“And divulge my deepest, darkest secrets? Never.”
“Where’s the other entrance?”
“Do you know our pantry holds a ransom of Cheez-Its, spray cheese, Cheetos, boxes of Easy Mac—a case of them, by the way—because one can never have enough unnatural cheese—beef jerky, pig rinds, Ramen noodles, corn nuts, Nestlé Quick, Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Pop-Tarts, SpaghettiOs, and syrup.”
“You have an incredible mind for detail. You should write.”
“I’m bollocks at anything that doesn’t rhyme. Now no editorializing—this is my story.”
She laughed again, and he kissed the side of her mouth. His lips hovered there as her smile widened.
“It doesn’t contain tea or booze, that’s the vital fact. So…in a fit of frustration that my pantry could help us survive a nuclear holocaust but didn’t contain a drop of alcohol, I slammed my back against the pantry wall only to find the wall did move. As in shift. As in creaked backward.”
“Oh my.”
He trailed his lips along her jaw. She giggled in pleasure.
“Now, when fate presents you a hidden door, you open it. When fate hands you a hidden stairway, you climb it, rather excitedly, even if it is littered with cobwebs and spiders and you are half convinced the bloody planks below your feet might splinter into dust and plunge you to your death. Even when you stub your toes on some old trunk, you just keep going.”
Emily had stilled beneath him.
“Wait. Did you say trunk? As in an old steamer trunk?”
He eyed her questioningly. “Yes. It was right near the top of the staircase.”
“It was moved. The trunk, it wasn’t where I left it. Someone must have moved it.”
“You’ve seen this trunk before?”
She blinked at him and exhaled slowly, summoning up the courage to tell him how she had first found the trunk. He had buried his face in the pillow and was laughing by the time she finished her tale.
“But the trunk,” she cried, smacking him on the shoulder. “If you didn’t move it, who did?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t suppose?”
“What? That Nick lugged the thing himself? Or Nora? No, I am done supposing with this house. It could have been Sid, for all we know.”
Emily made a face. But the wheels were turning in her head. “Go on with your story. I want to hear the ending,” she said distractedly.
“I found you. You know the rest of the story. And now I’m here.”
“And now you’re here,” she answered.
Suddenly the air felt different in the room. He became aware of their naked skin touching, of the rise and fall of their chests. He knew what would happen next. But it couldn’t. Not yet.
“Emily, I need you to understand something.”
Their noses were almost touching, her breath mingled with his, their lips so, so close.
“When I make love to you…when we make love…it needs to be somewhere we can be completely alone. Where no one can interrupt. Where we can stay in bed all day and all night. Where what I will make you feel…what I will make you whisper and cry out…can only be heard by me.”
In the moonlight, her skin glowed pearlescent like the inside of a shell, her eyes wide.
“I have to leave you before I break all the promises I’ve made to myself.”
“Please. Don’t go yet.”
He hesitated. He shut his eyes, hoping that if he could not see her, he would be able to walk away. He knew she was asking him to stay in ways he couldn’t. Stay in this bed. Stay in San Francisco. Stay.
Things had to be different with Emily. They had to be. As much as he craved her to the point of madness, as much as he was at war with himself not to take her right now—to take all of her, over and over again—he needed this moment to be different. They needed to be different.
“Sing to me.”
The simple request made a rush of relief break from his lips. Yes, that he could give her tonight. Every night, if she asked. He sang until her breath passed into sleep.
When at last he took himself away from her, his mind was a whirl of every emotion; he badly needed air. He slipped back into the hallway and shut the door to her wardrobe, exhaling heavily against it. Eager to put a safe distance between them, he retraced his steps to the stairway. Andrew had almost reached it when he spotted the trunk. Nora’s trunk.
Something about it, something he couldn’t quite place, held his attention as he approached it. With a growing interest, his hands ran over the leather straps, the hammered studs, the faded travel labels. It was old, no doubt, and well-traveled based on its wear and the preponderance of stickers. He smiled and knelt down before it, oblivious to all around him.
Filled with the same fascination that coursed through him as he stood before Nora’s niche at the Columbarium, he hastily flipped open the clasps, but with an ease that felt like he’d done it countless times before. As the lid rose a familiar odor assaulted his psyche. He teetered on his knees in shock. Without warning, memories like an old movie, cut up and out of focus, lashed across his eyes.
A seaside. Cliffs. An old hotel.
He blinked, trying hard to capture at least one of the images. Then from the depths of some long hidden place, a woman’s scream pierced the night, wailing and horrible. “Nooooo!”
He fell back onto his hands. They skinned on the splintered floor; his heart blazed in cold and painful beats. He could barely breathe.
“Nooooo!”
The pain was excruciating; blazing hot needles plunged in his eyes. He threw his hands to his temples and nearly screamed. The shrieking wouldn’t stop. They lurched like twisted, screeching metal, an endless cry of anguish.
“No,” he screamed back. “Stop!”
When he thought he could take no more, that the pain would tear him apart, it ceased. Then blackness, nothing. Silence. Just a trunk in the dark hallway.
“Christ,” he muttered and scrubbed his face with his trembling hands. “Christ.” It was the same awful screaming that had assaulted him at the library. The same voices, the same tortured helplessness.
Tentatively, as though he were approaching a wild animal in a cage, he went back to the trunk. He reached out like it was a hot stove, daring to touch it again.
Nothing.
He threw his hands against the sides, taunting it, striking it for the pain it had inflicted. Still nothing. In a burst of fierceness, he threw open the top. It was empty. His hands reached down and knocked hard against the base of it, and a dull echo sounded. It was a false bottom. He wrestled with the panel, gouging his fingers into the small space lining the edges, prying hard until it gave way, breaking free into his hands. He tossed it away where it rattled to a stop on the splintered floor.
Not knowing what he would find, he peered down into the trunk, torn between dread and expectation.
“Well, bloody hell,” he muttered and rocked back on his legs, shaking his head in disbelief as he reached down and pulled out a stack of letters. They were bundled in a red ribbon—that was all. No bones, no blood. Only letters.
They were addressed in a florid script that was difficult to decipher in the dim light. His heart sped up as the name came into focus:
Mr. Nicholas Chamberlain
of the Chamberlain Detective Agency.
The return address: Miss Noreen Thomas.
Nora. In a rush of excitement he left the trunk behind, and with an armful of letters he rushed down into the pantry. After he shut the door behind him with a definitive click, he turned on the light, grabbed a bottle of water from a nearby shelf, and sat down on the pantry floor. Too keyed up to possibly contemplate sleep, he took a long drink and hungrily eyed the envelopes that lay in his lap.
They were pricey by the looks of them, made of fine cardstock and of an elegant design, and they still held of a hint of lavender. He quickly opened the first on the stack:
April 13, 1933
Dear Mr. Chamberlain,
I will be hosting a birthday party for my dear friend, Lillian Hellman, this Saturday evening at eight o’clock at the Sir Francis Drake. You may consider it forward of me, but it would be a fine thing if you could attend. There will be copious amounts of martinis and stimulating conversation. You may wish to partake of both, or the former only.
Sincerely,
Noreen Thomas
...
He hurriedly read the next.
...
May 1, 1933
Dear Mr. Chamberlain,
Thank you for your recommendation of the spiritualist and medium, Mr. Kowacz. While his turban and accent were quite impressive, his results were not. He informed me I have not one, but two ghosts now. Either he is a magician capable of pulling them out of said turban, or he intends to grease his way into my heart—or so was the sentiment expressed by him—although with the Hungarian accent, who is to know?
I also wish to thank you for the bouquet of calla lilies. They were delivered earlier this week, black bows and all. While I realize the humor behind them, you should know I adore them. They remind me of your scrawny neck.
I remain, your annoying client,
Miss Noreen Thomas
...
He placed the letter aside as his eyes raced to the following.
...
June 26, 1933
Dear Mr. Chamberlain,
No, I will not go out with you to hear Mr. Armstrong play. No, I will not accompany you to the races, and no, I will not fly off with you to Mendocino.
Please leave me alone. One more word of advice: I am available next Saturday night for cocktails. And only if you say please and arrive on time.
Noreen Thomas
...
He read more, an observer to a charming, sophisticated, and witty war of words. At long last he laid his head back against a sack of rice and closed his eyes, the letters still in his hands, a smile on his lips. He imagined all the hoops Nora had made Nick jump through. How he had probably never met a woman like her in his life. How maddeningly in love he must have been. He yawned and felt, not for the first time, an extraordinary kinship with a ghost.
15
* * *
“NEIL CALLED,” CHRISTIAN YELLED out to Andrew as he came through the front door from his morning run. “He told Simon he wants to meet us for lunch today if we can make it—with an associate friend of his. Isn’t that awesome?”
“Tremendous,” Andrew said, assuming it would be yet another promoter or some club owner. He found Christian in the kitchen eating cold pizza out of a box. He angled around him to reach the sink and grab a glass of water, and Christian eyed him suspiciously while he drank.
“You seem rather preoccupied.”
“No. Just buzzed. It was a good run. Brilliant about Neil, though.”
“Since when do you think anything about Neil is brilliant?”
Andrew shrugged and backed up to make way for two workmen who were carrying a ladder. They looked this way and that as if expecting the Grim Reaper to descend at any second.
“First day?” Andrew asked them, to which they nodded grimly and scurried through the kitchen and out the back door.
“You realize you scared the living bejesus out of me last night,” Christian said, taking a seat at the counter. Andrew continued to sip his water, careful to study the calendar taped onto the refrigerator. “I mean, it’s one thing to whip open the pantry door in the middle of the night hoping to find a box of Oreos, but it’s a whole other deal to trip over a half-naked guy dead asleep on the floor covered in scratch marks and letters. I swear to God Almighty, between these ghosts, ashes in bongs, and things going bump in the night, I might as well move back into the basement of my tante’s shop.”
“Zoey wouldn’t allow it,” Andrew said, the glass still at his lips.
“Probably.”
“Funny thing, though,” Andrew pondered aloud, “but did I or did I not notice two glasses of milk and some Oreos near the ice box last night? And if I recall, you don’t fancy them. More of a Famous Amos man.”
“Fig Newtons, actually.”
“Case closed.”
“You will explain all of this when I get you drunk someday,” Christian added.
“You are going to have to get me royally pissed to even have a prayer of getting any information. And then I will be forced to kill you. So what time and where is lunch?”
“Huh?”
“Lunch. I trust Simon got the details this time—remember when he said he’d meet us by the taxi stand in Manhattan?”
“Yeah, the one on the corner.” Christian shook his head and laughed. “It’s at two. Why don’t we all go together—or are you going to be lurking in the foyer for Emily till then?”
Andrew refilled his glass. “No, I believe Emily can take care of herself…frighteningly well, in fact.” He took a long swig to hide his smile. “Actually, I’d love to do some writing, and I need to run some errands, so text me the address and I’ll meet you over there, okay? Where are you taking Zoey tonight, by the way?”
“Hell if I know. That girl’s got high expectations.”
Andrew toasted him. “Here’s to high expectations, then.”
“Is there something about that pantry that I should know?” Christian pressed, clearly too intrigued to leave it alone.
“Trust me. It doesn’t contain Fig Newtons.”
Andrew placed his glass down and headed off to his room to grab the stack of letters, then shot upstairs to the conservatory. He was impatient to finish reading them and wanted the privacy. It was still far too early for Emily to be awake, and although he was looking forward to presenting them to her later, a piece of him wanted to read them on his own first.
Bright light greeted him when he opened the conservatory door; it streamed in through the glass ceiling and washed the room in blue. The worn wicker furniture and orchids were back in place after the party, and he noticed the keyboard still sat near the door to the roof. Good, he thought as he made his way to a couch, maybe when he was done he could get some writing finished as well. But no sooner had he taken another step than his head snapped back in the direction of the keyboard. Surprisingly, the bench before it was occupied.
There sat a dapper, mustached, and vaporous man who crooned a heart-felt rendition of “Hong Kong Blues.”
Fear was Andrew’s first reaction. His heart skipped a few beats as though he had been splashed with ice water. He had seen Nick before, but that was only for a split second before he disappeared from the bathtub. Now the ghost seemed in no mood to vanish any time soon.
“Funny, I’ve heard that somewhere before.” Andrew steeled himself and approached the suave apparition who had closed his eyes while he tinkled the ivories, shimmering away. Overcoming his fear, he gestured toward the bench. “Mind if I take a seat?”
Nick shook his head and continued to play. With a bit of trepidation, Andrew sat down next to him. He didn’t know what to expect sharing a piano bench with a dead man. He expected it to be cold, which it was, disconcerting, which it definitely was, but not oddly familiar, which it was as well, beyond a doubt. Maybe it was because, even as a ghost, Nick could still play a mean accompaniment.
Andrew took the counterpoint, and a small smile broke at the side of Nick’s mouth—or vapory what-have-you.
“That’s part of the plan, yes? We need to find you?”
Nick didn’t respond.
“You don’t happen to hang out on Haight Street at night, by the way? Very different wardrobe, though.” The chill Andrew felt made him recall the shopping cart man he had run into after he had stormed out of the club in his frantic search for
Emily, but by the looks of things, Nick didn’t do homeless.
“So, how’d you like Grant’s tomb?” Nick asked, changing the key and the subject.
“What? Grant’s—oh, you mean the Columbarium?”
“Right in one.”
“Well…it definitely had its moments.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Andrew glanced over at him and back again feeling slightly unnerved. “A bit of clarification here. You, you…spirits converse with each other?”
“We may.”
“But you can’t speak to Nora because…”
“People have their theories.”
“Which are?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
“Which them? Who do we need to ask?”
“You’re a smart kid, figure it out.”
Andrew huffed in frustration, tired of getting the spectral run around.
“You know that Nora’s downstairs now. We, well we—”
“Moved her to her summer home? She must be thrilled.”
“It doesn’t bother you? Her being here, so close?”
“Those ashes you brought into this place, that’s not the woman I love. Gravel’s not my type, I’m afraid.”
“Really?” Andrew’s tone was unconvinced. “What’s your type then?”
“Redheads with wicked jaws.”
Instantly, the image of Emily and her beautiful lips, kneeling in front of him, assaulted his memory. He nearly fell off the bench.
“You know, Andy my boy, in my day that kind of behavior either warranted a twenty on the nightstand or a diamond bracelet around the wrist.”
“How, how the hell did you—”
“You’re a spirit yourself, kid, in there somewhere. And I hate to tell you, but your aura is showing.”
Andrew glanced down at his body then back at Nick, fighting to keep his mind away from the memory of Emily’s nails as they dragged down his chest and how her tongue and the heat of her mouth felt…
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 23