Love Me If You Must

by Nicole Young

  I painted water over the ’70s pattern, gave it a few minutes to soak in, then scraped the layers off with a wide, flat-edged putty knife. It wasn’t the most effective way to rid the walls of their covering, but the obsessive-compulsive in me loved the way the paper came off in long spirals that piled up on the floor.

  One wall was stripped bare when I realized Lloyd hadn’t arrived yet. I flipped open my phone and dialed up his cell.

  “Lloyd here,” he answered in tandem with crackling airwaves.

  “Tish Amble. I thought we were on for today.”

  There was a pause while he tried to come up with a good excuse for stiffing me.

  “Got tied up . . . crackle . . . deck repair . . . crackle . . . crackle . . . get the permit?”

  “Permit for what? I thought you were taking care of all the permits.”

  I could barely hear his reply as the signal cut in and out.

  “. . . get the permit . . . for the cistern . . . by tomorrow.”

  “By tomorrow? Fine. In fact, I’ll take care of it right now.”

  The line was nothing but static as I jammed the disconnect button with my finger. What kind of contractor didn’t pull his own permits? It’s not like it took a college degree to get permission to knock down a stone wall.

  I picked up the soggy paper shavings and dropped them in a plastic bag. Now I’d have to get cleaned up and face the village guardians myself.

  But it would be worth it if it meant getting rid of that creepy pile of rocks once and for all.

  8

  The brisk October wind blew cold fingers of air down the neck of my jacket, slowly cooling my boiling blood as I stomped two blocks down to the village offices. Lloyd’s reliability quotient had dropped to a solid zero. What was I paying him for? I should fire him and use the money on a one-way ticket to Fiji. I could renovate a grass hut as my next project.

  Leaves danced circles around me, then piled up in exhausted heaps against the brick storefronts. I pushed open the heavy glass door to the Village of Rawlings headquarters and stepped into a workplace as hushed as a morgue. The smell of new paper and copy toner greeted me. Behind the reception counter, a woman was absorbed with a collating project that involved six or seven multicolored sheets and an electric stapler.

  I crossed my arms and waited. She showed no sign of slowing. After a few moments, I cleared my throat.

  Without looking up, the clerk droned, “I’ll be right with you.”

  My fingers tapped the denim of my sleeves. The pile that consumed the woman’s attention hadn’t shrunk a millimeter since I’d been standing there. I wondered at what point she would decide to do her job and assist me.

  “Uh-hmmm,” I said with more insistence.

  The nameplate on the counter identified the woman as Laura Boyd. I was about to say her name in not-very-nice tones, when she huffed and laid down the papers overflowing her fingers. She gave me a sharp glance.

  “Can I help . . .” Her voice petered off into stunned silence. From her goggle-eyed stare, I concluded my notorious twin had preceded me once again.

  No time for flabbergasted clerks. I had a deadline.

  “I need to apply for a permit.” I flopped my elbows on the counter and leaned toward her. “My name is Tish Amble and I’m at 302 South Main Street.”

  “T . . . Tish Amble?”

  “That’s my name.”

  Ms. Boyd backed up into a desk, knocking over the pencil holder. She swung around, made a half-try to pick up the mess, then practically ran to a back office and shut the door.

  I hoped that meant she was getting my application.

  Her absence dragged on. An old-fashioned bell, the kind you ring for service, was sitting on top of a stack of last week’s local newspaper. My patience came to an end, and I gave the ringer a good workout. The ding, ding, ding, ding lowered my frustration level considerably, though whether it had the power to procure my application was yet to be seen.

  From the direction of the back office, bobbing between bookshelves and file cabinets, came a head shaved smooth as a plum. I had only a moment to wonder if the owner used a double-blade or some kind of cream, before the man’s face, purple-veined with anger, wiped all curiosity from my mind.

  “Laura tells me you need a permit.” His voice resonated off the plate-glass windows behind me and rattled my rib cage.

  My body stiffened in defense. “That’s right.”

  “At 302 South Main?” he asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “For what?” The guy sounded like a grunting monkey.

  “Removal of the cistern.”

  “Nope. Can’t do it.” He thumped his fist on the counter.

  “Pardon me?” My heels dug into the carpet.

  “You heard me—302 falls in the Historic Preservation District along with the rest of Rawlings Township. Can’t touch the foundation.”

  “Thankfully, the cistern isn’t part of the foundation.” I made my best attempt at a smile, but I’m sure it looked more like a grimace.

  “It’s part of the original stonework. The committee won’t let you touch it. Believe me.” His head angled down and his brows angled up.

  “Perhaps you could give me the chairperson’s name and I’ll check into it myself.” No village tyrant was going to deter me from reaching my goal.

  “Sure. Martin Dietz.”

  “Where would I find Mr. Dietz?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  I drew a deep breath. First a cop for a neighbor, then a body in the cistern, now some demon-possessed zoning official. I needed to go home and ask God what I did to deserve all the potholes on my straight and narrow road.

  “Mr. Dietz, what I need from you is the permit application. I’ll let the committee review it for themselves and make the final decision.”

  Dietz flashed an evil smile. “It’ll be a waste of two hundred and fifty bucks, but suit yourself.”

  He set the application between us on the counter. His look dared me to take it.

  My fingers hesitated a bare instant before snatching up the triplicate form. He shouldn’t be so cocky. I’d faced officials with more hair and come out a winner. There was no way he could stop my project from going forward. I knew all the ins, outs, and secret passages of zoning laws. Completing the application and getting denied was a mere formality.

  I gave him a final taut-lipped look and turned to go out. The coming victory would be one more notch in the holster of my staple gun. I couldn’t help but smile at the challenge ahead.

  Lloyd the contractor arrived first thing the next day.

  I greeted him with crossed arms and a tapping foot. I wasn’t about to let him off easy. “I couldn’t get the permit.”

  “Permit? What permit?”

  I rose up on my tiptoes to gain some height. “Hello? The permit for the removal of the cistern.”

  “Huh?”

  This guy was losing it. “You know. The one you told me to get when I called you yesterday.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d forgotten our conversation already.

  “I told you I would get the permit,” he said.

  I wanted to knock on his cranium to jog his memory. “No. You told me to get the permit for today.”

  His eyelids peeled back in a look of panic. “I said I would come by today. You went down to the village office?”

  “Yeah. Why the big deal?”

  “You saw Martin Dietz?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lloyd slapped himself in the temple. “You’ll never get the permit now.”

  “What do you mean?” I was pretty sick of him raining on my renovation parade.

  “I guarantee he took one look at you and decided you weren’t going to get a permit to flush the toilet, let alone remove a cistern.”

  “Mr. Dietz is a public servant. He can’t deny me based on frivolous logic.”

  “Mr. Dietz is a public tyrant. He’ll make your life so miserable, you’ll wish you wer
e the one buried in the cistern.”

  I stopped breathing. Did Lloyd think there was someone under the concrete in my basement?

  He shifted his feet. “I don’t mean to say there’s a body in your cistern. I was just giving you fair warning. Don’t go after the permit. Box in the cistern and forget about it. Let it lie.”

  My skin crept with déjà vu.

  Let it lie. I’d heard those words before; three simple words that always rousted the rebel in me.

  The cistern didn’t have a chance.

  9

  Good old Lloyd stomped off without pounding one nail.

  Get the permit and remove the cistern or wall the thing in were the only two options the man would entertain. My idea to sneak the big rocks out disguised as trash only served to hasten my star contractor’s departure. Apparently, Martin Dietz gave no quarter to code violators, and Lloyd wasn’t about to suffer the tyrant’s wrath.

  Moratorium declared, I slunk off to start work on the back staircase. I peeled, primed, and papered until the narrow passage looked like it belonged in the twenty-first century. Then I pried and pounded until the steps were squeak-free.

  By the time the big fall holiday arrived a few days later, I had worked off my frustration over the uncooperative Lloyd and was ready to enjoy the occasion.

  I was just tucking the final section of my costume masterpiece into place when the doorbell rang and the first little voices of the night wafted into the kitchen.

  “Trick or treat!”

  I dumped pencils and stickers into a bowl and headed to the front door to let the rascals help themselves. I smiled on the way through the dining room. I’d survived my first weeks in the new neighborhood.

  But though my gray matter was intact, my house still looked as if it were a creepy old asylum. Even if things weren’t moving as quickly as I hoped, I nevertheless felt satisfied when I reviewed my progress.

  I glanced around the vestibule before opening the door. Utterly perfect. I’d painted the walls a creamy off-white and rubbed the natural oak woodwork until it shone. An ornate Victorian three-bulb fixture gave off a welcoming light.

  I pulled open the door and stifled a giggle. A waist-high pirate pointed a plastic sword in my direction. Next to him, a dainty princess held up her sack in expectation.

  “What are you supposed to be? A mummy?” the pirate asked.

  “I’m Lazarus,” I answered. I secured a stray white strip wrapped around my head.

  “Who’s Lazarus?”

  “He’s a guy from the Bible. Jesus raised him from the dead. Lazarus, come forth!” I said, lurching sideways in my best imitation of the newly risen friend of Christ.

  Three summers of Vacation Bible School when I was a kid were the entirety of my religious training. I’d gleaned enough to know there was a God. And I couldn’t have survived to adulthood if I hadn’t held on to the hope that Jesus really existed. Sadly, a few years in the church I attended as a teen with my grandmother were enough to sour my attitude toward organized religion and keep me from wanting to know more. Now at least I browsed the Bible, even if I didn’t always understand it.

  Across from me, the chaperone forced a smile. “Kids, pick out a treat. We have a lot more houses to go.”

  I smiled back through the wadding that covered my face. The pirate rested on his sword. “There’s no candy in here and stickers are for babies.”

  “Jason!” The mother swatted at him. “Mind your manners.”

  “How about a pencil?” I asked, almost wishing I’d conformed to the tooth-rotting Halloween tradition. “Here’s one with 3-D lettering.”

  I handed the little thug his prize, and he toyed with the image for a moment.

  “Cool.” The pencil went into his pillowcase. Then he pushed back his patch and looked up at me. “Brandon says your house is haunted.”

  “Jason!” His mother grabbed at his shoulder and half dragged him off the porch. “Thank you!”

  The princess ran after them into the night.

  I sagged against the doorway.

  Haunted? Perhaps.

  There was always the possibility that my house was inhabited by the restless spirit of some murder victim. But what were the chances, really? Other than a vague glance over my shoulder now and then, I hadn’t given the ghost another thought. Nor had the apparition shown itself again. True, I hadn’t been in the basement since the day of my “vision,” and neither had anyone else. Lloyd had fed me one excuse after another for not getting to the job downstairs.

  Most likely, what I’d seen was a result of my own guilty conscience projecting an image from my past onto the concrete, hoping I’d face up to my deeds.

  Nah. Too Freud.

  I watched through the storm door as another group of trick-or-treaters came up the sidewalk, wearing costumes that stood the test of time.

  The five oversized kids gave their call in unison, then edged in toward the bowl. Hands hovered, then halted.

  I definitely should have capitulated and gone with the standard sweets.

  “Pencils?” the vampire asked through his fangs.

  A vein in my neck throbbed. “Here. Try this one. It’s 3-D.”

  He twisted it in his fingers. “Is it legal to pass this stuff out on Halloween?”

  I lost my cool. “Aren’t you a little too old to be trick-or-treating? You’re lucky I let you stick your fingers in the bowl.”

  “Sorry,” he moped, dropping a pencil into his bag. He backed off to make room for his friends.

  A white-sheeted teen peered over my shoulder into the house.

  “Have you seen it yet?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

  “Seen what?” I turned to look behind me.

  “The ghost.”

  A prickle crept up my scalp and raised the hair beneath the strips of cloth wound around my head.

  Tish, Tish. I could almost hear a voice calling me, rising from the concrete, curving up the basement steps, seeping under the door and floating to my place in the vestibule.

  Behind me, the kid let out a snort. “I’m just playing with you, lady. I’m the ghost. Get it? Man, you look like you thought your house was haunted or something.”

  There was laughter. The bowl jostled in my hands. Then the porch was empty.

  I clutched the Tupperware to my chest. Tears welled up and one of those big lumps stuck in my throat.

  Life didn’t seem right anymore. I’d managed well enough in my other neighborhoods. Lonely, but content. I had felt, or maybe just hoped, that a change was coming with this move to Rawlings. But things were worse here. Now, even the kids taunted me.

  I dabbed at a nasal drip with a dangling bandage.

  In my side vision, a dark figure moved across the lawn toward the porch. Probably another rude kid looking for a handout.

  It was David.

  My face burned beneath my wraps as I tried to find a place to hide. I absolutely could not let him see me looking like the victim of some toilet paper prank.

  “Hello,” he called from grass glistening in the light from the porch. “Is that you under all that tissue?”

  There was no hiding now.

  “Hi.” I tried to put a smile in my voice. “I’m just getting into the holiday.”

  He sprang up the steps. “Are you The Mummy?”

  I cleared my throat, trying to get the lump down to a manageable size before I croaked like a frog.

  “Yeah. The Mummy.”

  As soon as I said it, I felt like crawling into a tomb somewhere. Apparently my courage had escaped out the front door at the arrival of my adorable neighbor.

  I gripped the Tupperware like a life preserver.

  “What’s in the bowl?”

  He was probably hoping for a candy bar too.

  “Pencils.” The bowl started to shake in my grasp.

  “Superb idea. Why rot the little angels’ teeth?”

  My knuckles relaxed. At least someone agreed with my logic.

  “You�
��re not passing out treats at your house?” I asked.

  He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Trick-or-treat is strictly an American tradition. And with Rebecca gone . . . Well, I thought if I turned out the porch light, the kiddies would take the hint. But there’s no dissuading them. They wouldn’t quit ringing the bell. And when I opened the door to tell them the bad news, they gave me such devilish faces, I thought I’d better come over here to be safe. Perhaps I can hide behind the pencil bowl.”

  I grimaced. “I’m not having any better luck than you bribing a smile out of those ungrateful little monsters. I’m getting the idea that pencils and stickers don’t qualify as treats in their mind. Tricks, maybe.”

  He looked over his shoulder as the next batch of hooligans walked up the sidewalk.

  “Let me give it a go.” He came up the steps and took the bowl out of my grip. “I’ll get rid of every last one of them.”

  My brow furrowed. Get rid of the trick-or-treaters? This was my once-a-year missionary opportunity.

  “The pencils, I mean,” he said, and shook the bowl.

  The new arrivals gave the call and came close to collect their prize. Their hands pulled back in hesitation.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” David scolded them. “These pencils will be valuable antiquities one day. Put one in your trinket box, and I guarantee when you graduate from high school, you’ll be able to sell it on eBay and pay your way through college.”

  At his words, tiny fingers grabbed indiscriminately at the bowl, rushing to take more than one goody.

  I giggled into my hand, pleased with his clever sales job.

  “It’s definitely a different world than the one I grew up in,” I said as the kids left and made their way to less future-oriented porches.

  David crossed his arms and leaned against the vestibule wall, shaking his head. “Today’s kindergartners are more versed in computers than most adults.”

  I looked to the ground, embarrassed by my own ignorance. “I guess not everybody’s had the opportunity to be around one.”

  His hand touched my chin. I met his eyes, fascinated by the pale, yet piercing, blue.