Friday afternoon found Andrew working in the dining room on his laptop, sheet music splayed out across the table, his ratty old Cambridge T-shirt still sticking to his back from a pickup basketball game he had enjoyed earlier with Simon and Andrew at the school playground down the street. His sweaty hair was almost sticking up on its own due to the countless times he’d dragged his fingers through it.
Simon was not in any better shape and sat across from him idly drumming on an empty plaster bucket while staring in turn at an abandoned copy of Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and a Playboy that lay discarded nearby. A lit cigarette burned in an ashtray at his feet.
Christian was lost in the kitchen, preparing for what he kept referring to as The Dinner, pausing only to chastise Simon to smoke outside and question why he couldn’t get his porn off the Internet like any decent perv.
Andrew was doing his best to ignore this, focusing instead on the growing ash on the end of Simon’s cigarette.
While balancing on a ladder and yanking out some old knob and tube wiring, Sid took the opportunity to announce, “Those ladies upstairs. What do you think my chances would be if I asked one of them out?”
“Bad idea,” Simon replied.
“Hey, I didn’t even tell you which one.”
“Doesn’t matter. Although good luck with that Margot, my friend. Fiend of a woman if I ever saw one.”
“I didn’t think you remembered her name?” Andrew faced Simon. The ash fell off the end of his cigarette as Simon glowered in his direction.
“Well the big one, she’s kind of cute. A whole lotta woman there.”
An aproned Christian entered the dining room holding a large piece of cutlery. “Excuse me, man?”
“How are the short ribs coming there?” Andrew asked, smacking his hands down on the table certain that the last thing this place needed was a murder and yet another ghost.
“They’re fine. And her name is Zoey, by the way. Cut out that ‘big’ shit, okay?”
“Yeah, or she’ll knock you on your ass,” Simon said. Little Feat blared from the kitchen.
“So what, that leaves the booky one,” Sid pondered aloud, screwdriver in hand. “She seemed awful nice when I was up there last. A little hard to read, though.”
“Yes, that would be Emily.” Andrew sighed.
“So, you don’t mind if I…” He jabbed his screwdriver in and out of a hole in the wall.
Andrew tilted back his chair. “Do you wish to die young?” he uttered in a barely controlled voice.
His declaration caught Simon’s attention. “What? Has love come to Andy Hardy at last? When did this happen?”
“Nothing has happened. I told you, I ran into her on campus when I was trying to find us some rehearsal space, remember? And I don’t think she’d care to be screwed, so to speak.”
Christian and Simon exchanged looks.
“Don’t you think your muse will mind?” inquired Christian.
“About that. Excuse me, Sid, would you mind giving us some privacy, please?”
Sid’s stocky little legs lumbered down the ladder. “Gotta fix the john, anyways.” He trotted off down the hall.
“You know the other day in the attic when you gentlemen decided to humiliate me with your gushing description of my muse? Thanks a ton for that, by the way. Margot asked me about it, actually she cornered me, but that goes without saying. Anyway, she asked me if I was dating her—this muse. I couldn’t stand there and explain. It would have made me look like a—”
“A psycho?”
“Thanks, Simon.”
“A wanker?”
“Shut up, Simon.”
“A psychotic wanker?”
Andrew lunged across the table at him. Sheet music went flying.
Christian pulled him back. “Yeah, we know. Zoey told me all about it. You actually told Margot that you were dating her?”
“We broke up.”
“This imaginary girl and you,” Christian clarified.
“Yes, I just thought it would be easier that way.”
“Oh yes, tons.” Simon guffawed.
“So what do you want us to do?”
“In a word? Lie.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just came clean?”
“Are you mad?” cried Simon. “Can you hear him trying to rationalize that one? ‘Oh, pardon and all, but I may have communicated that the woman I said I was screwing I am no longer screwing, due to the fact that she was a figment of my imagination. But she has inspired all my music—and I would be lost without her—so no need to apply, no woman could compare.’”
Andrew held up the middle fingers of both his hands.
“What a tangled web, Paulie,” tsk-tsked Simon. “So the party line is you dated this muse but she’s history, so now you can put forth the moves on this Emily?”
Andrew slowly lowered his hands and spanned his fingers over the sheet music.
“Not to worry. Whatever you want. I’m only informing you, if you haven’t realized it up to this point in your illustrious career of fucking, that little girls don’t like it when you lie. Especially about other little girls. Especially about imaginary little girls.”
“Listen, Andrew,” Christian intervened, “I don’t agree with you, but I get it. Now, can you two stop goofing off for a second and come in here and help with the food? The dinner, remember the dinner? We’re hosting tomorrow night, right? So far we have no food, no alcohol, no decorations, nothing.”
“Decorations? What is this, a wedding?” Simon said. “We just met these women.”
Christian clenched the butcher knife tighter. “It’s potluck.”
“Fine. I’ll supply the alcohol and the cigarettes.”
“Zoey told me this morning she wanted everyone to bring a dish from where they were raised. Thought it might help us all get acquainted. I figured we could eat in the attic or on the roof if it’s warm enough. But short of some sawhorses covered in dry wall, we’ve got squato. Some fine romantic dinner this is going to be. I’m about to march up there and take Zoey out and let you guys hang yourselves.”
“Romantic dinner?” said Simon. “Do my ears deceive me? What is it with this place? I refuse to drink the water anymore. Speaking of which, does anyone fancy a pint? It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”
Suddenly, words reverberated inside Andrew’s head. Romantic dinner. Not just any dinner, Andrew, a romantic dinner.
Yes. Yes, that’s what he could do. He could start over, use the opportunity to redeem himself. He’d remain calm this time, be a gentleman, and not frighten Emily to death. Make it a night to remember—a night she’d never forget. Yes.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” With a new-found surge of confidence, Andrew started firing his ideas at Christian and Simon. Christian joined in, whether caught up in Andrew’s enthusiasm or in an attempt to get him to calm down, he truly didn’t care. Evidently they were so loud that a few minutes later they heard stomping on the ceiling. At least Andrew thought it was the ceiling. Then the moaning started, and a second later a wail came from the direction of the bathroom.
A second later, Sid flew down the hallway, a white-faced crew-cut of a blur, shrieking at the top of his lungs as he barreled out the front door.
The three men momentarily stared at each other and then tore ass toward the bathroom. Christian was the first to reach it, and he stopped short. Simon and Andrew nearly toppled over him. Frantically they stuck their heads around the doorway, one on top of the other, and into the room.
“Holy shit!” Christian cried to Andrew who could only say, “It’s true, man, it’s really true.”
Finally Simon, as though he’d been waiting all his life to say it, channeled a week’s worth of Little Feat torture into one breath, and grinning ear to ear, threw back his head and wailed, “There’s a dead man. In the bathtub. With a martini!”
Sure enough, a handsome apparition clad in a double-breasted suit with a boutonniere s
at with his legs crossed, relaxing in their claw foot tub. His ghostly arms rested on the sides. His opalescent fingers clasped a martini glass.
In elegant silence he toasted them, then winked and raised his spectral glass toward the mirror over the vanity on the opposite side of the room. There, in a flowing script, were the words:
The cabinet under the stairs
“Doesn’t he mean cupboard?” asked Andrew.
“How the hell do I know?” Christian retorted. “But what stairs? Which cupboard?”
They looked back to the tub. It was empty. He had vanished.
Like a shot, the three of them ran out to the lobby, pushing each other aside like children, eager to be the first there. Sure enough, under the long table that held their mail was a small door.
“After you, Simon,” Andrew said, his heart pounding in excitement as the three crouched down to open it. What would they find: a treasure map, money—a body?
“No, after you, Paulie boy.”
Andrew looked back and forth between his friends. Surely they weren’t scared. He motioned to Christian, but he held up his hands in refusal. Tosser. He took a deep breath and grabbed the small hook in the door and pulled. The door creaked open stiffly from years of disuse.
They peered into the darkness.
“We love you, man.” Christian smiled ear-to-ear.
“Holy hell!” cried Simon.
Which left Andrew nothing to say but, “Thanks, Nick.”
9
* * *
IF HISTORY BOOKS RECORDED such things, they would note that the Lost Boys’ assault on their neighbors’ hearts began on that Friday, at around six p.m.
An invitation addressed in a calligraphed hand arrived for Ms. Margot Larson, Ms. Zoey Cohen, and Ms. Emily Thomas that evening, slipped discreetly under their door.
Mssrs. Simon Godden, Christian Wood, and Andrew Hayes
request the honor of your presence
in the Conservatory at 8 p.m. tomorrow evening.
Formal dress is requested, but you may dress as you desire.
“My God, someone wrote this by hand. No one does this anymore. Do you see the way the ink ebbs and flows through the script? It’s been written with a nib pen dipped in India ink. It looks like something from…” gushed Zoey.
“From Captain Wentworth,” Emily whispered, foregoing the thought of Darcy, who probably wrote more neatly but never captured the exquisite anguish of his situation.
This beginning foray, while impressive in its own right, was followed by a stunning display of romantic maneuvering. A massive bouquet of wildflowers from the backyard was delivered at eight that evening—left in a martini shaker, no less. This romantic storming of the Bastille left the women with nothing to do but to circle the wagons. They spent the rest of the night determining what armor they needed to wear into battle. Zoey was enthusiastic, having evidently forgiven Andrew for his former transgressions; Margot was uninterested, having not forgiven Simon for any of his. Emily was simply panicked.
Later that night she lay in bed, unable to sleep. For the previous week she had avoided Andrew at all costs, and in less than twenty-four hours she would have to face him. They would stand awkwardly in that attic, all forced conversation until polite manners would dictate they could leave. How had Christian pressured him into this? Formal attire? Dancing? Part of her wished he had orchestrated this for her, but that would be absurd. He was blatantly in love with someone else; she had rarely seen a man that affected, and her irritation was only surpassed by her jealousy. For no matter how casual he appeared to be about his ex-girlfriend, this muse of his, his words spoke otherwise. She remembered their conversation at the café, the vehemence in his voice and his barely controlled emotions, and she found it ironic that never before had unrequited love become so popular.
She wouldn’t go tomorrow night. There was no other choice. She glanced at the clock; it was nearly midnight. She had gone to bed in only a white nightshirt that Zoey had loaned her because her room had been broiling, no doubt thanks to Sid’s crew disappearing before fixing the pipes. Unwilling to stay in the house past dark, they flocked out the doors at five each night no matter what state the house was in, leaving the inhabitants to the vagaries of ancient radiators. Chilly now, she rolled over on her side and pulled her blanket up around her shoulders, convincing herself it was the right choice. The room seemed to grow colder. Familiarly colder.
“Nora?” she breathed into the darkness. Her closet creaked open. A sharp gasp iced her throat. “Nora, I know you’re there.”
Silence.
“And I’d like to say—I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I’m Emily Thomas. If you want to borrow the coat, feel free. Just don’t murder me in my sleep, please.”
A ghostly feminine chuckle came from the closet. The door blew open a crack, and a slit of light was visible from the back wall.
“Nora?”
The chuckle continued, and the door whispered opened a fraction more. Andrew’s music seemed to be coming from the back of her closet. How was that possible?
Emily slid out of the covers; her toes curled on the cold wood floor as she crept over to the closet. The knob froze her fingers just as before. And just as before, she was terrified. “Please let it not be some specter like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark that spirals around my head before it eats me.”
“That, my dear, would be gauche.”
Emily stopped dead. She was about to rush back into her bed when a melody, so lovely and plaintive, captured her. As if drawn by an unseen hand, she crept forward and into the closet toward the sliver of light. She brushed her coat aside, and seeing a door knob that protruded from the back wall, twisted it. With a creak the door opened, and she stepped into a narrow, dimly illuminated hallway. A secret passageway.
The only thing she could decipher was that it must have served as a back stairway, a butler’s stairs, when the house was built. One old, ornate sconce covered in cobwebs lit the dusty hallway. The passageway went in both directions. Instinctively she turned left, the music becoming more distinct as she silently took step after step.
She ghosted along until she reached a dead end. A small section of wood flooring had been removed, and the opening shimmered with a dim glow. Bolts circled the cut-away; perhaps someone had butchered the floor to anchor a light fixture long ago. She peeked down through the opening.
She could see into the room beneath her through the filigreed canopy of a wrought iron chandelier that bathed the room below in near candlelight. Sheet music lay on the floor like drifts of snow and shadows of bookcases lined the walls. On the floor, a tea cup sat abandoned.
And there was a man. A man in flannel pajama bottoms and no shirt. The sight of him staggered her.
Alone, Andrew sat on a bed with his eyes closed; she could tell that in the dim light, at least. He was strumming a guitar. A more heartbreaking sound than she had ever remembered hearing filled the shadows around him.
He kept repeating the one refrain over and over, speaking softly to himself, and then starting again. His fingers moved over the frets—nimble, long, intelligent, seductive. He began to hum, a quiet desperation in his voice as though he had traveled all night and could spot the lights of home.
The words of Browning she knew by heart.
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each.
Tears burned in her eyes and muddled
the vision of him: his eyes closed, his head bowed as he finished, as though he had indeed stepped through that door and was lost to that woman. He stopped and put his hand over the strings to silence them and laid his head back with a sigh. The guitar pressed against his naked skin, his arms folded around it as if it were a lover.
Emily had never seen anything so erotic, so sensual. She couldn’t stay. She had to leave. Silently as the grave, she stole back down the passageway, back to her room, back to the security of her bed. She desperately needed time to think.
It was when she neared the sconce that she saw it. An old-fashioned steamer trunk. It sat in the shadows at the end of the hall in the direction she hadn’t taken. A wave of apprehension rose within her at the sight. What was it doing here? And what, more importantly, was inside it? Part of her was afraid to know, wanting to escape to her room and bury herself under the covers with her memories of Andrew, but curiosity kept her locked in place.
Upon closer inspection she could see that the steamer trunk was old, covered with dust and travel stickers from faraway lands and exotic places. Whose was it? Was it Neil’s? Maybe, but it was so long forgotten…Could it have been left here by a previous owner? And how was she even going to open it—she hadn’t a key.
Then she noticed: it wasn’t locked.
Hesitantly, she ran her hand over the worn leather and brass buttons that decorated the exterior. Her finger brushed over an aged, peeling sticker that read, Le Grand Hotel, Monte Carlo, then another that read, Cunard, White Star to Europe, and one that looked very worn, as though it was the first one ever placed on the trunk: The Mendocino Hotel. Her finger stopped when it reached that one. She swore she felt someone sighing behind her.
She gripped the latch and flipped it up. The trunk exhaled, as though it had taken its first breath in years. With a trembling hand, she slowly opened the lid.
She saw the shimmer first, and then she saw the color. Her heart leaped into her throat. A concoction of the most stunning workmanship lay within. It was a blue sapphire dress, 1930s classic couture, tea length and perfectly exquisite. Her fingers reached out to touch it. The satin felt alive. A pair of matching shoes was nestled next to the dress, and beside them sat a velvet box wrapped with a bow.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 12