Emily's Ghost (28 page)

When he released her, he
said, "I'll come to your room."

She answered simply,
"Yes."

By midnight the neighbors
had gone, the dishes were done, and all the lights were out. Emily
stood at the window of her darkened room, staring out at the green
and red running lights of ships steaming silently on the sound. Her
thoughts were a dim haze of expectations, hardly thoughts at
all.

She wanted Lee so much.
Sometime in the next little while he would steal into her room and
take her in his arms and they would make love. She'd been waiting
for this, she realized, since the last time he'd taken her in his
arms. And after tonight she would begin to wait for the next time.
The thought that she might spend most of the rest of her life
waiting filled her with a kind of melancholy panic. She was no
longer a whole person; there was a continuing, aching void in her
that only Lee Alden could fill.

She sighed deeply.
Okay. He's the cream in my coffee. Now
what?
It wasn't as though she had a future
with him. It wasn't as though he'd ever said he cared. She wrapped
her arms around herself, trying hard not to care in
return.

She wandered over to the
nightstand and picked up the ancient tick-tocking clock:
one-fifteen. There was a small television on the bureau; she
considered turning it on, then rejected the idea as too jarring to
her strange and pensive mood. She walked back to the window and let
herself become mesmerized by the hypnotic sweep of white light
flashing from the lighthouse on Nobska Point across the sound. When
the soft rap on the door finally came, Emily stayed where she was,
paralyzed by conflicting desires. She heard the door open, and then
Lee was behind her, slipping his arms around her, looking over her
shoulder at the nighttime traffic on the sea beyond.

"When I was a boy, all I
ever wanted to be was a tugboat captain," he murmured, rubbing his
cheek on the top of her hair. "It seemed like the perfect life:
absolute freedom, my own command, union pay." He laughed ruefully.
"I wonder where I went wrong."

"You still get Union pay,"
she quipped, suddenly, irrationally happy now that he was with
her.

"Yeah, but look at the
state of the Union; I feel guilty taking money from it." He nuzzled
the inside curve of her shoulder, leaving zigzag trails of heat
along her bare skin.

"Your
conscience should be clear," she said, drawing in her breath,
forgetting to let it out. "You voted against your last pay
raise."

"Uh-oh . . . an informed
constituent," he said with a smile buried low in his voice. "Then
you know I voted for an increase in your taxes." He began to drop
light, skimming kisses on the back of her neck.

"Oh-h-h . . . yes . . .
taxes . . ." she murmured, Playing along with their teasing
chatter, relishing the delay. "They say . . . nothing's . . . more
certain than—"

"-- an end to this," he
said in a husky voice, turning her around and kissing her
hard.

Emily's senses were white
hot. She'd been waiting for hours, quietly smoldering. In two short
minutes Lee had fanned those embers into flames. Whether this kind
of fire could cleanse and purify, she had no idea. It almost didn't
matter; she had no control over it anyway. She let herself be led
to the bed. She let him remove her thin gown. She watched by
moonlight as he stripped himself of the slacks and loose shirt he
wore. And then, at last, he was in bed with her and his kisses,
flame hot, were licking at the edge of her consciousness,
threatening meltdown.

"Ah, Lee ... more ..." she
cried in a low moan, knowing full well that she couldn't take much
more.

"Emily ... Emily ...
dearest ..." Lee was murmuring, his voice low with desire, "Emily,
I think I'm fall –- "

"Nobody beats Midas!
Nobody! Come in tomorrow and save!"

The television was on at
full volume, sending Emily's heart pitching through her lungs and
Lee rocketing from the bed toward the bureau. He slammed the on-off
toggle with his open palm, then switched on the small lamp that
stood alongside the set. Wide- eyed, he turned to Emily and
whispered, "Good God, we probably woke up half the house!" He
picked up the six-inch television by its handle and wiggled it.
"What the hell?"

Emily jumped out of bed
and threw Lee's pants at him. "Get dressed. Quick!" she cried,
perfectly aware of what was happening. "Every set in the house is
on!"
Damn Fergus! Damn him, damn him, damn
him!

"What're you talking
about? Why would -- " Lee cocked his ear toward the door. "Sweet
jeezuz. You're right."

Above the wail of wakened
children they heard several different television programs blaring
defiantly. The din was shocking, a horrible, illogical intrusion
into the peacefully sleeping house. Emily pulled a T-shirt over a
pair of shorts and ran out into the living room, where a color set
she hadn't even noticed before was featuring late-night bowling.
She rushed to the set and turned it off, watching frantically for
other signs of Fergus. If he was capable of such a mean, low deed,
he might be capable of much worse.

One by one she heard the
other televisions in the house silenced, until there was nothing
left but the sleepy whines and whimpers of the youngest children.
Grace and Hildie were in the bedrooms, soothing and reassuring
them. She had no idea where Lee was. There was nothing left for her
to do, so she headed back to her room. Whatever her mood had been,
it was decidedly foul now. When Mrs. Alden confronted her in the
hail, Emily was hard pressed to sound civil.

"What on earth is going
on?" Lee's mother wanted to know.

"What was on
your
TV—Dobie Gillis or
Cosby reruns?" Emily asked tersely. Her nerves were completely
exposed and raw; at any other time she would have been appalled by
her manners.

"There's no television in
my room," Mrs. Alden answered, taken aback. "What's happened?" she
repeated, gripping Emily's arm. In her pale robe, with her hair
unpinned, the elderly woman looked smaller and more fragile
somehow. And frightened.

"You needn't worry, Mrs.
Alden," Emily answered, forcing herself to calm down. "It's
nothing. It was some kind of ... of power surge, probably. The
televisions all malfunctioned."

"Malfunctioned? I never
heard of such a thing."

"It's the newer, more
electronic ones that do it. Mine at home goes on and off by itself
all the time," she said without irony.

"It sounds quite bizarre,"
Lee's mother said, keeping one ear cocked for danger. Emily
continued to stand in the dim hall, smiling inanely, until Mrs.
Alden pronounced herself reassured. "Everything seems to have
settled down," she whispered at last.

Emily said good night
again, but Mrs. Alden seemed to hesitate. "I suppose you think I'm
a nervous Nellie," she said. Before Emily could answer, she added,
"I'm not. But once, right after Lee was first elected, we had some
trouble here. A madman -- Lee called him a disenchanted voter --
broke into this place and vandalized it. He did terrible things,
truly vicious things.... Fortunately the house was closed up for
the season. But what if the children had been here with only their
mothers?"

Mrs. Alden clearly did not
expect an answer to her question. She shook her head and smiled
sadly, then switched on another wall sconce. "Good night, Emily,"
she said, and slipped back into her room.

Emily made a decision. She
could not stay in the house. The only safe thing was to pack and
leave. Immediately. Before Fergus got any other bright ideas. She
changed quickly into street clothes and packed her few things into
her canvas bag. She was on the telephone trying unsuccessfully to
arrange for a ride when Lee knocked and came immediately
in.

"Thank you anyway," Emily
said, and hung up.

Lee stared at the newly
made bed and her packed bag. "What's going on?"

"I wanted to tell you, but
I didn't know where you were." It was the best she could do for an
explanation.

"I was taking a quick look
around outside. Tell me what?"

"I have to go," she said,
lifting her bag from the bed and moving quickly as if she had a
plan.

Lee was dumbfounded. "Go
where? Why? How?" Automatically his hand reached out for the handle
of her bag, to stop her. His uncombed hair, drooping in sandy curls
over his forehead, made him look impossibly young and naïve. Yet
the look in his eyes, blue and steel, was anything but.

She could see that they
had reached a crisis point, but there was no turning back. "I've
got to get out of this house, for your sake. For all your sakes."
She tried to wrench her bag from his grip, but he held
on.

"Emily! What's the
matter
with you?" he
said, keeping his voice an undertone. Clearly he didn't want to
start another uproar.

She looked away, as if she
were being forced to tell him his dog had just been run over.
"Don't you understand about the televisions?"

"To be honest, no. Maybe
it's the cable hookup."

"Fergus turned them on!"
she said impatiently, angry that he refused to see the
obvious.

"Oh, not Fergus again," he
said wearily, loosening his grip. He walked away from her, running
his fingers through his hair, and paused in front of his beloved
view of the sound. "What is it with this phantasm -- this,
this
fantasy
of
yours? You're like a kid with a guardian angel -- "

"Trust me. Fergus is no
angel."

"All right, then," he
said, turning around and giving her an even look. "An imaginary
playmate. That's okay when you're young and wishing you had a
sister, but --"

"How stupid do you think I
am?" she asked, her voice rising. He made a shushing motion, and
she dropped into a controlled hiss. "If I were making him up, I'd
have made him a
her.
What the hell good is another man in my life?"

"He's not a man; he's a
figment!"

"That figment scared your
family half to death!"

"Come on, Emily. My nieces
will survive the Home Shopping Network."

"Don't do that, Lee," she
warned. "Don't treat this like a joke."

He sighed in frustration
and tried another tack. "Why would he want to scare little
kids?"

"He's not really
interested in scaring anyone. He just wants to distract
you."

"From?" Lee cocked his
head and gave her a slant-eyed, quizzical look. "This Fergus ...
this
ghost
... is
jealous of us together?"

Emily blushed deeply. "I
think so. It never would've occurred to me until last night, but
the way he looked . . . the things he said . . . yes," she said,
her voice dropping to a bare whisper. "I think so."

"Well,"
Lee said, totally at a loss. He sat down on the
edge of the bed, leaning his forearms on his thighs the way he had
at the séance. It was as if he were straining to see something that
wasn't there. He was so obviously
willing
to see it, but he was so
obviously unable to do it. "So Fergus is still in the picture.
Somehow, on the ferry, I had the idea that was all
over."

"That was my fault. I
misled you."

He looked up at her
sharply. "Why?"

She was standing next to
him, still holding her canvas bag, poised for flight. "Because I
thought you wanted to be misled," she admitted. "You weren't
exactly thrilled the first time I trotted Fergus out. On the other
hand, you sure looked relieved when I said it was over."

He stood up then and took
her by the upper arms. His look was intense, searching. "How long
did you think you could keep him a secret from me?"

She smiled lamely. "Since
you can't see him -- for as long as it took."

"Took to solve the crime,
you mean." He nodded to himself, as if it all were becoming
clearer. "Son of a bitch," he said softly.

He let go of her arms
after a gentle, absent-minded rub and began to pace the room.
Immediately he stopped. "I take it that you've been investigating
the murder, then, and not the Newarth economy. So. How's it going?
Got your man yet?" He seemed to be listening to himself with
amazement. "Son of a bitch," he repeated, shaking his
head.

Emily shrugged. "It's
going okay. I have a couple of leads." He didn't look fully
focused, so she didn't bother going into details. As for the fire,
she had no intention of bringing it up; one blistering lecture was
enough.

"So. He's back," Lee
repeated, staring at the floor. "And he's, what, in love with you
now, is that it?"

"I didn't say that," she
said quickly, coloring a little. "I think he's maybe just jealous
of your, well,
physicality.
He misses sex the way he misses beer and
roses."

Lee cocked one eyebrow at
Emily. "He treats them all the same?"