Chance of a Ghost

by E. J. Copperman

  Yes, that’s how my mind works, and no, I’m not proud of it.

  I started out calling in a conversational tone, the way I do when there are civilians in the guesthouse and I need to talk to Paul. “Mr. Laurentz,” I said, as if asking if the mail had been delivered yet or the coffee was brewed. There was no answer.

  The living room was no less unsettling in its complete averageness. The plush furniture looked to have been recently vacuumed along with the generic beige wall-to-wall carpet, not the kind of décor I’d have expected from as flamboyant a soul as Lawrence Laurentz. There were no books on shelves, no music in cases, no DVDs visible. Clearly the real estate agent had come through here, too, and had eradicated pretty much any lingering remnant of a particular taste.

  “Mr. Laurentz?” I tried, just a little bit more boldly, as I got to the foot of the staircase. There was no escaping it; I’d have to go upstairs. I did notice the lack of creaking, something I could not brag about at the guesthouse. Of course, my stairs were over a hundred years old, so I couldn’t really complain. Because then I’d have to fix them.

  There were two bedrooms upstairs, one of which Lawrence had obviously used as a den or office, with a desk that must have at one time held a computer in one corner. The only decorations that indicated Lawrence had ever lived here were theatrical posters framed on each wall. One of them, announcing the opening of Gypsy—the original cast, from 1959—was signed by Ethel Merman, Jack Klugman and Jerome Robbins. If the toaster hadn’t gotten Lawrence, the fact that Stephen Sondheim had not signed it had probably killed him.

  It also occurred to me that he’d likely taken his “stage name” as an homage to Arthur Laurents, who had written the book for that musical as well as for West Side Story and a great many others.

  I called his name a few more times in the den, then advanced to the bedroom, which was the next–to-last place that I wanted to look (the last was the bathroom, but I was fairly sure that having died there, Lawrence would not want to revisit that particular spot). But again, it had been homogenized to a beige, bland sort of place. The den was the only room with a hint of personality left.

  “Mr. Laurentz, it’s okay. I talked to my mom, and she’s not mad at you anymore. Please come talk to me.”

  Nothing.

  Well, I’d gotten an idea when I was in the den, though I hadn’t wanted to try it for fear of alerting any neighbors in the area. But if Lawrence was going to be stubborn about it, though, I’d have no choice.

  I walked into the den, looked around and called his name out one more time, still with no response. Might as well give it a shot, and if local security showed up, I could always run like hell.

  I took a deep breath and, completely cold, started belting out a tune from Gypsy.

  “‘You’ll be swell! You’ll be great! Gonna have the whole world on the plate!’”

  Lawrence materialized over the desk almost immediately, looking downright nauseated. “Stop!” he shouted. “You’re butchering it!”

  I grinned and stopped singing. “So. You were here all along, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. Please, just don’t sing anymore.” Lawrence wiped his brow as if there were sweat on it, with a cloth handkerchief he produced from his inside pocket. He was no longer wearing the cape but was still in a suit and tie. Just in case Cole Porter came by later for a few cocktails. Which, let’s face it, was possible. “Why, why have you come looking for me? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because you still haven’t told me the whole truth, have you? What was the story with you and Penny Fields? She didn’t just come by to deal with job issues that night. She was here because you two were having a relationship. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Lawrence looked profoundly embarrassed and stared at the ceiling, which was only a few inches from his head. “There are some things one simply doesn’t disclose,” he said with a sniff. “But your insinuation that Penny might have had a hand in…what happened to me…is incorrect. She would never hurt me. She didn’t like me, but she wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “She had a funny way of showing she didn’t like you,” I suggested. “And your feeling that she wouldn’t throw a toaster in your tub is very touching, but not what I’d call ‘evidence.’ Where was she when you were taking a bath?”

  “She went out to get us some tea,” he said, adding, “I refuse to discuss this matter with you any further,” he said. And he looked away, which led me to believe he might be planning on vanishing again.

  I sat down in his office chair and looked up at him. “We still don’t really know what happened to you,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t just leave you alone.”

  Lawrence wrinkled his nose and looked away. “Why? Nobody ever truly liked me when I was alive. I lied to you about your father. I asked you for help but then withheld information about Penny and the Thespians. I went through your mother’s furniture to find ways to further deceive the two of you. What makes you care?”

  I’d had to think about that one myself, so I had an answer ready. “Because every human being deserves to live. Because that was taken away from you and it’s not right.” Then I looked up at him. “And because I disagree that nobody ever liked you. I think it was more a question of you not much liking most other people. But you came to my mom after you died, you sought her out. She enjoyed your company; you’re the one who didn’t want to admit that she considered you a friend. Penny, clearly, liked you. I think you were so afraid that nobody would like you that you beat them to it. You need to loosen up a bit, Lawrence.”

  He didn’t speak for a while. Finally, he said, “I think it might be too late for that.”

  “You are…existing proof that it’s never too late,” I told him.

  He hovered in a sitting position, as if standing was too much of an effort. It had the added effect of bringing us closer to eye level with each other. “Then let me try,” he said. “I apologize for the way I treated you and your mother. I was thinking of myself and no one else, which I believe has been a fault of mine roughly since kindergarten. I’m very touched by your persistence. What can I do to help?”

  “You can tell me where to get illegal Viagra,” I said.

  Twenty-five

  The records office at Freehold Area Memorial Hospital (a name which doesn’t make sense to me at all—What’s it memorializing? Are we supposed to remember the Freehold area?) was the same kind of bureaucratic room you’ll find in government buildings, impersonal to a maddening degree and bland almost to the point of a style statement.

  That blandness made it even weirder that I was so on edge I thought my head would explode.

  Granted, this was the first time I’d been to the hospital since Dad died, and shockingly enough, the place did not hold pleasant memories.

  The overall effect was not improved by the fact that the hospital was crawling with ghosts. Many spirits, I’ve discovered, are at least semiconfined to the physical space in which they died. And a hospital, no matter how well its staff and physicians perform, is by definition a place where a good number of people pass away. Even the room I was standing in, behind the inevitable counter separating the in crowd (staff) from the uncool types (patients or, in this case, me), had at least twenty ghosts hovering about its ceiling, passing through its workstations and just generally hanging around like in a cosmic waiting room without any good magazines. One ghost in particular, with slicked-back hair and a gunshot wound in his chest, was giving me the same grin I remembered from when The Swine and I were dating.

  It made me wonder how Mom, who’s been seeing ghosts all her life, must have felt when Dad was a patient here. Did she start looking for him in the ceilings as soon as Dr. Wells gave her the worst news she’d ever gotten?

  It was, I’ll admit, a little unnerving. I found myself tapping my right foot in what appeared to be impatience but was really anxiety.

  Roberta, the middle-aged woman standing behind the counter and in front of the workstations, who was i
ndeed alive, misread my unease. “It’s been a busy morning,” she said as an excuse even before I asked for anything.

  I smiled to show camaraderie. “I’m sure,” I said. “I’m wondering if you can help me find the records from a few years ago. My father passed away here, and I need to see some of the paperwork.”

  Without changing facial expression, she said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” It was probably something she would say if the phone rang at three in the morning. “What do you need?”

  “I’d like to see the records of his stay here and the death certificate,” I answered. I gave her the date Dad died, and his name. “Would you still have those?”

  “Oh, we have them, all right,” Roberta said. “But I’d have to pull them up and make copies. And you’ll have to pay for the copies, a dollar a page.” That seemed pretty pricey for something run off on an office copier, but the hospital, as they often do, had me over a barrel.

  “Not a problem,” I said. “How long will it take?”

  “Give me a half hour,” Roberta said. “Busy morning.” I didn’t tell her that was quicker than I’d expected. Somehow it seemed she would have been disappointed if I was actually impressed by the hospital’s efficiency. Since I didn’t want to damage her worldview, I nodded grudgingly and headed through the maze that is the modern palace of healing to the food court, which is an odd concept for a hospital. It was next to the gift shop, which is an even odder one.

  Once there, I texted Mom. After my consultation with Lawrence, I’d alerted her that he was in a more reasonable mood and might venture by. But I’d also asked if she would go to the guesthouse and find Paul, so she could text back his replies. Ghosts can’t be heard over the phone. Hey, I don’t make up the rules. Frankly, I’m not clear on who does, but whoever it is has an odd sense of order. At times I think the afterlife is run by an eight-year-old with ADHD.

  After ordering a hot chocolate and a small salad, I texted Mom, “Ask Paul if Maxie’s found anything about the Viagra ring yet.”

  Lawrence Laurentz had been oddly reluctant to tell stories out of school, but after insisting that he’d never even looked into the possibility of a pipeline to Viagra pills because he had suffered a heart attack ten years earlier and was not a candidate for the drug, he admitted he’d heard rumors that they were obtainable through people in the New Old Thespians.

  “I wasn’t asking about it because I couldn’t use it, but I heard about it from Jerry and from Barney Lester at the Thespians,” he’d told me.

  “Was Jerry asking like he had some prescriptions and was offering them to you?” I’d asked. That was the implication I’d gotten from Officer Warrell.

  Lawrence shook his head. “No, it was more like he knew about this great thing and he wanted to show off how in-the-know he was,” he said. “The man is a moronic boor.”

  Barney Lester, I recalled, had passed away before Lawrence, of natural causes, his wife had said. “Did something happen with the Viagra that caused his heart problem?” I’d asked Lawrence.

  He shrugged. “I was out of the group when he died.”

  “But not when he got sick,” I’d reminded him.

  “He was one of the ones not talking to me. But I don’t remember anyone who was talking to me saying it was anything but his heart.”

  That hadn’t been much help. Sitting now at a table with my salad and warm chocolate (“hot” would have been an overstatement), I was considering my options when my phone buzzed, and I read the text from Mom: “nthng n vgr bt pl wnts rprt.”

  Of course.

  Muttering to myself about reintroducing my mother to vowels, I texted back a very clear “WHAT?” and waited.

  I recalled a time when people could simply talk to each other over items we called “telephones” and get our answers almost immediately. It took me a moment to ponder this, after which the phone buzzed again, and I got Mom’s latest missive: “Nothing on Viagra, but Paul wants a report.”

  Now, was that so hard, really?

  I really would have given in and called Mom myself, but the idea of the interminable delays during which Paul would relay a message to Mom, then me to Mom, then Mom to Paul, then Paul to Mom…was more than my brain could handle this afternoon, and the room was noisy, which would have necessitated my shouting questions about Viagra and murder into my phone. I sighed and texted back as much as I’d learned from Lawrence. By the time I’d deciphered four or five more of Mom’s texts, which appeared to be in Estonian even when she deigned to throw in the occasional vowel, I’d eaten half the salad, finished all the tepid chocolate and was heading back to the records department, where my buddy Roberta was plying her trade with a gentleman ahead of me and the leering gunshot victim had apparently left the room.

  Roberta’s client moved on, and she waved me over. “I got the records,” she said. She handed me an envelope on which had been printed, “NO CHARGE” in block letters. I looked at her. She pursed her lips a little and chewed on her gum a bit. “You shouldn’t have to pay for that,” she said, and turned back toward her computer screen.

  You can’t ever figure people.

  I took the envelope and walked into the corridor. There was a waiting room a few doors down, so I ducked inside to sit and examine the records. An older woman, transparent and dressed from the 1970s, was hovering over the only available seat in the room. I walked over to her and waited, but she didn’t move.

  Putting my hand over my mouth as if to stifle a cough, I said quietly, “May I?” The ghost looked displeased but rose up out of the way and through the ceiling. Two other ghosts in the room, noticing, glanced disapprovingly in my direction. Apparently I was being rude. Ghost etiquette. I suppose I could have sat down in the middle of the older lady, but that did not seem a considerably more polite alternative.

  The envelope contained many documents I vaguely recalled having seen before. Much of it was medical mumbo jumbo I couldn’t possibly decode, but there were a few things that came from Dr. Peter Wells, which was what I was looking for right now. There were orders for various tests and medications, MRI and CAT scans, which told me nothing, and the certificate of death itself. I’d probably gotten a copy five years before, or Mom had, but I’d never had the strength to really look at it.

  Knowing that Dad was potentially at the other end of this search, I took in a deep breath and steeled myself. It wasn’t like I wasn’t aware he was dead; it was more the idea of mentally bringing back those last days that I dreaded. But this was necessary.

  I promise I’ll try as hard as I can, but you have to promise to take care of Mom. Okay?

  The document, really the copy of the document, was not nearly as official and final a piece of paper as you’d expect. It looked very much like an innkeeper’s license (my own point of reference) or a certificate of divorce (see above). At the bottom was the signature of the attending physician, Dr. P. Wells. The cause of death was listed as cancer. That plain and that simple.

  I could have saved myself the trouble; there wasn’t anything especially helpful here. I searched through the envelope again, saw nothing else, then got up and walked back to the records department and to Roberta’s station. She glanced up, looking puzzled.

  “I really appreciate your help,” I said. “Just one thing: There’s no autopsy report in the folder.”

  She looked at me for a moment, trying to assess exactly how stupid this woman in front of her might be. “That’s right,” she said. “There was no autopsy.”

  “No?”

  Roberta shook her head. “Of course not. The attending physician was present in the hospital room at the time of death. There was no sign of foul play. The police weren’t called. The cause of death was known. Unless you or another family member had requested it, there was no reason for an autopsy.”

  I thanked Roberta again, mentally rejecting the idea of trying to give her a tip, and left the hospital, once again wrapping myself up in the nineteen layers of clothing that felt like they added a half ton
to my overall weight. I walked to the parking lot and got into the Volvo, which was probably thrilled with the weather, a reminder of its childhood in Sweden.

  But before I drove away, I texted Mom, “Get Maxie to check up on Dr. Wells.”

  Twenty-five

  The records office at Freehold Area Memorial Hospital (a name which doesn’t make sense to me at all—What’s it memorializing? Are we supposed to remember the Freehold area?) was the same kind of bureaucratic room you’ll find in government buildings, impersonal to a maddening degree and bland almost to the point of a style statement.

  That blandness made it even weirder that I was so on edge I thought my head would explode.

  Granted, this was the first time I’d been to the hospital since Dad died, and shockingly enough, the place did not hold pleasant memories.

  The overall effect was not improved by the fact that the hospital was crawling with ghosts. Many spirits, I’ve discovered, are at least semiconfined to the physical space in which they died. And a hospital, no matter how well its staff and physicians perform, is by definition a place where a good number of people pass away. Even the room I was standing in, behind the inevitable counter separating the in crowd (staff) from the uncool types (patients or, in this case, me), had at least twenty ghosts hovering about its ceiling, passing through its workstations and just generally hanging around like in a cosmic waiting room without any good magazines. One ghost in particular, with slicked-back hair and a gunshot wound in his chest, was giving me the same grin I remembered from when The Swine and I were dating.

  It made me wonder how Mom, who’s been seeing ghosts all her life, must have felt when Dad was a patient here. Did she start looking for him in the ceilings as soon as Dr. Wells gave her the worst news she’d ever gotten?