The Broken Globe - Geoffrey Smagacz



My brother Timmy's Halloween party started with a parade of high school guys, six packs in hand, piling out of rusted pick-up trucks and climbing the stairs over the garage into a smoky room where loud music blasted through tall free-standing speakers.
     I don't know how he finagled the presence of Diane, cheerleader, since my brother floated with the vocational trade students and not that heady jock circle. But she was there, along with three of her not-quite-as-cute girlfriends, one of whom brought Juanita, a plain and plump foreign exchange student from Mexico.
     Timmy had purchased a keg and strung black-and-orange crepe paper and balloons, tacking them to his ceiling with great care. He'd also vacuumed, and he must have powdered the shag carpet with baking soda or talcum because the place didn't smell like the usual musty beer-soaked dish rag.
     After I'd settled into a bean-bag chair and hit the three-beer threshold, meaning once I'd reached three I couldn't stop, Jim arrived. Don, his sidekick, followed immediately behind him wearing, of all things, creased pants.
     "What are you doing here?" I shouted to Jim, ignoring Don except to note he'd purchased a new pair of glasses with thick exactly rectangular lenses.
     "Your mother said you were up here."
     "What?"
     "Your mother," Jim yelled, pointing in the direction of Mom's house, then pointing to me.
     For a few minutes one of my brother's friends, who'd brought the latest record from a metallic-sounding Southern rock band, cranked up the volume. Several of them joined in the refrain.
     "My brother's throwing a Halloween party."
     "Looks like high school."
     "Hard to pass up a keg."
     "Huh?"
     "Want a beer?"
     "Sure."
     I walked over to the keg where my brother and a couple of his cronies stood guard.
     "You mind if they have a beer?" I asked my brother.
     Timmy glanced at them, glanced at me, shrugged, then went back to sizing up Diane and the girls huddled together in a giggling clique. I expertly filled three plastic cups to capacity, minimum foam, as if I had a certificate in bartending.
     We picked a spot away from the two speakers, but near enough to the keg, which sat in a round metal tub surrounded by chunks of ice. The beer went down smooth. Timmy – or whoever it was who bought the beer for my underage brother – had paid a few extra dollars and purchased Canadian.
     Timmy came over to me and said, "You better fork over some money for all the beer you guys are drinking."
     "He speaks," I said to Jim and Don, as if a lightning bolt struck, juiced Frankenstein, and gave us proof positive that the brain transplant worked.
     "I'm not kidding," he said.
     "OK, we will."
     I looked at Jim and Don, thinking they might divvy up or maybe at least pretend to reach in their pockets but each looked at something else. Then Jim took a long swig.
     "I'll give you some money later," I said. But Timmy turned his back on me and walked toward Diane and the girls.
     "Let's go over to Harry's Tavern and have a few," Jim said.
     "Why not hang out here?"
     "Is this the only style of music your brother likes?" Don asked.
     "I don't know what kind of music he likes," I said. "Take a look through his records," which Don did for the next half hour, sitting on the floor, records between his legs, reading record covers, taking records out of their jackets, and examining the quality of the vinyl.
     "Where's Debra tonight?" I asked Jim.
     "I don't want to talk about that bitch."
     "Huh?"
     "When I told her I was going to go out to have a drink, she blew a gasket. Said I was a drunk."
     I was starting to get tanked. Jim may have had a few before he came.
     "Hey, you gotta cigarette?" I asked one of my brother's beer buddies. He pulled a pack out of his denim jacket and jerked it, causing exactly one filtered cigarette to stick out. He grinned. He was either proud of his feat or proud that he smoked.
     "I think you're getting hooked on those things," Jim said. "You've got a monkey on your back."
     I looked over both my shoulders. "No, I don't."
     "When you've got a monkey on your back you're not free." He took a long swig, then got up and poured out another beer.
     "Look at this," Don said. "You think your brother would mind if I played it?"
     Others had changed records; no one seemed at the helm, so I said, "Wait'll this song finishes." The song Don played was kind of rock and roll and kind of twangy at the same time, a tune with a sappy story.
     A couple of the guys groaned when it started. Someone said, "What is this shit?" But they let it play almost to the end before the needle scratched across the vinyl and another replaced it on the turntable, a song with screeching, inaudible lyrics.
     I felt a tap on my arm. "Don't let him do that again," my brother said to me.
     Jim's eyes had become slits by the time the subject of Debra came up again.
     "I thought you guys had worked everything out."
     Jim sat there trying to think and talk at the same time. Something tried to bubble to the surface. One of my brother's recessed lights shone directly on Jim's face, making it seem as if he were being interrogated. However, he didn't move out of the light.
     "The plans have been made, right?" I asked him.
     "I don't want to marry that bitch."
     I shook my head a couple of times like a deer flicking off flies.
     "Everything was perfect the other night."
     "The car goes off the road, and then we nearly drown."
     "You two were all lovey-dovey. You put your ear to Deb's belly."
     "That kid. Stupid," he said, banging his fist on his thigh, then swilling another long draught. "This is good beer," he said.
     "We're going to have to come up with a few dollars for the beer."
     "All I have is a twenty."
     I spotted Juanita, standing within earshot.
     "Hola," I said, summoning my knowledge of two years of high school Spanish.
     Juanita smiled, making her cheeks even plumper.
     "Hello," she said, moving closer.
     "Como estas? "
     "You idiot," Jim said to me.
     "Good, and you?" She asked.
     "Muy bien. Yo estudio espa-ol hace… Jim, do you remember how to say it makes so and so many years that I studied Spanish?"
     "Dos, you idiot." Jim had been in one of my classes.
     "Please," she said. "In English."
     "Pero, yo…"
     "Please, no Spanish."
     There must have been drama in the way Juanita held up her hand and shook her head "no" that made Diane walk over and grab her arm.
     "These two bothering you?"
     "No."
     "Come over here," Diane said, after she eyeballed us. A couple of old lechers, she probably thought, though she did smile at me. I figured she knew I was Timmy's brother. As Diane turned, her thick sandy-blond, shoulder-length hair fanned out.
     "Cunts," Jim said.
     "Why do you have to talk like that?"
     "And Deb's the biggest cunt of them all."
     This last thought hung in the air like cigarette smoke. Maybe he assumed I was pondering his profundity, but what I was pondering was why the hell he wanted to get married and why the hell he didn't tell Debra about Lynette.
     "What are you going to do?" I asked.
     He shrugged his shoulders and took another long swig, finishing the contents of his plastic cup. This time he didn't immediately get up to refill it — probably too tanked to exert the energy. He waited for me to finish mine then had me do it.
     "You gonna get married or what?"
     "How can I get married to someone I don't love?"
     "You don't love her?"
     "I'm in love with Lynette."
     "I thought you weren't seeing her anymore?"
     Jim looked to the side, probably some expression he learned as a boy after his father asked him if he knew who broke the neighbor's front window when he'd known full well he'd done it himself.
     "You're not, right?" I asked.
     "Look at this Beatles album," Don said, interrupting us. "This is pristine. There's not a scratch on it."
     "Fuck the album," Jim said. Don took the cue and buzzed off. I poured us two more beers.
     "Lynette's the best fuck I've ever had," Jim said when I returned.
     "I don't want to hear about it."
     "She's incredible. You know what she did Thursday?"
     "I thought you weren't seeing her anymore."
     "She was a virgin you know."
     "You're right back to where you were a couple of weeks ago?"
     "There's nothing like popping a cherry."
     Jim assumed the position of Rodin's Thinker, but sitting Indian style, his chin held up by one arm.
     "I don't know what I'm gonna do," he said.
     "Why don't you tell Debra you're seeing Lynette and get it over with?"
     Jim let out an audible breath of air, put his head down, and ran his hands through his hair.
     "Well?" I said.
     "Well?" he said, imitating my voice.
     "Why don't you just tell Deb?"
     "Why don't I just tell Deb?"
     "Are you making fun of me?"
     He looked up and eyed me with a mean, penetrating stare.
     "I'm just asking a question," I said.
     "If I knew what to do I wouldn't be sitting here drunk."
     "If you told her, she could have an abortion."
     "She's not having an abortion."
     "No?"
     "We talked about that already."
     "What if she knew about Lynette?"
     He must have misread the tone of my voice, because he started to rise. "You better not tell her about Lynette." And then I think I misread his actions because I thought he was going to punch me.
     "I gotta take a piss," he said. He stood for a moment, lost his balance, tried to catch himself, thumped the floor hard enough to make the room shake, and then fell onto one of my brother's friends who helped him stand upright. The kid said, "You all right?"
     "Yeah. Where's the bathroom?"
     "Downstairs in the garage," I said.
     He steadied himself and slowly descended the stairs, a hand holding up each wall.
     A few songs later Don came over to me and said, "Where's Jim?"
     "The sonofabitch probably passed out."
     "Maybe we better check on him."
     "He's old enough to take care of himself."
     "He looked pretty drunk."
     Don descended the stairs. I bummed another smoke and inhaled very deeply, causing a long portion of the cigarette to glow. I looked up at a balloon, then at the end of my cigarette, pulled myself up, took a furtive glance toward my brother in conversation across the room, and popped the damned thing. A couple of guys looked over. My brother, from across the room, said, "Hey." Then I, too, made my exit.
     I didn't see Jim in the toilet or in the garage. As I walked outside, the screen door snapped back, echoing in the alley between the houses. It wasn't enough that the neighbors had to endure the house vibrating or the cars revving up their engines, they also had to put up with that freaking door.
     I could see Jim's red pick-up truck but where the hell was he? As I approached the truck, I heard the gut heave of a man puking, walked around the truck and saw Jim on his knees behind a blue van, his arms on the bumper, letting go the contents of his stomach. He groaned. Don stood aside looking on.
     "You all right?" I asked.
     "Uh."
     "I didn't think he had that much to drink," I said more to myself than to Don.
     "He was drinking shots at Harry's Tavern before we came here," Don said.
     Jim let go again and then groaned some more.
     I stood there thinking maybe Jim deserved to heave out his innards. Maybe if a person poked around the alcohol soup he'd deposited, they could find his heart or his brains.
     "You gonna drive him home?"
     "Yeah," Don said.
     "You got your keys?" I asked Jim
     Jim reached into his pockets, a hand still on the bumper. He vomited one more time.
     "Oh, God," he said.
     I grabbed him by his arm to drag him up. "Come on," I said but, as he stood, Rodney, one of my brother's friends, slipped out of the shadows.
     "What the fuck did you do to my van?" he asked, looking straight at me, obviously judging me by the company I keep. I didn't respond. "I said what the fuck did you do?"
     "Nothing," I said, but better that I hadn't because, with his pointed boot, he aimed a kick at my crotch. I flinched backward, barely escaping serious injury.
     "Puke on your own fucking car," he said, then got into his van, revved up the motor and spun out, flinging stones.
     "Asshole," I said.
     Not until Jim and Don had situated themselves in the cab did Don realize that Jim's truck had a standard shift, and he didn't know how to drive it. He nearly backed into a tree before I realized that I had given him opposite directions on how to shift gears, but he finally figured it out and lurched off slowly.
     After they left, I walked along the garage approaching the snapping door to my brother's lair, sure that I would continue past it and into the house, run upstairs and fall into bed. But as I neared it, three of my brother's friends emerged. I could have walked around them, but I stopped and held open the door for them. One of them said, "Hey, take it easy." Then I made a choice. A door had opened and I entered.
     As I reached the landing at the top of the stairs, Diane was trying to poke her arm through the sleeve of her varsity cheerleader jacket marked with the school letters. Her girl friends flanked her sides while Juanita stood behind in the shadows.
     "You leaving?" I asked.
     "Yeah," Diane said.
     "Too bad," I said.
     The ends of her mouth curled into a smile and her nose crinkled.
     "You're cute," she said.
     "You are too," I said, and suddenly our faces came within breathing distance, which is probably the closest I've ever gotten to a cheerleader. Her breath smelled beery.
     She put her lips to my ear, "You're cuter than your brother." Our cheeks brushed together. Her hair smelled smoky clean.
     "Thanks."
     "God, I think I've had too much to drink," she said, snapping me back to reality.
     Suddenly my brother appeared at my side, then pushed in front of me, nearly stepping on my toe.
     "Need help getting to your car?" Timmy asked.
     "No," she said. "We're all right."
     We watched them descend, but, before they reached the last stair, Timmy turned toward me and said "You fucker" loud enough for my ears only.
     "What do you mean?"
     "Why don't you throw your own party?"
     I responded by going to the keg and filling up another plastic cup.
     "Gimme some money for the beer," Timmy said.
     "I said I would."
     "Then hand it over."
     "I don't have it on me."
     "Then that's the last beer."
     The girls were gone; only Timmy's core group of cronies remained. They started a contest to see who could shout the loudest. Then one guy shoved another who pushed him back. He then tried to unbalance another. In moments, a group wrestling match ensued with this tiny mob shifting to the left, and falling en masse, some on the bed and some on the floor, knocking objects off the nightstand. They laughed and shouted. Someone said, "Get off me, you fucker."
     I bummed another smoke from the cigarette guy.
     "I should have bought a pack," I said.
     "No problem. Take a couple."
     "One's enough."
     Then I saw the balloons again — my cigarette and a large balloon. Pop.
     "What's that, a gun?" someone asked.
     "Cut it out," Timmy said. The mob quieted.
     I honed in on another one. Pop. And that was it. My brother extricated himself from the throng and from some deep part of himself shouted "Goddamn you" as he started toward me.
     I bolted down the stairs. He must've taken the steps two, three at a time, because in a moment he was behind me, pushing my back. I ran faster, snapping the door, but he didn't relent.
     "You goddamn sonofabitch. I'm going to kill you."
     I imitated the sound of his voice, no words, only the tone, taunting him. As I ran into the back entryway of Mom's house, I shoved the door in his face. I couldn't quite close it. He pushed with all his might. He didn't have my weight or my strength, but that night, maybe because I was drunk or because of some burst of his adrenaline or some deeper motivation on his part, I could feel myself losing the war. I let go and made a dash for the heavier kitchen door. I slammed it to give myself a minute before running into the kitchen.
     "You bastard," Timmy yelled.
     We'd fought before, we'd gotten into shouting matches or tussles, but something in his voice made me take him seriously.
     The back porch light shone through the kitchen windows, illuminating the stainless steel sink and the enamel kitchen table.
     "Knock it off," I said. I ran around the table. "Cut it out."
     "I'm going to kill you."
     "You're going to wake Mom."
     "I don't care."
     We circled the table again. And again.
     "Damn it. Knock it off."
     "No," he yelled, and as he uttered the word he grabbed the table and flung it upward. As it spun, it shattered the ceiling globe.
     At that moment, Mom jumped out of bed and thumped through the dark house.
     "Goddamn you two. What do you goddamn kids think you're doing? Get the goddamn hell to bed." With each word came the accompanying rhythmic thump of her footfalls, like the telling of a primitive poem. Then, almost like a plaintive refrain, came a very long and loud "Oh, Jesus" as she entered the kitchen.
     Timmy bolted. I turned on the light. Mom had made her way to the bathroom indicated by a trail of blood which began from a sharp shard protruding from the bottom of what a moment before had been a drinking glass. It must have set on the table when Timmy threw it.
     I found the broom in the corner and began sweeping. Broken glass had reached the hallway by the bathroom, and, as I approached the door, Mom said, "Goddamn you two."
     "I didn't do anything."
     "What do you mean, you didn't do anything?"
     "I didn't fling the table in the air. I didn't break the glass."
     "Get me a clean towel."
     I hesitated to go in.
     "I said, get me a goddamn towel."
     I entered. She sat on the tub's edge, her back to me. When she spoke, her words reverberated inside the enamel hollow of the basin. "I wish your father were alive," she said.
     I'd never seen that much blood.
     "Listen, Timmy's the one that started chasing me. He's the one that threw the table in the air."
     "Is that what happened?"
     "Yeah, he threw the kitchen table in the air and broke the ceiling globe."
     "What did you do to him?"
     "Nothing."
     "You must've done something."
     "I didn't do anything."
     "Then why would he chase you?"
     "Because he was drunk, because I flirted with the girl he's interested in, because I popped one of his freakin' balloons."
     "I don't know," Mom said. "I can't stop the bleeding."
     "What do you mean, you can't stop the bleeding?"
     "What did I step on?"
     "The bottom of a glass I think."
     "Get me the hydrogen peroxide." I did. She poured it on her foot without flinching. "I can't understand you two."
     "I told you I didn't do anything."
     "You act like two-year-olds or a couple of drunks. You certainly don't act like brothers." She turned around. "Give me another towel."
     "How are brothers supposed to act?"
     "Don't start with me." She threw a second blood-soaked towel near the first and wrapped her foot with the third. "I don't know if this is going to stop bleeding."
     I went back to sweeping the glass in the kitchen. I upturned the table. As I picked pieces of glass off the stove top, Mom hobbled through the living room and back into bed.
     "I'll tell you this much right now," she said from the other room, "you're not getting the car for a while."
     "How am I going to get to work on Thursdays and Sundays?"
     "You should have thought of that before."
     I was too tired to argue. I slumped at the kitchen table with my head in my hands.
     "How about turning the light off and getting to bed?"
     "In a minute."
     "Now."
     "In a minute."
     A minute passed.
     "Oh Jesus," Mom said with alarm.
     "What?"
     Nothing.
     "What is it?"
     "I can't stop the bleeding. You're going to have to drive me to the emergency room."
     "I thought you said I couldn't have the car."
     "Don't start with me."
     So I drove Mom to the emergency room where she received seven stitches on the arch of her foot, three pints of blood, and a prescription for iron pills.


Source

Appearance - Kate Peterson



It was during the first snowstorm of the new year. The color green was something you saw in pictures tacked to the wall or in a memory from what felt like years ago. I was living alone in a studio apartment in a shitty section of west Cleveland. Everything was the same color in that neighborhood, even in the summer. It was the kind of dirty grey that gets swept up into the air of unfinished basements and cold storage warehouses. There were no stairs to get to my apartment. I was as far down as you can get without going under. I slept in the same room as the oven, but I liked the smallness of it. When I was young my sister and I used to zip each other into suitcases. We would drag the suitcases up and down the stairs, and all around the living room, laughing hysterically.
     That first morning I wrapped a scarf around my neck and lit the stove. I tripped over my shoes on my way to the sink to fill the pot. I looked down at them accusingly, as if anyone but me could have put them there. I looked up after kicking them across the room and that was when I saw him for the first time. I wouldn't find out until later that he had been there for weeks. Inches away from me as I slept. An arm's reach as I showered and dressed each morning. He sat with me while I overcooked my eggs and searched the internet for a cat to adopt, each time deciding against it because I could imagine it snowballing into two or three until I became one of those women.
     The outside world that day, and every day since I had been living there, was a white swirling mixture of ground and sky. Set against the bright seamless backdrop was the outline of a man. He was fading in and out with each gust of wind, like a Polaroid gone backwards. But I saw him. I saw the tip of one of his pink fingers poking out of a hole in his glove. His hands were up against his mouth which was covered in a thick dark beard and his breath came in a long slow billow of white smoke, like the mouth of a gutter under a frozen street. His hood was pulled up over his head which made his eyes ever brighter in the shadow. I couldn't tell what color they were, but they seemed to have a reflection inside them like the round outline of a flashbulb in the eye of a magazine model. I didn't scream. I felt nothing like adrenaline, or dread. Or that feeling when your heart beats so fast it makes you want to throw up. Nothing like that happened. If someone told me that they saw a strange man staring at them through their window I would have expected to hear them say, "And then I screamed and dropped my glass and it shattered and I ran to the phone and dialed 911 and then I ran to my front door and pulled the deadbolt across and then I hid in the bathroom with the door closed and I couldn't stop shaking." But I didn't do any of that. I stood completely still as if someone was holding me there, and I watched as the man I saw so clearly disappeared into the endless white.

     There was nothing in my apartment that anyone would want. My possessions were piled in and out of boxes and I didn't even own a real bed. I had a mattress on the floor that tripled as a couch and dining room table. I did own a laptop but I took it with me to work. I didn't own a TV, or a toaster oven, or even a decent pair of shoes. I just decided that since there was nothing for him to steal, and I was sure he figured that out if he took a good look, that I would go on about my day despite his strange appearance outside my window. It felt less like a decision to ignore it, and more like it didn't happen at all. Or like it happens all the time. And that is exactly how it ended up. Each morning while I boiled water and ladled my mug into the steaming pot, I saw him. I didn't own a tea kettle either. I didn't see why people spent money on things like that when they could function perfectly well without them. But anyway, each night when I came home from work and my apartment was dark and quiet and anyone would think that I should be scared, I wasn't. There was no one waiting for me behind the shower curtain. Nothing was ever out of place. There were never any footprints circling my apartment, or scratch marks around my doorknob. I came and went peacefully and each morning I shared a moment with a stranger whose eye brows curled up like a puppy and whose fingers were always bent across his mouth.
     It went on for about a week that way. I continued to start my car ten minutes early with the keys dangling in the ignition, so it could thaw. I guess in hindsight that was a pretty stupid thing to do in west Cleveland anyway, random man or not. But I mean I just lived my life normally, with the exception of my gloomy window friend stopping by more and more often. Once while I was watching TV late at night, something caught my eye at the window. Of course it was him. I just kept on eating my popcorn until I was full and there was still half a bowl left. I hated to waste food, and I always felt bad for the little birds that hopped over the snow, and wondered what the hell they ate in this neighborhood at twelve below. So sometimes I would throw food outside for them. Or for the squirrels. So I went to the window. I had never really…confronted the man. I stayed a room's length away from him as he peered at me sadly. But that night I guess I got brave. I got up and saw his outline like the moon must have been fat and shining right behind him, casting a line of white around his face. My eyes went to the top of the window to unhook the lock, and when they returned to him there was only the snow. He had been erased by its pale hand. I put my face into the cold, that kind of cold that feels more like fire than ice, and I looked for him. The snow was covered in a layer of glass. I threw the leftover popcorn and it rolled like dice across the ground. There were no signs of his tracks. I noticed, as I pulled the window back down, that there was no moon that night.

     The next morning I saw the white grey billows of exhaust fumes pouring out of a piece of shit station wagon in front of my apartment. I saw the woman's eyes, and they were glossy and dull. I had seen her baby basset hound eyebrows before, on the man at my window. She just stared at the door as if she was waiting for someone to come out. I came out. She drove away.
     It happened that way three times. Not all at once, but spread so far out across two weeks that I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't a déjà vu, and that yes, this had really happened before. The fourth time I decided had to be different. Something about her felt so much like the man at my window, but maybe it was just her coming and going. And her staring. And those eyebrows arching up. But her hands were not covering her mouth; they were white and exposed even in this weather, and they were gripping the steering wheel. So I could see that her lips were moving tightly against each other, and on top of each other, pulling in and out of her mouth. This fourth time she didn't drive away when I walked out onto the ice. I stood waiting for her to do it; to drive away as she always had. But she just looked ahead at the road, and then back into my face. Then I saw her hand move to the door, and the window rolled down. I walked towards her casually, not like someone who had seen her on three previous mornings, but like someone who was going to ask her if she needed directions. Or if she was alright. So I did ask her that, because I wasn't sure what else to say.
     The wind stole the words and spread them out across the trees and the pavement and the kicked over silver trash cans. She said nothing. She looked like she might drive away again. She put her hands back on the wheel and looked straight ahead. But then she turned and looked past me at my apartment. I looked back then too, like maybe I was missing something. She was looking at the right side of the house, at the space between it and the neighbor's fence, which was all of four feet. It was the space where I saw my window friend each morning standing, waiting to watch me curse at my hair for making me late.

     "Are you looking for him?" I asked. Feeling as soon as I said it, the longing to take it back. I wasn't sure what I would say if she asked "Who?" Oh, just that man who stares in my window every day. The one who for all I know could be a serial killer casing out his next victim. I know that's what people would think if I told them. But it didn't feel like that at all.
     But she didn't ask me who, she didn't say anything for about a minute, she just stared blankly back and forth between me and the apartment, and I knew that I would be late for work again. She looked like she was about to say something, her mouth kept moving and tears starting falling into it from her eyes. I remembered the landlord speaking to me in broken English, telling me how grateful he was that he didn't need to help me carry furniture. I remembered him telling me that a couple had lived there before me. And he kept saying something in Spanish that sounded like "tragic." And he kept shaking his head.
     "Do you need help?" I asked, coming a little closer to the window. She just kept crying, harder now. I squeezed my cell phone for the time and saw that I was still early. I always turned my car on too soon, and by the time I got inside it the snow was pouring from the roof like rain.
     "You can come inside and we can have some tea if you want." I said, imagining myself using a soup spoon to dish her out a ration of hot water.
     "Or maybe you just want to talk? Is that why you keep coming here?" I just kept talking. I didn't know what else to do with her.
     "What's your name? I just moved here a few weeks ago, actually I guess it's been more than a month. I don't know anyone. I work downtown at a magazine. I do graphic design." She started to calm down a little and looked at me.

     "Amy," she said quietly.
     "Hey Amy," I said, a little too cheerfully. "I'm Ellen. Is this where you used to live?" I said, pointing back at my little faded blue apartment and the trees, and the trash cans that were glued to the sidewalk now from all the ice. She stared at the apartment and nodded at it, as if it had asked her the question.
     "Well, did you want to come in for a little while? I can't stay long, I do have to go soon, but you can come in for a few minutes if you want. I know when I moved from my first house I always wanted to go back and see what they did to my old room. See if they painted it a different color or anything. I didn't paint anything yet. Maybe I will in the summer." I smiled at her, and she smiled back slowly, as if her face had forgotten which muscles it took to pull up the chapped corners of her mouth. She stared at the house, and then at me and then back at the house again, and without saying anything she unlocked her seat belt and got out of the car. We were standing there in the middle of the frozen street, her car was still running and dripping fluid, making a little puddle that was curling and flowing over the cracks in the ice and the dirty solid snow that was pushed up onto the curb.
     "Did you want to…?" I motioned to the keys hanging in the ignition. It was alright for me to leave my car running, but if hers got stolen I would feel pretty terrible.
     "Oh, yeah, thanks," she said softly. I watched her lean into her car and shut it off, pull the keys out and put them in the pocket of her coat. When she turned to face me again I smiled a sort of awkward, ok right this way, kind of smile, and turned to walk to the apartment. She followed me hesitantly and I heard her take in a deep breath. The cold air must have stung her lungs because she started coughing.

     "You ok?" I said, turning to look at her over my shoulder as I opened the door and walked in. She just nodded, and I saw her eyebrows start to go higher, and her lips start to pull into her mouth. I wasn't sure if this was such a great idea after all. What was I supposed to do with some strange sobbing woman? I remembered that I didn't have anywhere for her to sit, and it felt like an even worse idea. I took in a deep breath of the frozen air as we walked into the apartment.
     She was my first guest and I was suddenly a little self conscious about my housekeeping. I scooped up the cold soggy tea bags from the counter and threw them in the trash, and moved a few things around so I didn't look like a slob.
     "Do you want some tea? Or hot chocolate maybe? I don't have a coffee maker." I grabbed two mugs before she could answer, refilled the pot that was on the stove, and started it to boil. She didn't say anything, and I looked behind me to see her standing in what I guess had been her living room, looking around the apartment like Dorothy when she came out of her little spinning cabin.
     "I think I feel like some hot chocolate," I said, trying to break her from her daze. She stared at me as if she had forgotten where she was. "Sure," she said finally.
     I attempted small talk, mostly to myself, while the water boiled. I asked her questions and got a nod here and there. Finally I had two cups of hot chocolate and I stirred at them violently trying to get the lumps out.
     "I wish I had some of those tiny marshmallows. They're fun," I said, smiling awkwardly as I handed her the mug. It was from some rest stop in the Redwood Forrest, Paul Bunyan and his big blue Ox. I wished I would have noticed and given her the one with the Dalmatian instead. That would have seemed a little less awkward. My mom sent it to me because when I was little I loved Dalmatians. I tried to explain to her that, thanks to Disney, lots of little kids liked Dalmatians and that the phase was over, but she still kept sending me mugs and birthday cards with black spots.

     "I guess you could sit…on my bed if you want? I'm sorry, that's pretty creepy but I don't have any chairs yet." I looked around at the empty walls and the posters rolled up on the floor and told myself I would hang them up tonight. But I knew I wouldn't. She walked over to my bed and sat down on the corner. I pulled up a box full of books and sat down on it. I sipped at the hot chocolate and got a big chunk of powder. I hoped I had stirred hers a little better.
     "So, you lived here before me?" I asked quietly. Hoping not to start another round of hysterics; she had finally seemed to calm down.
     "Yes."
     "Did you live alone?" I squeezed the hot mug, already feeling like I knew the answer. She must have been part of the couple the landlord attempted to gossip with me about. Maybe it was a really bad breakup. Maybe he was still looking for her, still stalking her. I thought of the man who I guess was stalking me. But he didn't seem like he would hurt anybody. He was too sad, too cold and lonely.
     "No," she said, and then she breathed into the steaming mug, and I waited, hoping that maybe she would tell me her story so that I didn't ask the wrong question and make her cry.
     "I lived with my fiancé, Eric. He was a musician." She tried smiling. "We had rugs and towels hanging all over the walls," - she pointed to the tiny holes, the ones I never noticed - "and his friends would come over and practice."
     "Band practice in this place? That must have been crazy." She smiled bigger now. I was sure she was transporting herself back there, and I pictured four or five guys with guitars huddled around the bed where she sat and listened, maybe a drummer with his chair stuck inside the bathroom. She stopped talking and stared down into her mug. We sat in silence and then my eyes went to the window. He was back.

     Amy noticed the way I looked at the window suddenly, and she looked too, but nothing happened. She didn't see him. He walked closer to the window and cupped his hands around his face to peer inside. Then he looked sadder than he ever had. His cheeks pulled up and his forehead wrinkled like an old man. It looked like he was shaking. He put his palms flat on the window and I could see what looked like frost forming where the tips of his fingers touched the glass. I realized in that moment, what I knew I couldn't say out loud. Either I had a tumor growing in my brain that was making me see this man that she couldn't, or he was a ghost. He was her ghost. Her fiance's ghost.
     "Amy, what happened to him? To Eric." I halfway hoped she would say, "What do you mean? He's at work." But then that would mean that I had a tumor, and I couldn't afford a tumor. I didn't have health insurance.
     But she didn't say that. She just looked at me as if she didn't care how I knew, or what I knew. As if I wasn't even there. She stared into the air and her mind went somewhere else again. This time it wasn't somewhere happy at all.
     "He killed himself. Right over there." She pointed to the cramped bathroom. The yellow tiles. I pictured the man at the window, staring into the tiny mirror over the sink, with a gun inside his mouth. I thought about what questions were appropriate, if any. And what do you ask first? Why or how? I guess how was the less complicated one so I went with that.
     "Pills. He swallowed the whole cabinet full. I found him lying on the floor all curled up." She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut hard. I guess she was seeing it again. Seeing him. I looked at the window and he was squeezing his eyes shut too.
     "What was he like?" I tried changing the subject a little. I stared out the window at him as she spoke.

     "He was," she paused, "quiet. I never knew what he was going through. In his head. He just wouldn't tell me. He lost his job and they kicked him out of the band. They said they didn't need three guitar players, they said they looked stupid on stage with that many people. My parents never liked him. They didn't want us to get married. They said he looked like he belonged in a homeless shelter. But he loved that beard. I loved it..." She trailed off and looked down at her shoes, which were making a puddle on the wood floor.
     "I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming here. I just feel close to him here I guess. I never got to say goodbye." She sighed and looked around at the empty walls. I was sure now that the man at the window was dead. That he was Eric. That he was coming here for her. I guess it didn't sound as crazy to me as it should have.
     "I think he's been coming here too." I said, bracing myself in case she flipped out. She didn't. She just stared at me and squinted her eyes like she was trying to read the fine print across my face.
     "Someone's been coming to the window. I thought maybe he was homeless or, I'm not sure what I thought. But maybe it's him. He's there right now actually." I expected him to disappear as soon as she turned her head to look out the window, but he didn't. He stared into her eyes. She turned back to me.
     "There?" she said, confused, pointing to the frozen glass.
     "Yeah. He's looking at you. He seems really upset. Maybe he didn't mean to do it." I wasn't sure what I was doing. Being an interpreter for the dead? She looked at me at first like I was crazy, and I understood. But she didn't get up, she didn't throw the hot brown liquid in my face and run screaming for the door. I think she must have wanted this, deep down. She must have driven here needing to find something. Needing this to be real. Her face softened and she looked back at the window as she spoke. I looked back too and of course, maybe to make me look even crazier, he was gone.

     "Does he…talk?" she said, and I could hear the sane part of her trying to win out over whatever part believed it all.
     "Well he's gone now. But no, he doesn't talk. Not to me."
     She snapped her head back towards me, the fastest movement she had made so far.
     "What do you mean, he's gone?" She got up and went to the window. She looked out of it a little frantically, and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She stood there with her eyes closed for a long time. Just breathing.
     Finally she turned and looked around the apartment again, this time with the softest edge of a grin. She looked down into her mug and then up to me.
     "Thank you for this. For letting me come back."
     "You're welcome."
     "I'll let you go now. I don't want to make you late." She walked to the sink and put her mug down next to the dirty plates and cups. I followed her to the door as if it were still her apartment. The sun was so bright against the snow that I had to shield my eyes with the half empty Dalmatian mug.
     "It was nice meeting you." She said, smiling so that now I could see the row of white teeth that I never imagined existed.
     "Sure. I'm glad I could…help?" I said, searching for the words to describe or explain what just took place. She turned and walked back to her car, seeming almost a little embarrassed for having been there at all. Then to my left, from the side of the house came at first a shadow, and then a man. Eric. Now he had a name. I watched as he walked with his hands down from his face now and at his sides. He stopped and looked at me, right into my eyes, for a few seconds that seemed to stretch out longer than any other few seconds of my life. Then he walked forward again, catching up to Amy.

     "Amy!" I wanted to tell her that he was right there, he was right behind her. But I stopped. She turned to face me and she was really facing him. He was between us looking right into her face, close enough to touch her.
     "You're welcome to stop by anytime." I said, feeling like it sounded less genuine that it was. I guess I really did mean it. She got into the car and I watched as Eric got into the passenger's seat.
     "Thanks." She said, looking back at the house. I knew I would never see her again by the way she looked at it as she drove off, like she was saying goodbye.