by Marty Rafter
gazed into her eyes. Her eyes remained focused somewhere far off in the distance. I could smell her breath now, stale. I suddenly felt very sad for her alone and forgotten in this room gazing into nothing… visited by ghost she couldn’t see. So I very squeezed her arm, willing a tiny portion of compassion into the shell of her person, but as I did that, her eyes started to focus, and a look of total unrestrained terror came over her face. Her arm jerked away from me, and she sucked a huge breath of air in, and then, I was back in my bedroom. I ripped off my earmuffs, and stood up, and that was it. Some actually majorly unusual happened, and that is my best tale of the paranormal, and oddly enough, in it, I’m the ghost.
There is a guy who hangs around outside my apartment who asks me for a rolling paper every time I walk by. As far as I can gather that is some sort of code that he has drugs to sell, but you’d figure he would catch on by now that I’m not a potential customer. Other than the lone drug dealer, it is a pretty nice building. Mostly students. I am too old to live here, but I work for the company. At least in the summer I do, I rent apartments in the building and a bunch of others. It is not bad, it is easy work, and mostly it is just a lot of hours through the summer. I’m sure it gives my mother anxiety that I am taking so long to getting around to doing something that fills the minds of others with my successes, but I’m pretty content… for the most part anyway. The rest of the year, I hang around the library and read. Lately, I’ve been reading the Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz. The only copy the library has is really old, and they won’t let anybody take it out. I have been interested in that lately, Communism. Not really communism in that I actively support it or anything political for that matter, but in these holistic thought models. Communism really took the Every Question Answered mode of thought pretty far. It also has the same basic problem as fundamentalist religious belief does… a pre-supposition of the outcome. It’s almost as if nobody expected there to be complicated personal questions in between the beginning and the Promised Land.
When I get to the library, Ben is already waiting at my favorite table. Disheveled, Sephardic, and overweight from the psychiatric drugs, Ben has recently decided that I am some sort of prophet. Remember the cracks in my contentedness that I just alluded to? Well, here is one of them.
“You’re here early, Ben” I say
“I had to go to a meeting this morning” He says, as he loudly snaps open the can of Mountain Dew clutched between his meaty hands.
I look at Ben’s filthy shirt, a too snug Brooks Brothers oxford probably gifted to him by a loving grandmother before his life took an unexpected turn. The lowest button had popped off, and is revealing the hairy recesses of his enormous navel. “Pitching a big deal to the CEO?” I ask.
“What?” Says Ben, as he stares back at me with his wide watery eyes.
“It was a joke..." I say, watching my tone “I’m sorry, Ben”
I am a little scared of him, once when the librarian reprimanded him about his soft drink, he threw the can across the room, and the police had to be called. Actually, they probably didn’t have to be called, but they were called. It was big mess. Ben cried, and the police were actually pretty understanding to both parties, but either way, Ben was banned from the library for almost a month. He spent the month hanging around by the food trucks next to CMU, where he tried in vain to talk to the students, but mostly they ignored him, and some were outright rude. By the time he came back to the library at the end of the month, it was obvious that the alterations in his routine had hurt him. After that, I tried to talk to him more, but he still scares me. He is big and unpredictable, but also about as lonely as me, so we talk.
Ben looks at his hands for a few seconds, and then digs into his pockets. He hands me something in wrapped in a cloth.
“It stopped working” He says
I already know what is in the cloth bundle. It is a little head made out of Fimo clay. I made it for him.
“I don’t think it had any special powers, Ben. It was just a little token”
“Oh that’s not true, Luke. It was amazing. As soon as you gave it to me, he went away. First he was everywhere. I even saw him in the toilet once, but then this” He picks up the little clay head “you gave me this, and he went away. For weeks”
“Well, if he did go away. It wasn’t the head that did it, it was you. Maybe it just helped you change the way you were thinking.”
Ben starts to shake his head “no, no. Not true. No way. I was outside my place smoking a cigarette, and he walked right up to me. He took the smoke from my mouth, and spun it around. Stuck the cherry right in my lip. Look, look at it”
There is a little mark on Ben’s lip that looks like a cold sore
“Maybe you just made a mistake, Ben. Maybe you just flipped the smoke around backward by accident” I say.
“No. no fucking way. I didn’t burn myself. You need to fix it again. Can you? Put some power back into it” he says, pushing the small head towards me again
“Ben, I just made it for you as a present. You might be confused, man. I really didn’t do anything to make this magic.” I hold the clay head it my hand, it is cold and feels a little damp “It is just something I made for you…because we are friends”
Ben hangs his head for a moment, and then takes a long drink from his can. “He knew about you”
“Who did? The head?” I ask
“No, not the goddamn head. Him. You know who I mean” Ben says, raising his voice.
I read once that tone of voice is key when you are talking to people who are seriously disturbed, so I try to be as calm as possible. “Ben, I’m sorry, man. I will definitely make you another head. I will do it as soon as I get a chance”
Ben nods slowly.
“What did he say, Ben?” I ask, after a few second of silence.
“He said that you’re a ghost, Luke”
“Buddy, I’m not a ghost. I can talk to anyone here. Everyone here can see me” I hold up the head”I made this for you. This real, physical thing. I am definitely not a ghost”
Ben shakes his head, and looks at his hands. “I know you’re not a ghost.”
I put the clay head into my pocket, “I actually have an appointment myself.” I say
“But you just got here”
“I know, but I totally forgot I have something else I was supposed to do today”
“What is it? What do you have to do?” Ben asks
“I told somebody that I would meet them at their work to sign a lease renewal”
“Where do they work?”
“The museum”
“Can I go, too?” He asks
“I don’t know, man. Maybe not today. I will make you a new clay head though, I promise. Can you meet me here tomorrow?”
“I guess”
“Ok, same time. I will have a new one for you. “
I rush out of the library and straight up the road to the museum. They are close, actually attached, and that is one of the many good things about Pittsburgh. There are lots of good things about Pittsburgh, but don’t move here. Or else they will be all be ruined by being crowded and expensive. I don’t really have an appointment. Even if I did, I would never in the winter. I am a seasonal employee. I make all of my money between April and September, after that, if the company needs anything, it is never a rush.
The museum is almost like a church to me. I go there to wander and to collect my thoughts. At least I used to, but now there is a girl there on Mondays. She is fantastic, dark hair, too much makeup, angry and compact behind one of those carts that have additional enrichment projects for children. For the past two months, I have been going to see her there every week. I used to just go and walk around with my headphones on and absorb the atmosphere, or occasionally make some small talk with the guards, but lately I have been experimenting with various forms of engagements to see if I can get her attention.
For a couple of weeks I sketched, which I quite competent at, as long as I am not drawing from life. My real strength lies in improvisation. Then, it occurred to me that it might be a bit strange if I am sitting in front of some of Monet’s water lilies and drawing a picture of a person being kidnapped by a UFO, so I left my sketch book at home. Then for a couple of other weeks I brought something that I was reading. I try to read important books, not because I am some intellectual elitist, but because it saves me quite of bit of time in searching out what to read. If it won a major award, I will read it. I respect the opinions of critics who have awards to hand out. Plus, it gives me a measure of authority when I discuss things with the type of casual intellectuals who feel like reading the New York Times is the educational equivalent of touching saints’ relics. Everyone is always seeking low effort holiness. Any decent really smart person knows that they are mostly pretty stupid.
So, I would sit in the galleries and read, but I think the guards got wise to my real objective because they would tease me, and suggest that I take my outside reading to the library, or at least move to a seat where I would have a better view of the girl at the art cart. My latest trick is to take notes about the art. I think that might be the best strategy because I have noticed her starting to look at me a little bit. For some reason, even after spending the last eight weeks trying to catch her eye, once she
