Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story

by Glover, Sarah M.

  “Is there any chance you might be able to introduce us to our neighbors?” Emily asked. “Sid was just telling us about them.”

  “No rush there,” Zoey interjected. “Honestly.”

  “Of course, I’d be delighted. They just got in, in fact. I’ll see if they’re available. If you’d excuse me for a moment.”

  They watched him trot down the stairs. Zoey summarily disappeared without a trace and left Margot and Emily to eat their newly delivered breakfast in peace. But after they dressed, Emily could no longer keep her curiosity from getting the better of her. What had Sid meant about strange sounds, and what about the attic? It had been locked since they arrived, and they had been unable to see it. She remembered Zoey saying something about it being unsafe to enter. Maybe she could charm a key from Sid and check it out herself?

  It didn’t look like Neil was going to return with this Nick and Nora from downstairs any time soon, so unable to resist any longer, Emily announced to Margot that she was going to bring up a bunch of boxes from the foyer. After she slipped out the front, she padded toward the small door at the end of the hall that led to the attic. She gave a turn of the knob; it was still locked. Not to be thwarted, she headed down the stairs in search of Sid but instead found a workman at the foot of the steps. “You mind moving a few of these, miss?” he said, pointing to the stacks of small boxes on the steps. “We gotta bring up some equipment.”

  Begrudgingly, she stacked as many boxes as she could handle in her arms, all the way up to her chin before she cast a last look at the door to the downstairs apartment and turned to trudge back up the stairs, intent on returning for the key soon. Midway she felt an icy chill blow across her neck, like a gust from an open window, and she shivered so violently that the boxes fell from her arms in a tumble.

  Hell.

  She knelt down to stack the boxes again when she spotted it. Her one shoe left from the night of the show. Alone, by itself. Small and stylish, a little poetry for no one to see again.

  That night came back to her in all its hope and disappointment. What remained was one old shoe, an odd, forgotten thing. Suddenly overcome with the emotion she had fought so hard against, she grabbed the boxes roughly in her arms, and clumped back up the stairs, angry at herself for being so weak.

  When she reached the top, a shattering bang from below frightened the wits out of her, and she cried out loud. The boxes wobbled, and she lost her grip. One after another they careened out of her hands, shoes falling everywhere.

  Hell, hell, hell!

  She spun around and looked down to the foot of the steps. In shock, her body fought to understand what her eyes were telling her mind. No. It was impossible. He was here. He was standing in her foyer—her foyer—wearing a torn T-shirt and jeans and looking like he just stepped off a stage. Andrew Hayes was standing in her foyer.

  Now he was kneeling down. Before she could ask herself why, he picked up her lone shoe out of the mess. “I believe this is yours,” was all he said, looking at her in amazement.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there, frozen in time. All she knew was that his incredulity had begun to ebb, and caution overcame his sharp features as if he was afraid she might start screaming.

  “Th-Th-Th…” She tried to thank him but words failed her. Plus, in the dim recesses of her mind, she knew that it was impossible to make a th sound with your mouth open wide. Before she could shut it and stutter another syllable, Zoey came marching down the stairs, passed her, and grabbed the shoe from his hand.

  “Was that your sick idea of fan appreciation the other night? Freaking my friend out like that? It was an accident. Get over it,” Zoey shouted. In utter shock, Emily watched as her roommate swatted his arm with the missing shoe to punctuate her words. “What—the—hell—were—you—thinking?”

  Zoey spun around, dropped the shoe, grabbed Emily’s hand, and dragged her back up the stairs. The last thing Emily saw as their door slammed shut behind her was the half-enchanted, half-stricken face of Andrew Hayes rubbing his arm as he stared at her shoe.

  6

  * * *

  WHAT WAS ANDREW HAYES doing here? Here? In her house? Thoughts raced in Emily’s mind at the possibilities. One, he had tracked her down to finish berating her. Or two, he had come to apologize. No, that was never going to happen. How would he ever find her? Plus, what kind of madman would track down a woman he had only seen once? The kind who had chased her clear out of the club—that kind of madman. The rational side of her mind was screaming at her to barricade herself in her room, but her heart and her body were pumping with so much adrenaline they overtook all reason.

  “You—you hit him in the arm with my shoe!” Emily gasped as Zoey dragged her back into the living room and threw her onto the couch.

  At the sound of all the commotion, Margot walked in from the kitchen, coffee in hand and paper under her arm. She plopped down next to Emily on the neighboring couch, whispering, “What did I miss?”

  “Not a word from you,” Zoey reprimanded her, and she scooped up a few prayer cards that had blown off the mantle from her arrival. “And as for you…” She threw a look at Emily. “What the hell gives? What’s going on between the two of you? You haven’t said a word all week about what happened at the Skellar and we didn’t force it. So out with it.”

  “Out with what?”

  “So you’re going to stand there and tell me that he stopped a show and stormed out the door because you had some allergic reaction and couldn’t breathe and made a waitress spill a tray of drinks?”

  Emily’s face struggled to maintain a pretense of control.

  “Well, in that case, it’s a good thing I hit the bastard. Jesus, the man has issues.”

  “But you hit him with my shoe. He might be hurt. He might be bleeding.”

  “He might want to sue,” Margot added with a nod.

  “Christian should have warned me about him if we were going to be living here. What a piece of work—just like that asshole professor of yours,” Zoey muttered. “You’re always making excuses for people’s bad behavior.”

  “We’re not talking about Vandin, now,” Emily snapped. “Wait. What did you mean ‘Christian should have warned you’? Why does Christian have anything to do with it?”

  She hesitated. “He lives here.”

  Emily looked stunned. Even Margot put down the newspaper.

  “They all live here, the whole band, all right? It’s out now. Okay? I was sure you’d never agree to rent the place if you knew, that’s why I didn’t mention it in the first place. But I knew you’d love it once you saw it. The house was too good to pass up. I mean, look at it.”

  “Yes, look at it.” Margot retorted wryly, waving her hand in the air.

  “And as for this Andrew, listen, it’s a pretty simple process to get a restraining order. I’ve done it a dozen times. You slam that on his ass, and you can kiss your problems goodbye.”

  “Zoey!”

  Suddenly another knock came from the front door, and three heads wrenched toward it. Zoey strode over and whipped it open. “Listen, dickhead, you better have a good explanation for the horrible way you—”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” an English voice soothed from the landing, spiking Emily’s heart rate until she quickly realized that it was that of her recently acquired landlord. “I was wondering if I might introduce the downstairs tenants to your friends? We were heading up for a tour of the conservatory. It’s just been finished, or let’s say, it’s safe enough to inhabit now. Or we could come back if this is a bad time.”

  The sounds of people shuffling outside the door hit Emily full force. If The Lost Boys were going to be their downstairs neighbors, that meant only one thing: Andrew Hayes would be living, breathing, and…showering under her feet.

  “How ya doing, Zoey girl?” another voice cried from the landing.

  “Christian. This is kind of a bad time.”

  “Excuse me.” Margot jammed her head through the entryway. “We’
ll meet you upstairs in a few minutes, if that’s all right with you. Thank you.” Then she slammed the door shut in their shocked faces.

  Now it was Zoey’s turn to appear stunned. “Why did you do that?”

  “To keep both of you from losing what little you had left of your dignity. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Zoey, I could tolerate living in a complete dump, I could tolerate the leers from the workmen and possibly even the complete lack of indoor plumbing, but do you seriously understand what life is going to be like living over a band?”

  “See? This is why I couldn’t tell you—you always see the negative in everything. And seriously, I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal,” Zoey argued. “They’ll be on the road most of the time, anyway. That’s what they do. They probably never live in one place long enough to buy furniture.”

  “But they’re here now. How are we ever going to sleep with all that racket, study and grade papers, much less put up with whatever the hell they decide to drag home? You never think anything through. You lied to us to get what you wanted, and now I’ve just sunk all the rest of my money to pay to move all our furniture to this construction site with crazed, stoned, and drunk idiots partying all night under my feet.”

  “So you haven’t met them and you’ve already decided exactly who they are, is that it? It must be great to be right about everyone all the time. Maybe you can give a seminar on that. So I lied, I’m sorry, but at least I put myself out there.”

  “Yeah, we’re so far out there that we have to defend ourselves from our new neighbors with footwear.”

  The resulting showdown was one of the loudest and most colorful that Emily had ever witnessed between her two friends. In the end, two things were decided. First, Margot would agree to stay in the apartment. Second, she maintained full rights to call the cops if their neighbors got too loud. With their friendship still intact, Zoey and Margot headed up to the attic while Emily made a promise to meet them momentarily.

  Frantic, Emily paced the length of the living room, trying to figure out what to do. Stay or go? Her situation was very different than Zoey and Margot’s. It wasn’t as simple as dealing with loud neighbors. If she was going to live here she had to come to terms with this strange attraction she felt for this Andrew Hayes. An attraction that troubled her and left her questioning her normally sound judgment, even as it seemed to intensify with each passing day. There would eventually come a day when they would have to talk. Or she could avoid him; he wouldn’t be there much. Zoey was right about that. He’d be on the road most of the time.

  Why she thought of Myra at that moment, she couldn’t say. But in her mind’s eye she could picture the old woman’s finger wagging at her, demanding she channel Tracy Lord. “Bring it on, C.K. Dexter Haven,” she could almost hear her whisper. “What’s the worst he can do?”

  That was it. Let him bring on his worst; she would remain calm, cool and unruffled, which wasn’t difficult since the heat seemed to have gone out yet again, a particularly chill blast hitting her as she reached the door. She turned about on instinct but saw only the empty apartment. There was no one there. Yet at that instant she swore she felt a cold pressure on her arm like those of fingers, icy and singular, pushing her forward.

  Shaking it off, she reached the attic door and hurried up a dark, narrow staircase to the conservatory. Another door waited for her at the top of the stairs. She swallowed hard and pushed it open.

  Immediately bright sunlight flooded down upon her, forcing her to squint and raise her hands to her eyes. A ceiling of glass seemed the only thing between her and the endless blue sky. Before her lay a long room, the entire structure made of glass and wrought iron like a hothouse except it was perfectly pleasant. Dozens of half-dead orchids lined the shelves on the perimeter, and planters full of the remains of mottled geraniums and spidery ferns sat next to the assortment of abused wicker furniture that dotted the tile floor. At the other end, a landing exited to what Emily could only assume was a roof garden.

  But Emily saw nothing beyond that. For there, set off near the corner, Andrew Hayes stood, his back turned away from all of them, silhouetted in sunlight like some formidable saint from Margot’s holy card collection.

  Her first instinct was to laugh. It was all so ridiculous—a fantasy at best, a sickness at worst. But whatever it was, whatever emotion was wreaking havoc with both her mind and her body, would end the moment they exchanged words. It had to. It couldn’t survive past the first hello. If it did, she wasn’t sure she would.

  As for her friends, she was relieved to see that they hadn’t abandoned their protective stance. Zoey had joined Christian, and although she had reignited her nonstop praise of the house, she kept her sights fixed on Andrew. Margot had gone so far as to pick up a particularly heavy potted orchid for examination, as if to test how far she could throw it if necessary.

  “Zoey you’ve met. Margot and Emily,” Neil said, “I’d like you to meet your neighbors, Christian, Simon and, oh, there you are, Andrew. Ladies, may I introduce Christian Wood, Simon Godden, and Andrew Hayes. Gentlemen, Margot Larson and Emily Thomas.”

  Emily watched Andrew shake hands with everyone until he came to her. “Emily,” he said oddly, and it sounded to her as though he were confirming her name. “Emily Thomas.”

  His hand covered hers in greeting. One hand over the other, equally cool, equally tentative, but his touch seemed to draw from her a stream of memories that were in no way cool or tentative. The rest of the room seemed to watch them with varying levels of wariness, unsure if another blowout might ensue. No one ventured to mention the bizarre episode at the club and risk breaking the apparent peace.

  “It’s Andrew, right?” she heard herself say through the maelstrom, and in the dim recesses of her mind she knew she should be trying to channel Katherine Hepburn, as she intended. Composure, Emily. Composure. Don’t let on that you know him. You’re going to ruin everything. Yet how did she know him? She could not even answer that herself.

  He cocked his head to one side and studied her. He was almost too alive to look at. It was too much to take in. The precise structure of his face coupled with the strokes of red that ran along the lines of his cheekbones etched themselves into her mind like an overexposed photograph.

  “Yes. My name is Andrew Hayes. We’re the—”

  “We’re the eejits downstairs,” Simon cut in. “You might as well get used to referring to us that way. If we get too loud, an easy fix is to pound on the floor. We probably won’t hear you, but hell, it’s worth a try—Emily, it’s Emily, yeah?”

  The way he stared at her caused Andrew to stare at him.

  “Oh, you’re a drummer, right?” Margot asked as if she had never seen him before. She put down the planter, and her heels clipped along the tiles as she made her way to Simon’s side. “Feel free to do the same, bang on the ceiling that is, if we get too loud. I’ve been told I often do.” Margot tossed her hair in an uncharacteristic flounce, all black sheen and menace.

  “Oh, well have a go at it then, there’ll be plenty of bangin’ with all this remodeling going on,” Simon countered, not to be outdone, his brogue thickening by the minute. “It’s the endless screwin’ and that drillin’ that makes the most racket, don’t you think, girlie?”

  “Girlie?”

  “Or the wailing from the ghosts—that’s what’s really going kill you,” said Christian with a nonchalance that no one else seemed to embrace.

  “Ghosts?” Zoey asked, and Emily noticed Andrew shoot a flat look at Christian, who went on undeterred. “Haven’t you heard yours yet?”

  “Wonderful. First a band and now the undead. We should have a dinner and see what else shows up,” said Margot stiffly. “Zombies? Witches? Really.” Her words, however, had the opposite effect on Zoey and Christian, who decided that a dinner would be just the ticket for all of them. The next fifteen minutes were spent on who was going to bring what, with people drifting here and there, trying to position themselves closer to or fa
rther from each other, depending on the individual.

  During this time, Emily watched Andrew and Simon stroll over to the glass door that exited to the roof gardens. Andrew was gesturing riotously with his hands, something Emily had seen him do on stage when he got agitated. Suddenly his eyes narrowed infinitesimally, and his fingers paused in mid-air like they were changing chords. He knew she was watching him.

  Her eyes raced back down to the shelf of flowers, willing herself to appear aloof and disinterested. Some discarded construction blueprints allowed her to look busy, and she folded over page after page until she noticed her watch. She would have to leave soon if she didn’t want to be late for Vandin’s lecture. It was her escape.

  “Emily,” a voice said from behind her shoulder.

  Startled, she swallowed and drew on an untapped sense of courage before she slowly turned. The first thing she saw were his eyes. They were blue like…like nothing and everything and filled with such earnestness that her heart nearly melted at the sight. Yet she was far too wary to trust him—or herself for that matter—with anything more than a hello.

  The blue eyes widened in amusement. “You’re actually here. You live here. In this house.”

  How should she respond? Did he still think she was a crazed fan who had hunted him down from the park to the show to his home? Though the look on his face seemed to contradict any ill will, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her from the park at all. Perhaps he merely recognized her from the club, though that might prove bad enough in its own right.

  “I had no idea you lived here too,” she offered in hasty explanation. “I mean, that anyone lived here too. Well, not really, but we only moved in a week ago and we were told our neighbors were named Nick and Nora. Old people—who weren’t sane.”

  His mouth quirked and she could tell he fought not to laugh. “They are, unfortunately. Old, that is. Dead actually.”