Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Charlie’s not sure she’ll be able to pay attention to anything Betty’s telling her about the basement if the woman—ghost—doesn’t stop biting her lip. Pages on how Betty’s hair bounces just so when she moves won’t be compelling to anyone but her.
Frannie wishes Hot Ghost Mom would give her a tour of the building. Wishes she could stop wondering if she was annoyed or amused. Wishes she could stop remembering the way her arms felt briefly beneath Frannie’s, warm and tingling and wonderfully strange.
She’s a ghost. It doesn’t bear thinking about. And on top of that, she’s haughty, and imperious, and so frustratingly pretty …
A lifetime of having confusing crushes on popular girls has clearly left its mark on Frannie’s overeager heart.
Though she supposes it’s not really her heart that’s the problem here.
If Hot Ghost Mom were a little less clever, a little less beautiful, a little less intimidating, maybe Frannie would be properly indignant instead of blushingly frustrated.
As it is, she’s been haunting Frannie’s dreams (no matter what her definition of that word is), and fueling her creativity, and is basically front and center of every thought Frannie’s had for a week. And they’ve barely spoken at all. Frannie feels sixteen all over again.
Spending her free time writing about her isn’t helping, but Frannie needs to write this book, and make it good, or she’ll have spent another year with Henry for absolutely nothing. She’ll convince him to give Ghost Book to Maribel before Christmas. No question.
Her cell pings and Frannie uncurls from her hunch over her laptop. She blinks down at the text message from her mom: There’s supposed to be an exhibit on corsetry at FIT. You should ask your roommate to go with you!
Frannie snorts and texts back: Good heads-up. Gretchen and I are going to a flea market in two weeks, but I’ll ask. And I went to Jonathan’s open mic earlier this week, thank you.
She looks out at rainy Central Park. She’s not usually a fan of rain, but in the Dakota, it gives everything an eerie, Gothic vibe that she loves. The only downside of working out of Henry’s apartment is that she can’t hear the rain on the roof.
Her cell pings again: I’m just here to remind your subconscious that there’s more to life than Henry and the next career step.
Frannie smiles at her phone. Her mother’s nagging is gentle and well-meaning.
And she’s not totally wrong either. Frannie’s life is pretty quiet.
Hot Ghost Mom may have taken up most of her mental real estate over the past week, but the lack of ghostly presence in the apartment has been glaring.
She never expected to want to see the ghost children.
But all alone, Henry’s apartment feels a little too big, a little too empty.
So quiet she needs to escape, actually.
The graying wooden door of Henry’s other storage closet on the ninth floor creaks as she pushes it open. Six feet by ten, with one dirty skylight, the room is full to bursting with overflowing bookshelves and stacks of plastic storage containers.
Rain pelts against the skylight and she takes a deep, only lightly dusty breath.
She thumbs on her phone’s flashlight and moves to the closest bookshelf.
She doesn’t remember the author or title, but she remembers paging through a book on the Dakota once, back in her second week working for Henry.
She finally spots it: The Dakota: A History of the World’s Best-Known Apartment Building by Andrew Alpern, a giant coffee table book full of fantastic pictures, floor plans, and history.
The atmosphere and the sound of the rain on the skylight is too tempting.
She settles into the aging red-leather armchair in the corner and uses her phone’s flashlight as she flips through the preface, reading about the Dakota’s creator, Edward Clark.
It’s a few minutes before the hair on the back of her neck finally gets her attention.
Slowly, she looks up and stares at the image Michael makes, standing quietly in the center of the tiny room.
In the gray light coming through the skylight, he looks more like a ghost than he ever has, semitransparent and a little unsettling.
“Bridgette’s looking for you,” he says, his voice soft against the stillness. “She wanted to play catch.”
Frannie slowly closes her book, tugging off her hair tie to mark her place. “Your mom made herself pretty clear.”
Michael shrugs, looking around the room. “Anything that occupies Bridgette is good in my book. Mom’s just being … Mom.”
Frannie’s still not entirely sure what Hot Ghost Mom’s problem is. Days to think haven’t made it any clearer. “I don’t want to get either of you in trouble,” Frannie ventures.
“We can handle it,” Michael says, his lips quirking up almost exactly the way Hot Ghost Mom’s do.
Frannie bobs her head, not sure how else to react. Bridgette seemed happy to be in Frannie’s presence and simply chat at her. Michael, at ten or eleven, is a little aloof for a kid. She doesn’t know how to talk to him.
“Is that the Alpern book?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Frannie says, surprised. She lifts the heavy book to show him the cover.
“I’ve been looking for that for forever,” Michael says, his face lighting up. “Mr. Flores had a copy maybe ten years ago, but then he moved, and no one else seemed to have one. Which is weird!”
“It really is,” Frannie agrees. At least she’s good at talking about books.
“I was just looking at the schematics for the building. I’m sure you already know, but I had no idea that some of Seventy-Third Street used to be on the same electrical generating plant.
Clark bought so much real estate up here. ”
“Yes,” Michael says, bouncing on his toes, which is kind of adorable. “They were all wired to the same grid at the beginning. I’ve never been able to verify if those power lines are still connected, though.”
“It doesn’t say?” Frannie wonders, flicking through the pages. It’ll take her a few days to read through the whole thing.
“I don’t think anyone’s really interested,” Michael says with a little shrug. “Eventually, Edison brought service up past the park. Not sure anyone really cared what happened to Clark’s system after that.”
Frannie frowns. Now she wants to know. “Huh. Maybe sometime I can hit City Hall, see what they have.”
Michael’s whole face splits in a grin. “That would be amazing,” he says, his voice high and excited. “I also want to figure out what the old dining room looked like. Bridgette talks about going there sometimes.”
“Right, there was something about a dining room. It would be cool to still be able to eat there.”
“Not like they’d let you,” Michael says.
It takes a couple seconds to realize he’s teasing her.
“I could be a dinner companion for the older tenants. Henry could give me a few hours a week.”
He laughs, and the sconce by the door flickers. Frannie’s about to ask if the dining room got torn down when they converted the staff quarters into studios, but “Pink Pony Club” blares out of her phone, and they both jump.
She needs to get back downstairs, check her email, and go back to transcribing. But she can already see Michael’s face closing down again, his shoulders curling inward.
“You wanna head back to Henry’s with me?” she asks. “Take a look at this in light that doesn’t give you a headache?”
He laughs again and the hair on Frannie’s arms stands up, that static feeling growing around her.
“Sure,” he says, smiling at her as she hauls her sorry ass out of the armchair with the big book. He sticks out his hand. “We should be proper friends.”
Frannie can’t help but smile back, charmed. “Okay. Nice to formally meet you, Michael.”
His palm feels somehow more substantive than Bridgette’s, the tingling feeling stronger and more present, but still less than it was with Hot Ghost Mom. It leaves her arm buzzing when he drops her hand.
Why does Bridgette’s touch feel different? Why does Hot Ghost Mom seem more substantial than either child? Is it because she’s a newer ghost? The questions swirl in her head. They all seem rude, or unkind, but Hot Ghost Mom’s earlier accusation comes back: oblivious.
“Do you mind me asking how long you’ve been here?” Frannie asks tentatively.
Michael shakes his head with a smile. “Since 1923.”
“Wow,” Frannie breathes. She knew, based on his clothing, that it had been a very long time. Still. “That’s a lot of time in this building. You must know everything.”
His chest puffs up with pride. “Just about. Mom knows a lot too. She’s read all the books I have.”
“Do you have more?”
“Yes! I can bring some tomorrow. I just need to find them. Mom doesn’t read them much anymore,” he says, starting toward the door.
Frannie follows, too curious now to stop her questions. “How long have Bridgette and your mom been here?”
“Bridgette died in 1889, and Mom in 1964,” Michael says, holding the door for Frannie.
She follows Michael as he walks down the hall toward the Seventy-Second Street side of the building.
“Oh, wow. Do you guys ever go to the San Remo, or over to the Natural History Museum or anything? That must be cool when it’s empty,” Frannie says, smiling at little at the thought of Bridgette and Michael dragging Hot Ghost Mom to see the dinosaurs.
“We can’t go more than two feet past the gates,” Michael says easily. “But we take virtual tours sometimes. That’s always fun.”
“Oh,” Frannie says. That’s … a very small radius. “Are there any other ghosts here?”
“Nope. None that have been electrocuted, anyway,” he says, turning to walk backward so they can see each other. Like Bridgette, he seems more solid under the hallway lights than he does when the gray daylight hits him through the windows.
“So, you only become a ghost if you’re electrocuted?” Frannie wonders.
“As far as we know. Plenty of people have died here, but no one else hung around.”
Frannie wants to ask how he died, but that feels like a bridge too far somehow.
“Bridgette got electrocuted flipping a faulty switch in her bathroom,” Michael says, like he knows what Frannie was thinking.
“I was screwing in a new light bulb. Bridgette bumped into me about a year later. Mom was doing something with a lamp for Joan. Then Joan moved away. Bridgette found Mom and brought her back to me, and then we were all here together, and no one’s come to join us since. ”
Frannie doesn’t know how to react. It sounds desperately lonely, just the three of them here for eternity.
“Well, you’re always welcome at Henry’s place, whether I’m there or not,” she can’t help but say.
Michael smiles up at her as they head down Henry’s hallway.
“I’ll make sure he keeps getting new video games, and if you have movies you guys want to stream, I can always put my accounts onto his TV so—”
She opens the door to Henry’s apartment and pushes inside, only to come face-to-face with Hot Ghost Mom. She’s standing at the end of the galley kitchen with Bridgette, and she’s staring at Frannie, utterly unimpressed. Frannie has to fight the urge to just turn tail and abandon Michael.
But she’s made progress with her little ghost friend. She at least has to try not to get him in trouble. “I was just—”
“I found Frannie in Henry’s storage closet. She didn’t go looking for me,” Michael says quickly.
“I see,” Hot Ghost Mom says.
“She was minding her own business. She said we can watch whatever movies we want on Henry’s TV. And she’ll get us new video games. I think you should stop being so mean to her.”
Frannie’s credit card is clearly about to take a hard hit, but she can’t be bothered. Michael’s sticking up for her, which is so sweet it almost hurts, and Bridgette’s grinning at her brother. She doesn’t know how it happened, but she’s earned the kids’ trust, and she wants to keep it.
Hot Ghost Mom meets her eyes, jaw tight.
“I’m happy for them to hang here, and they’re welcome to use Henry’s stuff to access anything you guys haven’t been able to before,” Frannie hedges. “It would be nice, having them here. A bit less lonely.”
Something flickers in Hot Ghost Mom’s eyes, and they stare at each other for a moment. Then she vanishes.
The resulting silence is … uncomfortable.
“So, you can look at this here anytime you like,” Frannie says slowly, extending the book to Michael.
He takes it, still staring at the space where Hot Ghost Mom disappeared. “Thanks.”
Frannie nods and leaves him to his thoughts. She heads toward the desk. “How are you, Bridgette?”
“Good!” Bridgette chirps, following her and grabbing her hand before Frannie can sit down. “Come play Mario Kart with us before you work.”
Frannie laughs, her discomfort falling away. “I’ll lose. I’m sure you guys are much better than me.”
Still, she follows Bridgette into the living room.
She turns to watch Michael slowly move through the dining room, placing the Dakota book on the table.
He stares at it for a second before turning and smiling at her.
He trots into the living room to join them on the couch, and they boot up the game like nothing happened.
Like it’s normal for the three of them to play video games together.
It’s not normal, but it’s fun, and Frannie lets them con her into almost an hour of gaming before she finally rouses herself to go back to work.
Michael’s words and Hot Ghost Mom’s assessing stare swirl in her head. Hot Ghost Mom was electrocuted, and then someone named Joan left. And she, Michael, and Bridgette have been alone ever since.
Maybe Frannie’s not being haunted, but that history—their existence—sounds rather haunted to her.