Chapter Five Partners
I open my eyes slowly. My head instantly tells me this is a terrible plan.
“Oh, good. You’re up. Coffee? Toast? Eggs? How do you like your eggs?”
I let out a soft scream, rocket up, and plummet down, clutching my back. “Damn it,” I groan. It wasn’t a dream, and the fall in the wet glass didn’t help my back.
“Sorry.” Johnny floats my laptop, a plate of toast, and a cup of coffee down with neat, precise placement: coffee on the nightstand, laptop on the bed beside me, toast by the coffee.
I blink up at him through waves of pain.
“Ooh. You look worse than I do. And I’m dead,” he says, wincing away from me.
“Your fault,” I croak. “Ugh. I’m so congested from crying and screaming last night—my sinuses always get congested when I cry.”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry about that, kid. What can I do?”
“Find my saline nose spray and the Motrin,” I mumble, ignoring everything else in favor of my pillow.
In seconds, a glass of water, nose spray, and a pill bottle are floating next to me, neat soldiers in an airy line.
I gratefully take the pills and water, swallow what I need, and realize my stomach will hurt if I don’t eat. And coffee may or may not help my head; it’s a gamble.
Sitting up makes the pain shoot up from my hips to the base of my skull. “Physical therapy today,” I half-whimper. I don’t like people seeing me weak and miserable.
“That’s good. Sounds like you need it.”
I decide that I don’t care if Johnny sees me whimpering like a wimp. One, he’s not going to tell anyone. Two, he’s dead, so I’m automatically in better shape, and my competitive nature likes that. Three, I don’t think I have a choice.
“I have to use the bathroom. Move your ghostly ass, and you stay out of the bathroom when I’m in it.”
“Of course. I’m a ghost, not some peeping tom,” he spits and crosses his arms. “I’ll go... I’ll go all the way outside. Yep. Yep. You tell me when it’s research time.”
I think that’s a little extreme, but what the heck. It’ll be nice knowing I won’t have an audience.
I stagger to the restroom, stagger back, and sit on the edge of the bed, blinking and rubbing my temples, hoping the Motrin and coffee will kick in.
I pull the laptop over and open it, even though the burst of electronic light instantly hurts my eyes. I turn the screen brightness as low as possible while still being able to see and start typing.
Johnny Miller, Pine Ridge, NY. Death.
His picture comes up.
Him in a black-and-white photo, wearing a uniform and with a much different haircut.
Obituary. Beloved son... Survived by his parents, three brothers.
Death date: September 17th, 1954.
My spine prickles in a different way. I moved into the house on the anniversary of his death.
Well, that would piss me off, too, if I were a ghost.
“But... But... It doesn’t say how?” I gasp.
“Hey. You said you’d call me.” Johnny’s head is suddenly next to mine.
“Stop fucking doing that!” I hiss, narrowly holding onto the laptop. “This isn’t even proper research. I’m just... Googling.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It means I’m just starting to look up things, not dig too deep. I, um... I found your obituary and a picture of you. You wanna see? I would understand if you didn’t.”
“No.” Johnny’s voice is soft, then it grows stronger, a note of forced nonchalance in it. “No, I can take a look. Not like I don’t know what it says.”
I turn the screen towards him so he can see the picture in the Pine Ridge Community Library’s online archive of The Pine Ridge Gazette, the local paper.
“It doesn’t say anything about how. Just ‘died tragically.’”
“The caption says ‘unexpectedly,” I point out, pointing at the line of text under the picture.
“Unexpectedly, tragically, it’s bread and butter. Goes together,” he mutters. “Search up Harry Rogers.”
I do, and groan. “There are hundreds of Harry Rogers. Which one am I looking for?”
“Uh... Try Harry Rogers, Korean Conflict, Army Medic.”
“Oh! Hey, that worked. Died in 2005. Saratoga Springs. Survived by Nancy, his wife of nearly fifty-one years, their three daughters, Pamela, Nora, and Harriet, and their two sons, Robert and Paul. Umm... Optometrist. Career in nursing before return to school in the 1960s to start a second career... Donations sent to the VFW and Books for the Blind.” I scan the text and mumble what I find, gradually aware that the room is getting hotter and hotter.
When I look up, Johnny isn’t next to me.
He’s across the room. Filling it. He’s now the size of a double-wide mattress, and heat and anger radiate from him.
I close the laptop slowly. “Should I be afraid right now?” I whisper, knowing full well that I can’t run, and yeah, this guy is a ghost, but he can absolutely hurt me.
“He married her. He married Nancy, that bastard! Look them up, look up when,” Johnny snarls. “Harry Rogers and Nancy Benson. Look up when they were married!”
“I... Okay, okay.” I feel like now is not the time to point out that the internet isn’t always reliable, but sure enough, “Harry Rogers and Nancy Benson marriage record, New York” pops right up. “December 10th, 1954,” I whisper. “In Saratoga Springs. Looks like they moved away from Pine Ridge.”
“Looks like,” he replies in a dark, bruising voice, body and heat shrinking.
“Not even cold. Three months later! Not even three whole months later. He came to my house the night I was going to propose. Told me I didn’t love her.
Just liked her because she was... She was ideal. The perfect kind of wife.”
“Oooh.” That tea just spilled—or rather, my less fright-addled brain can now sip on it. “You think Harry wanted Nancy, so he bumped you off?” I ask in a hushed, excited voice.
Johnny glares at me. “Yeah, Sherlock. I had always hoped I was wrong. Was never sure. But now that I know they ended up together? Murder. Had to be.”
I bite my lip and mutter, “Sorry. That was the wrong reaction, I know. It’s exciting to follow along when a detective solves a crime on television, or in a book, you know? I sometimes forget that murder happens to real people. People like you.”
Johnny shrugs. “Thanks. But being angry at you isn’t going to help.
We need to find out why they didn’t think it was a murder.
I was a young guy! In great shape. Sure, I’d been a little sore in the belly that last week, but that was cold feet.
I was gonna propose. That’s a big deal. Of course my guts were acting up. Happens to everyone.”
“Does it?” I know I sound bitter.
“Doesn’t it?” Johnny spreads his hands, and now there’s a new layer of glaring—me at him.
“I just think that if you’re a man and you love a woman enough to have sex with her—”
“Hey, hey! We rounded the bases, but Nance and I never slid home, if you know what I mean.” He holds up his hands in protest.
“I wasn’t done, Mr. Interrupting Ghost. If you love a woman enough to sleep with her or to think she could be your wife, to live with you forever, have your kids, and all that... You trust her, right? You wouldn’t be nervous to ask her, because you would believe she’d say yes.”
“I thought she’d say yes! She came on to me, not the other way around. I was meeting Harry Miller one night, over at Jack’s Roadhouse—”
“Jax Alley? The roadhouse outside of town?”
“I think technically it’s in town, but outside of town proper, sure. Anyway, good to know it’s still kicking along. Anyway, I’d only moved in a little bit ago, made fast friends with Harry Rogers, a medic in the service, about my age, who worked at the hospital. I worked at Manny’s Garage—”
“Manny’s Automotive! That’s where the gas station is, too. It’s still there, still near the hospital.”
“Yeah, well, we used to eat our sandwiches in the field, and I bummed a cigarette off of him once, and we got to be buddies. He was a madman on the dance floor. Big, good-looking guy, wide smile, a little wave in his hair, complete charmer, an all-around good one—”
“Mm. They don’t make enough of those anymore,” I sigh, thinking of Devon and the way his muscles felt against my back. Haven’t thought about him in months. Not like that.
“Well, he was dancing with every dame in the place—fat, thin, blonde, redhead, brunette— Everyone but the waitress. Nancy. When her shift was done, she sat with me. We had a couple of beers, went up to Blue Moon Lake, where we smooched a little... Let me tell you. She was saying yes while I was waiting. I was done with all the ‘tomorrow we may die’ mentality that makes a fella and a pretty WAC go into the linen closet on base for ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes. Sounds about right.”
“Hey! I could go longer, lady, but ten minutes is about as long as you can last without getting caught, okay?”
“Okay, okay, none of my business. So you weren’t nervous about Nancy saying no. You were nervous because...”
“Because... I wanted to get married. Get on with my life. But...” Johnny’s face looks so pained suddenly.
Then so still. All of him is still, and he fades before my eyes, going from somehow solid to see-through, then just an outline.
“I guess I wasn’t crazy in love with her.
No Romeo and Juliet. No, ‘I will die without you. But then... I mean, do people feel that way outside of books?” he asked.
“No. No, I don’t think so. But it’d be nice.”
“Well, that was Harry's point, the nosy ass. He didn’t want Nancy until I had her—that’s what I think.
I think he didn’t even notice her until we started going around together.
She was just the waitress, and he was hanging out with all the pretty nurses and the girls who worked the phone exchange.
I had Nancy, and I wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be some big explosion of love, some shouting in my heart with all the bells and whistles. Marriages look like that, you know?”