The Ghost in Love (16 page)

“I had expected something smaller, to tell you the truth. This is a large apartment, from what I've seen of it so far.”

Pilot waited.

“My name is Stewart Parrish. I've been sent to find out where Benjamin Gould is.”

“Wherever he is, you can't go there.”

Parrish leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees so that he was closer to Pilot now. “Yes I can. I just need you to tell me where he is and I'm off. You see, there are certain things I'm a little foggy about. Kind of like I just woke up from a nap and need to refocus my thoughts before they're clear to me again. I know things but I don't know them, if you get what I mean. I just need a little mental shove from you in their direction and off I go.”

“Skillicorn Park.” Pilot told the man the truth because the name was really the only thing he knew. He had no idea where the place was. The dog overheard Ben say the name to Ling when the two were talking. A moment later they both disappeared. To Skillicorn Park? Who knows? Who even knew where that
was
?

“Thank you. Good-bye,” Parrish said quickly, and then he, too, disappeared into thin air.

Pilot looked at Ben's empty chair a long time and felt his heart grow hard and heavy. What's worse than being left out of things? The dog did not have the slightest desire to go to this Skillicorn Park or anywhere else. But that wasn't the point. What he resented was how everyone else seemed capable of going there with no fuss. Blink an eye and they were gone. Feeling once again like the last unwanted dog in the animal shelter, Pilot lay in his bed watching the rest of his world disappear to Skillicorn Park as if it were in the next room.

The dog rose slowly and walked toward the kitchen for a drink of water. Passing his master's chair, he paused and lifted a leg on it.
A quick, short spurt of pee shot out and dribbled down the chair leg. No big squirt or anything—just enough to lodge a small wet protest against the Skillicorn Park gang.

Pilot was gone no more than five minutes. When he padded back into the living room, Parrish was once again sitting in Ben's chair.

“Surprise! Did you miss me?”

“Did you get lost?” the dog asked, but didn't bother looking at the man. He climbed back into his basket, circled twice, and lay down with a satisfied groan.

“Oh, no, I went there. It's a very nice park—lots of trees. But I arrived just as they were leaving: bad timing on my part. Do you know where else they might have gone?”

“I have no idea.” Pilot closed his eyes, hoping the man would see, take the hint, and leave.

“Hmm. That's disappointing. You really have no idea?”

“Nope.”

“Do you mind if I stay here and wait for them? I'll just sleep in this chair.”

Pilot opened his eyes again and gave the man a dirty look. But human beings don't understand dog dirty looks, so it was lost on Parrish. “He may not come back tonight. He may not be back for days. I don't think he'd be happy if you stayed here for days.”

“Fair enough. I'll make you a deal, then: I'll wait here for him tonight. If he's not back by morning, I'll leave. Is that okay with you?”

“Whatever.” Pilot closed his eyes again and fell asleep quickly. He was an almost-old dog, bone tired from all the running around he had done recently. He assumed Parrish knew Ling the ghost because he had disappeared to Skillicorn Park in exactly the same way as the other two had done earlier. Somehow or other this stranger would find a way to reunite with them. But right now it was time to sleep.

True to his word
, the next morning Parrish got up and prepared to leave as soon as Pilot awoke. “I'm on my way. I won't bother you anymore.”

Shyly the dog asked, “Before you go, would you do me a favor? I don't know when they'll be back and I really need to pee. Would you take me outside for a short walk?”

“Sure, I'd be glad to! Do you have a leash?”

“In the hallway by the door.”

“Then, let's go. We can take as long as you like out there.”

Parrish clipped the leash to Pilot's collar and opened the front door. “Gee, I can't remember the last time I walked a dog. This'll be fun.”

Thirty seconds after they were outside, Pilot jerked the leash out of Parrish's hand and ran away as fast as he could down the sidewalk. He ran faster than he had in years. He ran almost like a puppy, but that was because he was so frightened. His only idea was to escape from Stewart Parrish.

Pilot had waited a long time for the man to awaken. Whenever Parrish moved in his sleep in the chair, the animal quickly shut his eyes. He did not want the man to know he was awake and watching him. He did not want Parrish to know anything. If he did, there might be no escaping, and that thought worried the dog most because he knew now who the man was.

About five o'clock that morning Pilot had come half-awake so as to shift his position in bed. Because he was sitting so close by, Parrish's smell drifted over again. The dog hadn't been able to identify one particular part of his odor the night before, when they met for the first time. But in the mysterious place halfway between sleep and
consciousness, the senses are tuned to a different, more obscure wavelength.
They
recognized the smell now. Shocked, Pilot came instantly awake, lifted his head in dire alarm, and only slowly, very slowly, lowered it again until it was resting tensely on his paws.

Dogs see ghosts. They see disease floating down the street like fog. They hear and smell the unimaginable. Yet dogs are indifferent to such things because they are simply part of their perceived world. Human beings don't gasp at flowers or think about the insect that lands on their feet. We accept what we know when we encounter it and go on with our lives.

At the same time, when we open a bottle of milk that has gone bad, pure instinct makes us rear back in disgust on smelling the rotten stuff. It wasn't Pilot's senses that now said, Run, run—get away! It was purely survival instinct.

Life and death do not mix. They could never dance together because both of them would insist on leading. They coexist only because they are mutually dependent. In truth, they despise each other as the night despises the day and vice versa. If they were human siblings, they would have killed each other in the cradle. Each has its own distinctive odor. Everything alive has a warm ripe scent, organic, ongoing. Death's aroma is cold and unchanging.

Stewart Parrish smelled of both. That was impossible, according to everything Pilot had ever been taught or experienced in life. The dog had not recognized the odor earlier because it did not exist, or rather it
should
not have existed any more than cold fire or hot ice should exist. Nothing could be alive and dead at the same time. But Stewart Parrish was. Pilot knew now that any entity smelling of both was potentially the most dangerous thing he had ever encountered.

So Pilot ran. He flew. He moved as fast as his legs would go. While he ran his only thought was to run faster. Get away. Halfway
down the block, the dog wanted to look back to see if the man was coming but knew he shouldn't slow down yet. Go farther. Get farther away because who knows how fast that man can travel if he wants to catch you?

Completely surprised by the dog's sudden lunatic dash for freedom, Parrish shook his head in amusement and sat down on the front stoop of the building. He watched Pilot run, black leather leash whipping back and forth behind him, until the dog was out of sight. Then Parrish reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a pretty good cigar. He had been saving it for a nice quiet moment when he could sit someplace awhile, take it easy, and puff away in peace. Now that he didn't have to walk the dog, there was no time like the present. He would relax right here, smoke his cigar, and, after taking care of that one thing, eventually make his way over to Danielle Voyles's apartment, which was only a few blocks away.

The cigar was Honduran and had the slightly off-putting sweetness of all tobacco originally grown in Cuba but then transplanted to a climate similar to its origin but not quite. It was like Parrish himself: transplanted to new ground, he was similar to what he once had been but not quite the same. The result was a good cigar but not a great one. Just like me, Parrish thought with a snort: a good one but not a great one.

Half an hour later he took a satisfyingly long last draw on what little was left of the cigar. Bending his head back, he blew the smoke out all at once. The thick gray cloud was so dense that it hung unmoving above his head. Without looking to see if anyone was around to witness what came next, Stewart Parrish climbed up into that cloud of cigar smoke and disappeared once again.

Moments later he reappeared in German Landis's childhood bedroom. It was conveniently empty, which was nice because that
gave him time to concentrate and do the job quickly without distractions, such as a little-girl German Landis asking,
What are you doing in my room?

He walked around, picking objects up, weighing them in his hand as if they were fruit he was considering buying, then putting them down again exactly where he'd found them. Once in a while he muttered “Hmm” or “Nope,” but for the most part Parrish remained silent while searching. Dolls, a pencil box, a Daisy Duck watch, and other objects were examined. He picked them all up, scrutinized each closely, put it down again. Eventually he saw the red stone on a shelf. Curious why something so nondescript would be up there, he lifted it from its place. He held it no more than a second or two before smiling and saying, “This is it.” He pocketed the stone and left the room. Now he had to go find Danielle.

“Where is this man now?”
German asked Danielle Voyles.

“At your boyfriend's apartment.”

“He's not here? He's not waiting for you outside in the parking lot?”

Danielle shook her head. “No, he said he'd wait for us at your boyfriend's place.”

An announcement over the supermarket's loudspeaker system cut off anything else Danielle wanted to say. Coca-Cola was on sale today at aisle seven. Stock up! The two women stared silently at each other while the announcement was repeated.

German looked at the red stone in her hand. How had he found it? How did he know what it meant to her? What did Danielle Voyles have to do with this?

“Should we go to the police? I don't know what to do.”

“
Do
you know where your boyfriend is?”

“No. We broke up. I saw him yesterday but it was short and we
didn't talk much.” German wanted to say, “I saw him yesterday at your apartment, where you pretended not to see him,” but the look on Danielle's face silenced her.

The two women walked toward the exit.

Danielle stopped and grabbed German's sleeve. “He told me something, the man. I asked why was he bothering
me
about this? I don't know you and I don't know your boyfriend, either. He said both of us were supposed to have died but we didn't. You know about my accident. But what happened to your boyfriend?”

German said, “Nothing. One of his
girlfriends
was killed a few years ago, but Ben? No.”

They took a few more steps before German stopped and said slowly, as it dawned on her, “He fell. He fell and hit his head very badly right after we first met. He had to go to the hospital because it was bleeding in here.” She pointed to the back of her head. “It was critical. For a few days it was very bad. But he didn't
die
.”

Stewart Parrish was sitting
in exactly the same place on the front stoop of Ben Gould's building when the two women showed up. He liked this spot. Liked being able to see the whole street and watch the neighborhood goings-on. He had spoken to an elderly man from Montenegro who was visiting his grandchildren. As soon as Parrish heard where the man came from, he switched languages from English to Albanian, which thrilled the old man. Then he chatted with a heavy teenager in a Puma sweat suit on her way to aerobics class. Everyone he spoke to was open and friendly. Even to a guy like him, who to all appearances was raggedy and down on his luck. Parrish liked that. He liked that these people didn't judge his book by his cover.

He had just lit up a second cigar while sitting on the steps when
the landlord of the building came out to ask why he was there. Stewart said that he was waiting for either Ben Gould or his girlfriend German to return. He was an old friend of theirs from school and expected them at any minute. Jovial and intelligent, his answers satisfied the landlord, who went back inside and left Parrish alone.

It was turning out to be a nice morning. Danielle Voyles had been no problem. He scared the wits out of her within the first five minutes of their meeting. After that she needed no further convincing. When he handed her Rudi's stone, she'd dropped it because her hand was shaking so badly.

And now here they came, two smart-looking women walking down the sidewalk toward him on this mild overcast morning. German Landis was much taller than he remembered. However, when Parrish saw her that first time months before, he was in no state to judge anything. His mind back then was just a garbage can full of disconnected fragments. When the women were a few feet away, he stood up while at the same time ducking his head in a sort of bow of respect and greeting.