The Ghost in Love (2 page)

They had been so much in love, equally and passionately. Like a spider web that you walk into, it is not so easy to get all the tendrils of real love off after you have passed through it.

Early in their relationship, they had seen the Cary Grant film
The Awful Truth
, about a couple that splits up but, by sharing custody of their dog, reconcile because of their abiding love. Neither German nor Ben liked the movie. But now it stuck on the walls of both their heads like a glowing Post-it note because some of the story had come to pass for them.

They had contact now only because of the dog. Both regarded Pilot as their adopted child and friend. Ben had given it to German on their third date. He had gone to the town animal shelter and asked to see whatever dog had been there the longest. He had to repeat that request three times before the attendants believed him. The whole thing was German's idea. It was the first of many of her ideas that effortlessly touched Benjamin Gould in the middle of his soul. Several
days earlier, she'd said she was going to buy a dog that no one wanted. She was going to the dog pound soon and, sight unseen, buy whichever dog had lived there longer than any of the others.

“But what if it's a skeez?” Ben asked half-seriously. “What if it's got a terrible personality and dread diseases?”

She giggled. “I'll take it to a veterinarian. Skeez and disease are okay. I just want to give it some kind of nice life before it dies.”

“And if it's ferocious? What if you get a biter?” Ben asked these questions but was joking. He was already a convert.

At the animal shelter they took him to see a dog they'd named Methuselah because it had lived there so long. Methuselah did not lift its head from the floor when the stranger stopped in front of its cage and peered in. Ben saw nothing but entry-level dog. If it had any extras, he sure didn't see them. There was not one thing special about this animal. No soulful sensitive eyes. No puppy's adorable, rollicking enthusiasm. It did no tricks. If it had a shtick, cute wasn't part of it. All the employees at the shelter could say about this uninteresting mixed breed was that it was housebroken, quiet, and never caused trouble. No wonder any prospective owners had rejected it. Every single sign indicated this bland mutt was nothing but a dud.

Although he had little money, Ben Gould bought Methuselah the dud. The dog had to be coaxed from its cage and out onto the street again for literally the first time in months. It did not look at all happy. Ben had no way of knowing that he'd bought a skeptic and a fatalist that didn't believe anything good came of anything good. At the time of its adoption, Methuselah was past middle age. It had lived a difficult life but not a bad one. It had had three previous owners, all of them forgettable. On occasion it had been kicked and beaten. Once it had been struck a glancing blow by a passing truck. It survived, limping for weeks afterward, but it survived. When
picked up by the dogcatcher, it was relieved more than anything else. At the time it had been living on the street for three months. From past experience it did not trust human beings, but it was hungry and cold and knew they were able to remedy that. What the dog did not know was that if it was taken to the wrong kind of animal shelter, it would be killed after a short time.

But it was lucky. In fact this dog's great turn of life luck began the day it entered this particular haven. The place was funded entirely by a rich childless couple who loved animals above everything else in the world and visited it frequently. As a result, none of the stray animals brought there was ever euthanized. The cages were always spotlessly clean and warm. There was ample food and even rawhide chew bones, which Methuselah found disgusting and ignored.

It ate and slept and watched for the next three months—a great career move, because it was missing a miserably cold and snowy winter outside. It did not know what this place was, but so long as it was fed and left in peace, then it was an adequate home. One of the joys of being a dog is that they have no concept of the word “future.” Everything is right now, and if right now happens to be a warm floor and a full stomach, then life is good.

Who was this man
pulling on its leash? Where were they going? They had walked many blocks through blinding, blowing snow. Methuselah was old enough that the bitter cold pierced his bones and joints. Back home in the warmth of the animal shelter, the dog could go outside whenever he wanted but rarely did in mean weather like this.

“We're almost there,” the man said sympathetically. But dogs do not understand human language, so this meant nothing to the now
wretched animal. All he knew was that he was cold and lost, and life had just turned hard again after that pleasant respite in the shelter.

They were two blocks from German Landis's building when it happened. After looking both ways, Ben stepped off the sidewalk into the street. Slipping on the snow, he lost his balance. Arms windmilling, he began to fall backward. Startled by this sudden wild movement, Methuselah leapt away and jerked hard on the leash. The man tried to stop his fall while at the same time keeping the dog from bolting out into the street and being hit by a car. As a result of his body going in so many directions at once, Ben fell much harder than he might have if he'd just gone down from the slip. The back of his head hit the stone curb hard with a loud, thick thud, bounced, and then hit it again just as hard.

He must have blacked out then, because the next thing he knew, he was on his back looking up into the concerned faces of four people, including a policeman who held the dog's leash.

“He opened his eyes!”

“He's okay.”

“Don't touch him, though. Don't move him till the ambulance gets here.”

Across the street, the ghost stood in the snow watching this, utterly confounded. A moment later it fizzled and flickered like a sick television set and disappeared. Methuselah was the only one to see it, but ghosts are nothing new to dogs so the animal didn't react. He only hunkered down into himself and shivered some more.

The Angel of Death looked
at the ghost of Benjamin Gould and shook his head. “What more can I tell you? They've gotten very clever.”

They were at a table in a crummy turnpike restaurant near
Wallingford, Connecticut. The Angel of Death was nothing special to look at: it had manifested itself today as a plate of someone's finished meal of bacon and eggs. Egg yolk was smeared across the white plate. Inside this smear were scattered bread crumbs.

It was midnight and the restaurant was almost empty. The waitress stood outside sharing a cigarette with the cook. She was in no hurry to clear the table. Having found the Angel of Death here, the ghost of Benjamin Gould had manifested itself as a fat black fly now sitting in the egg yolk.

The plate said, “When Gould hit his head on the curb, he was
supposed
to die. You know the routine: cracked skull, intercranial bleeding, and death. But it didn't happen.

“To oversimplify, think of it as a massive virus that had infected our computer system. Afterwards, a whole bunch of similar glitches popped up across the grid and we knew we were under attack. Our tech guys are working on it. They'll figure it out.”

Unsatisfied by this explanation, the ghost/fly paced back and forth across the drying egg yolk, its little black spindly legs getting yellow and gooey. “How can
Heaven
get a virus in its computer system? I thought you were omniscient.”

“So did we until this happened. Those guys in Hell are getting cleverer all the time. There's no doubt about that. Don't worry, we'll work it out. For now, though, the problem is you, my friend.”

Hearing this, the fly stopped pacing and looked down at the plate. “What do you mean?”

“There's nothing we can do about you until we fix this glitch. You've got to stay here till then.”

“And do
what
?” the fly dared to ask huffily.

“Well, doing what you're doing, for one. You can continue being a fly for a while and then maybe change into a person or a civet
maybe . . . Changing identities can be lots of fun. And there's other pleasant things to do on earth: learn to smoke, try on different kinds of cologne, watch Carole Lombard films . . .”

“Who's Carole Lombard?”

“Never mind,” the plate said and then mumbled, “She's reason enough for you to stay here.”

The fly remained silent and unmoved.

The plate tried to change the subject. “Did you know that Ben Gould went to school in this town? That's why I'm here now: to do some checking up on his history.”

But the fly wouldn't be sidetracked. “How long will this take? Just how long will I have to stay here?”

“In all honesty, I don't know. It could be awhile. Because once we find the computer virus, then we're going to have to run a check of the whole system.” The plate said this lightly, knowing full well that it was on spongy ground here.

“ ‘Awhile' meaning how long—a year? A century?”

“No, no, not that long. The human body is built to physically last only seventy or eighty years, ninety at the most. There are exceptions, but not many. I would say Benjamin Gould will live no more than another fifty or so. But if you don't mind some advice, I would suggest that, while waiting, you go and stay with him. With the right kind of guidance, he could skip having to live a few lifetimes and move several steps up the ladder.”

“I am not a teacher, I'm a ghost—
his
ghost. That's my job. Read the job description.”

The Angel of Death considered this and decided it was time to get to the point. “All right, then, here's the deal. They've decided—”

“
Who's
decided?”

If the plate could have made a face it would have pursed its lips in
exasperation. “You know very well who I'm talking about—don't play dumb.
They've
decided that because it might take a while to sort out this virus problem and you're stuck here through no fault of your own, they're offering you a chance to try something untested just to see if such a thing works: if you can somehow get through to Benjamin Gould and help make him a better person while he's alive, then you won't have to come back to earth and haunt things after he dies. We know how much you hate fieldwork, so if you succeed here, you can stay in the office and work there in the future.

“We don't know how much longer he'll live, because he was scheduled to die from the fall that day. Now the matter of his fate is anyone's guess. That means there's no telling whether you have a lot of time to work on him or only a little.”

The ghost was genuinely surprised by this offer and paused to let the intriguing proposal sink in. It was just about to ask, “If I don't come back here to haunt him, what will I do instead in the office?” But the waitress came to the table, saw the fly in the egg yolk, and whacked it dead with an old newspaper.

Somewhere in everyone's inner city
is a cemetery of old loves. For the lucky contented few who like where they are in their lives and who they're with, it is a mostly forgotten place. The tombstones there are faded and overturned, the grass uncut; brambles and wildflowers grow everywhere.

For other people, their place is as stately and ordered as a military graveyard. Its many flowers are well watered and tended, the white gravel walks have been carefully raked. All signs indicate that this spot is visited often.

For most of us, though, our cemetery is a hodgepodge. Some sections are neglected or completely ignored. Who cares about these
stones or the old loves buried beneath them? Even their names are hard to remember. But other gravestones there
are
important, whether we like to admit it or not. We visit them often—sometimes too often, truth be told. And one can never tell how we'll feel when these visits are over: sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier. It is entirely unpredictable how we'll feel going back home to today.

Ben Gould rarely visited his cemetery. Not because he was particularly happy or content with his life, but because the past had never held much importance for him. If he was unhappy today, what difference did it make if he was happy yesterday? Every moment of life was different. How did looking or living in the past genuinely help him to live in this minute, beyond a few basic survival tricks he'd learned along the way?

In one of the first long discussions they ever had, Ben and German Landis disagreed completely about the significance of the past. She loved it. Loved looking at it from all angles, loved to feel it cross her right now like a thick midday shadow. She loved the past's weight and stature.

“
Stature?
What stature?” Ben asked skeptically, thinking she was joking. The memory of the delicious sandwich you ate for lunch is not going to take away your hunger four hours later. On the contrary, it will only make the hunger worse. As far as he was concerned, the past is not our friend.

They argued and argued, neither convincing the other that he or she was wrong. It became a joke and eventually a stumbling block in their relationship. Much later, when they were breaking up, German tearfully said, “In six months you'll probably think of me and our relationship about as often as you think of your third-grade teacher.”

But on that subject she was 100 percent wrong.

The great irony that held both Ben Gould's life and apartment
captive these days was that he lived with not one but two ghosts, because German Landis haunted him too. He went to bed thinking about her and minutes after waking every morning he started thinking about her again. He couldn't stop himself, damn it. It wasn't fair. He had no control over it. Their failed relationship was an insistent mosquito buzzing close around his head. No matter how much waving away he did, it never left or stopped irritating him.

He was at his desk, staring at his hands, when the doorbell rang that morning. He was wearing only underpants and nothing else. He knew it was she. He'd known she was coming but had purposely chosen not to get dressed. In recent meetings with his ex-girlfriend, Ben had grown increasingly remote and sullen, which only made the air between them dense and uncomfortable. Sometimes it got so bad that German thought, Oh, just let him keep the damned dog and forget it. At least that way I won't ever have to see him again. But Pilot was hers; Ben had given him to her as a present. She loved the dog as much as he did. Why surrender only because her idiotic ex made her uneasy for five minutes every few days when she came to get Pilot?