Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

“The ghost.”

“You’re going to tell me, so tell me?” she said. She signaled for the waitress to bring her another, then, in her head, she conjured sad French accordion music playing, mimes and ballerinas entering the stage to act out Mike’s story, guys rhythmically kicking Gérard Depardieu in the kidneys as a backbeat, because fuck him, why did he have to be in everything French?

So he told her, about Concepción, about the other ghosts, about how they had only spoken to him, about the Friends of Dorothy, about all of it, and as he told her, she believed him, because his wasn’t even close to the most bizarre story she’d been part of, and then she realized . . .

“Oh my fucking god, the guy who paints the fucking bridge orange for a living is special and I get to go back to retail. Oh, fuck me. Fuck me roughly with a big spiky demon dick!”

“Huh?” said Mike, who hadn’t expected that particular reaction. ­“People are looking.”

“Fuck them!” Lily said. “They’re not special. I know, because I’m not special and I recognize the symptoms. Although all you Marina ­people think you’re fucking special, don’t you? You entitled fucks!”

The waitress was making her way over to try to settle Lily down, but Mike signaled that he had this and she went the other way.

“Concepción evidently thinks you’re special,” Mike said. “She said you would be able to help save them from the Ghost Thief.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Lily said.

“Maybe you’re supposed to find out,” Mike said. “And right now I need you.”

“What for? You’re the magic ghost-­talker guy.”

“I need you to talk me out of jumping off the bridge.”

Part Two

With nothing will be pleased until he be eased

With being nothing.

—­ William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act V, Scene V

10

Remembrance of Things Past

She was so slight that her body made barely a rise in the sheets, like a wave on a calm pond from a phantom wind—­her face might have been a skeletal mask laid upon the pillow for presentation, her long white hair brushed out to one side the way she liked it.

“You are trying to disappear,” Baptiste sang from the doorway, “but I see you.” He wheeled his mop bucket into her room.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Baptiste,” Helen said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Bonjour, Madame Helen,” said Baptiste. “Comment allez-­vous?”

“Pas trés bien. Je suis fatiguée, monsieur.”

“I won’t be long, then you can rest. Can I bring you anything, chère?”

“No, thank you. Thank you for speaking French with me, no one does that anymore. I spent my semester abroad in Paris, you know?”

She told him this every day he worked, and every day he replied, “Ah, the City of Light. So many delights. What, I wonder, is your favorite?”

And here, her answer often changed. “I loved walking through the Jardin du Luxembourg in the autumn, when the wind was blowing a little, and chestnuts would drop out of the trees and sometimes hit one of the old men who sat on the benches reading. Plop, right on the head.” She laughed, then coughed. “Now I’m the old one.”

“Nonsense, chère.” He was not so young himself, and by the end of his workday, gray stubble would show on his dark cheeks as if they had been dusted with ash.

“You want some oxygen?”

“Non, merci,” she said.