Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)

And there was another gap. And Lily’s voice continued, her entire half of the conversation, and only her half, and as the recording ran, Sage ­started to squirm in her chair and Lily fought, fought very hard, not to grin, and was really thankful when the alarm on her phone went off so she could make a big deal out of ignoring the imaginary call.

They listened to the entire conversation, Lily’s side only. When it ­ended, Leonidas looked at Sage and said, “That’s it. That’s the entire call.”

“But she always does—­” Sage stopped. “I’ve heard her before, she’s so profane.”

“I think we can see what was going on here,” Leonidas said. He raised his eyebrows at Sage in what he probably thought was an open, understanding manner, but Lily thought they looked like two bristly caterpillars crouching, ready to pounce. He turned to Lily and she pushed back a little from his desk—­the eyebrows, they were sizing her up. “Lily, while I don’t approve of high jinks in the call center, I understand the point you were making with this little performance.”

“Uh, thanks, Mr. Leonidas,” Lily said. Point them at Sage. Point them at Sage.

“And, Sage, while you may not immediately see the efficacy of Lily’s method, she does get results, she connects with the clients, and ultimately, that saves lives. Perhaps less focus on her process and more on yours and we’ll be able to connect with more ­people. Help more ­people. Don’t you agree?”

Sage nodded, looking into the abyss of one of the buttons on her cargo pants.

It was a Leonidas ass-­chewing—­as close as he ever got to one. Lily resisted doing a booty dance of triumph against Sage’s stupid sweater because that would be immature, so she did it mentally and said. “Friends?” She stood and held out her arms to force Sage into hugging it out. And as she held Sage a little too long, feeling the slight woman get tenser and tenser as the embrace continued, even as she puffed Sage’s frizzy-­ass hair out of her mouth, exhibiting her victory—­nay—­her domination, Lily also warmed with the satisfaction of her own specialness.

She was the only one who could hear him—­the only one who could talk to the ghost of the bridge.

21

Killing Villarreal

Mike Sullivan hung from one of the vertical suspension cables by one hand. “Look, I’m as light as a feather. There’s hardly even a breeze and I’m standing straight out.”

“You are lighter than a feather, my love. Let go and you will not fall, and the bridge will not let you blow away.”

“Yeah, I think I’m going to wait on the letting-­go part.”

“You are beyond fear. And you are bound to the bridge just as you were drawn to it.”

“Just the same, you died of what, diphtheria? What if right after you died I was to offer you a big steaming cup of diphtheria, how would you feel?”

“They can put it in a cup now? It was invisible in my day.”

“A Cleveland steamer was a ship, in your day, my sweet Conchita.”

She reclined on the oceanside railing—­the walkway on that side of the bridge was closed most of the time, the foot and bicycle traffic confined to the bay side. Not that it would have mattered. ­People would have walked right through her and have only felt a chill, which was normal for the Golden Gate.

She said, “There is someone who needs to speak to you, my love.”

“Another one? I don’t understand. Why do they want to talk to me?” There had been scores of them, each telling a different story; a woman who was trapped overnight in a stationery cabinet with a janitor after the earthquake of 1989 and didn’t share the Pepsi she had in her purse, a man who hallucinated he was being pursued by a giant squirrel in John Muir Woods. The

only thing the stories had in common was some unresolved element, some lesson unlearned, something sad.

“I don’t know why, my love, any more than I know why I had to wait two hundred years for you, and that you have been on your way here for two hundred years, but I trust there is a reason. I have faith.”

“Faith? But all those years as a nun, didn’t you—­I mean, did it prepare you for this?”

“For this? No. True devotion is done not for a reward, but for the devotion itself. All my works, all my prayers, were for forgiveness of my selfishness, my weakness, because I could never love God as much as I loved you. What my time as a nun prepared me for was the damnation of being without you for these centuries, which I deserved. For this, you, here, with me, this joy, for this I was not prepared.”

Mike settled on the walkway beside her and took her in his arms; she embraced him, and in an instant they were a single entity—­the only thing the third ghost could see of them was a white gardenia that Concepción wore in her hair, glowing.

“This is where I’m supposed to talk to the guy, right?” said the third ghost.

Mike and Concepción divided like a luminous amoeba and each stood on the walkway.

“My love, I am going to drift,” she said. “Good day, sir.”

The third ghost, who wore a baseball uniform, tipped his cap. “She asks someone what a Cleveland steamer is, might be your last—­uh, whatever that was you two were doing for a while.”