by Laurel King
Well, great. This lady’s either crazy, or dumb, or—both. Just what I need in my life, more crazy.
“Exactly who are we talking about?”
“I’m sorry, you’re right, I probably sound like a nut job right now. Let me start over. My name is Victoria, I got your name and number from Marcus.”
Shit.
Marcus was a name I had spent the last few years trying to forget. Of course, being a medium, I had no hope of avoiding his murdered 7-year-old brother, Trevor. That sweet kid had followed me ever since the day I got him killed. Occupational hazards and all that, I suppose.
“Okay, I’m listening,” I said. As she spoke, I unlocked my car door, dumped my purse into the passenger seat, and plopped down to listen.
“Well, about a week ago, I was in this car accident.”
“Did anyone die?”
“What? Oh. No, no one died.”
“Okay, that makes things easier,” I said, turning the keys in the ignition so I could crank up the air conditioner. Here in Charlotte, hot and humid go together like ribs and barbecue sauce. It’s just the way it’s always been; or so they keep telling me.
“Anyway, it wasn’t a bad accident or anything, just crunched up the front of my car, so I had to get it towed to the body shop.”
“Okay,” I said, starting to feel boredom itching around the edges of my mind. Which is precisely when Jamal decided to make himself comfortable next to me, right on top of my purse. Well, not really on top of it, since he’s a ghost. But, still.
“Well, ever since it got towed there, my grandmother keeps coming to me at night.”
“Is that annoying?” Like you are to me right now… I thought, fiddling with the temperature controls on the dashboard.
“No, it’s just—after she died, she used to come to me every night. But lately she was only coming a couple times a year. I mean, it’s been a decade, now.”
“I see. So you’re upset about her coming more often, again?”
“Yes! That’s exactly right! You really are a psychic, aren’t you?”
Here we go again.
“No, I’m not a ‘psychic’. I’m actually a medium. Didn’t Marcus explain?”
“Well, sure, but I wasn’t really listening to all of it. He was going on and on about stuff, but when I heard that you could figure out things the rest of us don’t understand, I just knew I had to talk to you.”
“I appreciate the confidence,” I said, “but it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Good! When can I come to your office? Are you open tonight?”
“Actually, I just closed up shop.”
Jamal started waving his arms around, shaking his head as if to say, No, no! Stop!
“Oh,” Victoria said, sounding like a teenager who just got un-invited to the coolest party of the year.
I watched Jamal flailing around for a few more seconds, trying not to laugh. Evidently, he had forgotten he was a ghost and no one could hear him but me, because he was still using hand motions and mouthing words to get my attention.
“But I could squeeze you in tomorrow afternoon.”
Jamal finally stopped, slumping down into himself with relief. I had to give him credit; the guy was hilarious when he wasn’t trying.
“Fantastic! I knew it would be soon.”
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow around, say, 1 p.m.?”
“Great. See you then!”
I ended the call and put the cell phone in my purse.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he responded, doing his best impression of super-innocent.
“I mee-eaan why didn’t you just say whatever it was you wanted to say? I’m the only one who can hear you, for crying out loud.”
He chuckled, a deep, slow chuckle that made my stomach feel strange.
“Baby girl, I think sometimes I start to forget I’m—you know.”
We sat there in silence, the AC blasting my hair in a million directions and not affecting him at all.
“Yeah. Well, that was a stupid call. So why were you losing your mind?”
He looked out the window, at his hands resting on his knees, over at me.
“Just think you should take this gig. That’s all.”
Yeah, right. Jamal never talked about any of my clients unless there was something in it for him. Each time he helped another ghost—or spirit, or whatever people like to call them nowadays—he earned some kind of ‘brownie points’. After he helped enough of them, he told me he would get a kind of promotion. Honestly, I didn’t really understand it at all, but he was pretty serious about it. I thought it was kind of sweet.
“All right, all right, she’s coming tomorrow afternoon, so just drop it, okay?”
“I’m hip to the groove, baby!” he put his hand up for a high-five. I just stared at him.
“Oh, right,” he slowly lowered his hand, shaking his head, “guess it’s time for me to make like a tree and….”
The next time I blinked, he was gone.
“Good night, Jamal.” I shifted the car into reverse, turned the volume knob on my stereo up to almost full blast, and pulled out of the parking lot with Earth, Wind, and Fire pounding in my ears.
Chapter Three
“How’s it hangin’?”
I looked up from staring into my orange-colored beer, and saw the juiciest, shiniest, pink and pouty lips I had ever seen on a guy, surrounded by a perfectly-trimmed goatee. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, he smiled. Perfect, white, beautiful teeth between those lips.
God help me, I thought, suddenly feeling a little too desperate and a lot too drunk.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, looking at all the empty chairs next to me. “Did your friends leave you here all by yourself? Or are they just late?”
Finally, I found my voice, “Neither.”
Motioning to the chairs, he asked, “Mind if I sit here?”
I snorted in disgust, “Be my guest. No one else will.”
He took a few minutes to sit, readjusting his shiny suit coat, taking off his hat and carefully placing it on the table. I used that time to grab a few cocktail napkins and wipe my face off. Sure, I was on the short road to divorce now, but I didn’t have to look like a total loser-mess in the process.
“So, if no one left you here, and you’re not waiting for anyone, why are you sitting alone?
I shrugged, decided now would be the perfect time to get totally blotto, and starting guzzling my orange beer.
“Hey, hey, slow down, there,” he said, reaching across the table and gently pulling the huge beer mug out of my hand.
“Sorry,” I said, swiping the back of my hand across my mouth.
“Uh-oh,” he said, pointing to the stack of napkins. “You got a little bit of something right about—here.” He pointed at his own face, making a big circle around his mouth area.
Oh, god, I forgot about my makeup! I thought, about five seconds too late. I had decided this year I should dress like a witch, so there was a bunch of green makeup all over my face, and black lipstick on my mouth. By my own calculations, that meant right now I probably looked like a toad on a quick trip through the blender.
Nice. I thought. How can this night get any worse?
“Ha. Thanks. I forgot about the makeup.” Grabbing a napkin, I unzipped my purse and frantically searched for my compact. “Stupid purse. Always filled with a bunch of junk I don’t even use, which means I can never find the two things I actually do need when I want to.”
“That’s what the ladies do, sweet thing,” he said, leaning towards me. He smelled incredible, like some crazy mix of incense and coconut.
No wonder he’s wearing a pimp costume, I thought, he’s a perfect shoo-in.
“I guess,” I answered. I was always saying lame things in front of guys like him.
“Tell me what’s goin’ on, girl.”
I found my compact, opened it and nearly dropped it o
n the floor when I saw myself. Green and black makeup were smeared all around my mouth, and there were tear-tracks running down the middle of my cheeks.
Perfectly matches the way I feel on the inside, I thought, trying to minimize the damage by using the napkin, but failing miserably.
“Going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. My husband’s an asshole—sorry, almost-ex-husband—and I’m alone on Halloween night dressed in a witch costume with makeup smeared all over my face, guzzling orange beer. That’s what’s ‘going on’.”
He laughed softly, shaking his head, still looking right into my eyes. Even though I knew I looked terrible, I was starting to feel a warm sensation down below that I hadn’t felt in months.
Is this guy actually a real pimp? I thought, studying him a little closer. He had a really nice-looking afro, his skin a warm mocha color, and his clothes were so authentic I was starting to wonder if his costume was one of those super-expensive rentals from the theater district store a couple of blocks down.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, gesturing toward my almost-empty beer mug. “Not that stuff, a real drink.”
“Sure, why not,” I said, finally giving up on my makeup. “Do you work here or something?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Well, that costume is pretty expensive-looking. I mean, I haven’t seen 70’s clothes look that real since the last time I watched a rerun of That ‘70s Show.”
“Watched what?” he asked, turning his head to the side and lifting an eyebrow.
“You know, that show with Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher, the kids always in the basement hanging out, set in the 70s?”
“I, uh, must have missed that one.”
“How could you miss it? It was on for almost 10 years.”
What’s up with this guy? Has he been hiding under a rock?
“I don’t really catch a lot of shows on TV.”
“Oh.”
The waitress finally came over, dressed in a bumblebee costume, complete with bouncy little flowers on a headband. She cleared my orange beer mug away, looked pityingly at my obviously-terrible makeup and asked, “You want me to close out your tab?”
“No, I think I’ll have a—”
I looked at him; he just shrugged his shoulders and pointed at me.
“Okay, then, I’ll take a margarita on the rocks, with salt, easy on the ice.”
“Add it to your tab?”
“Actually, I think someone else is paying for it.” I gestured toward the drop-dead gorgeous guy sitting across from me, but she didn’t even look at him.
“Um, sure, okay, whatever.” She left without a second glance, switching her butt as she walked so the foam ‘stinger’ hooked to her black tights would wiggle. Sexy bumblebee costumes for toddlers; it’s all the rage! I thought.
“So, tell me what’s happenin’. What’s good?” he asked, leaning toward me.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you told me your soon-to-be-ex-husband’s an asshole. Tell me why?”
“He cheated on me.”
“That ain’t cool.”
“Ha. That’s an understatement.”
“A lot?”
“What?”
“Did he cheat on you a lot? Or just once or twice?”
“Are you serious?”
He looked at me for a few seconds, genuinely confused. “Yeah. Dead serious. Why? Do people tease you about this or something?”
“No, no, it just seems strange for you to ask ‘once or twice’ like that’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Great, I’m already pushing this guy away and it hasn’t even been five minutes. I was pretty famous for annoying people in the first ten minutes of meeting. In fact, I had a bit of a ‘reputation’ for that in my circle of friends. Our circle of friends. Well, his circle of friends. Whatever.
“Sorry, I get a little touchy about the subject of cheating, now that it’s the main focus of my pathetic life.”
“You don’t need to apologize, he should be the one apologizing.”
“I guess so.”
The waitress came bouncing over with my margarita, in a humongous glass.
“Here you go!” she chirped, “Let me know if you need anything else!”
I looked over at him, eyebrows raised, Want anything?
He shook his head, hands up, Nah, nothing for me.
“Nope, we’re good.”
She looked at me quizzically, creased her eyebrows, frowned a little, then turned and walked away.
“What’s her problem?” I asked, using the little umbrella in my drink to stir the tequila into the sweet and sour mix, for easier gulping.
“Maybe she’s not used to seeing people who talk to ghosts.”
I stopped stirring.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“Ghosts. Maybe she isn’t used to seeing people talk to ghosts on Halloween, at a fancy club in the middle of K Street.”
I’m pretty sure my mouth was hanging open. No, I’m positive my mouth was hanging open.
You gotta be kidding me, I thought, not again.
“Are you telling me you’re a ghost?” I dropped the stupid umbrella back in the drink, planted my hands on the table, readying myself for a physical battle. With who, I’m not sure, because if this guy was a ghost, who was I trying to fight?
“See? Now you’re hip to the groove, baby.”
A ghost. Again. Only, this time, I was grown, about to be divorced, and wearing a stupid costume in the middle of a nightclub in D.C.
“Why are you here? Why me?”
“Well, first of all, I died, not too far from here. And, second of all, why not you?”
“How did you die?”
“Long story, pretty lady. The important thing is: now I have someone to talk to. You.”
“No, no, no. I talked to ghosts before, and it always turns out bad for me. Either someone doesn’t believe me, or the ghost is all belligerent, or something. I’m done with it. For good.”
“Hmm. Maybe. Let’s just see what happens. Maybe it’ll be different this time around.” He leaned even closer, staring right into me with his big, golden-sparkly, shining eyes. Oh, my god, I’m getting turned on by a pimp-ghost.
“Are you really a pimp?”
He laughed out loud, a rumbling, warm sound from deep inside his chest. “Well, I was a ladies’ man back in my day. I s’pose you could call it that.”
“I thought so. Only a pimp would act that way with a total stranger. Especially me.”
“Now, don’t sell yourself short, foxy mama. Any man would be a fool to just let you sit here by your lonely self, staring at that god-awful orange drink.”
“Really? That’s funny, cuz I’ve been sitting here doing just that for about two hours, now. And no ‘man’ came over to talk to me.”
“That’s a real shame,” he said, shaking his head like it was the biggest tragedy since the fall of Rome. “No beautiful woman should be sittin’ by herself, on a night like tonight. Men these days forgot the art of gettin’ a brick house like you back to the crib.”
“A what?”
“Brick house. To the crib. Which thing don’t you get?”
I laughed, loud and hard, for a few minutes. He watched me, curious. After some hiccups and hitching my breath a time or three, I finally calmed down, dabbing at the corner of my eyes with another napkin.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You. Us. I mean, here I am, talking to a ghost-pimp from the disco days—which, by the way, was only a few decades ago—and it’s like we’re speaking Spanish and Italian at the same time. Some stuff gets through, but a lot of it is ‘lost in translation’.”
He laughed too. It was nice to laugh with a guy, after weeks of fighting with one. Too bad this one was a ghost. Leave it to me to hit it off with the only dead guy in the room, haha.
“I guess we got a lot to work on, if we’re ever gonna get
anything done, huh?” he asked, fiddling with his shirt collar.
“Wait, what?”
“We have to work out our differences—”
“No, not that part, the part about getting anything done. What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, worried that I already sort of knew where this was going. “I don’t want to get anything ‘done’ with you.”
“Look, Amber,” he said, “I picked you for a reason. There’s some things we need to get done around here, and you’re the first one who can relate to my kind that doesn’t scare the livin’ hell out of me.”
No. No, no, no. No way. This will be a disaster.
“No!”
“Too late.”
Ugh.
Maybe I could just—
“Don’t bother.”
I looked at him, eyes widening.
“Did you just read my mind?”
“Not exactly, but it’s the same idea.”
Crap. That means the whole time we’ve been talking—
“—I knew what you were thinking. Yep.”
I sat there, frozen in fear.
“Don’t be afraid, Amber. I don’t want to do anything bad to you. Besides, it’ll be fun working with a lovely lady such as yourself, who thinks I’m a stone-cold fox with juicy lips.”
Good grief. Being embarrassed is one thing, but this was starting to feel like one of those ‘at school with no clothes on’ dreams.
“Yeah, I hate those. Unless there’s nothin’ but females in the room, then I’m a little more ‘up for the occasion’ if you know what I mean.” He winked at me, made a click sound with the side of his mouth, and smiled really, really big.
“Stop that!”
“What?” he grinned even bigger, teeth almost glowing in the dark they were so bright. “What’d I do?”
“Get out of my head you big jerk!” I swung to smack him, and caught nothing but air.
He laughed hugely, slapping his leg, tears glistening in his eyes, getting a really good hardy-har-har going, at my expense.
Which is the exact moment the stupid waitress showed up. Staring at me like I was totally insane. To be fair, seeing me yell at—and try to smack—the nobody sitting across from me probably made her think I was just the tiniest bit of crazy.
“Uh, here’s your check, whenever you’re ready. But—no hurry, okay, just, um, take your time, ma’am.” She slid the bill towards me, very slowly, as if—at any second—I might suddenly lunge and devour her eyeballs in a couple of quick bites. As soon as the paper was out of her reach, she snatched her hand back and did a lightning-fast about face to book it out of there.
