A Bride Worth Billions (31 page)

The first time it happened, he was drawing up a plan for a house that was to be built on a cliff. He’d done the ocular, and the site was beautiful. It overlooked the city, and the ground was solid enough to allow an anxiety-free construction. There would be large bay windows on that side of the house, though the cliff itself would be inaccessible from the exterior. That would minimize any accidents, especially since the clients were parents to a small child.

He was sitting at his desk, buried in images of this beautiful house when what felt like a draft blew past him. He raised his head and noted curiously that the apartment’s windows were shut. Chalking his slight shiver up to exhaustion, he’d leaned back on his red-cushioned office chair and yawned.

That was when he felt it again, and this time it blew straight into his ear. The gust was cold enough that it startled him out of his chair. Looking around almost wildly, he raised a hand to cover and warm his ear.

When nothing stirred in the apartment, he left his desk and prepared for bed.

Something had started creeping into his dreams, and it took no shape or form. It was there in every single one, calling,
Joel, Joel,
in a breathy, unfamiliar woman’s voice. It didn’t matter if his mind was simply rehashing the day’s events as he slept, or if he was dreaming about goldfish and boogeymen; that voice seemed to be coaxing him back to waking. Sometimes it succeeded, and he would wake up with a start, blinking anxiously and wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep.

One morning he had woken up just like that, yanked gently out of restfulness. He tried for a few minutes to fall asleep again, but his suddenly active mind had other plans. He dragged himself to the bathroom, leaning tiredly over the sink.

Joel, Joel,
that voice called to him again. His eyes opened wide almost immediately, all traces of sleep gone from his expression. He shook his head, thinking he was still dreaming. He
couldn’t
be awake. That voice wasn’t part of the real world.

Joel,
it giggled patiently. In trepidation, he realized that the voice was coming from the bathroom mirror above the sink, and all he needed to do was raise his gaze to see whose it was. He mustered the courage to do that, but all he saw in the mirror was his own reflection—pale, tired, and half-crazed.

On a Saturday afternoon as rainy as his first day in the apartment, she appeared to him. Not in a dream, not in the misty bathroom mirror, but right there in his old couch, looking as real as flesh and blood. She had reddish brown hair, blue eyes, and peach-colored lips.

One moment he was eating cereal, watching cartoons alone, and the next he was slowly turning his head to the woman laughing beside him. The cereal bowl fell. Milk and cornflakes spilled all over the old, dark green rug. He was frozen in terror, eyes wide, bowl-empty hands still raised in mid-air. He watched the light from the television screen change rapidly in her ocean blue eyes.

She turned to him, feminine laughter trickling down to a gentle smile. “Hello, Joel,” she said.

There was a scream in his throat that wouldn’t come out. He forgot to blink, and the cool air began to dry his eyes.

The smile disappeared from her lips, and her eyebrows knit into a worried frown. “Joel?”

Finally, his mouth and vocal chords remembered how to produce sound. “What… Who… Who are you!” He thought he saw a sheen of tears cover her eyes, her lower waterline reddening.

“Don’t yell at me.” He recognized her voice. He had been dreaming about it for weeks, and it sounded airy and otherworldly even though she was right there in front of him, long legs outstretched and resting on his low coffee table, indigo dress spread on his couch cushion.

But the longer he looked, the less she seemed real. He found things inconsistent with the laws of physics. The couch didn’t seem to yield to any weight, and the cushion didn’t look depressed under her thigh. The fabric of her dress wasn’t lying on the upholstery so much as spilling into it like melted wax. And her eyes… Nobody’s eyes could be that blue.

“What are you doing in my apartment?” he managed to ask, voice shaking wildly.

“It’s
my
apartment. I live here… Or at least I used to.” She giggled, but the darkness of the joke was lost on him.

More out of fear than will, he jumped out of the couch and ducked behind its arm, shaking violently even as he slowly raised his head to peer over the rough upholstery. She was still there, staring at him. “H-how do you know my name?” he asked in a tiny voice.

“Um… I can read. You’ve got documents all over the place. You’re always drawing and tracing and stuff… Are you an architect?”

He nodded slightly but remained silent.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh stop looking at me like that. God I miss being alive. What I would give to be ogled again instead of being stared at like I’m a creature from a horror film. Come now. I’m the Casper kind: friendly.”

“So y-you’re a ghost?”

“I sure am, sweetheart. Dead fifteen years and counting.”

Then he screamed, ducking again behind the couch’s arm and leaning against it with his hands over his ears. He shut his eyes tight and breathed heavily in disbelief.
This can’t be real,
he told himself,
I’m seeing things. Everyone was right. I need to see a shrink. I’m not well. This isn’t—

“You’re not crazy,” said that echo-y, dancing voice. “I’m just as real as you, Joel.” There was a melancholy in her tone that somehow made his heart beat just a little less fast.

When he looked over the couch again, she was still there, looking at him forlornly.

“I’m real,” she said, sounding almost like she was trying to convince herself.

He swallowed twice before managing to speak again, “What’s your name?”

Her smile told him that she hadn’t heard that question in a long time. “My name is Deirdre.”

And then when he blinked, she was gone.

For the next few days, Joel didn’t see the ghost again. He was almost convinced that he had dreamt it all up when she started making her presence known.

Pens and papers he would leave in one spot were in a different place the next morning. Dishes he’d left in the sink would be dry and clean by the time he came back to the kitchen. When he forgot to light the incense, the entire apartment would smell like green tea and aloe vera anyway, the only evidence of their source the tiny cylinders of ash on the floor of the porcelain holder.

He refused to call out to her and ask her to come talk to him, but it wasn’t because he was afraid of ghosts. It was more that even in his head, he sounded crazy. Even with all the evidence he encountered daily, he would be damned if he started acknowledging a figment of his imagination.

One thing was for sure though: the apartment just didn’t feel as empty anymore. And… dare he say it? He was starting to feel just a little bit less alone too.

She…
it
had stopped pestering him in his dreams, so his sleep was actually restful. He wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, but he woke up everyday hoping that she would appear to him again instead of just leaving innocuous little presents. If she were right there in front of him, undeniably existent, then at least he could examine his sanity instead of just wondering about its state.

Things were like that for about a month before he finally gave in. It was his birthday, and he was feeling particularly despondent, like the world had forgotten him. His cell phone was silent the entire day, except for a client’s email asking him to revise a plan. There were no knocks on the door or letters in the mail.

“Deirdre?” he had whispered, almost to himself. He was sitting at the kitchen counter, running his finger along the cold green tiles.

He wasn’t expecting a response, but there she was all of a sudden, sitting across from him, looking exactly like the first time he’d seen her. Her elbow was propping up the hand she was resting her chin on. This close, he could see the dark blue ring in her otherwise light eyes. “Yes?” she said.

He raised his hand as if to touch her, and then pulled it back towards his chest. “Are you real?” he asked, afraid to blink for fear that she might disappear again.

“You tell me,” she said.

“It’s my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”

“I’d offer you a slice of cake, but… I don’t have cake.”

“And I don’t have a working digestive system.”

He made a loose shooting gesture towards her. “Right.”

“So, birthday boy, how do you want to celebrate?”

“I haven’t celebrated anything in a long time.”

“You shaved.”

“I shaved.”

“Was that a celebration?”

“Not really.”

“You haven’t shaved in weeks. And you shaved on your birthday.”

“It’s more of a… commemoration. Just to remind myself I’m still here.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I bug you just to convince myself of my being here.”

“Why
are
you still here?”

She sighed, the sound unmistakable though he was pretty sure no breaths came out of that pretty mouth anymore. “I was late for the bus? I don’t know… What do ghosts say? Unfinished business?”

“What unfinished business?”

She shrugged. “No idea. I didn’t so much as leave dirty dishes in the sink.”

He swirled around in his stool once and then rested his elbows on the counter, all business. “Well… Is there anything you regret? Or…”

She shook her head slowly a few times, looking like she was deep in thought. “No… I was living a full life. I was an in-house art director for a fashion magazine. I had lots of friends. My family loved me…”

“Boyfriend?”

“Well, I guess that’s one thing. I never had a boyfriend.”

The statement genuinely surprised him. “Never had a boyfriend? How does a woman who looks like you go through life never having a boyfriend?”

“The feminists would skin you alive for that. I dated, sure, but… I never fell in love with anybody. Just never happened for me.”

Maybe some people just weren’t built for falling in love,
he wanted to say,
and if you’re one of them, and you do it anyway, it can never end well
. “Why do you think that is?” he asked instead.

“Loved myself too much probably. Though I have to admit I’ve always wondered what it would be like.” She looked up, staring right into his eyes. The intensity of her gaze sent shivers down his spine. “This is starting to sound like a whisky kind of talk. You got any whisky?”

“You can’t eat cake, but you can drink whisky?”

“Not for me, dummy. For you. It’s your birthday. You’re allowed to get drunk.”

He did as he was bid, casually sliding off his stool, filling a short glass with ice cubes, and pouring himself some whisky. He didn’t let himself think about the absurdity of the situation, that he was following the suggestions of something his mind could only refer to as a ghost.

He kept the bottle near as they talked. Five refills later he was happily buzzed, and his questions became more brazen.

“What’s it like? Being dead?”

Her chest rose and fell. She was staring up at the pots and pans hanging from the cupboard above them, blue eyes seemingly brighter in her reverie. Her chin was resting on her palm, and her brown hair burned like fire in the dying afternoon light. He took a mental photograph of her looking just like that. He memorized the shape of her nose, the arc of her eyebrows, the mole right on her cheekbone. “Well,” she said, “it’s like living for a very long time. Longer than comfortable.”

That made sense to him even though he knew it shouldn’t have.

“I speak for myself of course,” she continued. “I’ve been stuck here for a decade and a half after all. It’s a very slow and boring existence—I think I’m allowed to use that word still. I’m a Sagittarius, you know, and I get very restless.”

“So this is hell for you? Being stuck here having nothing to do?”

“It’s not that I have nothing to do—our apartment is spotless, or haven’t you noticed—but going through walls loses its novelty very quickly after one is dead. At first I felt like a superhero. I spied on the people who lived here, and if I didn’t like them, I drove them out. Exorcists and paranormal ‘experts’ came and decided I was an evil spirit or some nonsense. The truth was that it was just really fun messing with people’s minds. Of course if it was a nice family or something, I left them alone. One time I scared the pants off a robber. The bum was trying to rob an old woman, can you believe it? A sweet, helpless, little old woman. And he was his neighbor, too! Oh, I was so mad… I gave him a scary movie-worthy fright, let me tell you. I made the lights flicker, and I froze his stealing butt off with my super ghostly breaths. Then I pulled down his pants and watched him trip all the way down the hall.” She laughed, and the sounds echoed eerily in the air. It didn’t faze him though; in fact he found himself charmed.

“Did you follow him into his own apartment?”

She shook her head, and he watched her brown-red curls slip in and out of the watery purple of her dress. “Oh, no. I can’t go past the walls of this apartment. That’s why those paranormal people really got on my nerves. I mean, I’m not evil! A girl’s gotta have some entertainment once in a while. I accidentally break a few glasses, and all of a sudden I’m evil? I was just trying to make some music, like in those documentaries with the water and the cups…” She paused, sheepishly smiling at him. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I’m sorry. I haven’t talked to anyone in a long time.”

He smiled drunkenly back at her. “No, it’s all right. No one’s talked to me in a long time. Was the last guy who lived here not into ghostly chats?”

“He was some twenty-two-year-old surfer wannabe. He showered once a week, and I don’t think the guy has ever been to a barber. I was not interested in making a connection.”

Joel laughed for the first time that day. “How long did he live here?”

“Two years, I think. Sometimes I would get so bored that I almost convinced myself to appear to him, but one look at those exposed, unwashed armpits, and I just… I couldn’t. I had never been so thankful I lost the ability to smell when I died, let me tell you.”

“I guess I should feel flattered then. You didn’t wait long before you decided I was worth scaring.”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” she said in a frustrated tone. “I just… I thought you needed a friend, that’s all.”

He downed the watered down whisky in his glass. “You’re very good at reading people.”

“What happened to you?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she leaned in closer, and he realized almost immediately that she was no longer sitting on the stool. He couldn’t see the lower part of her legs, but he was pretty sure she was floating off the ground.

Her question was making him think of things he would rather not think about, especially not in this heightened, drunken haze. His eyes began to feel hot.

“What happened to you, Joel?” She raised her pale arm, running a finger down his cheek. He tried to imagine warm flesh, but it just felt like a cold pin gently touching his skin. It wasn’t the most comforting sensation, but he leaned into it just the same. “What happened to you?”