by E. C. Bell
“Tell him to go to hell, Marie!” he yelled. “He treats you like shit!”
I guess my face betrayed my anger. I was mad at Farley. Furious, in fact. Mr. Latterson thought my angry look for was for him, and blew an absolute gasket.
“I’ve had enough, Jenner!” he thundered. He drew himself up, and pointed imperiously at the door. “Pack up. You are done.”
That got my attention. He was firing me.
I couldn’t believe it. My second firing in almost as many days. I wanted to turn and scream “See what you’ve done!” at Farley, but I couldn’t. I had to figure out a way to keep this job.
“Oh God, say something, Marie,” Farley said. He’d gone from angry to terrified, much as I had. “Make him keep you on. Please.”
For a microsecond, I thought about just leaving. Walking out. Leaving Mr. Latterson and Farley and finding anything else as a job to pay the bills. Maybe be a waitress. They make tips, right? That might be all right.
The look on Farley’s face stopped me. I needed to stay for him. I’d promised.
So, I decided to use “Operation Teardrop.”
All right, sounds silly, but when I came up with it, I was going through my World War II phase. Everything I did had “Operation” before it. “Operation Dishcloth” when I was doing the dishes. “Operation Find the Floor” when I had to clean my room. Stuff like that.
I invented “Operation Teardrop” just before my father decided to leave. Between the fights with my mother, he’d try to, you know, parent or something. It took me no time at all to figure out that if I turned on the waterworks, he’d give in. Every time.
I wasn’t sure if it would work on Mr. Latterson, but I decided what the heck. I was so close to tears anyhow, it wouldn’t take much.
So, I thought about my dog, Bear. He’d died when I was twelve. I felt my lips quiver, and thought about my Granny Jenner. I’d loved her, and she’d died too. Cancer. They’d both died of cancer.
I whimpered, and sniveled, and then I thought, for the briefest second, about my mother. Dying. Of cancer.
That’s when the waterworks really started. They weren’t all fake.
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Latterson,” I boohooed. He turned around—he was at his office door—and his face contorted. Tears obviously made him uncomfortable, so I decided to see how he dealt with a whole bunch more.
“Really!” I screeched, and then wailed, hitting registers too high for the human ear, I was sure. I boohooed again, and felt tears and snot running down my face. “I am SO sorry! It’s just my Mom is sick and I need to work to take care of her and—” For a second, I almost lost it. I was too close to the truth, but I hitched in a couple of breaths and decided on the big finish. “If I lose this job, I don’t know what will happen to her!”
I threw myself on my desk, pounding it with my fists, spraying snot and tears all over my day timer. “Please don’t fire me, Mr. Latterson. I’ll be a better employee! Really I will!”
I hitched a couple more hiccupping breaths, and then sat up and dug in my sweater pockets for tissue.
“Here, take this,” Mr. Latterson said. I looked up. He looked like he wished he was anywhere but there, and he handed me a tissue without making eye contact.
“Sorry to hear about your mother,” he said. “Just pull yourself together.”
I nodded, and started mopping up. I made sure to hiccup a couple more times, like another outbreak of hysteria was just around the corner.
“Now, now,” he said. “Maybe I was a hard on you—you missed a bit, right up on your cheek there. Do you promise to stay at your desk and do your job?”
I nodded meekly, and held the tissue out to him. He pulled his hand away as though I was trying to hand him a bag full of crap.
“No, no, it’s okay,” he said, backing toward his office, one hand out behind him, clawing for the doorknob. “Keep it. Let’s put all this nastiness behind us, shall we? You do your job as well as you can, and we’ll forget this ever happened, all right?”
“All right.” I wiped my nose again, and smiled tragically at Mr. Latterson as he clawed open his door and escaped to his inner sanctum. “Are you sure you don’t want this back?” I cried, holding out the sodden lump of tissue.
“It’s okay, you can keep it!”
His office door boomed shut. I took a deep breath, and blew it out. Worked every time. Then I turned on Farley, who looked nearly as shattered as Mr. Latterson had.
“If you ever do anything like that to me again, so help me, I will walk out of this place and you will never see me again,” I said.
He blinked a couple of times, then took a hesitant step toward me, a stupid half-smile on his translucent face. “What exactly was it that I did?” he asked. “Just let me know. A pile of stuff happened, and I want to make sure—”
“Shut up,” I said. He clapped his mouth shut and skittered back to the door, like he was ready to make a run for it. “I don’t need this job, Farley. There are lots of jobs out there. The only reason I did all that—” and I pointed back at Mr. Latterson’s office door, “—was so I can help you. Do you understand?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes pinwheeling as though he was still trying to figure a way out of that room.
“Now go,” I said. I needed to pull myself together, before I really started crying.
“All right.” He shuffled another step toward the door, then looked back at me. “When can I come back?”
“I don’t want you back in this office again,” I snapped.
“Oh.” He looked horrified. “I’m really sorry—”
“Shut up.” I felt real tears, very close. He had to leave. “I’ve got the master key you gave me. Tell me what office is empty. We can talk there.”
“Carruthers’ old office, on the main floor.”
The main floor sounded like a bad idea. James was on the main floor, a lot.
“Won’t people see me go in there? I don’t want any more trouble in this building.”
“There’s a restroom down that hallway. If you act like you’re going to use it, no one will notice. Just go past it, and around the corner is Carruthers’ office, and a boardroom. Either would be a good place to meet. We won’t be bothered. No-one is allowed in there.”
I was almost ready to tell him to shut up again, when something he said hit me.
“Why isn’t anyone allowed in there?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Carruthers told me to leave it alone when he moved out. So I did.” Then he frowned. “Think there might be something in there that he doesn’t want anybody to see?”
“Could be.” I took another deep, shaky breath, then pointed at the door. “Now go. I have to work.”
I tried to put some order to the chaos that was my desk until I was certain Farley was gone, then collapsed. My hands were shaking badly and I felt like I was going to throw up. I had to pull myself together.
Why had I agreed with Farley’s stupid idea? I’m a levelheaded, down-to-earth girl—well, except for the whole seeing the ghosts thing—how did I ever let him talk me into that? Way in the back of my mind, another voice, the one that works hard at keeping me on the right track, whispered that Farley hadn’t talked me into anything. I’d been a willing participant.
Man, two jobs in two days. I stared at my hands, willing the tremors to stop. The money I was getting for helping James was a Godsend, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I needed to hang onto this job, at least until it looked good on my resume.
Yeah, right. The little voice squeaked in outrage when I tried the “it’ll look good on a resume” gambit. That wasn’t it, and I knew it. I shook my hands vigourously, until they were calm. Then I resumed cleaning my desk.
What was I going to do? I had actually let a ghost talk me into breaking into an office, which was a bit worse than letting James talk me into stealing from Mr. Latterson. But only a bit. I felt like maybe I was losing my mind.
As I tidied, I wondered if James ha
d delivered the report about all the bank accounts to Mrs. Latterson. I hoped so. And I hoped that things would move quickly after that. No matter what I’d said to Farley, I didn’t want to stay here. The little voice whispered that it was a good bet Mr. Latterson was going to rip me off, too. That little voice sounded like Farley, and I growled. I literally growled out loud. Because I knew that stupid voice was right.
So, why was I hanging around? Why was I coming to work at a job that was probably going to give me nothing in the way of wages at the end of it all? Was it all for Farley?
Or was it because of James?
James was cute, true, and interesting, and polite, and his eyes had this way of catching mine and holding them until I felt like I was drowning—but a good drowning, not like Mr. Peppercorn up in McMurray, it had taken Mom months to straighten him around enough to move him on—was it James?
Why wasn’t I going to take the job James had offered me?
I poured myself a coffee, then sat back down and pulled a piece of paper from the middle drawer. Perhaps a “Pro and Con” list was in order.
I started drawing cat faces, because I wasn’t ready for pros and cons. I needed to think about what working with James really meant.
It seemed that the money was good, and relatively easy to come by. I mean, it took me a grand total of six hours to find the information, plus type it up, and that included most of the cleaning time in his dead uncle’s office. Imagine how much we could make in a month.
Was it just the money? Or was it his eyes? And if it was, did I really need James’ eyes, right now? Not really. Because that led nowhere. I knew that. Because, the little voice reminded me, ever so gently, what happens when a man, even a man who says he will love you forever, finds out you have a gift, like seeing ghosts. They leave. Now the voice was my mom’s. And she was crying over my father leaving. Again.
All right, so the nice eyes thing was out. Until I had completely eradicated all ghosts from my life, I wasn’t going down that road. That was the reason I left Fort McMurray, for heaven’s sake. Okay, so it wasn’t the only reason. I’d also left because of Jerk Arnie. Arnie had been a pig and had made my life a living hell. So, on top of everything, I was a bad judge of character, especially when it came to men, so James’ eyes and the fact that I was attracted to them—to him—didn’t really put him in the best possible light, date-wise.
I glanced down at the cat faces, and started drawing curly whiskers with a freshly sharpened pencil, still thinking about James and his eyes and muscles and everything. Why couldn’t this be easy? Why couldn’t I say to myself, “Self, you’re going to take the job with James, but it’s going to be a business relationship and nothing more,” or something like that? I needed a good job. One that could pay my bills and help me take care of my mother. This one wasn’t going to do it. Since I’d lost the other one—and I cursed Gerald again, feeling fully justified—I should not look a gift horse in the mouth. I needed to take the job James had offered me.
However, Farley had to move on. I didn’t want to see him do what the ghost in the telephone booth had done. Or worse. I felt an obligation to him—and maybe something more.
True, he was an exasperating old guy, and watching him pull his stomach in every time he got around me was starting to drive me crazy, I mean come on, you’re dead Farley! Get over it! But there was something about him. Something that made me want to help him. However, he had to be put in his place. He too had to understand that it could only be a business arrangement. I was there to help him move on, and that was all. I’d made that commitment to him. I had an obligation. But that was all.
I set the pencil down and picked up the paper to throw it in the garbage, and saw what I’d written in the curlicues I’d made with the cat whiskers. “Call Mom.”
I crushed the paper and tossed it. Why couldn’t I come up with a better plan than that?
Farley:
My Lunch Date With Marie
I have to tell you, I didn’t want to piss off Marie again so soon after the mess up in Henderson’s office, and then the mess up in Latterson’s office, and then her melt down. So, I went and checked Carruthers’ old boardroom out before she came, to make sure I hadn’t been bullshitting her. It looked exactly the same as the day I’d locked the door.
There wasn’t much dust. The small board room table in the large outer office was covered by a big tarp, with the chairs nestled under it, their backs leaving humps down the cloth like a double backbone.
I stared out the window while I waited for her. Well, really, I stared through a small opening left by an ill-fitting shade that covered the window and toned the bright midday sun down to dusk in the room. Outside, once my eye adjusted, I could see the kid—what the hell was his name? Jack? No. James—I could see James out cleaning clutter from around the tall pines in front of the building.
I could tell he was whistling, even though I couldn’t hear him through the glass. He sure was a neat freak. Unless they’d hired him to do that kind of shit work, too. I’d only been hired to keep the building running properly. As I watched him dig under the old pines, pulling out newspaper so weathered it crumbled to dust in his hands, I wondered what had happened to the old guy they’d hired to come in twice a week and do the yard work.
“Maybe he died too.” I said the words out loud without thinking, then shivered. “More than likely Carruthers fired his ass. If he can get this goon to do all the work for what he was paying me—probably less—then why the hell not?”
I turned away from the window, and waited for Marie to arrive.
Marie:
My Lunch Date with Farley
After I’d told Mr. Latterson I was leaving for lunch—to his face, because I seriously did not need to be fired again—I used the master key Farley had given me to open the door to Mr. Carruthers’ old office on the main floor. Well, I tried, anyhow. The key went into the lock, which was all good, and it started to turn, but then the lock started to grind, horribly. Finally, finally, the door opened—but only a hair, and then it jammed.
“Son of a gun.” I put my shoulder to the door and it finally popped open.
Farley was waiting inside. I knew it before I saw him. He was glowing even more brightly than he had up in Mr. Latterson’s office.
“When was the last time you opened that door?” I asked, stepping inside and quickly shutting the door behind me. It closed more easily than it had opened, but I hoped it wouldn’t jam again. That door was the only way out of the room.
Farley didn’t answer me. He stood, staring, as though waiting for another outburst from me. Good.
The reception area was empty, except for a table and chairs, covered by a tarp. Two offices backed onto to this area. Both doors were open, and I glanced inside both. One was empty, but the other one still had a desk, a chair, and a computer. I frowned. That was odd, leaving a computer in an abandoned office.
I walked back to the reception area, and grabbed a chair under the tarp. It was leather. Felt good under my fingers as I pulled it out and then sat on it. I left the tarp on the table, though. I didn’t need the table. I wasn’t sticking around.
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” Farley finally asked. He sounded so afraid, my anger crumbled. However, I had to be strong.
“I made a mistake with you, Farley.”
“A mistake?” he asked. He sounded even more afraid. “Jesus, you sound like you’re going to give me the ‘it isn’t you, it’s me’ speech. What, are you actually going to break up with me?”
I couldn’t look at him. If he thought we had some kind of relationship past me moving him on, I had waited too long for this conversation. “I should have treated you more like a ghost and less like a person from the very beginning,” I said. “But I found you—”
“Intriguing. Yeah, I remember.” He walked a couple of paces closer to me, his hands clutched together like he was praying. He tried to speak, then stopped and sighed, waiting for me.
“Yes.
You were intriguing. And when you were having those dreams or whatever they were—well, that was weird. Death is much more straight forward. A person dies, they gain some understanding about themselves, make a few decisions, bing-bang-boom, and they leave. But you! Man! You just keep sticking around.”
“I don’t want to leave,” he said. “I told you that.”
“I know,” I replied. “That was wrong of me. I let you think that you could. That we could be like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson or something, and figure out how you had died when we probably won’t. Even though I was positive Ian Henderson had nothing to do with your death, I let you talk me into breaking into his office—I mean, what is wrong with me?”
My throat tightened. What was wrong with me? I felt one tear after another slip down my face, and I brushed them away impatiently. Now was not the time to cry.
“I was giving you hope when there shouldn’t be hope,” I whispered. “Hope’s not what this last bit of time is about. It has nothing to do with that at all, and I’m sorry, Farley. I shouldn’t have done any of that to you. You didn’t need an adventure. You needed to move on. I held you back. It was probably all my fault, the blinking out and the fading, and everything. I really let you down.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said. “I think you’re helping me, you know, gain some understanding, or whatever it is that you said I needed to do. Really.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, shaking my head. “I know that much, anyhow. I have to talk to my mother. I really don’t know how to handle this at all.”
“Your mother?” Farley’s tone changed, became more clipped.
“Yeah. My mother,” I said. I was surprised at his sudden anger. I’d talked to him about my mother. Hadn’t I?
“Why are you going to talk to your mother about me?”
“She has the same gift I have, plus loads more experience.” I frowned. “I’m sure I told you about her. I’ll just find out what I should do next from her. She’ll know.”
