’ve blocked two suites for the night for maintenance scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Perfect,” Tommy said.
“We’re not going to keep the hotel from renting those, are we?” Belle said, if they run out of room.
“They are far, far from full,” Jewel said. “In fact, over two-thirds of the hotel is sitting empty right now. So won’t cost them anything.”
Belle wasn’t sure why she had suddenly worried about that. More than likely her job of corporate accounting had her mind working that way.
As they headed up the stairs, Nancy asked Jewel and Tommy a question that had been starting to bother Belle as well.
“Is it normal to not feel grief about dying?”
Jewel just shrugged as she and Tommy reached the first landing and kept going.
“We were bothered by that as well,” Tommy said. “It felt as if we should have been angry about being killed, but neither of us were. We think it’s because this feels so real. We haven’t really left the world, just been given a new job to do.”
“In fact,” Jewel said. “When I asked K.J. about that, he said simply ‘What’s to mourn? You’re still here eating great, living free, doing an important job, and having great sex.’ I think he was exactly right. We are still alive, just in a different state is all.”
Belle could understand that. All of this was feeling very, very real, even though she could go through things and make other people do things and who knew what else. One moment she had been alive in the other state, then a truck had hit her and she hadn’t felt anything, just ended up in this state.
“So other people just move on to the next world?” Nancy asked as they reached the first floor landing and turned to go up another flight of stairs.
“Almost everyone,” Jewel said. “From what we understand and have been told.”
“White tunnel and all?” Belle asked. She wasn’t much of a religious person, but afterlife had always interested her.
“That’s what K.J. said,” Tommy said. “But you would have to ask him to get more information.”
They reached the second floor and Jewel led them down the hall to the right, all the way to the end. “You two can take that one, we’ll take this one.”
Jewel pointed to two doors.
“I need a shower,” Tommy said. “So can we meet in thirty minutes back here?”
“Take showers, get changed into comfortable clothes,” Jewel said. “And we’ll go get dinner and then do some shopping.”
“Perfect,” Belle said and Nancy nodded.
Jewel and Tommy turned and vanished through the door to their room, leaving the two standing in the hallway.
“Guess we don’t need keys to anything anymore,” Nancy said, laughing.
“Guess not,” Belle said, smiling at her best friend.
She turned and with her eyes only slightly opened walked through the door and into the huge suite.
Tall windows ran along one wall looking out over the trees, the neighborhood, and the mall beyond. The sky was colored with a beautiful sunset since it was just about seven in the evening.
The room was furnished in comfortable-looking cloth couches and chairs in varied brown tones. The carpet was a soft brown and a number of lamps were turned on around the area.
Through an open door to the left Belle could see a huge king bed and she headed that way, pulling her suitcase.
“Wow, this is something,” Nancy said. “It’s bigger than my apartment.”
Inside the bedroom, Belle spotted a huge walk-in closet. She pointed at it. “Guess people who stay here travel with a ton of clothes.”
Nancy laughed and dropped her suitcase by the closet, then went to look at the bathroom.
“I take it back,” Nancy said. “The bathroom is bigger than my apartment.”
Belle followed her into the gigantic tile and mirrored bathroom. The glass shower could hold ten people and the big jet tub next to it could hold another ten.
There were three sinks in the long vanity counter, something Belle had never seen or could see a use for.
“And look,” Belle said. “They left the toilet seat lid up.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Nancy said, laughing.
Nancy went back into the bedroom and started to undress, putting her blouse on the bed, then her slacks. Then she peeled off the matching blue underwear and bra she had been wearing, finally standing there in the nude.
All Belle could do was stare. Nancy was the most attractive person she had ever seen, and Belle loved it every time Nancy undressed in front of her.
Nancy glanced at Belle. “Come on, we only have thirty minutes. I’ll wash your back if you wash mine. I want to rinse as much of this day away as I can.”
“I can’t agree more,” Belle said, finally kicking herself into gear.
Nancy had just gotten the water temperature set in the huge shower and was stepping in through the glass when Belle got into the bathroom. Belle quickly unwrapped the ghost version of the hotel soap from a basket on the vanity and joined Nancy in the huge shower.
Nancy looked at her and smiled, blushing slightly. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a wonderful body?”
“Only you,” Belle said, staring in to the green eyes of her best friend. “But so do you, you know. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Not a soul but you,” Nancy said.
The next thing Belle knew, Nancy was holding her tight against her wonderful-feeling skin.
Belle hugged her back and the two of them stood there like that under the warm water for a very long time.
Belle loved the hug and everything about it.
Finally Nancy pushed back slightly, keeping her body against Belle’s. “Thank you for trying to save my life this morning.”
Belle didn’t know what to say, but before she could say anything, Nancy smiled. “I’m damn glad you didn’t succeed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here with you like this, and I would have been totally heartbroken you were gone.”
Then Nancy hugged her again, long and hard.
The sensation of Nancy being against her naked skin felt fantastic, and she could feel herself becoming aroused.
Belle kept hugging her, hoping the moment would never end.
Finally, Nancy pushed back slightly, her wonderful face flushed from either the heat or the moment. Belle had an idea her face was the same way.
“Wash my back,” Nancy said. “We keep this up much longer and we won’t make dinner.”
“And that’s a bad thing how?” Belle asked, surprised but excited at the hint that Nancy had just given her. Did they really have the courage to take their friendship to the next le
vel?
It seemed Nancy did.
And Belle had wanted to, secretly, for years.
Nancy smiled as big as any smile that Belle had ever seen. Then she turned around and braced herself against the tile of the shower wall, the water flowing over her head and down her back.
Belle spent the next wonderful five minutes exploring every inch of Nancy’s back, butt, legs.
Then Nancy did the same to her.
And never in all her life had Belle been so turned on.
FOURTEEN
Jewel and Tommy managed to get showered and get their running clothes back on and into the hallway about the time that the two new recruits appeared from their suite. The shower felt wonderful after the long day and Jewel had almost decided to stay in and help Tommy with his shower, but knew if they did that, they would be late for dinner.
Both women had wet hair (just as she and Tommy did) and they were wearing the same comfortable clothes they had changed into in their apartments.
“Anywhere close to eat at 7 p.m. that won’t be too crowded?” Tommy asked.
“Sizzler is about it,” Nancy said. “In the parking lot of the big mall. There are restaurants on the other side of the mall, but they would be jammed this time of night.”
Jewel looked at them. “Can you handle going back there?”
“Oh, sure,” Belle said. “I like the place and it’s big enough we can find a table out of the way.”
“Always a good plan,” Jewel said, impressed that they were already thinking like that.
“I think it would be fine as well,” Nancy said.
“Lead the way,” Jewel said.
Belle smiled at Nancy and they turned and headed for the stairs.
It was a nice walk as the sun was setting. Belle and Nancy led them along the tree-lined sidewalk in front of now-closed office buildings. Jewel enjoyed the walk, but the evening air was chilling right down and Jewel wished she had something heavier to wear. She would shortly.
About ten steps in front of her and Tommy, Belle and Nancy walked side-by-side, at times laughing at something one of them said.
“They are going to make a great team,” Tommy said softly so the two women in front couldn’t hear. “We got to get their auras contained, though. They are simply radiating.”
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