Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (12 page)

Why she thought of Myra at that moment, she couldn’t say. But in her mind’s eye she could picture the old woman’s finger wagging at her, demanding she channel Tracy Lord. “Bring it on, C.K. Dexter Haven,” she could almost hear her whisper. “What’s the worst he can do?”

That was it. Let him bring on his worst; she would remain calm, cool and unruffled, which wasn’t difficult since the heat seemed to have gone out yet again, a particularly chill blast hitting her as she reached the door. She turned about on instinct but saw only the empty apartment. There was no one there. Yet at that instant she swore she felt a cold pressure on her arm like those of fingers, icy and singular, pushing her forward.

Shaking it off, she reached the attic door and hurried up a dark, narrow staircase to the conservatory. Another door waited for her at the top of the stairs. She swallowed hard and pushed it open.

Immediately bright sunlight flooded down upon her, forcing her to squint and raise her hands to her eyes. A ceiling of glass seemed the only thing between her and the endless blue sky. Before her lay a long room, the entire structure made of glass and wrought iron like a hothouse except it was perfectly pleasant. Dozens of half-dead orchids lined the shelves on the perimeter, and planters full of the remains of mottled geraniums and spidery ferns sat next to the assortment of abused wicker furniture that dotted the tile floor. At the other end, a landing exited to what Emily could only assume was a roof garden.

But Emily saw nothing beyond that. For there, set off near the corner, Andrew Hayes stood, his back turned away from all of them, silhouetted in sunlight like some formidable saint from Margot’s holy card collection.

Her first instinct was to laugh. It was all so ridiculous—a fantasy at best, a sickness at worst. But whatever it was, whatever emotion was wreaking havoc with both her mind and her body, would end the moment they exchanged words. It had to. It couldn’t survive past the first hello. If it did, she wasn’t sure she would.

As for her friends, she was relieved to see that they hadn’t abandoned their protective stance. Zoey had joined Christian, and although she had reignited her nonstop praise of the house, she kept her sights fixed on Andrew. Margot had gone so far as to pick up a particularly heavy potted orchid for examination, as if to test how far she could throw it if necessary.

“Zoey you’ve met. Margot and Emily,” Neil said, “I’d like you to meet your neighbors, Christian, Simon and, oh, there you are, Andrew. Ladies, may I introduce Christian Wood, Simon Godden, and Andrew Hayes. Gentlemen, Margot Larson and Emily Thomas.”

Emily watched Andrew shake hands with everyone until he came to her. “Emily,” he said oddly, and it sounded to her as though he were confirming her name. “Emily Thomas.”

His hand covered hers in greeting. One hand over the other, equally cool, equally tentative, but his touch seemed to draw from her a stream of memories that were in no way cool or tentative. The rest of the room seemed to watch them with varying levels of wariness, unsure if another blowout might ensue. No one ventured to mention the bizarre episode at the club and risk breaking the apparent peace.

“It’s Andrew, right?” she heard herself say through the maelstrom, and in the dim recesses of her mind she knew she should be trying to channel Katherine Hepburn, as she intended.
Composure, Emily. Composure. Don’t let on that you know him. You’re going to ruin everything
. Yet how did she know him? She could not even answer that herself.

He cocked his head to one side and studied her. He was almost too alive to look at. It was too much to take in. The precise structure of his face coupled with the strokes of red that ran along the lines of his cheekbones etched themselves into her mind like an overexposed photograph.

“Yes. My name is Andrew Hayes. We’re the—”

“We’re the eejits downstairs,” Simon cut in. “You might as well get used to referring to us that way. If we get too loud, an easy fix is to pound on the floor. We probably won’t hear you, but hell, it’s worth a try—Emily, it’s Emily, yeah?”

The way he stared at her caused Andrew to stare at him.

“Oh, you’re a drummer, right?” Margot asked as if she had never seen him before. She put down the planter, and her heels clipped along the tiles as she made her way to Simon’s side. “Feel free to do the same, bang on the ceiling that is, if we get too loud. I’ve been told I often do.” Margot tossed her hair in an uncharacteristic flounce, all black sheen and menace.

“Oh, well have a go at it then, there’ll be plenty of bangin’ with all this remodeling going on,” Simon countered, not to be outdone, his brogue thickening by the minute. “It’s the endless screwin’ and that drillin’ that makes the most racket, don’t you think, girlie?”

“Girlie?”

“Or the wailing from the ghosts—that’s what’s really going kill you,” said Christian with a nonchalance that no one else seemed to embrace.

“Ghosts?” Zoey asked, and Emily noticed Andrew shoot a flat look at Christian, who went on undeterred. “Haven’t you heard yours yet?”

“Wonderful. First a band and now the undead. We should have a dinner and see what else shows up,” said Margot stiffly. “Zombies? Witches? Really.” Her words, however, had the opposite effect on Zoey and Christian, who decided that a dinner would be just the ticket for all of them. The next fifteen minutes were spent on who was going to bring what, with people drifting here and there, trying to position themselves closer to or farther from each other, depending on the individual.

During this time, Emily watched Andrew and Simon stroll over to the glass door that exited to the roof gardens. Andrew was gesturing riotously with his hands, something Emily had seen him do on stage when he got agitated. Suddenly his eyes narrowed infinitesimally, and his fingers paused in mid-air like they were changing chords. He knew she was watching him.

Her eyes raced back down to the shelf of flowers, willing herself to appear aloof and disinterested. Some discarded construction blueprints allowed her to look busy, and she folded over page after page until she noticed her watch. She would have to leave soon if she didn’t want to be late for Vandin’s lecture. It was her escape.

“Emily,” a voice said from behind her shoulder.

Startled, she swallowed and drew on an untapped sense of courage before she slowly turned. The first thing she saw were his eyes. They were blue like…like nothing and everything and filled with such earnestness that her heart nearly melted at the sight. Yet she was far too wary to trust him—or herself for that matter—with anything more than a hello.

The blue eyes widened in amusement. “You’re actually here. You live here. In this house.”

How should she respond? Did he still think she was a crazed fan who had hunted him down from the park to the show to his home? Though the look on his face seemed to contradict any ill will, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her from the park at all. Perhaps he merely recognized her from the club, though that might prove bad enough in its own right.

“I had no idea you lived here too,” she offered in hasty explanation. “I mean, that anyone lived here too. Well, not really, but we only moved in a week ago and we were told our neighbors were named Nick and Nora. Old people—who weren’t sane.”

His mouth quirked and she could tell he fought not to laugh. “They are, unfortunately. Old, that is. Dead actually.”

“Ghosts? Really? And you live here too,” she whispered, staring at him before she caught herself. “Sorry, how long have you been here?”

“Only a month or so. Did you like the show? You ran off rather suddenly.”

“Yeah, yes. About that—I’d like to say, that is, I’m sorry. I never meant to crash your show in any way. I was sick. There were peanuts. I had some bad peanuts—they’ll kill you if you’re not careful. You weren’t hurt were you?”

“From the peanuts?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “There was glass everywhere.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Oh…Oh! Then why did you—”

“Run after you? You looked like—well actually I swore you were someone I hadn’t seen for a long time. A very long time. Trust me, I usually don’t accost patrons—bad for business you know. I’m horribly sorry.”

They both stood silent, struggling for something to say in light of the current revelations.

Unable to bear the awkwardness, Emily finally asked, “We have ghosts then. You haven’t
seen
anything, have you?”

“No, we haven’t had any actual sightings,” he replied quickly, in evident relief. “I was a sworn nonbeliever at first, never put much store in any of this, though I’m done second guessing anything at this rate…Nick tends to be rather opinionated in his tastes. He doesn’t care for my guitar playing late at night, and I don’t think he fancies people ripping his home apart either. But I can’t blame him for that first one. So, ah, welcome to the neighborhood, then. It’s amazing…you’re here.” If possible his expression became more enrapt. “You’re truly here.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, it’s only that you’re—you’re actually living in that flat upstairs. It’s abysmal from what I’ve seen, that anyone could live there, that is.” His words tumbled out faster than she thought possible.

“It beats living in the park.” At the mention of the park his eyes fixed on hers, and she felt the blood race to her cheeks. Did he recognize her from there? She was mortified he might. If so, he had the good grace not to say a word.

“Hey, Andrew, hit me, man,” Christian asked, trotting toward them from across the room.

“Pardon?” replied Andrew, not taking his eyes from Emily.

“We had an argument about the song I heard Nick playing on the piano the other night,” Christian explained and smiled at Emily. “It’s a game we play, actually.”

A second later Neil joined them, intrigued.

“Andrew can name the song, when it was recorded, the album it originated on, and any notable covers. It’s kinda creepy, but hey, the man’s a genius.”

“Is that right?” said Margot.

“Christian, I’d rather not.”

“Okay, so here’s the lyric.”

“You’re telling me this ghost Nick was singing?” asked Margot.

“Yeah. Something about needing someone to love him and take him back to San Francisco and bury him there.”

Andrew hesitated.

“Ah, hah! See, I knew I could stump him. Yes! Finally.”

“‘Hong Kong Blues,’ recorded in thirty-eight by Hoagy Carmichael. I can’t place the album, but George Harrison covered it in eighty-one.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Margot scoffed. “Give Emily a line of poetry and she can recite the entire poem, not just some useless stats.”

Emily glared at Margot and suddenly felt a strange kinship to Andrew, as though they were two talking parrots in the room brought out for entertainment. She might as well have been seven years old again at a holiday dinner, her father coaxing her to impress some distant relatives who adored how she knew “those Keats and Yeats” fellows.

But it was Andrew who spoke first. “Escape me? Never.”

Emily knew this poem. It was Browning, and Browning was her Achilles’ heel. Yet why would he know it? More importantly, how could she recite those words and keep her emotions from seeping into them? Her voice drifted into a whisper.

“Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?”

Emily closed her eyes, unable to finish, as Zoey began to clap, and soon everyone joined in. When Emily lifted her eyes, she found Andrew. He stood completely still.

“She could give your muse a run for her money, couldn’t she,” Simon remarked.

“Don’t mess with Andrew’s girl. We owe her big time,” Christian jumped in, smiling good naturedly at Andrew. “But like you said, maybe it’s better if she actually lived here and not—”

“Christian, stop!” Andrew ordered, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his shoulders stiff. The look said it all for Emily. She had almost forgotten.
It’s always about a girl. The mystery girl back home.
It was then that everything became clear. He was a man in love. And not the nonchalant kind—the messy, heartbreaking kind. The kind that made everyone outside that rarified air squirm. Timing was everything, wasn’t it?

“Emily.”

“No, it’s wonderful that you have such inspiration, being a musician and all. She must be a huge help to you.”

She immediately found Margot’s eyes in the group. Margot knew exactly what was going on; she was far too observant and cynical to pretend otherwise.

“Sorry everybody, but I’ve got classes this morning, and I’m really running late.”

“Watch out for yourself with Vandin,” Zoey said softly, interpreting the pain in her voice for other reasons.