Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  Just grieving for Cassie, I thought. I only wished Twyla didn’t sound like a dog with its tail caught in a door.

  The room was steeped with dejected energy, and when I found Amanda Lee in a corner seat, leaning her head back, blind to the ghostly slide show, I thought at first that she was one of us.

  But she was too solid. And too . . . drinking?

  When she saw me, she raised a cut-crystal glass of what look like brandy. “Jen-shen.”

  “Oh, my God, you sound like Randy.”

  “To Casshie,” she continued, toasting. “I saw ’er dishappear from this plane in a vision.”

  Everyone in the room lifted their electric devices. Twyla even cut her singing.

  “To Cassie,” they all said, as sober as when they’d died.

  On the wall, pictures of a smiling Cassie with light hair and her pale lipstick loomed.

  “Amanda Lee,” I said, hovering right in front of her. I wanted to pat her face and sober her up. “You never drink.”

  “Jush so much death, Jen-shen. Can’t get away from the death.”

  “Cassie wasn’t sad.” How many times would I have to repeat this because they hadn’t been in the forest with us tonight? “She was very happy to go.”

  I moved away from Amanda Lee and yelled at the room. “She was happy! Can’t you guys process that?”

  Twyla hung her head, the slide show coming to a stop. From the love seat, Old Seth tipped back his ten-gallon hat.

  “This ain’t about Cassie, Jensen. It’s a time for the rest of us to mourn.”

  Carlota, who had blooms of red and yellow flowers braided into her hair, all colored up, thanks to the electricity she was sucking, pointed at me with her cord and spoke to me in a deluge of Spanish.

  I’d had enough in high school only to get by, but I recognized something about “sad” and “heart.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s very sad and heartbreaking that we’re never going to see her again. Then again, maybe we will, on the other side. But this was what she wanted.”

  “Suicide,” Carlota said, switching to English. “That is what it is when you call your wrangler to you. She took her existence twice, once in life, once in death. She has never minded leaving others behind.”

  Carlota and the girls, plus Old Seth, had been around for a while—the mid-1800s. They’d hung on because they loved this existence and had a certain point of view because of it. But it didn’t mean I agreed with them.

  Twyla clearly thought the same. She raised her head and shot a laser gaze at them. “Fuck you. We have every right to call our wranglers to us when we want to.”

  They all started to squabble while Amanda Lee tipped back her glass and found she didn’t have any more booze. She sighed, leaning her head back again.

  I didn’t engage in the discussion, either. I only listened, being a new girl and all. It was pretty apparent that Old Seth and the senoritas were the type of ghosts that Wendy had been talking about before—the ones who avoided their wranglers and needed cleaners. They were stuck on vendettas, like Old Seth was with the descendants of the neighbor who’d killed him. He loved to haunt those people. Or the girls, who, I’d recently found out, liked to return to the stretch of road, now a freeway, where they’d croaked, looking for rattlesnakes and scaring some of the modern drivers into accidents. All of them fed off the fear from the living, whether that was a secondary motivation or not.

  The bottom line was that none of them wanted to leave, but it didn’t mean they needed to judge Cassie for calling her wrangler.

  When Amanda Lee stood, her glass dropped to the carpet, and she pointed at Old Seth.

  “There’ll be no dishrespecting Casshie in my home,” she said forcefully.

  I guessed she could see and hear him, if not the girls.

  He made to remove his hat and speak some cowboy justifications to her, but stopped when Amanda Lee barked, “Oooo-uu-t!”

  She didn’t even have to officially expel them, because when she made her uneven way to the door and opened it, they slid out without another word, all of them seeming confused as to why we didn’t understand their reasoning about Cassie.

  When they’d left, Amanda Lee went back to her seat, this time smoothing out her skirts with major drunken care.

  “I believe,” she said, “I just chashed off my bodyguard.”

  Twyla hopped away from the table. “I’m still here.”

  I could tell she wanted to be needed, especially tonight, when she’d lost her best pal.

  “Twyla’s got your back,” I said to Amanda Lee.

  She looked satisfied, and Twyla bucked up, taking her task seriously, going to a window and stationing herself, peering through the slats.

  Reporting for duty hard-core.

  As Amanda Lee shut her eyes and started breathing deeply, I didn’t rouse her to tell her about the image I’d had in Elfin Forest about my bracelets. Nah, I’d let her know about that tomorrow, before she left for Brittany’s office.

  Right now, I’d just let her cuddle down in that chair, resting her eyes to get the peace she needed.

  At least for tonight.

  15

  Twyla was so serious about her new duties with Amanda Lee that I left her behind at the casita to guard away to her heart’s content.

  Besides, I figured that, since Sailor Randy had known Cassie, too, he deserved to personally hear about her wrangling. Too bad I didn’t own a telephone shaped like big red lips, like the one I used to have in my bedroom before I’d died; I would’ve used it to give him an easy ring if that’s how things worked here. I could get ahold of a human on their phone by manipulating their cell devices, but ghosts didn’t exactly have smartphones.

  All I could do with Randy was communicate the ghost way, traveling downtown, where he’d be at the pub with Suze.

  Flaherty’s was having an off night, with a few bar-bound customers watching that ESPN sports channel on the corner TVs. Before I located Suze, I spotted Randy in a far seat, eyeing his neighbor’s glass of tawny booze.

  With his tilted sailor’s cap, Randy fit right into a pub. He knew how to take advantage of being there, too, as the inebriated, distracted, muscle-shirted guy next to him droned on about basketball scores with a bearded bartender I hadn’t seen before.

  Slyly, so as not to create a huge disturbance, Randy gestured toward the man’s glass, manipulating the electricity in the air. The glass wobbled. He kept at it, and it wobbled harder. Then it tipped over, pooling scotch on the bar.

  The basketball fan pushed away from the spill. “Di’ I do that? Rookie move.”

  As the bartender gave his customer a “no worries” smile and went for a towel, Randy slid over the top of the bar to the other side, where booze trickled to the floor. He caught some in his mouth, and a light stream of sparks cut through him, the liquid running out and to the floor in spite of its delayed journey.

  The bartender backed up a step. “Did you see that? Were those little lights in the air?”

  All five people sitting at the bar shook their heads, and the server gingerly wiped the surface, then left Randy’s area as soon as possible. My ghostly friend licked his lips, hovering in place, gazing at the rows of bottles standing on the mirror-backed shelves like he was contemplating knocking one of them down so it’d break and give him another false rush.

  “Prankster,” I said, sitting near him at the corner of the bar. “One of these days, some sensitive human is going to see every move you make. Then you’ll be as exposed as a Penthouse Pet.”

  He must’ve looked over a shoulder or two during his ghost time to see nudie pictures, because he just smiled, totally understanding what Penthouse was. “Yer friend Suze’s in the back, takin’ infentery.”

  Inventory. Got it.

  The basketball fan had moved a few chairs down from his former seat. “It’s not as cold over here,” he said to the bartender.

  Randy pointed to a vent above us. “My cover story.”

 
“And a good one.” Back to business. “So did Gavin stop in here anytime today?”

  “Nah. Lotsa tourists, in ’n’ out, some of ’em more interestin’ than others. No Gavin, though. Sorry ya came down here for nothin’.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a wasted trip.” I wished I could put off the news about Cassie. I couldn’t predict how each ghost would handle her final passing, and it was stressing me out a little.

  But when I told him about her, his ever-content expression didn’t change all that much. He tried to take off his cap in respect, yet it looked attached to him, just as the rest of our clothes were, so he merely bowed his head for a few moments. Then he gestured toward a bottle on the shelves near us, air-flicking it so it crashed to the counter.

  At the sudden shatter, the humans around us jumped.

  Randy bolted right on over to get him some more liquor. Again, a shimmer of sparks cascaded through him before the drink splashed to the floor.

  When he was done, he gave a general salute to the sky. “If I could hold a glass, I’d raise it to ya, Cassie doll.” He motioned me over to join him, but I shook my head.

  As the bartender grabbed another rag and rushed to clean up again, Randy jumped butt first on top of the bar, legs dangling. Around us, everyone decided that there must’ve been a small earthquake. Yeah, that explained why only one bottle had fallen off the shelves.

  After that, Randy didn’t comment any more on Cassie.

  So that was it? He wasn’t going to have more of a party for her? There’d be no sodden grief or drawn-out sadness at the fact that she’d ended her time in this dimension?

  I tested Randy out. “Old Seth and Carlota didn’t take the news about Cassie very well.”

  “Ol’ judgmental farts. I say die ’n’ let die.”

  Just as I was about to ask him to tell me more, Suze walked into the main room. She had reddish smudges beneath her denim-colored eyes, her graying curls springing out of the low ponytail she wore, making her look even more worn-out than yesterday.

  Had I given her a sleepless night with my appearance?

  After she had a word with the bartender about his shift hours tomorrow, she headed for the back again.

  “I’m off to talk to her,” I said to Randy.

  “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  “No more spilled drinks?”

  He gave me a get-outta-here flap of the hand. “I limit myself to two pranks per bartender.” Then he glanced around, his gaze landing on a green, clover-painted clock on the wall. “Trouble is, sometimes every second feels like ’n hour. ’Less I’m prankin’, that is.”

  “Behave, Petty Officer.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  His lopsided smile escorted me out of the bar area until I entered the back hall and found Suze in a different room from the one we’d been in last night. This place was filled with stark wood shelves with boxes labeled NAPKINS and FLATWARE, plus every kind of liquor you could imagine. I was surprised Randy hadn’t been back here on a rampage.

  As Suze scribbled on a clipboard, I decided to materialize again, but this time with a little more finesse and warning than last night.

  Before I gathered my energy to appear, I motioned toward a pile of napkins that had been unpacked from a box on a middle shelf near Suze, and without effort, I pushed one of them off its resting place, letting it coast to the ground like a feather from an angel’s wing.

  Suze bent down to pick it up.

  When she put it back on the shelf, I did it again.

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked, bending a second time.

  I focused all my energy on materializing, feeling myself burn as my essence folded outward.

  And there I was, standing at the foot of the napkin while a squatting Suze gaped at my sneakers, scanned up my jeans, my shirt tied over the tank top, then finally making it to my face.

  “Don’t freak out,” I whispered.

  “Shit!” The clipboard smacked the ground, and she scrambled backward until she hit the wall, sliding the rest of the way down. “Oh, God. Oh, my God!”

  I gave her a moment to “God” all she wanted, but she just kept shaking her head and saying that word.

  Then she went to the questioning stage. “Did I fall asleep again?”

  “No. This is for real. It was real last night, too.”

  She lifted up her hand in front of her face. It was shaking. “Too much coffee. Not enough coffee. I’m not sure which one it is. Does caffeine cause hallucinations like this?” She shook her head again. “Why’re you talking to yourself, Suze?”

  “You’re not,” I said. “Also, you have no idea about what a hallucination really is.”

  Ghost inside joke. She didn’t laugh.

  “Is this thing on?” I asked, tapping at an imaginary microphone.

  We used to do dumb stuff like that, and in spite of her confusion, she laughed at me, tremulous, disbelieving, on the edge of crazy.

  She would eventually come around, but I couldn’t waste a lot of time in material form like this. Not unless I wanted to plug my essence in somewhere.

  “Suze, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “You talked last night. At least, I’m pretty sure you did.”

  She still wasn’t absolutely buying into the reality of me. But her cautious bewilderment was better than her being so scared that her heart gave out or something.

  Where to start with her, though? I decided to begin where any honest friend would.

  “You sure look like crap,” I said.

  She made what we used to call her “onion face.” That’s because it looked like she was smelling onions when she exaggerated a “what the hell” expression.

  “Nice,” she said, still surveying me. “A smart-ass ghost?”

  “Not a lot different from the smart-ass human you knew. So have you been burning the candle at both ends lately?”

  She gave me an inch of leeway. “The rent’s due, my car’s been giving me fits, so that means extra hours.” Narrowing her eyes, she added, “Plus, I’ve been having bad dreams on top of it all. Seems my best friend from all those years ago has decided to haunt me in them.”

  “I’m not haunting you, believe me.” Haunting wasn’t this gentle, in my book. “Besides, you should know by now that these aren’t dreams.”

  As I kept looking her over—threadbare jeans with a hole eating its way through one knee, a red-and-white checkered blouse that’d faded from too many washings, a Flaherty’s apron covering the rest of her—I wondered if a ghost could do something like rob a bank to help out her fellow woman.

  But I highly doubted that Suze would take that kind of money, although it might be fun to try to outsmart a bank, now that I could. Maybe.

  She’d finished checking me out, and instead of collapsing into tears like last night, she tentatively smiled.

  “If this is really you . . .” she said.

  “It is.”

  She choked up a bit. “Then these are the happiest nights of my life. Even happier than my honeymoon, and then the day I signed divorce papers after my husband cheated on me with . . . Oh, you wouldn’t know her. You don’t even know him.”

  “I still want to do something mean to him,” I said, affronted for Suze’s sake. “What a dick.”

  “I’ve learned to let it go.” She was relaxing more now, one hand on her knee. “I haven’t gotten alimony from him in years, so I don’t have to associate with him these days. I hated to take his money, anyway. As you can see, I’m a free and independent woman now.”

  She subtly covered the burgeoning hole in her jeans with that hand.

  Ow. How many talks did we used to have about how awesome we were going to be when we grew up? We were going to be Charlie girls—kind of free, kind of wow—just like the perfume commercial’s lyrics said when we were kids. We’d carry briefcases down city streets and wear snazzy business suits, wafting along on the scent of success. In high school, Suze had developed a real talent for numbers and I had
a thing for Indiana Jones, so she’d be a banker and I’d be an archaeologist someday.

  Or none day.

  Suze obviously wanted to get off this topic as soon as possible, and she said, “Didn’t you mention something about bracelets to me yesterday? I remember that clearly. You talked about Brittany and Lisa and that party on the night you . . .”

  “Died.” I’d been real vague with her about my death tale last night, and fleshing it out wasn’t on my agenda at the moment. “It’s a long story, Suze. But you might be interested to know that I paid a visit to Brittany about those bracelets this morning.”

  “You freaking haunted her?” she said, laughing in more disbelief. But I think she might’ve been concentrating on my chutzpah this time.

  Anyway, I didn’t correct her on using the word “haunted” now. It didn’t really matter. “Brittany gave up the info I needed about the bracelets. Hey, when you saw her the last time, was she . . . ?”

  “A cat lady? Yes. Her face was almost a smear. I’d rather have my wrinkles and gray hair than . . . that.”

  “I’d rather you had them, too.”

  She broke into a smile so warm that I could feel a friendly shudder go through me. But before we got all sappy with each other, she said, “If you think Brittany is bad, you should see your old friend Lisa. You can look her up on the Internet under a ‘professional name’ now.”

  I wandered over to the nearest plug and started to juice up, knowing—and thanking the stars—that I would be here for a while.

  “Do tell, Suze,” I said, feeling like nothing had changed between us.

  Except maybe for all the things that had.

  • • •

  Suze seemed to eventually forget that I wasn’t your average human as we caught up with each other, first about Lisa Levine, who’d remained a single girl, traveling most days as a beauty spokesperson for an international cosmetic firm. It felt like old times chatting with Suze, bringing back our high school days, especially when we would cozy into the Naugahyde sofa she had in her den after snatching a handful of Otter Pops from the freezer, sugaring up during extended girl-talk sessions.