The Ghost in Love (36 page)

The crowd began to move in around Ben, German, and Pilot. None of the three knew what they intended to do.

“Give us the dog and we'll leave you alone!” a voice called out.

“For now,” another added, which garnered a big laugh.

“Give us
German
,” someone else said.

The crowd moved closer. Ben and German faced them standing side by side. She still held Pilot in her arms. The dog did not try to move.

Stanley was so transfixed by what was happening that he did not notice Spilke slip away. The angel knew he was literally watching human evolution unfold before his eyes. He did not want to miss a minute of it, especially because he really didn't know what would transpire next. That was the truth. Since mankind had begun to reclaim its destiny, God and his many minions only watched now like spectators at a football game as events unfolded.

Standing nearby, Danielle Voyles was not so at ease. It looked as though Ben, German, and their dog were about to be devoured by this seething crowd. Danielle turned to Stanley and asked the angel to help them. He shook his head. Frustrating as it was, she understood why he was saying no. She had just told him not to interfere with their lives.

“What if I prayed?”

That got the angel's attention. He looked at her, amused.
“What?”

“What if I prayed to God to help them?”

Stanley grinned. “You can't have it both ways, Danielle. It'd be better if you prayed to yourself to think up a good way to get them out of this.”

She closed her eyes, joined her hands together, but then didn't know what to do or say next. She kept her eyes shut for as long as she could stand it. Eventually curiosity and concern made her open them again, even if what she was expecting to see was a train wreck about to happen.

Ben had no idea what the milling crowd was going to do to them. He tried to steel himself for anything. Only about twenty feet separated them. The others were just standing there waiting, waiting, but for who knew what? It was maddening.

A smell that was well known and loved drifted through the air. The aroma captured and filled his mind. It was the smell of Pilot right next to him: doggy, earthy, and eternal. It was so familiar and appealing that instinctively Ben reached over and stroked the dog's head with as much love as he held. That gesture and the look on his face made German push his head up into the hand despite the spot they were in. As Ben was petting him, Pilot clenched his whole body and then went slack.

Forty seconds later the first dog appeared. A grubby sort of black setter mix, you see three of them whenever you visit an animal shelter: dogs that, if they were human beings, would have last names like Smith or Jones. This one trotted down the sidewalk toward the crowd. Hardly anyone noticed. But Pilot saw it. He tracked it, and when the black dog sat down on the edge of the crowd, the two of them made brief eye contact. Then the setter started licking its belly to keep up appearances. Pilot looked away and mentally began preparing himself for what was coming.

Next to appear out of a hedge was an ancient beige-and-white basset hound that had definitely seen a lot of mileage and better days. The edge of one ear was chewed up and her muzzle was dappled gray. She went to the other side of the crowd and enthusiastically
started sniffing the ground as if searching for food. She looked up once at the same time that Pilot looked her way. They connected.

In the next few minutes fifteen dogs discreetly appeared and made a complete circle around the crowd of people. In due course someone finally noticed them and nudged a neighbor with an elbow to look. Word spread and people started asking one another, “What's with all these dogs?”

Then the woman who'd slapped German made to walk off to the side to smoke a cigarette. But when she started to move away, a taupe pit bull with a head the size of a wastebasket snarled in a fearsomely feral manner while staring her right in the eye. Petrified, the woman stood still, arms extended out to either side so that she looked like a tightrope walker.

The child who'd thrown the rock at German knelt down to pet a corgi but jumped back as the dog lunged at him, snapping like a piranha. This sort of thing happened all around the crowd, and now everyone knew that a large pack of extremely hostile dogs surrounded them.

“Ben?”

It took him a moment to realize that Pilot had said his name.

“Yes?”

“Remember a few weeks ago when I got really sick and you took me outside every few hours all night long so that I could go? And the next day I wasn't eating, so you cooked me a piece of meat?”

Ben nodded. “I remember.”

Pilot said, “I remember too.”

Still gazing at the woman who had been scared out of her wits, the big pit bull said to her, “I remember too.”

The corgi hissed Peter Lorre style at the rock-throwing kid, “I remember too.”

And so on. Every one of the dogs said that sentence in their own way to different people throughout the crowd. But no matter how it was spoken, it was clearly both a statement and threat to all the various bad Ben Goulds. It said, Do not touch him or German. It said, We are here now and we won't let you harm them.

One bellicose fool said, “Oh, yeah? Well, remember
this
, Fido . . .” and raised an arm to hit a German shepherd. Instantly the shepherd and two other dogs attacked and mauled him. The man fell to the ground screaming and trying to cover his head with his arms so that the dogs wouldn't bite him there, but they did.

Pilot told the dogs to stop, but not before the man had gotten some sizable wounds.

There was such a rush and flurry of things going on that no one noticed that while the dogs were attacking this man, new people had appeared and worked their way into the crowd. Interestingly, the pack of dogs allowed every one of these newcomers to pass.

When things had quieted again and the only noise was from the bitten man weeping on the ground, German said, “I remember too, Ben. Pilot's just faster than me.” She pointed out some of the new faces in the crowd. Puzzled, he looked at them and they acknowledged him with nods or warm smiles. He had never seen any of these people.

“I don't understand,” he said.

German and Pilot looked at each other. The dog said to the woman, “You tell him.”

“All of them are us, Ben. The dogs
and
these new people are the parts of Pilot and me that love you. We brought them here to protect you. You brought the parts of yourself that hate you. We won't let them hurt you.”

“We won't let you hurt
yourself
,” Pilot corrected her.

That brought an instant uproar. Ben's people were outraged, particularly because they knew they were in the minority now.

One woman shouted, “We'll do whatever we want to him. You can't stop us!”

That comment was answered by three throaty dog growls and a slap on the head to the small speaker from a burly six-foot-four-inch man with a military crew cut.

“
We're
Ben and you aren't, so butt out!” someone else whined, but then ran away as soon as he said it. No one tried to stop him.

Silence fell again, because no one knew what to do next. That quiet lasted only a short time, though, for a voice started shouting, “He's dead! He's dead!” which set everyone in motion again.

Ben, German, and Pilot got over there as fast as they could. What they saw on the ground was disturbing: a man in a dark brown suit and an Elvis Presley hairdo was lying on his back, staring up at the sky with eyes as glassy and lifeless as an antique doll's. Ben walked forward and squatted down next to the body. He put an open palm in front of the man's mouth and nose to see if he could feel breathing. Nothing. He looked at German and shook his head.

“Do you know who that is, Ben?” she asked.

“Yes. He was the part of me that never really believed you loved me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, seeing him dead, I recognize him now.”

Mr. Spilke had been standing far back with the other passengers from the car. They blended in with the new crowd of German's people who had come to defend Ben. Her old teacher strode forward but stopped to speak to an attractive black woman. After listening
for a few moments, she nodded and said something brief back to him. Spilke touched her shoulder in thanks and continued on toward the others standing around the body.

“The woman over there that I just spoke to? She took this man's place as soon as he died. She was standing near me, so I saw her appear.”

Ben only needed one glance at the black woman to know it was true. He recognized that she was the new worry that had entered his mind moments after German's wondrous call to arms had proved without a doubt how great her love for him was. Sometimes fears do die or we manage to outgrow them. But new and different ones always replace them: brand-new fears, the latest models.

He thought of his dead uncle's futile, years-long battle against cancer. First, doctors discovered it on his skin and removed it. A few years later it reappeared in his prostate gland. They cut that out but six months later the cancer showed up in his liver and killed him. Toward the end of his life the ashen man had asked, “What was the point of all that worthless treatment and fighting the disease? Just so I could experience a hundred different kinds of suffering?”

Mirroring that sentiment, Ben said now in despair, “We can never get right with ourselves, can we? We'll never be at peace. As soon as one thing goes away or we're able to overcome something bad about ourselves, it's instantly replaced by something else ugly or dangerous.”

Mr. Spilke asked, “Is that a question or a statement?”

“A statement,” Ben said, and turned to the crowd. “But it's true, isn't it? I'll get over some of my faults and fears but others will always replace them, won't they? There'll always be more of you.” When he said this, he saw the obnoxious Broomcorn, who took credit for having
created Stewart Parrish. Ben asked him, “What are we going to
do
about this? We've got to live together whether we like it or not.”

The other man looked unhappily around at German's people and Pilot's many dogs surrounding him. Ben Gould's bad points were now way outnumbered by the things another person—and pet—loved about him. Much as he hated to admit it, Broomcorn knew this confrontation was a standoff at best. “You said it before: we have to negotiate.”

Out of nowhere, Ben asked, “Are you hungry?”

“
Hungry?
That's a strange question to be asking now. But yes, sure, I wouldn't mind eating something.”

“Can I cook for you? I can't have you all over because my place isn't big enough. But if you'd choose five or six representatives, we could go back to my apartment. I'll make something to eat and we can talk.” He turned to German. “Your people too. Have them choose a few and we'll all eat together and talk.”

After some hemming and hawing, Broomcorn and the others in his group agreed. Having waited till they settled the matter, Pilot coolly asked if Ben planned on leaving the canine contingent out on the street with a few table scraps to keep them happy. Embarrassed, Ben said no, no, of course the dogs were invited too. Pilot gave his master a long, withering look and then went off to confer with his delegation.

“Ben, I'm going back to the Lotus Garden now, but I wanted to tell you something first.” Danielle took him by the sleeve and led him away so she could talk without the others hearing. She had walked over with Stanley. On the way the angel had tried to no avail to convince her to stay there and see what life with her new perception and powers would be like, but Danielle had adamantly refused, saying
she only wanted to talk to Ben a few minutes and then she would leave. Stanley had no power to stop her.

“I couldn't do what you just did, Ben, even if I wanted to,” she said when they were out of earshot. “The way you gave your powers to German and the dog. The way you made Pilot understand. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't know how. I know some things now but I don't know how you did that.”

“I don't either, Danielle. It just happened, but I don't know
how
it happened.”

She nodded. “It's like me with you. I don't know how or why I suddenly started seeing you. It was, like, from one minute to the next, there you were.”

Ben offered, “Maybe when you understood what was really going on with people like us, you allowed yourself to see me.”

Hearing that, something struck Danielle: an idea, a possibility, a long shot, but why not? “With German and Pilot, maybe
you
didn't do anything, Ben. Maybe
they
did it. Maybe just because you love them as much as you do, they were able to take what you have now and use it. Sometimes you love in other people what they don't even know about themselves.

“You were right: we'll never get rid of all our bad sides and weaknesses, because there'll always be new ones. But sometimes other people can rescue us from ourselves when we can't. Not always, but sometimes. German and Pilot love you. Just by being in their lives, you gave them something fantastic and powerful. They used it now to save you from your demons.

“Sometimes, when we're in love, we give the person things we don't even know we're giving. My father used to say the best thing about my mother was she always made him feel loved. Know what
Mom said to that? ‘I
do
?' And she meant it: she really didn't know she was doing that.

“You know what else my dad said? The truest sign of a successful life is when you're loved by the people you most respect or admire.”

Ben asked delicately, “And what about those people who are alone?”

Danielle paused before answering. “Like me? Well, not everyone can be saved. We both know that. Anyway, it's not always a person that saves us. Some lucky ones find their love in a friendship, or politics, even a sports team . . . I don't know.