Mansion of High Ghosts

by James D. McCallister

  After a few lurching yards, Billy, stopped and pled: “Water—I’ve got to have cold water.”

  “We’re all but there. Just get your card key out in case we get hassled.”

  Devin, kind and fatherly, voice lucid and sober, but no surprise: this was his balance time, his soul and spirit attuned in perfect harmony with the right frequency of the vibration of life, which for Devin meant being drunk enough to forget he existed as human.

  “The key’s not here.” Billy, digging in a pocket of his stained khakis, wept over its loss.

  “Hey.” Devin, tender. “I’ll talk our way in, if I got to.”

  “No. I let you down.” He sobbed, echoing off the walkway and the water. “I let everybody down.”

  Oh, lord. Not this kind of drunk. Devin had finished with the crying phase of his disease years ago. Well. Hours ago, anyway.

  “Look here, spud.” Devin did a pat-down. He found the key card nestled behind Billy’s overstuffed wallet full of twenties and fifties. Rich bonehead. Always was.

  Regarding the sartorial mess that was his oldest and best-est bud, Devin, musing: “Here, tuck in that goddurn shirt. Wait. On second thought, keep it pulled out.” Pitching his Marlboro butt into the canal; it perished with a tiny hiss. “Looks like you done pissed your drawers.”

  Filled with self-loathing, his sorrow turned bitter. “Would it surprise anyone at this point?”

  Devin’s memory lousy, no question, but he truly never recalled a Billy quite this wretched. Or—did he? “Settle down.”

  “I want to kill myself. You don’t understand.”

  “Why the fuck you want to say something like that?” Rage. “You ain’t got nothing wrong in your life.”

  “Leave me alone. Please.”

  “Hell of a thing to say.” Devin, grumbling. “To your old pal.”

  Several mini-dramas followed in getting the card key to work, first in the reader to access the lobby of the hotel and then in the elevator—Billy, staying on concierge level, required the card as an extra step before being allowed to engage the button—and last in the room’s door lock. The entire front of Billy’s shirt was now stained with endless tears that dripped. He was a sight. Devin, thanking god it was late.

  The blind-drunk leading the shitfaced, both at last tumbled into the chilled, manufactured air of Billy’s double suite, immaculate as when the housekeeper had left it:

  Billy, busy from the moment of his arrival.

  Once in the room, Devin, tripping over the suitcase and dancing, nimble-footed, in a mad search for the mini-bar, which he found in the cabinet below the flatscreen TV. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Billy dive into the bathroom, tearing off his puke-stained shirt like Superman in the phone booth. Buttons, scattering with a crisp clatter on the tile floor.

  Devin, cracking open a mini Chivas Regal and gurgling its contents, sky-hooked the empty across the room into the plastic waste can by the writing desk, nothing but net. Pulling out a Marker’s Mark, a tiny version of the distinctive normal bottle with the red wax seal. Gulping down that sharp mercy. Another successful free throw.

  Going whoop, whoop at the top of his lungs, a kind of dry wheeze; meanwhile Steeple, retching all epic-like into the toilet. Peeking in the bathroom Devin could see that Billy had the dry-heaves again. Ouch. After the bushes you’d’ve thought nothing left inside but the thin and bitter bile of his stomach lining, ravaging his throat.

  Billy, collapsed beside the white commode, the cool of the tiles against his flushed, red skin likely a blessed event, long golden-boy hair spread out on the floor in a fan around his face: a corona. Devin, leaving him to sleep there.

  Stretching out in the easy chair, sipping on a chilled mini of Jack Daniels and trying to get some shuteye before he’d need to start drinking again, Devin, remembering passing out in the college dorm to some movie, Billy sawing logs on the floor or on the couch, and him drunk but still unable to go to sleep; always the last one up, lonely in the night, haunted by old ghosts in his head.

  Billy.

  Devin.

  Like old times. Fade out.

  Sixteen

  Creedence

  Chelsea, sitting on the edge of the unmade queen-size bed, holding her sides, rocking back and forth but not rockabye baby, and not from the ever-present cramps, instead from finding a purple elastic hair-tie, clenched in one angry fist—an unfamiliar hair-tie. Dusty, his buzz-cut not requiring any pulling back; Chelsea, using the black ones and the black ones only. So, whose, this purple stretchy unfamiliar rubber hair band?

  With a frizzy, god-durned red hair tangled all around it?

  Frizzier than hers had ever been, and by a damn sight?

  The question moot, now. The answer, hers. This, constituting evidence.

  As though her eyeballs hadn’t already done the job.

  They’d come here first, before they went to get their hammy burgers and Frenchie-fries and choco-shakes. They’d fucked. On the bed. She could smell it, still, in the air. And gone for a snack afterwards.

  Dusty and his routines. Lord have mercy.

  This? Much worse than the martial perfidy she’d committed with Buddy.

  This? Their own bedroom.

  Dusty and his little girlfriend, not even a grownup woman yet, messing around on this bed. The one upon which Chelsea herself lay night by night. On which she’d lain on her back for Dusty to impregnate her, bidding him repeatedly to try harder. After she’d missed her period a month after letting Buddy come inside her, bareback, she had to make sure it was Dusty’s baby for sure. So, she’d made sure. Was sure.

  Or rather, certain.

  Not sure, but certain.

  That sounded more final and formal.

  Buddy Lawler didn’t mean squat. Impulsive and stupid, her behavior, but not designed to rub Dusty’s face in things. Not like this. Not like standing around at the goddurn Pecan Market for all to see. Whichever one had the made the baby in her, well, that was nobody’s beeswax. Insider trading. Inside baseball. Whatever they called it.

  A secret to be kept.

  Forever.

  That’s what it was.

  Chelsea stopped crying and got mad. Who was this Ashleigh?

  She already knew: Another little slut, like all the others back in school.

  Kookie Colette, the popular girls and boys had called her. A bony beanpole with freckles and big feet, gawky and awkward and semi-friendless, never dating anyone but Dusty; the cheerleaders and jock girls and even the bookworm girls, all so lovely and with boyfriends like them, smart and beautiful and talented. But, her? A dorky goofball, bony and long-legged, freckles. Her mother, calling her a mess and a wreck.

  Chelsea, also remembering calling herself that. “I’m a mess,” she would say to people. And so she was.

  Cramping like mad for a day or two as it was, now with this fresh stress…

  Sick.

  Bolting headlong into the bathroom. Heaving, but nothing coming up.

  Realizing the hair tie still clutched in a fist. Screaming and throwing it into the toilet. Flushing, twice before it would go down.

  Coming out of the bathroom, sipping a Dixie Cup of tap water that smelled of chlorine: needing to be sure. Mussed sheets meant nothing. She’d not made the bed up that morning, and rarely did so. Unlike Mama, who made sure all beds made up before the day got started. Even on Christmas morning.

  Searching, sliding her hands around, she stumbled upon forensic evidence, jerking back from the find: a damp spot on the comforter, wadded down on the floor. Like it’d been kicked off, the way it did from Dusty’s wiggling fishy-white legs during his and Creedence’s three minutes of glorious marital congress that occurred every now and again.

  Yuck. Blech.

  She knew, knew it all. Could see them in her mind’s eye as clearly as a movie up on the big screen: the wet-spot.

  Incontrovertible.

  Chelsea, revolted, smelled her fingers, the stench acrid, almost like piss—not his gun
k, this, but hers!

  He gave her a girly-squirt.

  Dusty, making sure that Ashleigh got hers.

  Never caring a bit about Chelsea getting hers.

  Or Colette.

  Or Creedence, either.

  But Dusty, conscientious enough about this girl to give her an orgasm.

  At the grim revelation Chelsea was not hurt beyond words, but beyond reason itself: Hollering through her raw throat and kicking up a mad dance of frenzied frustration, like she had in her room so often as a teenage girl bored out of her mind; cats and long freckled legs, all going every which way. Until she collapsed on the couch, hurting her back on one of his damn controllers lodged between the cushions.

  It had been a long tough morning at work, but at least she had a caring boss.

  “Colette, sugar—what on earth’s the matter?”

  She still couldn’t get Uncle Hill Hampton to call her by her grown-up name. They wouldn’t learn, the old people. Wouldn’t change. “I’m fine.”

  “You look peaked.” He leaned over the switchboard desk, had broken out the seersucker already, a lime green one that looked new out of the tailor’s bag, like all his suits. That had been Daddy’s thing, too. They had gone suit-shopping over in Columbia and Charlotte and Atlanta together more times than she could remember. Mama always scoffed and said, suit shopping? Golf? Don’t you believe it for a minute.

  Her boss and substitute-father seemed troubled by her puffy eyes, her obvious unconcealed distress, sniffling into a tissue as she did for about the four-hundredth time today. She’d yet to confront Dusty. Had spent all night locked in the bedroom feigning—or perhaps actually suffering—physical illness. Had sneaked out and overheard him again in the laundry, talking on his phone.

  The hand-job voice. Again.

  They must really like each other. All that phone talking.

  Down-mouthed. “Nothing’s wrong. Something in the air, maybe. A spring cold.”

  “That don’t look like no cold to me. C’mon back into my office, now.”

  Hampton, a barrel-chested, prehistoric cave-bear of a towheaded Southern behemoth, boomed out the orders across the expanse of the showroom filled with gleaming automobiles awaiting inspection and subsequent purchase by starry-eyed motorists. “LAWLER—get your butt over here and look after the switchboard while I consult with Mrs. Wallis for a minute.”

  “I’m the top sales associate this month. This here’s a misuse of my abilities.”

  “Well, do it for me as a favor, then.” When Uncle Hill sounded so friendly, it was usually him at his most threatening. A weird kinda talent. “As a friend, Buddy-bo.”

  Buddy knew this deceptively collegial tone, a precursor to getting one’s ass handed to them. “Anything you need, chief.”

  Chelsea, sticking her tongue out at him, a raspberry.

  Buddy looked all disappointed. Mouthed, ‘come on, now, girl.’ Sad-eyed.

  Oh, lord. Don’t let Buddy get pitiful on her, too.

  Too late. Having already told him not only to stop picking on her and calling her Susie Freckleface over the intercom, but now also how she didn’t want to do it with him anymore and how it’d all been some weird bizarro-world anomaly destined for consignment to the memory hole of shameful acts never spoken of again, both ideas exacerbating deep-seated insecurities. Since, he’d been either needy or else a little petulant shit; Buddy and Dusty, she thought, ought to take their act over to open mic night at The Dixiana. Start a comedy duo. A franchise. The Wee Weenie Brothers.

  In the office, Hampton motioned her over to one of the chairs. Chelsea knew she must look disheveled in her slacks, a pink V-neck blouse and modest heels, clothes wrinkled as though pulled from a hamper. Her makeup smeared, she sat ramrod straight, tearing her damp tissue into smaller and smaller pieces.

  “Are you worried about that little baby a your’n in there? I bet that’s all this is.”

  Chelsea leaned forward onto the edge of the desk. Hot tears dripped, but she pretended not to notice. “I reckon you’re right.”

  Hampton’s kind smile evaporated into a distressed grimace. He lurched around the desk and patted her on the back, gentle.

  “Here, honey—you want a cold drink? Let me get us some cold drinks.” His bellowing, elephantine voice likely carried all the way back into the clangorous body shop: “Cheryl-Ann—go to the lounge and get me two Co-colas. Chop-chop, you hear me?”

  Chelsea, now in better control of herself. “Truth be told, I ain’t sure Dusty loves me no more.”

  He scoffed like Mama. “Dusty not loving you? I can’t imagine it. No sir—oh, heck. I’m just gonna say this, and I’m hoping you ain’t gonna take it the wrong way.”

  “What?”

  “I remember your Mama, now, when she was carrying you? Lord help me, but that woman, she was a handful. I don’t know how your Daddy put up with it like he did.”

  “Is that right?” Creedence, lightening the tension. A little towel-snapping humor. That’s how they rolled at the dealership. “Mama says the same about y’all, back in the day.”

  “We wa’n’t nothing too bad, girl.”

  “Do tell.” She missed her Daddy so much. Hearing Uncle Hill talk about him made Dwight Rucker real again.

  “Playing cards upstairs at The Dixiana, or in the back room at Pike’s Bait & Pawn. Taking Burnie Sykes’s money, losing my own there and on the Redtails. Drank some beer. That’s the worst we done.” Casting his eyes down to the tips of his gleaming hand-tooled cowboy boots, his voice now came chastened. “But don’t tell your Mama I told you all that. If she knew we used to gamble and get all drunk-up, she’d have a hissy fit.”

  “I don’t think it matters too much now.”

  “She’s your mama, ain’t she?”

  “True that.” Chelsea, sucking her teeth. “She’d cut your behind, wouldn’t she. Like she did Daddy’s.”

  Hushed and serious as all get-out: “I don’t doubt that she would.”

  Cheryl-Ann, a sort-of friend from way back, came in carrying two cans of cold soda pop, already opened and with bendy straws inserted. Her eyes, probing: “You all right?”

  “Ain’t no thang.”

  “You let me know if you need anything else,” soft and maternal. Cheryl-Ann, not too close, but a longtime friend. “Buddy keeps asking what’s going on in here, too.”

  “Tell Buddy to kiss my foot, please? Would you?”

  “With extreme prejudice.” Cheryl-Ann winked and exited.

  “Now look here,” Uncle Hill said, slapping his thighs, “anytime you want to talk to me—and I don’t know why I got to keep telling you this—you get up from that durn desk and march right in. You hear me?”

  She said she would.

  “Tremendous.” He pounded the desktop; Uncle Hill, a man accustomed to cutting the deal and moving on. “Feel better?”

  “I might need to go home a little early again today. If that’s okay.”

  “Are you kidding? Go on right now, matter of fact.”

  “But the switchboard—“

  “Shut your mouth. We’ll get old Buddy to sit and answer them phones. Hell,” Hill Hampton shouted, a man in the grip of a theory. “I’ll work the goddurn floor myself. You’ll see us move some of these cars then, boy. Like in the old days.”

  She grinned. “I’ll bet you could, Uncle Hill.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Hampton came back around the desk and helped her to her feet, chivalrous and deferential. How handsome he’d always seemed. Daddy’s best friend. Her dead Daddy’s rich old best friend. Her benefactor, her protector.

  Putting her arms around him, head against shoulder. A single, silent heave, but no fresh tears. She held onto him.

  He squeezed and patted and went mm-hm. “You’re gonna be fine, my angel.”

  So powerful and strong.

  A thought, racing through her whole body like electricity. Terrible but wonderful and naughty and exciting: Uncle Hill—in no way shape or form
her real uncle—could probably fuck like a racehorse. As big as one too, she surmised.

  She looked up into his eyes, not letting go. His arms, dropping. Chelsea, standing up on her tippy toes. Putting her lips onto his. A kiss.

  A real one.

  Her heart, pounding; her tongue, starting to probe—

  His lips, frozen, but not breaking the kiss.

  Until he freaked the freak out. Uncle Hill, pushing her away and staggering back, had turned the color of a brick.

  “Colette, lord have mercy. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Just a kiss.”

  Breathless and flustered. “Get on home now. Pull yourself together. Lord have mercy on our souls, girl.”

  Outside the office, she felt faint. Whoa—that had happened. Big dummy. Impulsive. Why didn’t she fuck everybody who worked at the dealership? Cheryl-Ann and Alejandro included, who was always looking at her feet, the little pervert?

  Skittering out and across the showroom floor, she averted her eyes from the toad Buddy Lawler, sitting at her personal and private workstation.

  “In a hurry?”

  “Yes. Move so I can get my stuff.”

  “What happened in yonder?”

  Chelsea, ignoring Buddy, gathered up her purse and the sweater she put on when the AC got too cold. But noting the car salesman—her erstwhile lover—clicking around on her computer with impunity, she pushed him back away from the monitor.

  “Quit snooping at my history, you butthole.”

  “You been reading some weird ass stuff, girlfriend.”

  She whispered, “Don’t you dare call me that.”

  “You telling me you think they wasn’t no plane that hit the Pentagon?”

  “Well, I don’t know. And neither do you.”

  “Bullcrud. I think the government ought to keep an eye on your ass.”

  “It ain’t like dirty pictures. Now, turn it off.”