by Kim Fielding
“But I didn’t—”
“Didn’t see me. I know. I can do this, remember?” Jack wavered from sight—more slowly this time—then sharpened again. “Actually, it’s been a while since I was visible. Took me a while to work up to it.” He held his arms up slightly to examine them. “I’m doing a pretty good job. No see-through. Oh, and I remembered the clothes.” Even in the darkness, his teeth glinted when he smiled.
Maybe, just maybe, if Tag stayed rational, he could force the crazy away. “So you’re telling me you’ve been tagging along with me all day?”
“Yep. Saw the Grand Canyon. Never saw it before. Kinda stupid, considering how close I’ve been for so long. It’s real pretty.”
“And I picked you up last night?”
“Sure. There used to be a motel there. You saw the sign, right?” Jack didn’t wait for an answer. “I died there. And now—”
“You died?” Great. Tag wasn’t just hallucinating people, he was hallucinating dead people.
“Well, yeah. I’m a ghost. Thought you’d figured that out by now, on account of the… you know.” This time Jack flashed out of existence and back in, all in two blinks of an eye.
A ghost. Of course. “And you died at the motel.”
“Long time ago.” Jack’s cockiness faded and his shoulders slumped. “Almost sixty years,” he said in a near whisper.
Tag rubbed his forehead, hard. “Okay, well, you had a nice day trip. I’ll just take you back so you can haunt in peace.”
But it was Jack who looked haunted. “Please don’t. Not yet. I…. After I died, people used to stop by the motel, and that wasn’t too bad. I could watch them, listen in. Peek over their shoulders when they watched TV. They were company. But then they stopped coming and the motel closed. Burned down not long after that. And it’s just been… empty. Just me all lonesome.”
Tag wondered if it was extra loony to feel sorry for your figment. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Couldn’t. Tried. But the cars on the new highway, they’re going way too fast for me to hop inside. And when I tried to walk, I got all… don’t know how to explain it. Weak. Sorta stretched.” He shook his head and then perked up. “I was real happy when I found out I could hitch with you.” He opened his mouth as if he were going to say more, then closed it again.
When Tag’s mother was having one of her bad spells, she used to think that the FBI was sending thought rays to her through the house’s wiring. She’d dump all the food in the garbage because the CIA had poisoned it, and she’d spend hours sitting at the kitchen table, trying to decode secret messages in receipts and junk mail. Tag’s delusion was more bizarre, maybe, but at least it was friendlier. Maybe Tag wasn’t too far gone yet—at least he was aware Jack wasn’t real.
“You look like you died young,” Tag said, as if it were a perfectly ordinary conversational gambit.
“Did. I was a month short of twenty-two.”
“What’d you die from?”
Jack gave him a long, expressionless look. Then he shimmered a little—and he turned bloated and pale blue, his eyes blankly white.
“Don’t!” Tag cried, turning away quickly. He stayed resolutely facing his window until Jack sighed again.
“Sorry. I know it ain’t pretty. But you asked. It’s okay now. I fixed it.”
When he hazarded a glance, Tag saw that Jack looked like a healthy hallucination again. “What happened?” Tag asked, almost forgetting for the moment that Jack was imaginary.
“Drowned.”
“In the desert?”
“In the motel pool.”
“Christ.” Wow. Tag’s unconscious was more brutal than he’d assumed. “So now you’re a ghost because you’re seeking vengeance or justice or something?”
“Who’m I supposed to get vengeance on? I’m not carrying a grudge. I don’t know why I’m here. Just am.” He sounded sad again. Despairing, almost, as befitted a lonely spirit.
“So what do you want me to do?” Tag asked.
“Just let me stay with you for a little while, okay? I’ll be good company. Don’t even care where you’re going just so long as it’s not back where I came from.”
And although it made him complicit in his own insanity, Tag found himself nodding. “Fine, then. For a little while. Just don’t scare me like that again.”
Jack whooped and pounded the dashboard with both hands. “All right, then!” And he flashed Tag a sunny smile.
Seven
THE RAIN began to fall again, making the confines of the car seem even smaller. Jack didn’t seem to care. He hummed off-key, experimented with the radio controls, explored the rumpled contents of the glove box.
Tag still hoped he could reason away his hallucination. “If you’re a phantom, how come you can move things and hold them?” He gestured at the Camry owner’s manual in Jack’s hands.
“I can sort of… will myself solid. Like this.” Jack poked Tag in the bicep, making Tag yelp and jerk away. “C’mon. I barely touched you,” Jack said.
“Yeah, but… I felt you.” Okay, not just visual and auditory hallucinations, tactile ones too. Lovely.
“I haven’t touched anyone in a really long time. And nobody’s touched me.” Jack was silent for a while after that, staring at the rain that sheeted across the passenger-side window.
When an oasis of bright lights appeared ahead, Tag sighed. “I need to crash. Maybe if I get a decent night’s sleep the crazy will go away.” That could happen, right? Sleep-deprivation psychosis, perhaps exacerbated by the monotony of the dark road. And perhaps the mere thought of a good snooze had been helpful, because by the time he took an off-ramp and pulled into the parking lot of the Cozy Canyon Inn, Jack had disappeared.
It was totally fucked-up that the car felt a little lonely without him.
The motel clerk didn’t seem all that pleased to see him. Tag probably looked disreputable—unwashed, unshaved, disheveled. But hopefully he looked relatively sane. After a careful perusal of Tag’s driver’s license, the clerk nodded slightly. “Can I have your credit card, please?” he asked. Tag wondered if the lines between the guy’s bushy eyebrows were there all the time, or just on account of him.
“I’m paying cash,” said Tag.
“We still need a card. In case of damage.”
“I’m not a rock star. I don’t plan to trash the place. I just want to shower and sleep.”
“It’s policy.”
Tag was suddenly so weary, so worn-down; he was afraid he might cry. He licked his lips and took a deep breath. “I don’t have a credit card. I threw them all away. But I can give you something else to guarantee I won’t wreck anything, okay? My car keys.”
The clerk considered this for a long time, and Tag grew positive he would refuse. But then the guy’s expression softened a little. “Okay. And I don’t need the keys. Just… take it easy, all right?”
“I promise. I don’t have the energy for destruction.”
When Tag entered room 117, he shook his head over the clerk’s initial caution. The room wasn’t exactly in pristine shape—scuffed walls, threadbare carpet, peeling veneer on the furniture. But it seemed reasonably clean and had a bed and a bathroom, and that was all that really mattered.
The dust from at least three states was embedded in his pores, so he headed to the shower, ignoring the slightly mildewed grout and concentrating instead on the decent water pressure. And even though he stayed in there forever, using up all the shampoo in the tiny bottle and nearly the entire minuscule cake of soap, he never ran out of hot water. Afterward, he combed his hair back from his forehead, momentarily taming the curls, and shaved away his nascent beard. He brushed his teeth and even flossed, cringing when he spat tiny tendrils of crimson into the sink. He hadn’t been very careful about dental hygiene lately.
“You don’t look insane,” he told his reflection. “You may be talking to yourself, but at least you can pass for mentally stable.”
He still had a couple clean ch
anges of clothes in his suitcase, but passing up the chance to do a little laundry might be unwise. He washed a couple pairs of briefs and some socks in the sink and hung them over the shower bar to dry. He was going to clean a T-shirt or two, but fatigue set in. “Screw it. Nobody’s close enough to notice if I stink.”
Still naked, he shambled out of the bathroom—and yelped when he spied Jack sitting on the bed.
Jack looked shocked. “You have a tattoo.”
Tag glanced down at his chest and frowned. “I was going through a steampunk phase.” He’d considered getting it taken off, or at least altered into something else. But laser removal was expensive, and what could you turn an octopus into? He couldn’t think of a remedial design he’d like any better.
Shaking his head as if to clear it, Jack gave a wry smile. “You were in there forever. I was beginning to think you’d drowned.”
“Uh… I thought…. What happened to you?” Tag remained stupidly in the bathroom doorway.
“I figured you’d have an easier time checking in if you weren’t with another man. But you only got one bed.” He bounced up and down a little.
Frowning, Tag stalked across to his suitcase and pulled out a pair of briefs. Jack watched while he put them on.
“How the hell do you turn on the TV?” Jack asked when Tag was covered. “I couldn’t find the power switch.”
Feeling slightly ridiculous, Tag tossed him the remote. “It’s on there.”
Jack examined the clicker carefully, as though it were some exotic artifact, before pressing the button marked On. He seemed delighted when the set came to life, but Tag moaned. Hallucinating a ghost was bad enough, but imagining them operating electronic media—that was really awful. Pathological.
“I need to sleep,” Tag announced.
“I’ll turn the volume really low. Please?” Jack tilted his head like a puppy. “I haven’t watched in a really long time.”
“I doubt the quality’s improved any.”
But Jack was already clicking his way through the channels, exclaiming in wonder when he realized how many there were. Tag shook his head and climbed onto the side of the bed opposite Jack. The mattress was overly squishy, but there were plenty of pillows. He reached over and switched off the lamp. Jack remained sitting beside him, bathed in the flickering light of the television. He was watching some cop show—one of the CSIs, maybe—with rapt attention.
“Do ghosts sleep?” Tag asked through a yawn.
Jack turned to look at him. “I sleep a lot. There’s not much else to do, most of the time. It’s okay. Kind of… floaty, like swimming way underwater. But this is better.” He patted the bed before turning back to the screen.
Better. Tag looked blearily around the dreary motel room with its two ugly paintings on the wall and puke-green curtains across the window. “How does this place compare to your motel. The one where….”
“Where I died? This is way nicer.” Jack maneuvered to lean back on the pillows next to Tag. His weight on top of the blankets pinned Tag down. “You don’t mind sharing a bed with a fellow?” Jack asked.
“I’ve shared a lot of beds with a lot of fellows.”
For once, it was Jack who looked surprised. “You sleep with men?”
“When the opportunity arises.”
“You’re homosexual?”
“Card-carrying.”
“And you just… tell people? Just like that.”
“First off, you’re not people. You’re imaginary. And second, yeah. I’ve been out since I was fifteen.” That wasn’t quite true. He’d been out to his friends since then but hadn’t said anything to his parents for another year. Their reaction had been pretty much what he expected—his mom had cried and his dad had yelled, and then they’d both refused to talk about it again.
Jack was looking offended, though. “I might not be alive, but I’m not imaginary. See?” He poked Tag’s shoulder really hard.
“Ouch! That doesn’t prove anything. I’m imagining the poking too.”
“Do you always imagine ghosts?”
“No. You’re my first.”
“That’s ’cause I’m real, dummy. Or well, nearly. Real enough.” The corners of his mouth curled down and he turned his gaze back to the TV.
Tag tried to formulate some kind of argument, a definitive proof that Jack didn’t exist. But debating the subject with Jack seemed to acknowledge Jack’s existence, at least a little bit, didn’t it? Tag was still trying to work this out when he slipped into sleep.
WHEN TAG opened his eyes, bright light was sneaking in around the edges of the ugly curtains, and Jack was propped on the pillows, staring at him.
“That’s kind of creepy,” Tag complained before yawning widely.
“I’m supposed to be creepy. I’m a ghost.”
Scowling, Tag sat up and stretched. He’d had some strange dreams but now couldn’t remember them. That wasn’t unusual. Whatever went on in his subconscious had little interaction with his waking life. Until very recently, when his psyche decided to spring Jack on him.
“Things are really different than they used to be,” Jack said. He waved toward the television where a morning show played, the sound turned low.
“The world’s moved on.”
“I guess it does that.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve missed a lot.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Stuff was simpler when you were alive.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I… yeah. Sure. You didn’t have information coming at you twenty-four seven, just filling up your brain until you want to burst. And people were safer, right? Less likely to get blown away by a crackhead or a terrorist or just some dude having a really bad day.”
“Some people were safer,” Jack replied, his expression reminding Tag that Jack hadn’t been safe at all—he’d died far too young. Except he hadn’t died at all because he wasn’t real, dammit.
Tag climbed out of bed and stretched again. He should have been disappointed that a decent night’s sleep hadn’t cured his insanity, but he wasn’t. Hell, he was beginning to find his hallucination intriguing. Still, under other circumstances he probably would have made a beeline to the nearest shrink. Now, though… now he didn’t have to bother.
“I’m gonna shower,” he announced.
“You showered last night.”
“I like being clean.”
He spent only a few minutes under the water this time, using up the last of the soap. Afterward, his hair wouldn’t behave, not even when he attacked it viciously with his comb. Tag paused, remembering back to childhood and his mother’s ferocity with the tangles in his too-long hair or with the scissors and razor when she decided to “clean him up.” He took a deep, shaky breath and combed more gently.
He emerged from the bathroom to the smell of coffee. Jack smiled widely and handed him a steaming cardboard cup. “I figured out how to work the machine. Well, there were some instructions. Those helped.”
Bemused, Tag sipped the liquid. It was standard motel stuff—bitter and cheap—but even so, the flavor was complex enough that he didn’t think he was imagining it. Besides, it burned his tongue. Which meant it was probably real, and that meant he’d somehow brewed himself a pot before showering and without the memory of doing so. “Thanks,” he said.
“Wish I could drink some too.”
“You can’t?”
“Ghost, remember?”
“But… you’re pretty solid.”
Jack beamed as if he’d been paid a compliment. “I am. But my insides aren’t quite… I don’t really have guts and stuff, so there’s nowhere for coffee to go.”
“Oh. Well, um, sorry.”
Tag began to gather the few belongings he’d scattered around the room. He folded the clothes he’d washed the night before and stuffed them in his suitcase, packed his razor and other toiletries into a black bag, and stole the white pen from beside the phone. You never knew when a pen would come in handy.
Jack watched Tag work. After the suitcase was zipped and as Tag scanned the room for anything he might have forgotten, Jack said, “Have you really slept with a lot of men?”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve only slept with a few, I guess. But I’ve fucked plenty of ’em.”
“That’s different from when I was alive.”
“What? You’re trying to tell me there were no queers in the fifties? I know that’s not true.” Tag drained the cup and stood a moment, considering whether to pour a refill before he hit the road.
“Of course there were homosexuals. But people weren’t so… casual about it. If a fellow admitted what you just said, he could get arrested. Committed. He could lose his job, his life. Most folks wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He could get killed.”
Tag paused as he reached for the coffee pot. Jack looked slightly flushed and breathless, both of which were ridiculous for a ghost or a hallucination. “How’d you die?” Tag asked quietly.
Jack disappeared.
The same desk clerk was on duty when Tag checked out. He was wearing a different shirt, though, so maybe he’d just come back on duty. He quirked a bushy eyebrow at Tag. “Room’s not trashed?”
“I left a couple towels on the bathroom floor and I think I knocked a pillow off the mattress. That’s the extent of it.”
“Well, I guess I can forgive that much.” The clerk smiled. “Drive safely.”
Tag got into the car and started it up. He was planning on drive-through, but he spied a small market and headed there instead. He was getting sick of fast food, and Jason would have laughed at that. He used to tease Tag about his junk food addiction. “Don’t know why you’re not big as a house, man,” he’d say, stroking Tag’s lean belly. “I bet someday all those Whoppers are gonna catch up with you.”
Tag would move his boyfriend’s hand to his crotch. “Well, here’s a whopper for you too.”
Jason would chuckle and give him a friendly squeeze. Sometimes Tag wondered if Jason laughed as much with his new boyfriend. Jason deserved to be happy.
At the market, Tag bought a carton of OJ, a couple bananas, and a frozen burrito that he zapped with the store’s microwave. He got an apple pastry too, which probably wasn’t any healthier than McDonald’s but looked mighty good. He thought about a couple cans of energy drink but decided against them. He didn’t have very far to drive today.
