Ghost Heart

by John Palisano

  “Why?”

  “Punish me for getting involved with you.”

  “Right now I want to kill all of those bastards,” I said. “Why do they care about me so much?”

  “I don’t know,” Minarette said. “Why does anyone care about anyone else? Who knows? I don’t think there’s any secret gift you’re harboring that they want to take. I think, and this is the scary part, they just pick people at random. No reason. Just because.”

  “There’s got to be a reason,” I said. “And there’s got to be a way to fix you—make you feel better. Take all of this away.”

  “I don’t know,” she said and snuggled closer to me. “I hope you’re right.”

  We leaned on the railing of the pier for a long time, just looking at the waves below us, holding one another’s arms.

  We both saw white flakes blow around us—only a few. “Look,” she said. “Is it snowing?”

  “I think it is.”

  Within a moment the snowfall increased.

  Minarette kissed me. The cold flakes fell on our noses and cheeks. It was one of the best feelings in the world. And then she kissed me again for what felt like forever. When we finally broke apart, the entire pier was coated white.

  “Look at that,” she said.

  “It’s early in the season for a storm like this,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  She hurried away from me. I was confused for a moment. Minarette shot out one of her legs and slid several feet on the pier. She laughed, and I saw her as a child in that moment. I thought of myself as a child, and had a vivid memory of my mom walking with me on the pier as a kid and me seeing the fish in the buckets, which horrified me.

  “Come on,” Minarette said. “Try it.”

  “Hah.”

  I ran a little, then shot out my legs as best I could with my cast still on, freezing in place. I slid on the snow. “We’re skating.” I almost toppled over. “My legs aren’t ready for this.”

  Minarette laughed again. “Carpe diem, Rick. You can sleep again later.”

  She took a longer run and slid even farther.

  I did the same. It hurt like hell, but I grinned anyway. Forget it, I thought. She’s right. Just enjoy this. Have a blast. Life’s short. Carpe diem. All that.

  The storm got worse. It’d already dropped about a quarter of an inch of snow on the pier by the time we slid to the front. I didn’t care.

  “I want to slide all the way back to end again,” she said. “Okay?”

  “I’m with you.” Inside, though, I was really hoping we’d stop soon. My legs and hips were on fire. Again, though, I just told myself to try and tune it out.

  We did, sliding and laughing like two little kids. Despite the pain, I was having the time of my life. When we made it back to the end of the pier, the same two gulls were still there. “I think they like watching us,” she said.

  Minarette lay down on her back. “Come on. Make a snow angel with me.”

  Before I could, she fanned out her arms and legs. Her smile was infectious and irresistible.

  It took me a bit longer to get down on the ground on account of my aches and pains, but I managed.

  “Am I going to have to carry you back, Old Man River?” she said, laughing.

  I laughed, too. “I’ll make it,” I said. “But I do think there’s a bottle of wine and bath in my near future.”

  On the deck, I felt the cold snow seep onto my scalp. I didn’t care. I welcomed it. I looked up at the large gray clouds overhead. They stretched as far as I could see and completely covered the sky. Snow fell on my face. “I love this, Minarette,” I said. “This is the best day of my life.”

  “Me, too,” Minarette said.

  I turned my head and our eyes met. I swore she looked like she was about to cry. But maybe it was just the cold and the snow.

  “I love you,” she said.

  I froze.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  She reached out, found my hand, squeezed it and then let go. She sighed. I sighed. Her legs jerked. “Stop slacking on making your snow angel,” she said, laughing. “Come on. Don’t leave me hanging here all alone.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. As I moved my arms and legs furiously, the snow crunched underneath.

  We stayed there for a moment, just looking up at the sky.

  “I want to see what our angels look like,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  We got up and stood over the impressions we’d made in the snow.

  “Two angels,” she said. “And look? It looks like they’re holding hands.”

  She was right. “That’s awesome,” I said. “That’s us.”

  I snapped a picture with my phone. I turned to her. “Should we take one of us together?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  We held each other and I held the phone out. “Smile,” I said. We both looked at the picture. “Good?” I asked.

  “Perfect,” she said. “But wait.”

  “What?”

  “The seagulls are gone.”

  “Oh.”

  “Maybe we should follow their lead,” she said. “It’s getting really heavy.”

  “True,” I said. “I can’t even see the car or any of the islands now.”

  I took her arm and led her off the pier. We slipped a few times and giggled about it. “I’m really in the mood for a coffee.” she said. “Think it’d be safe to stop?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, I guess we’ll see.”

  “Your hill is going to be murder if it isn’t plowed.”

  “It’s usually okay until the first freeze,” I said. “I can always go to the shop if it’s easier.”

  We made it off the pier. “The beach is so pretty covered in snow like that,” she said.

  “I love coming to the beach when it snows.”

  We found our way across the path and back to her car. “I’m soaking wet,” I said. “Do you have a towel or something I should put down?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’ll probably be an improvement.”

  “Hah,” I said.

  It took some doing to get her little Saturn out of the parking space, but she did it. We had no problems driving out of the parking lot and onto the main roads. Mostly they were clear, the result of the new paving materials that rejected snow and helped melt and disperse it.

  “Not so bad,” I said. “See?”

  “Nope. It’s fine.”

  And it was.

  We stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way back. We each got a nice hot coffee. “I won’t keep you any longer,” she said. I took the hint.

  “Yeah. These jeans are getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute,” I said.

  “Should I turn the heat on?”

  “I think that’d make it worse,” I said. “I’ll probably never get them off.”

  “We don’t want that,” she said.

  We passed the big Kohl’s and I thought about the times I had been in there when I was a kid with my mom, back when it was called Caldor’s. I used to love to go and check out the toys there. Again, I was struck by how much time had passed, but I was still standing, despite all I’d been through. Sure beat the alternative, which I’d been a little too close to discovering the hard way.

  The ride home from there only took a few moments. I kept looking over at Minarette. She didn’t look supernatural. I could see her pores, after all. I didn’t want to think the V word because it didn’t make sense. There she was, right before me, living, vital, looking every bit alive and not sick at all. Maybe it was a trick because, like she’d told me, she’d recently fed, or whatever it was Damian had put her through. I wanted to ask her about my uncle, but thought better of it. I didn’t want to scare her away, and we’d just had a
great time together. If my uncle Dave was alive, that’d explain how the paper had been signed at the shop, and how someone had gotten inside seemingly without breaking into the business. Of course he’d have an extra set of keys. Or several. But what about his missing hand? The one they’d identified? Explain that? I thought. I couldn’t, and my head hurt just thinking about it all, because she’d said he was no longer alive the way I’d known him. How could that be? How could any of it be? It all seemed like I was living in some hallucinatory dream where things were off just a little bit. None of it felt or seemed real at all. Maybe that was just my way of dealing with the situation.

  “This the street?” Minarette asked.

  “Yup,” I said. “Just go down, and my street is on the left.”

  She said, “Pretty sure I remember it all from here.”

  “Cool,” I said. Of course, I wanted to talk to her more, but my head was just spinning in a million places, and I knew if I brought something else up, it’d be hard to stop, and I knew she was really ready to do her own thing. When she rolled up to the stop sign, she took a sip from her coffee. I watched out of the corner of my eye. Her gestures looked normal and not those of a supernatural being. Maybe the whole thing was some affectation. I sure hoped so.

  Minarette drove me right up to the front of my house. The snow still fell, but it didn’t stick to the street.

  She said goodbye, grabbed my face and gave me a deep, long kiss. I tasted the coffee. Not unpleasant at all. “Bye,” she said and gave me a quick hug.

  “Bye,” I said. “Great day.”

  “Yes.”

  I grabbed my cup of coffee and wrangled myself out from her car. My body was sore, and I knew I’d be paying for it all night if I didn’t take a painkiller soon. I made a mental note to do so.

  As I walked up my stairs, I looked around at the trees covered in snow and recalled myself climbing them as a boy, wondering what my life would bring. The snow swirled around the branches, its icy smell drifting down to me. In back of me, I heard Minarette drive away. I turned just in time to see her disappear down the street—a last glimpse until the next time.

  Chapter Twenty

  There was no information available about the tunnels under the Universe, or any others in Whistleville. I scoured online search engines, but the tunnel system appeared to be unarchived and undocumented. That meant I’d have to somehow worm my way into them the old-fashioned way. I thought about how I might do such a thing. I’d have to blend into the crowd and sneak past the security to get down behind the stage. If I could do that, I could likely make my way into the basement and to the tunnels beyond. Doing so was going to take some chutzpah

  I knew what I had to do, that’s for sure. Sneak in the gun. My uncle’s from the shop. The Universe didn’t screen people for guns. If I kept it cool, they’d never notice. I could wear my work boots and hide it in there. That’d work. No problem. Just in case I ran into trouble. If Damian was down there, or the guys who rammed me and attacked me? It’d break my heart if they got shot in some lost tunnel and were never found until they were bones and I was long gone.

  There were a few things I needed to get in order. First on the agenda? Getting to the shop again, getting the gun, then getting back to my place to get ready. That was easy. Called one of the cab companies. Uneventful. On the way to the shop, it was weird seeing how much of the snow had melted. There were still small drifts, but mostly the town was littered with gray, lumpy ice. The streets, for the most part, were clear. It was a very different feeling than the day before, when Minarette and I had gone on our adventure. Everything we’d seen was likely very different. I pictured the silhouettes of our snow angels washed away.

  I’d put in a call to Lew about putting the shop on hold for a while. I’d mentioned that my doing so was primarily for me to heal and to allow me time to deal with the many tragic events. “Grief is a many-headed monster,” he’d said. He agreed it was a good idea and said he’d start the paperwork. If we didn’t wind down the business, I’d be stuck with paying taxes, regardless of if it was functioning. I was relieved it’d soon be off my shoulders. I had to do a few things myself, like change the answering machine message, contact a few of our vendors and cancel the automatic shipments of a few things we got weekly, like motor oil and hand cleaner. No big deal.

  Sitting at the main desk, I fumbled with the drawer key for a moment or three. Was taking a firearm into a club really a good idea? If I was caught, it’d start all kinds of trouble. I’d use the situations I’d been in as evidence I wasn’t in my right good mind, that much I knew. It took several minutes of my going back and forth to decide it was a horrid idea. I put the small key back under the paper clip tray, where Uncle Dave had hidden it, got up and went to the back room.

  What the hell are you doing? Get a hold of yourself, I thought. This is turning into too much. You can do better than this, man. Really, you can. Sneaking a gun into a club? Going inside the tunnels and looking for the very people who keep beating on you? Where nobody knows you’re going, and no one will see? While you’re still very messed up from the last bit of business they brought on you? Don’t be an idiot, man.

  I pulled out the cot in the back room, set it up quick, then got horizontal. My body thanked me, although I didn’t want to ever get up again after I was down. I shut my eyes and curled my arm over them for good measure. I rolled on my side and pulled the fleece blankets up to my neck. I did not want to do anything but fall asleep and forget everything for a few hours. If I did, though, I’d get nothing done. I compromised with myself and set my phone alarm for two hours. A nap would be good, considering I’d need to go to the club.

  * * * * *

  The Universe was hopping. Perfect. I had the car drop me off up the block so that I could blend in better. I could not have timed my arrival better. It ached when I walked, but all in all, I knew I’d be fine. There was nice crisp winter air, which was my favorite, and so I took that as a good omen. Shuffling my way toward the front with the crowd, I put my hand on my wallet. I had gotten change for two twenties so there’d be no issues at the door. When I got closer, I saw the cover was ten bucks, took out the proper bill, folded it, and put my hand in my pocket. As soon as I was near the front door, I put my head down lower. There was a girl in the front taking cash behind the small booth, then the bouncer with a flashlight. He was looking people up and down, but not really patting anyone. I’d used the ankle holster, figuring I’d never seen them do a pat-down that thorough. The most I’d ever seen was an arms-up, quick pat around the middle. If I was caught with the piece, I’d leave without a scene. I had my permit with me. On the off chance they’d call the cops on me just for trying, well, they had lots of documentation that there’d be countless good reasons I’d want to have some protection on me. Still? I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. It’d be a lot easier just to do what I needed to do—head inside the club and get down inside the tunnels beneath.

  It was my turn at the booth and I paid without incident. She stamped my hand with the image of a monkey eating a banana. Then I stepped toward the bouncer. The fellow looked at me, and for a moment, I swore he knew I was packing.

  We made eye contact. I did my best to keep a straight face. I must’ve been a good actor, because he waved me through without incident.

  The lobby opened up. There were people all over the place. It was perfect. If it’d been a slow night it would’ve been harder to blend in and then to disappear below. It was busy. Making my way toward the main floor, the volume increased. There was EDM banging. Not my favorite by any means, but it meant a lot of people would be messed up from drinking and popping stuff, and there’d be lots of inebriated people trying to dance. Fine with me. Helped my cause.

  At the bar I ordered a good Sam Adams winter lager, nursed it and scoped out the venue. I’d been to the Universe several times, but had never paid much attention to how people would get backstage an
d below the venue. As far as I knew there was one door to the right that led up a small flight of stairs toward the stage, and then, across the stage on the opposite side, down another flight of stairs, there were rooms for preparation, and then beyond those, passageways even lower, toward the tunnels beneath Whistleville.

  They’d put the screen down in front of the stage and were projecting CG animation of the stars and planets, completed by the club’s logo floating past every once in a while. That was good, because if I could get through the side door unnoticed, it’d be a straight shot across the stage, and, hopefully, down below.

  I felt nervous, of course. That was what the beer was for. I had to take the edge off. As I was thinking of all this, I recognized someone coming up toward me. “Minarette,” I said when she got close enough. “Funny seeing you here.”

  Minarette looked different again. Her hair, of course, was shiny and black. Her cheekbones looked higher and her lips looked fuller. Light seemed to go inside her skin and reflect back, translucent and beautiful. She really did look quite striking, and drop-dead gorgeous, but in an almost entirely different way. She seemed to me to be a brand-new person. “You’ve changed again,” I said. “I dig the new look for you. Very Goth.”

  “You haven’t changed,” she said. “Still the same guy.”

  Before we could go any further, someone I didn’t recognize—a burly fellow—hurried up behind her and whispered something in her ear. Her smile fell. He left. “Look,” she said, all nervous. “I’ve got to go meet someone. Let’s catch up again later, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, relieved on one hand, but nervous on the other. Her being there probably meant Damian and the others would be, too. That’d make things a little bit harder. I watched her leave, her moves effortless and graceful. I sipped the last of my beer and thought. Hard.

  Minarette had acted strangely disconnected—had she been the same person who made snow angels with me? The one who’d told me she’d loved me? It was so weird how cold she acted.

  What would my next move be? How would I get down there without being seen or caught? The only goal I had was to see what was going on, and to find out if what Minarette had told me about the tunnels was true—that Damian and his crew were down there. If so, I’d have to figure out what to do at that point, be it going to the proper legal means or doing something vigilante style.