Boyce said that yesterday he got a call from his realtor, Bruce Barenburg, who was very angry that a second realtor, our old high school classmate Keller Bigsby, was going to start showing the house. Boyce told him he had no idea what he was talking about. Bruce said that Keller told him the reason that Boyce was switching realtors is because Bruce is a lonely liar who makes up stories about drifters in closets. Boyce told him not to worry about it, that everything was a mix-up, and to keep sending prospective buyers to the house.
These stories were told while we grilled hot dogs at Boyce’s place. I did my best to act shocked, but both Sammy and Boyce told me I couldn’t do things like that anymore. Sammy said he hadn’t decided if he was leaving or not—though he did admit that if our town had a fair supply of literary prostitutes interested in Colonial Gothic writers he could probably make the decision right now. Boyce just said he was only doing this because he had to, and that I shouldn’t make it any worse than it has to be.
I tried to change the subject by bringing up Virginia Blare at the Sleep Center, but once they found out that I didn’t ask her about her supposed ghost they were even more disappointed. Hiring escorts coached into a fraudulent interest in dead writers and impersonating rival realtors over the phone did not elicit the same confusion and disgust as did my lack of curiosity about Virginia Blare’s ghost.
Last night I found out, however, that I would get another chance to be curious. When I went to work last night Marcel was leaving, and told me the results of Virginia Blare’s tests. Apparently, she never went to sleep. The entire night. She stared up at the ceiling the entire time, and every time an attendant came in to tell her that this wasn’t going to work unless she at least tried to sleep, she said, “I can’t go sleep alone. That’s why I’m here. Funny, right?”
I’ll try to make things up to Sammy and Boyce by getting some information from Virginia Blare tonight, since Marcel said she’s coming for another analysis. In order to prepare, I have come up with several questions for her about her ghost:
1. Does it walk on the ground? If it does, does it seem to have to concentrate on its step? To me, it seems like a ghost that walks on the ground is like a person walking on water. As soon as that ghost puts its weight down it should sink. I would guess ghosts are always trying to take a step on a creaky staircase and ending in some Indonesian village.
2. If the ghost is someone you knew, at what age does it appear? The age that the person died? If Sammy had murdered the prostitute I got him, and she wanted to haunt him, could she come back as herself at just twelve years old? That way when she appeared to him and said, “You were my lover,” not only would Sammy be scared, but everyone else in the room would think he was a pervert.
3. Does your ghost seem to be at all interested in confusing you rather than haunting you? For instance, if I were a ghost, I would clearly come back as a bird. I would appear on the kitchen floor and tell the living that birds can’t fly in the afterlife, mainly because the only things that fly after death are people who refused to recycle because it’s for nerds. When they said, “Huh? Really?” I’d tip their fridge over with my beak and scream, “Suckers!” then fly away.
4. Does the ghost have any power to travel backward in time? If so, why you right now? No offense, but if you could pull John Wilkes Booth’s pants down right before he shoots Lincoln, wouldn’t you do it? Is it that you’re so special or that the ghost is so shortsighted? Or is it that if ghosts can travel back in time, then Booth's own ghost would attempt to prevent it from pulling down his mortal self's pants? Who would win in a fight between your ghost and the ghost of John Wilkes Booth? How long into the fight before it got confused that if Booth's ghost is fighting it, maybe Lincoln's ghost could stop gazing at his monument for one damn minute and come help?
5. Can the ghost still learn things when it’s dead? If it didn’t know how it died, could you inform it (assuming it didn’t have an axe coming out of its head, in which case it could merely deduce the fact)? If ghosts can learn, that would then mean ghosts could learn everything, and since they exist outside of time, they would appear to learn it instantaneously. When you told the ghost, “My mother killed you,” it would say, “I know.” Then you'd say, “She did it because of the inheritance,” but the ghost would say, “Duh.” So you’d say, “Her husband helped her do it,” but then the ghost would get snobbish and say, “Did you know I can speak German now?”
