One Ghost Per Serving

by Nina Post

  “Did you buy something that day?” Nathan said, trying not to think about yogurt.

  “YES! So you do remember.” DZ grinned. “I bought that self-cleaning kitty litter box in the shape of a space pod that can walk itself across the room.”

  “Even though you don’t have a cat,” Nathan said.

  “Yes I do.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

  “Really? Huh.” DZ seemed taken aback that he didn’t have a cat. “Could’ve sworn I did, but that would explain why I haven’t seen it in so long. I figured he probably just keeps to himself in a different wing of the house.”

  “The cat wing.” Nathan pressed his forehead harder and rolled it from side to side. Existentially speaking, this pirate ship was agonizing, considering that he wanted to stop, foremost, and had zero control over doing so, but he also wanted to throw up, and now, to strangle DZ until he stopped talking. Nathan couldn’t remember the last time he was so uncomfortable, but he was sure DZ was involved.

  “Great idea!” DZ raised a hand for a high-five, then let it go. “Anyway, that’s how I keep track of how much each of the leading contestants have consumed. That allows me to connect sales lift to the contest and figure out how hard it would be to replicate the effects on a national scale. What mystifies me is how this Snackerge clown has eaten so much of the yogurt, yet hasn’t been affected by a commerce spirit. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Nathan made the mistake of looking over the side. The ship swooped down, bringing Maritimania suddenly close in a Vertigo-like effect as it came up from behind Nathan.

  “Ew, watch out for the phone,” DZ said, angling away from Nathan.

  Later, on the sea creatures carousel, DZ sat a couple of poles in front of Nathan, on a mermaid. His phone rang and he had a brief, hushed, and tension-filled conversation. He hung up and looked back at Nathan. “Snackerge is like a tapeworm I can’t get rid of, or a layer of viscous slime I can’t quite remove without a specialized chemical agent. Anyway, I had our intern –”

  Nathan shifted on the carousel whale. “Who is this intern you keep mentioning? I wasn’t notified of any intern.”

  “He’s my intern, and I keep him pret-ty bus-y,” DZ said. “I had him set up cameras in every store, chain or mom-and-pop, within twenty miles of Snackerge’s house. I’m using face-recognition software and network databases to link Snackerge with his social security number, his credit and debit cards, his addresses, his driving records, and his consumer profile. If he enters any store within that distance parameter, I’ll know. And then I can deploy measures.”

  Nathan ignored a small boy watching the carousel who gave him the finger.

  “That sounds too invasive, DZ. What about his privacy?”

  “What about it?”

  Nathan rested his forehead against the pole. Even though he had thoroughly sanitized the pole and the horse before he got on it, he ran a cleansing wipe over his forehead anyway.

  Sometimes there weren’t enough cleansing wipes in the world.

  On the way to his shift at Sammy’s, Eric rode his bike downtown and noticed his wife’s car parked in front of a cafe, which was sandwiched between a pizza restaurant and a gift store.

  Right behind Mark Bollworm’s car.

  Eric circled back around, deliberated, then parked and locked his bike. He looked into the window on the very edge. Willa and Taffy were having milkshakes with his ex-friend Mark. That was his family in there, having milkshakes with someone who couldn’t even be bothered to stay friends with him. In his text ending their friendship, Mark seemed to have left out: I am working on making your wife and daughter my family instead, so there is understandably a conflict of interest here.

  Mark put his hand on Willa’s and she didn’t pull it away. The world outside of Eric slowed and moved around him like cloudy gel. All of time-space had narrowed to this particular moment. If this was living in the present, he could damn well do without it. Did she just put her thumb over his thumb? Eric paced up and down the sidewalk and a woman of his mother’s generation steered around him with a wary look.

  Eric entered through the employee door in back and looked out from the kitchen. Mark was talking to Taffy now. He said something else and she shrugged. Eric heard him order a strawberry milkshake.

  “She hates strawberry,” Eric said, baffled.

  “What are you doing back here?” one of the employees asked.

  “Leaving,” Eric said, wondering if he had gotten sucked into some other hellish universe where this wasn’t his family.

  On the way back to his bike, Eric knocked the paper from under a guy’s arm and didn’t bother to look back.

  “This,” DZ said, referring to something on his tablet, “is my favorite, my all-time favorite.” Nathan didn’t care. He was just relieved that they had gotten off the pirate ship. He stumbled off, reached a fence, then put his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. He had already thrown up on the ship, so it was really just dry-heaving.

  DZ trotted over to Nathan. “Check this out. My fourteen-pound baby, a personal remote-controlled spy plane.”

  Nathan slowly straightened. After a moment, he put a hand on the fence and looked at DZ’s tablet.

  “I programmed it with the GPS coordinates of Eric Snackerge’s bus. It even has remote control! I can have it take off and land, all the way from Maritimania!”

  Nathan kept his hands on his knees but watched the plane on the tablet, represented by a black dot. It took off from one location – “That’s my plane shed,” DZ said, and put his finger on the first red X – flew through Jamesville, and finally reached the end location – “Eric Snackerge’s bus,” DZ said.

  Nathan was shaky but was no longer actively retching. He slowly straightened, then leaned against the fence.

  “It’s giving me a feed of encrypted video footage while sniffing his Wi-Fi network and intercepting his cell phone calls to his wife and some local stores. If I wanted, I could have it launch a DoS attack.” DZ typed another command. “And look, infrared cameras.” Multiple small screens showed the view from the front and back of the plane.

  With a swipe of a finger, DZ brought up a fuzzy video feed.

  “That’s Snackerge eating a sandwich.” Nathan’s tone was incredulous. “And watching TV. A nature show.”

  “We should all have so much fun.”

  “Can you tell what he’s doing on his laptop?” Nathan asked.

  DZ handed him the tablet. “You look. I have to hit the head.” DZ left for the bathroom and Nathan held the tablet.

  Snackerge was video-conferencing with his daughter. He was also emailing his wife and planning his work schedule around the contest. Nathan admired how he had settled into the bus: there was a sofa he probably used as a bed, a small TV, what looked like a fridge, and a footlocker. The windows had curtains.

  DZ was probably buying things while he was on the john. He would be a while. After some furtive typing, Nathan found the input field for the destination and changed it to DZ’s house. The plane wasn’t going anywhere. Nathan watched for DZ in about six different directions, then searched for a time field. He quickly set the time to divert to the new address for ten minutes.

  “It’s cool, huh?” DZ was suddenly on his right.

  “Yep.” Nathan handed the tablet back and tried to calm his breathing. DZ might notice his nervousness, but DZ also loved to watch people marvel over his toys.

  “Check out this dot game.” DZ switched screens from the drone to a colorful game, and Nathan knew he was okay.

  Chapter Eleven

  The sprite, He Who Cleans House, was nattily dressed in nautical navy and accessorized with a polka dot handkerchief in his jacket pocket. He rested his tiny hands on his clipboard while he waited for the room to quiet down. More than a dozen chairs surrounded him in a half-circle. “Eric, you perceive that your wife and daughter are transferring their affection of you to this man who used to be your friend.”

  Eri
c shook his head from his seat across from the sprite. “Perceive? You’re implying that it’s all in my mind, when I’m forming a conclusion based on premises. Mark took Willa’s hand and picked her up at Taffy’s party. He bought Taffy a milkshake, in a creepy ‘I want to be your new Dad’ way. He’s after them. He wants to take my place.”

  He Who Cleans House nodded. “You should listen to your intuition.”

  The spider, He Who Dances for Ladies, started a foxtrot in front of Eric, who wondered what to make of it, and asked, “What does he look like, this former friend?”

  The blue-striped shrimp, He Who Eats Mucous, waved his arms. “Yes, what does he look like? He can’t be more attractive than you.”

  “He’s right,” He Who is Delicious, or the jar of pickles, said. “As humans go, you’re quite attractive.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Eric said. “That’s kind of you to say.”

  He Who Dances for Ladies switched to a mambo. “Tell us.”

  Eric looked at the floor. “He’s tallish.”

  “As tall as you?”

  “Almost,” Eric said. “He has dark, lion-like hair, with full but close-trimmed facial hair. Brown eyes. A charismatic presence.”

  “Like Kris Kristofferson in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?” He Who Reclines, the man-sized orange ladybug, asked in his guttural voice.

  “No, more like Kurt Russell in The Thing,” Eric said.

  An excited murmur swept through the room.

  “And you’re living in your bus?” He Who is Delicious said.

  Eric nodded. They all tsk’d and shook their heads, if they had one. She Who Floats bobbed up and down.

  “His wife has a great job offer in California, too,” Rex said. “She wants to leave.”

  “You have to fight for what you want!” He Who Eats Mucous said. “Fight to get your family back!”

  “It’s not that easy.” Eric leaned forward and staring at the floor. “It’s out of my control.”

  “You’re trying to win that contest, aren’t you?” He Who Eats Mucous said.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So you’re doing that for your family. That’s in your control.”

  “Not really,” Eric said. He glanced at his watch. A talon the size of a nightstick crept up to Eric.

  “Oh, buttery scallop!” He Who Cleans House said in a swear, grabbed a chair cushion, skipped down three chairs to Eric, and covered Eric’s leg with it. The talon sank into the cushion and Eric jumped up. The sprite took the cushion with the talon in it to the corner of the room.

  “That’s He Who Digs In. He’s just being friendly,” He Who Eats Mucous said.

  “Yeah, I have a ‘friend’ like that,” Eric said, looking pointedly at Rex.

  “Rex, what do you think about Eric doing this contest to win his family back? You know Eric better than anyone,” He Who Cleans House said.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Eric muttered.

  Rex crossed his leg, flashing a little bare ankle over his Chukka boot, and finished filling out a line on his crossword. He spoke with long-suffering patience. “Well, I certainly would. But I doubt my opinions are welcome.”

  “That’s never given you pause before,” Eric said, cracking his knuckles.

  Rex filled in another word while everyone waited. “Fine. I’ll tell you what I think. Eric needs to know where he stands, and he needs to know that he has support, but he’s too afraid to actually do something about his suspicion and paranoia. That’s why he needs me.”

  Eric angled up his hands from his thighs. “I’m right here. Why are you talking about me in third person?”

  He Who Cleans House hushed him. “Why does Eric need you?” he asked Rex.

  “Eric’s put years into this relationship,” Rex said.

  Eric laughed through his nose. “Sure, if you call possessing me then refusing to leave even after I finally get free of you ‘putting years into the relationship.’“

  “And that means something to him,” He Who Cleans House said, as though Eric hadn’t spoken. “Keeping that connection.”

  “That connection is the bane of my existence,” Eric said, his voice raised. He Who Cleans House nodded and closed his eyes to show Eric that he understood, but put out a hand to indicate that he should be quiet. “Why do you think that is?” He Who Cleans House asked both of them.

  “That’s easy,” Rex said. “He doesn’t trust himself or his decisions, so he needs me around to tell him what to do.”

  “What? That’s – No!” Eric sputtered.

  Rex went on. “He constantly tests my loyalty to him while rejecting it and lashing out at the same time.” Rex tapped his pen against the folded-up crossword. “What’s a nine-letter word for a bull’s place of safety?”

  The Ghost of Christmas Past raised his hand. “Querencia.”

  “Very impressive, Christmas Past,” He Who Cleans House said.

  He Who Squeaks, the caterpillar, emitted a long whistle through the holes in its abdomen.

  “I gotta go,” Eric said, and stood up. “This was great.”

  “Before you do,” He Who Cleans House said, “I have a task for both of you.” He stared pointedly at Eric and Rex. “I want you to do a karaoke duet before the next meeting.”

  “I love karaoke!” Rex said.

  “I have eyes everywhere,” He Who Cleans House said as Eric stormed out of the circle. He Who Likes Grapes blocked Eric on the way with his long arms. With some effort, Eric managed to make a wide berth and get past the gorilla with one large eye.

  “I’ll know!” He Who Cleans House yelled after Eric.

  DZ stormed into the office and past Nathan’s desk, ruffling a stack of papers with his wake turbulence. “Red alert,” DZ said. “Quantal read the Jamesville Trib article. They’re worried that someone, namely the iron-stomached Eric Snackerge, is going to win the contest, and that someone, namely the antler-wearing Eric Snackerge, will interpret the symbols.” He took off his aviator sunglasses and rubbed his face. “We’ve got a call with Quantal in,” he looked at his watch, “four minutes. Thankfully not a video chat, because I forgot to do my microdermabrasion last night.”

  Nathan sat in the extra chair in DZ’s office and checked through the RSS entries for the Journal of Revenue Recognition.

  “Sir, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.” DZ spoke to the phone base as though he were speaking to the client in person. “My VP of Operations and I have everything covered.”

  DZ held the phone away from his head and winced. Nathan could hear the sonic effluvia from the earpiece. DZ muted the sound on the base but covered the mouthpiece. “This is why he’s not on speaker,” DZ whispered, then unmuted the base.

  “I assure you,” DZ said in the phone, “Snackerge is not going to win the contest. No one will win the contest. It’s almost impossible. Like, 99.9% impossible, and even then, by an infinitesimal stroke of luck.” Pause. “Because of those glyphs!”

  Nathan sighed.

  “We’ve already had some sales lift,” DZ said, “and based on our firsthand data, I can tell you that customers are practically frothing at the mouth to get at your yogurt. We’re talking mobs, melees, fisticuffs, camp-outs, you name it. It’s going to be a huge success.”

  DZ pointed a trigger finger at Nathan and winked, then held up a finger. “Are you ready to be the number one best-selling yogurt brand in the world of organic and non-organic brands?” He grinned. “That’s what I thought. I’ll shoot you an email with the new info. You too. Bye now.”

  DZ let out a nervous breath after he set the phone on the base. “We’re okay for now, and I promise you that this non-contest won’t be any trouble.”

  “Oh, really?” Nathan sanitized his hands.

  DZ scoffed, then took on a hurt expression. “Yes, really. How could you possibly doubt me?”

  Nathan snorted a laugh. “Because you make these plans without telling me, and you always think everything is going to be a huge success. But since you onl
y have a vague notion of a plan, and no contingencies or back-ups or what-ifs, your big idea goes off the rails and I have to clean up after you.”

  Nathan opened DZ’s office door, then slapped his palm against the doorjamb. “I used to think it was really cool, how many ideas you would come up with. But then those ideas become the equivalent of the sugar gliders you bought last year: you get tired of playing with them.”

  DZ gazed into the distance. “I wonder what happened to those sugar gliders. They must have escaped out an open window. Tell the janitor there are to be no more windows left open.”

  Nathan leaned back into the office, one hand gripping the door jamb. “Your sugar gliders didn’t escape out the window.” He tapped his chest. “I had to procure a foster family for them, which required a twenty-minute drive into the country. So why should I share your confidence that nothing will go wrong with this contest?”

  DZ tossed up a small beanbag then caught it. “Because I have it under control, obviously.”

  Nathan tossed up his hands and let them fall against his legs. “Another mess I’ll have to clean up.” He left the door open and went back into the main room.

  DZ followed Nathan out of his office. “Everything will be fine! You just worry too much, like that one time, with the missing comma?”

  Nathan whirled around. “My insistence that the comma be put in prevented us from losing $3,000 in monthly revenue.”

  DZ started after Nathan as he went to his desk and shut down his workstation. “Why don’t you come over for dinner later? I had some Maine lobsters and Cincinnati ice cream delivered to the house earlier. In dry ice, no less. I could get a couple of former Soviet bloc girls delivered, too: fresh off the boat, desperate to –”

  “God, no,” Nathan said, not wanting to hear what DZ thought they were desperate to do.

  “And you can see my new Chilean flamingo,” DZ said. “Costs thirty bucks a day to feed the damn thing, but it’s nice to look at.”