Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “It was awesome,” Finn said.

  “Other than that, we’ve heard a lot of unusual noises, seen a few flashes of light on our video camera, and recorded some temperature abnormalities, hot or cold spots like the one you described. No ghost has ever composed a piece of music for us, though. That’s what makes this so special. We’ve also never worked with a spirit of Scott Joplin’s notoriety.” As Heather spoke, she lowered her voice in deference. “I’m going to try to channel him. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. So don’t get discouraged if we don’t get a repeat performance.”

  “Tell her about you equipment,” Carlos spoke up.

  “Right. Thanks, hon,” Heather said, glancing back at Carlos with a fondness that made Phoenix wonder if they were more than friends. It might have been a harmless hon, or Heather might be staking her territory. Phoenix didn’t want to care, but she did.

  Finn took over. “Basically, I’ve got the video camera, a digital camera with zoom, a motion detector, some aluminum chimes and a temperature monitor, otherwise known as a thermometer. We’ll see what happens. Hope you don’t mind if we hang out awhile.”

  “What’s awhile?” Phoenix said.

  “Definitely overnight. We don’t get our best data in daylight. Heather’s gotta jet back over to her kiddies in Canyon Country later, but I can camp out here, if that’s OK.”

  Again, Phoenix glanced at Carlos, questioning. She hadn’t counted on a stranger spending the night in her apartment. Last night, Carlos had slept here on the futon while she slept on the bed in Nia’s room, but that was different. She knew him, at least. “I’m not sure if…”

  “Maybe we should play it by ear,” Carlos said. “Pardon the pun.”

  Finn shrugged, his jaw flexing with irritation or disappointment, or both. He didn’t answer, unpacking a boxed motion detector from Radio Shack.

  “Whatever makes you comfortable, Phoenix,” Heather said. “This is your place.”

  While she waited for Finn to set up his surveillance—Gloria would be cracking up if she could see this, she thought—Phoenix shared the food Sarge had brought with Carlos. Like her, Carlos hadn’t had breakfast. They stood beside each other over the kitchen counter, awaiting turns while each stabbed at the chunks of spicy chicken and rice in the bowl. Neither of them spoke, but they both glanced occasionally at the styrofoam take-out container that had mysteriously appeared on the counter last night, which sat unmoving less than a foot from them. Their meal felt like the most normal thing in the world, but there was nothing normal about it.

  “We’re ready to rock, ladies and gentlemen,” Finn said finally. He was standing near the front door with a long thermometer, where she and Carlos had felt the cold spot. “Everybody go where they’re going and stay still, OK? We don’t want anyone setting off the motion detector except Mr. You-Know-Who.”

  This guy definitely was not going to spend the night here, she decided. Carlos, once again, took his place in the bedroom doorway, sitting on the floor. Phoenix sat beside Heather.

  “Wow. I’m actually a little nervous,” Heather said, taking a deep breath. She closed her eyes, trying to calm herself the way Phoenix often did right before even her smallest concerts, when the nest of butterflies converged in her stomach.

  Heather clasped Phoenix’s hand between hers, and for an eternity, she said nothing. Phoenix heard their combined breathing in the room, a far-off siren and a closer ice-cream truck playing a manic circus tune through her closed door. Phoenix was sorry she hadn’t gone to the bathroom first, because her bladder was pressing against her jeans. With her luck, she would wet herself again if the motion detector sounded, or if the chimes Finn had hung in the kitchen tinkled.

  But for the longest time, the room was silent.

  The longer she waited, the more Phoenix remembered the other things she could be doing right now, a list that was endless and panic-inducing. She still hadn’t chosen a fashion stylist, and she had no idea what to do with her hair. Beyond that, she hadn’t visited her voice coach in weeks. She’d better get in gear if she was going to be singing on national television next Tuesday. Ronn had told her to feel free to lip-synch when she needed to—plenty of other performers did—but Hell would get a cold spot before Phoenix Smalls would do anything as fake-ass as that.

  “You got hurt when you were young…maybe nine or ten?” Heather said softly, jolting her.

  Had Carlos told her that? Adrenaline streamed through Phoenix’s arms. “Yes.”

  “What I’m feeling is…this was an accident.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “I’m feeling he wants you to know this was an accident,” Heather clarified. “There was something of his…an item he once owned, or used, at an important time in his life. A bitter, angry time. He didn’t mean for it to happen. He’s sorry you got hurt.”

  The piano! Remembering her joy at finding that old piano as a child, Phoenix’s breath went frosty in her throat. Had that piano her parents sold once belonged to Scott Joplin?

  “I got hurt by an antique piano when it fell down the stairs,” she whispered. She saw Carlos squirming where he sat with wide eyes.

  Heather shook her head as if to clear it, her thin lips tightening, then she frowned. “There was a lot of pain,” she said after a pause, but Phoenix didn’t know if she meant there had been pain for Joplin or for her. Both of them, maybe.

  Phoenix felt her heartbeat gather speed. Did she want the ghost to come back? It was the chance of a lifetime, something she’d regret forever if she didn’t pursue it—but she was far from comfortable with communing with the dead.

  Heather’s eyes remained closed. Her brow knit itself, and for a long time she concentrated so hard that her face turned ruddy, almost glowing. She squeezed Phoenix’s hand gently and rhythmically, as if she was trying to pump something out of her. A minute passed. More. “Damn, damn, damn…” Heather muttered finally, obviously upset. It was like hearing a doctor say Oops in the middle of an exam.

  “What?” Phoenix said, anxious.

  Heather’s hazel eyes opened. She smiled, releasing Phoenix’s hand, which was slippery from their combined perspiration. “Sorry to scare you. I’m just frustrated. I felt like he was…sooooo close. Finn?”

  Finn shook his head, examining his thermometer. “Nothing yet.”

  “I don’t think he’ll come for us,” Heather said, her smile turning sad. “I got that message for you, Phoenix, but…I think that’s all he has for me.”

  “We can wait and keep trying,” Carlos said.

  “No,” Heather said. “The best way I can put it, Phoenix, is that he wants to be with you.”

  Maybe I remind him of his wife, Phoenix thought, the theory she and Carlos had conceived in their long conversation last night, before she decided she was nervous enough to ask him to stay despite her vows not to. “I can’t see anything else from him,” Heather said, her envy obvious in her face. “But he has a beautiful spirit, I’ll say that. You would have liked him very much.”

  Phoenix didn’t doubt a bit that she would have liked Scott Joplin. She just wasn’t sure how much she liked Scott Joplin now that he was dead.

  “We should pack up, Finn.” Heather sighed.

  “Are you kidding me?” Finn said, walking toward them. The motion detector chimed loudly, and Phoenix jumped. “I blew off an open call for this.”

  Despite the way Finn grated Phoenix’s nerves, she had to agree, considering she’d skipped an appearance with Ronn. “I don’t mind if you stay,” she said.

  “I know you don’t,” Heather said. “But he does.”

  Heather’s eyes didn’t blink. She wasn’t kidding. Phoenix felt her limbs tense. Yeah, and I bet nobody likes to piss off ghosts. I bet that’s a pretty bad idea.

  “Let me at least leave the camera. Will you let it run tonight?” Finn asked Phoenix.

  “I guess so. If you show me how.”

  While Finn coached her and Carlos on the operation of the video
camera—and the wireless monitor he’d set up in the bedroom—Heather packed his other things in his suitcase and gathered her knapsack, ready to go. She didn’t look frightened, but she moved quickly, eager to leave. When Finn and Carlos retreated to the bedroom for one last gadget-oriented detail Phoenix wanted nothing to do with, she walked up behind Heather, who was in the kitchen gazing at the refrigerator door, touching it lightly with one finger, the way her mother tested furniture for dust.

  “Bet you wish you’d been here last night, huh?” Phoenix said.

  Heather turned, startled. “Yes,” she said. “You’re a lucky girl.”

  “It didn’t feel so damn lucky. I wish it had been you here instead, believe me.”

  “Me, too,” Heather said, and Phoenix wondered if they were still talking about the ghost. Heather sighed, wiping a strand of hair from her forehead. “I’ve been wrestling with something, Phoenix, and I’ve decided to break one of my rules.”

  “What rule?”

  “Well…every once in a while, in the course of my spirit work, I come across messages, or knowledge, that might be unsettling. Warnings, you could call them. Usually it’s my policy not to scare people over vague messages I can’t help them interpret. When I was in college, one poor friend of mine hardly left her room for three months after I told her she might have an accident. As far as I know, she never did, so I scared her for nothing, maybe. I just don’t know. This isn’t a science, unfortunately. And I never like to share that kind of thing with clients unless it’s something like, ‘Stop smoking or you’ll get lung cancer.’ Not that you need a psychic for that.” She laughed, but the sound was more nervous than mirthful.

  “What is it?” Phoenix said, her voice tight. She’d better ask now, or she wouldn’t want to hear it at all. “Something about the ghost?”

  “I don’t…think so…” Heather said. “Please remember that most ghost encounters are positive, in my experience, or at least neutral. I’ve never come across a spirit I thought wanted to hurt someone, even when they had a good reason to. And this spirit specifically said he was sorry you’d been hurt, and he was adamant about it.” She sighed again, searching for words, blinking rapidly. She looked pained. “But there is something, Phoenix. How can I put this?”

  Put it in English, and fast. Phoenix was nearly as frightened as she’d been when her refrigerator slammed itself shut in the dark. Her taut bladder complained, throbbing.

  “You’re not safe,” Heather said finally. “That comes across very strongly, and it did from the minute I saw you, especially when your father was here. This is a dangerous time. I won’t pretend I know it isn’t the ghost, but it’s probably something else, maybe something with your career. That might explain the father connection. Whatever it is, your life is at risk.”

  There was loud laughter from the living room, Carlos and Finn sharing a joke, and their jocularity shook Phoenix from a leaden stupor that had crawled over her as the psychic spoke. Finn was saying he’d nicknamed the camera his piece-o-shitcam.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Phoenix said, trying to keep calm.

  Heather gave Phoenix a helpless look, her eyes motherly. “That’s the thing. I don’t know. I don’t even know what kind of danger it is. That’s why I almost didn’t tell you.”

  Their conversation caught Carlos’s ear, and Phoenix saw him gazing over at them while Finn talked on. “In that case,” Phoenix said, “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  Heather wrapped her arm across Phoenix’s shoulder, resting their heads together. “I’m sorry. If anything else comes to me, I’ll contact you right away, through Carlos.”

  “I’ll give you my cell number, too, just in case,” Phoenix said. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Thanks for trying, anyway.”

  She gave Heather a hug for good measure, in case that might give her a flash of insight like on The Dead Zone, but the psychic only told Finn she was ready to leave. Phoenix watched as Heather called Carlos hon again, and he gave her a Miami-style kiss on each cheek.

  Then, they were gone.

  “She left in a hurry,” Carlos observed.

  “Yeah. Didn’t she?” What Heather had told her about the piano might have been information she learned from Carlos, or just a lucky guess. Most psychics were bullshit artists. Even Carlos had said that. “How well do you know her?”

  “Very well,” Carlos said.

  “Are you going out?”

  That was the most polite term Phoenix knew for sleeping together. The question didn’t faze Carlos. He reclined across the futon, propping one leg on the pale wooden arm as he popped a nacho chip into his mouth. “We did. We’re not anymore.”

  “And she’s probably not too happy about that. Right?”

  Carlos smiled thinly. “Now who’s the psychic?” His smile irritated her. She hoped she would remember never to fall into bed with him, no matter how comforting his presence when their clothes were on.

  “Well, she said I’m in danger, and I wonder if she just said that to freak me out. Jealous women are nothing to play with.”

  At that, Carlos’s smile vanished, and he sat up straight. “Heather’s not that way. She would never say something like that to be spiteful. What kind of danger?”

  “She didn’t know. Maybe the ghost, maybe my career. Something to do with my dad.”

  “Maybe your father’ll kill you when he finds out you’re sneaking around with me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Phoenix said, with her own icy smile. “He’d kill you.”

  “Ah. Good point. But I wouldn’t take Heather’s message lightly. Considering those shootings implicating G-Ronn right now, it’s not a big stretch. You told me about that panic in St. Louis. Remember? You had two thugs packing heat outside your door all night?”

  Phoenix hated having her words parroted at her, especially when they were exaggerated. “They were guards. I didn’t say they were thugs. And Ronn’s not like people think.”

  “None of us is like anyone thinks we are. But I’ve made my point about the current company you’re keeping, I hope. Cuidado, that’s all.” Watch out.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m more worried about the company in this room.”

  “The ghost?”

  “No,” she said. “You.”

  He half smiled again. “I’m not dangerous.”

  “Is that what Heather would say?”

  Carlos’s eyes flitted away from hers. “I used to make the mistake of sleeping with my female friends, and when we weren’t friends anymore, I was baffled,” he said, returning her gaze. “Luckily, Heather is still a friend. She helped me grow up. She’s a wonderful lady, and I respect her. But she has two kids, and I wasn’t ready for that. Does that answer your questions?”

  “But didn’t you know she had two kids before you hooked up?” Phoenix said, angry for Heather’s sake. She understood how much it hurt to lose Carlos Harris.

  “She knew who I was,” he said. “I told her all along. She made the choice to go there.”

  The angry feeling didn’t dissipate. It was her own anger, she realized. It had nothing to do with Heather Larrabee, a woman she didn’t know. Carlos was still too careless, showing glimpses of his marvelousness to women he had no intention of sharing it with. She could see that about him as clearly as she could smell his luxuriant cologne, which was now the strongest scent in her apartment, an old memory in her every breath. It was hard to be with him.

  “Listen, Carlos…” Phoenix said, sighing. “I would appreciate it if you would stay here again tonight, just to make sure nothing else weird happens. I know you want to have more contact with this spirit, if that’s what it is, and that’s cool with me. But after that…”

  He held up his hand before she could finish. “I understand,” he said. “You’re at an important crossroads in your career. You don’t have time for dating. It wouldn’t be fair to me.”

  “Good. You’re a psychic, too.”

  “Not at all,” he said,
his voice as flat as glass. “That used to be my favorite speech.”

  It didn’t take Phoenix long to understand that she had fallen into a dream.

  She knew as soon as she saw she was sitting in her parents’ living room in Miami, on the walnut bench of the spinet piano from Grandpa Bud and Grandma Oprah. Mom was reading the Sunday New York Times at her reading table, while Sarge polished his trumpet on the leather sofa. The trumpet’s finish gleamed like precious ore beneath his loving hand. An old-fashioned clock with two trumpet-playing angels, a clock she had never noticed, ticked from the piano.

  They were waiting.

  “Whatever you do, Phoenix, remember to make the smart play,” Mom said, one of her favorite phrases. Mom peered at her over her purple reading glasses, the ones she only wore at home. Her hair was cut short in a way that made its silvery strands seem playful instead of tired. “This is the best thing for you. Think of how much you’ll learn from him, how much more you’ll understand the world outside these walls. What’s more important than that?”

  Sarge grunted. “He’s so old,” he said. “She’ll be nursing him before long.”

  “Stop exaggerating, Daddy. He’s not that old.” But maybe he was, she thought. Maybe.

  Sarge didn’t argue further, glancing at the clock. When there was finally a knock at the door, three confident bangs, Sarge said, “Well, it’s about damn time.”

  “Land sakes, mind your language,” Mom said, a series of words that had never emerged from her mother’s mouth. A reminder that Phoenix was dreaming.

  Phoenix leaped to her feet, almost tripping over the many-layered white chiffon dress she hadn’t realized she was wearing. Sarge called her back and told her to sit down, setting his trumpet aside with unhurried care. “Don’t act so excited. It’s unseemly. I’ll answer it.”

  The man they were waiting for stood on the doorstep, standing five or six inches shorter than Sarge. Phoenix heard his voice greeting Sarge in a polite, masculine rumble as soft as a kitten’s purr. Her heart quickened when she heard him. Leaning over to peek through the doorway, Phoenix saw a spotted horse tied to a magnificent canopied black surrey that shone in front of their house like the moonlight on the midnight ocean’s plane. The surrey was a few years out of date, but lovely nonetheless. He’d chosen it special to come see her.