The Ghost in Love (24 page)

Danielle stared in disbelief at the teenager, then at the other woman. She repeated what she'd just heard to verify she'd heard it. “You
dreamt
you were in a car when a plane crashed next to you?”

“Yes. And a piece from it hit me here.” The girl pointed to her temple.

Danielle looked at her twin, ignoring the girl altogether. “This is true? I dreamt the accident when I was young?”

The twin nodded. “That's why I said you should have been asking all of them questions.”

“I
dreamt
that accident?”

“Down to the last detail.”

What the others told Danielle
finally made her weep. In the middle of someone else's answer, her head dropped to her chest and she began to cry. So many of their stories and memories she had forgotten. The amazing, beautiful dreams. The fears and hopes, even the questions. It felt as though she had forgotten everything interesting and important.

“How could it happen? How could I forget so much of my own life?” She addressed the question to a stable and mellow twenty-five-year-old version of herself. Uncomfortable with the question and the pleading tone of Danielle's voice, the other woman gave her a sympathetic look and walked away.

Danielle turned to her twin standing nearby and asked again, “How come we forget so much?”

The woman answered, “The question's not how: the question is
why
.”

“Yes, okay, then: Why?”

“Ty krasivaya.”

“What?”

“
Ty krasivaya
. Don't you remember that?”

“No.”

“It's Russian. It means ‘You are beautiful' in Russian.”

Danielle wiped rain and tears off her face. “
Tee
what?”

Her twin repeated the phrase slowly, as if she were a language teacher getting every bit of the pronunciation correct.
“Ty krasivaya.”

“No, I don't remember that.”

The twelve-year-old had been tagging along the whole time. Now she said, “It's what Mr. Malozemoff says. He says it sometimes when I go to his store to buy gum or something.”

That brought on a new torrent of memories of life at twelve for Danielle. Going to the candy store owned by Mr. Malozemoff, the thin Russian who always seemed to be standing in the doorway to the place, smiling and smoking. Sometimes he spoke Russian to the kids because it made them laugh. He liked and pitied Danielle. He'd heard that her parents were very strict and religious, plus it appeared she had few friends. So he once told the plain-looking girl that she was beautiful in Russian.
Ty krasivaya
. When he translated the phrase after she asked what it meant, she blushed. The next time she went to the store, she shyly asked him to write down that phrase for her. From then on, he would sometimes repeat it when she came in, but only if she was alone, because he didn't want to embarrass her. In Danielle's whole life he was the only person who ever told her she was beautiful. But, as is so often the case, long ago she had forgotten Mr. Malozemoff and his small, important kindness.

“How could I forget these things?” She paused to slow her breathing. “How can I remember them again after they're gone?” She looked at her twin and something dawned on her. “And how did
you
remember Mr. Malozemoff? If you're me ten minutes ago, I didn't remember him then.”

The twin said, “Because I'm history now:
your
history. After your
time is finished, you become just another part of Danielle Voyles's history. You join all the other parts. Then you know everything they know.”

“So there's me living now”—Danielle held her right index finger with her left hand—“and there's all of you. There's a wall separating us. You remember everything because you're all part of my past. But I only remember little bits and pieces because I'm living now.”

“Right.”

Mulling that over, the image of fireflies came to her mind. Danielle was not a person who thought in metaphors, but now she pictured her memories as fireflies. Those lovely summer evenings when she was a girl running around the backyard, catching some in a jar. Keeping them for a few minutes to watch up close before releasing the dots of soft light back into the night. They never seemed to mind. But sad now to think that all she remembered of her life—her entire
life
—was like a few flickering bugs in a jar.

“Lilacs.”

“What?”

“Lilacs. Every spring Mr. Malozemoff's store always smelled of lilacs. He kept a big bouquet of them on the counter so long as they were in season.” Danielle was pleased to have remembered this detail.

“You mean those kind of droopy purple flowers he has in his store? Those things are lilacs?” the girl asked.

“Yes. He kept a vase of them in the same place on top of the cigar counter. I remember that now. I want to remember more. I want to remember my life. How do I do it? How do I bring things back?”

Her twin pointed toward the women sitting at the four picnic tables. “Talk some more to them.”

“Something's wrong.”

“Now he tells us.”

The three stood on the sidewalk in front of Danielle Voyles's apartment building. Pilot had been with them until a few minutes before but then wandered off.

“Ben, this was your idea. You said she might be in trouble and that's why we came here. Now you say something's wrong. What are we supposed to do, go in and see if she's all right or not?”

“I'm telling you, something's wrong. Something else is
wrong
here. I don't even know if she's in there now. Coming over here, I was sure and I knew we had to help her. But now I don't know. Maybe that's why I thought she's in trouble. Something's changed. Something's different.”

“Great, that tells us a lot: ‘Something's different.' ”

“Cool the sarcasm awhile, willya, Ling? Let me figure it out.”

She started for the door. “We're wasting time if she really is in trouble. I'll just go in there and see.”

Ben reached and stopped her. “That's a bad idea. You can't do what you could before. Going in there could be dangerous.”

The ghost sneered. “What could happen—I might die?”

Still holding her arm, Ben pinched it hard.

“Yow!” Ling snatched the arm away and rubbed it. “Are you crazy? Why'd you do that?”

“To show you what pain is like. Which means it's the same for you, too, now. Yes, Ling, you
could
die, and it might be hideously painful. Do you know where old-ghosts-turned-human go when they die? I don't. Did they tell you that before you came here?

“Ben?”

He ignored German and continued staring at Ling to make sure she'd gotten his point.

“Ben.”

“What?”

“Look.” German was pointing down the sidewalk. Pilot was standing together with two other dogs, two cats, and what looked like several large rats underneath a street lamp. They appeared to be conferring.

The group of animals broke up and came toward the people. But a few feet away they veered off and made for the apartment building. Pilot passed closest but said nothing and didn't even look in their direction. When he was almost to the front door, he stopped, turned around, and came back. He spoke to Ben.

“We're going inside to look around. It's too dangerous for people in there now. Wait here till we come back.”

“Pilot—”

The dog turned around and trotted away.

All of the animals were from this neighborhood, so they knew Danielle's building well. First the rats went around back and entered through a small broken window in the cellar that they had used for a long time. After getting the all-clear from the rats, the cats followed.

Pilot stood halfway up the front yard watching to make sure they got into the building okay. That accomplished, he barked the signal to the others to proceed. Standing together on the front lawn specifically under one open ground-floor window, the other two dogs immediately started fighting. Loud and ferocious, they made it look and sound as if they were really trying to kill each other. But up close you could see that their bluster was feint-and-fake; they weren't doing any damage.

Soon the landlord of the building threw open the front door and came charging out, brandishing a broom in his hands. “Get outta here, ya mutts! Get away from my building!”

The dogs moved a little closer to the street but did not stop fighting, although the landlord was now trying to push his broom between them. When Pilot was sure the man's whole attention was turned the other way, the dog sidled into the building through the open door.

Rats and cats think differently
. Rats are much smarter animals but also awfully greedy and can be distracted by anything that is in their immediate self-interest. In contrast, cats generally take a more distanced view of things. They stop eating as soon as they're full. When anything bores them, they walk away without hesitation or concern for others' feelings. They are not diplomatic and do not suffer fools gladly. Felines find life both amusing and pitiable in equal measure. They don't see that as a contradiction, either. Isn't it possible to smile and sigh simultaneously?

When the rats entered the basement of Danielle's building, the first thing they searched for (although they never would have admitted it) was something to eat. Despite what they had promised to do for Pilot, they remained true to their rat-ness: eat first, investigate
second. They hit the basement floor sniffing for snacks and not Danielle Voyles. They had been in this building only a few days before but knew from long foraging experience that there was always the chance juicy morsels might have been dropped, forgotten, discarded, or left behind in the intervening period.

By the time these rats had covered the nooks and crannies of the basement, looking for treats, the cats were already on the staircase up to the ground floor. When all of the animals spoke together earlier out on the street, the rats had said that this landlord usually left the basement door open a crack so that his own cat could get in and out. They also said the man detested dogs, so a big rowdy dogfight on his front lawn was sure to draw him out of the building.

Both rats and cats have uncommon senses of smell but use them for distinctly different purposes. Rats are down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts smellers: they sniff the air only to detect imminent danger, food, or the potential mate. Right now is enough to them and the only thing that matters. If a male's horny and desires a certain female that recently gave birth, he'll eat her young and solve the inconvenience that way. Life's tough for a rat. Get used to it. Use your nose to find what's important, get it, and then get out, because everybody else hates you and wants you gone. No animal can smell danger or a threat faster or better than a rat.

Pilot knew this when he called on them to help. He also knew, however, that he had to supplement their tunnel-vision pragmatism with the aestheticism of poets, and that's why he'd put out a “calling all cars” to any cats that happened to be in the neighborhood and willing to help. Cats smell the air the way professional wine tasters sample wine. They sip it in small bits and then whish it around in their heads while thinking about it. Only after due consideration do they exhale. Both kinds of animals can smell and distinguish many different elements
contained within one slip of air. But rats aren't interested in making those distinctions if they don't lead to immediate gain. Cats take individual odors so seriously that sometimes they'll pretend to be cleaning themselves thoroughly when in truth they're taking time to mull over a smell before coming to a conclusion about it.

Because he had already visited her apartment once, Pilot knew exactly what it and Danielle Voyles smelled like. He had described the smells to the others and asked them to find out if those scents were alive when they entered her place. Another major difference between animals and mankind: Animals can discern both a present and past tense for a smell. They know immediately if something is still there or not just by its odor in the air. That's why Pilot had asked both species to help. No animal smells hazard faster than a rat. But if Danielle was
not
in her apartment or was in danger, then Pilot wanted to hear the cats' conclusions after smelling the lay of her land.

Customarily cats, rats, and dogs despise each other. But Pilot had brought this group together today by formally issuing a call for “universal peace to overcome chaos,” or UPTOC. No animal in this part of the world had requested an UPTOC for generations, which was exciting. Because no matter what happened today, this event would cause waves all the way up to the highest levels of the animal kingdom. Some said the first call for an UPTOC had happened on Noah's ark. Otherwise, how else could so many different breeds of animals have survived together in such a small space without ten kinds of catastrophe and carnage and the direst consequences of survival of the fittest? Others believed that UPTOC began much earlier, perhaps in the age of the dinosaur. No one could be certain.

When they are young, all animals are taught how to make the call. But few have done it because it is too risky and dangerous. An UPTOC made at the wrong time or for the wrong reason could
reveal to mankind one of nature's great secrets: animals—
all
animals—understand one another when necessary. At birth, every species is taught two languages: its own and the universal. Only mankind forgets this universal language by the time it is old enough to speak.

The old woman was coming out of her apartment when she saw the first cat down the hall. She did not like cats. She did not like animals. She did not like much of anything on this earth, but particularly not cats. They were dirty, wanton, and loud. They were moochers. They took everything from you and then they died. It was the same thing with men. But at least men spoke the same language as you and once in a while they were nice to cuddle with. Who wanted to cuddle a ball of furry dirt?