Nobody Gets The Girl (3 page)

Martha was telling Henry she planned to call
the police then go over to Edna's house. This bugged Richard. Edna
Green was his neighbor. She was a sweet little old lady who
deserved better neighbors than slobs like Martha and Henry.

If Martha were going to call the cops, he'd
give her something to call about. He went to the dishes in the
sink. Martha was looking away, craning her neck to see if anyone
was in the living room.

Richard picked up a plate, and hurled it
against the wall by her head. It shattered with a satisfying
crash.

He flinched as Martha shrieked at an octave
he didn't know the human voice could reach before she fled the
house through the kitchen door.

"Martha!" Henry shouted from the phone.

Richard picked up the phone.

"Hi," he said.

"Martha! What's happening?" said Henry.

"Can you hear me?" asked Richard.

"Martha! Say something!"

"Sorry," said Richard, hanging up the phone.
"Nobody's home."

CHAPTER TWO

HEY! I'M ON TV!

IN RETROSPECT, RICHARD
felt kind of
bad about how close the plate had come to Martha's head. In life he
hadn't been short-tempered. He'd always been able to take
consolation in the fact that today's frustrations could be turned
into next week's stand-up comedy.

But his current situation didn't strike him
as particularly funny.

He took a shower to wash away the grime of
the kitchen floor, although the grime of the shower tiles prevented
him from feeling clean. It made him wonder again just how long he'd
been dead. Veronica had been such a neat freak. The shower tiles
used to sparkle. How long would it take to build up so many layers
of soap scum and mildew?

He got out of the shower and toweled himself
dry. He thought he heard something like footsteps in the hall. Had
Martha come back? They sounded too heavy for Martha.

A voice called out, "Anybody here?"

"Yes!" said Richard, bounding out of the
bathroom with the towel wrapped around him.

Two police officers stood in the door of the
bedroom. The first one, a middle-aged black man, crept into the
room cautiously, seemingly oblivious to Richard. He was followed by
a young Hispanic woman who seemed much more relaxed.

"Search the closet," the man said, pulling
out his flashlight and lowering himself to his knees. He clicked
the light on and looked under the bed.

The woman shrugged and went to the open
closet door. She half-heartedly pushed the clothes around with her
flashlight.

"Look at the size of these pants," she said.
"Whoever lives here must be a real lard-bucket."

"I don't suppose you can see me," Richard
said, waving his hand in front of the woman's face. She turned from
the closet and walked through him.

"Just testing," he said.

"Why are we wasting our time with this?" the
woman asked.

"It's our job," said the man, sounding
annoyed.

From outside, there was the sound of
squealing tires, followed quickly by a slamming car door.

"Martha," Henry screamed, bursting through
the front door.

The older cop stepped into the hallway, his
gun drawn. "Freeze!" he shouted.

"Don't shoot!" Henry cried out from the
hallway. "I live here! What's happened to my wife?"

"She's OK," said the woman, cautiously
slipping past her partner. "Just stay calm. I believe that you live
here, but we're going to need to see some ID."

Richard followed to watch events unfold,
toweling his hair dry. No one seemed to see a towel floating in
mid air. He wished he understood the rules of this ghost
business a little better. This bit about being able to touch stuff
unless someone was looking at it...

Was that it? Was it as simple as that?

He stepped back into the bedroom and turned
on the light. Then, just for the hell of it, he picked up the lamp
on the nightstand and threw it against the wall.

The cops were in the room in seconds, guns
drawn. "Come on out!" the male cop shouted.

"With your hands up!" the woman added. "We
know you're in here! Give up!"

"I'm trying, OK?" said Richard.

They swiveled around, placing their backs
together, studying the entire room.

Richard went to the lamp. He couldn't budge
it. He could feel it, but it seemed made of lead. With a grunt, he
tried harder. Once more either he or the lamp seemed no longer
solid. His hand passed right through.

"Curious," he said.

Then, just for the heck of it, he threw his
towel into the air.

It fell to the bed. The woman cop jumped, and
looked in his direction.

"You see that?" she said.

"What?" the guy asked.

"That towel on the bed. It wasn't there a
second ago." She reached out and picked it up.

"It's damp," she said.

"You sure?" the guy asked.

"Yes, it's damp," she said.

"No. I mean, maybe it was there. I think I
saw it there earlier."

"I don't know," she said. "It . . . I don't
know what I saw. It was like it moved."

Suddenly, the male cop relaxed. "OK. OK.
Whoever you are, I know you can hear me. So far, you haven't hurt
anybody. I don't think you want to hurt anybody. I think this is
all a joke to you. Come out right now, before I change my mind
about how serious this is."

"It's breaking and entering," said Henry,
from the hall.

"Sir, it's probably safer if you go next door
with your wife," said the woman.

Richard stepped through all three of them on
his way into the hallway. Martha and Henry could go next door.
Could he?

He opened the back door and stepped into the
sunlight, leaving the door open.

He stretched his arms over his head,
luxuriating in the warmth on his naked skin. He walked a little
further into the backyard. The lawn had really gone to hell. But it
really didn't matter. Why had he wasted even one Saturday morning
mowing it? What did an unmown lawn matter in the grand scheme of
things? Then he noticed that his feet itched, and he worried that
he might have stepped on something bad in the tall grass. So, OK,
maybe his life hadn't been a complete waste.

Before he had time to further ruminate on the
cosmic significance of his life, the cops followed him out the
door.

"Told you I heard the door open," the woman
said, with a smug tone that indicated she’d won some small
argument.

"Gloat later," the guy said, sprinting around
the edge of the house. The woman raced in the opposite direction.
Henry came out onto the back deck, and Martha called out to him
from the neighbor's yard.

Richard decided to go back inside. He wasn't
used to being barefoot. Maybe Henry had some sandals that would
fit.

A few minutes later, he joined the crowd that
had gathered in the front yard. He was dressed in Martha's pink
silk robe with Henry's neon green flip-flops. No one paid him any
attention.

The lady cop was on the radio, reporting back
to the dispatcher. "Whoever it was got away. Ray thinks it might
have been a runaway kid hiding out. We're pretty sure he slipped
out the back door and is long gone."

"So, you're not going to do anything?" Henry
asked the male cop.

"We did do something," the cop answered. "We
searched the house. Nobody's in there. All we can do now is keep an
eye on the place."

Martha looked wild-eyed, half-afraid,
half-angry. "I can't go back in there," she said. "What if he's
still inside? Maybe he just opened the door, then went back into
hiding."

"Ma'am," said the male cop, "if anyone's
hiding in that house, they're either the size of a rat or
invisible. We searched everywhere."

"Well, he must be invisible then," Martha
said. "Because, I swear, there's someone in that house!"

"Sorry lady," said the cop with a shrug.
"Invisible people aren't really a police matter. Maybe you should
call a priest."

RICHARD WOKE UP
feeling wonderful.
He'd had the most awful dream. Then he looked around the room and
realized he was still in Henry and Martha's bed. He owed his good
night's sleep only to exhaustion and the fact that Martha had
insisted on sleeping in a hotel.

"So, you're not going to wake up from this,"
he said. "This is real, Richard, deal with it."

First, he wanted to deal with some coffee. He
wandered into the kitchen and found a coffeemaker. Unfortunately,
he didn't find any coffee.

So he grabbed a beer.

He went into the living room and stretched
out on the couch, then clicked on the TV with the remote.

Somehow, he had imagined the afterlife would
provide a sharper contrast with life. Was he really going to spend
the rest of eternity wandering around the house in a bathrobe,
drinking beer, and watching TV? Was death like a Saturday morning
that would never end? If so, was that heaven, or hell?

"I'm getting real tired of this," he said,
casting his eyes toward the ceiling. "I mean, shouldn't I be here
for a reason? To avenge some injustice or something?"

It occurred to him that this would probably
make for a pretty good Jerry Springer show. "My boyfriend don't do
nothing with his afterlife but keep his ass glued to the couch," he
said in his best redneck woman voice.

But instead of finding Jerry Springer as he
flipped through the channels, he found a local news show with a
picture of his house on the screen.

"Police say the strange occurrences could
have been caused by a runaway child. But the owners of the house
have another theory."

Martha's wrinkled visage suddenly flashed on
screen. "Poltergeist," she said. "I’ve learned all about haunted
houses on the Travel Channel. Our home has been possessed by an
unquiet spirit."

The camera cut to home video of the crowd
gathered in front of the house the day before. And there, plain as
day, was Richard in his pink robe.

"Hey!" he said, sitting up. "I'm on TV!"

The report ended with the news that Martha
and Henry planned to contact a priest.

"OK," Richard said. "OK, OK, OK. I was on TV.
The camera saw me, even if no one else did. OK. OK. So what does
that mean? I mean... I mean... what does this mean? What on
earth?"

He got up and paced around the room, running
his fingers through his hair.

"I can touch things, I can't touch things. I
can't be seen, but I can be filmed. I can't be heard on the phone,
but..." He noticed something out the living room window. There was
a paper on Mrs. Green's sidewalk. At least now he could know once
and for all how long he'd been dead.

Standing on the sidewalk, he unfurled the
front page of the paper. July 9. He'd played the comedy club open
mike on July 7.

He wasn't dead.

At least, being dead didn't add up. There
wasn't enough time for him to be buried, for Veronica to sell the
house. There wasn't enough time for the grime on the kitchen floor.
So he wasn't dead, and he wasn't dreaming.

Insanity began to climb pretty high up the
list.

Only, he wasn't insane, either. He was
certain of it. As crazy as his situation was, it was the situation
that was screwed up, not him.

He went back into the house. Maybe Martha had
a video camera or at least a tape recorder. Maybe there was some
way he could send a message. Especially if a priest really was
coming, maybe a priest would have some clue as to Richard's
condition.

He tore apart the front hall closet.

He scattered the contents of the kitchen
hither and yon. He pulled out all the bedroom drawers and emptied
their contents on the floor.

Nothing. Not even a camera.

Then he noticed the tube of lipstick on the
dresser. He looked at the mirror.

He uncapped the tube, and wrote as calmly and
legibly as he could on the mirror. "My name is Richard Rogers. I'm
trapped in this house, like a ghost, but I'm not dead. Help
me."

RICHARD LIKED THE
priest.

Father Leibowitz was a young man, but one
accustomed to the authority and respect due his position. He took
command of the situation from the moment he stepped in the door.
Henry and Martha didn't have time to introduce themselves before
Father Leibowitz gave his first order.

"The mirror," he said. "Show me."

"I apologize that the place is such a mess,"
Martha said, leading him down the hall. "What with all—"

"Unimportant," Leibowitz said with a
dismissive wave. He drew up in front of the mirror, and read its
message. He pulled out a cell phone and punched a button.

"April," he said. "I've got some names for
you to do a search on. Our ghost says his name is Richard Rogers,
and his wife's name is Veronica Rogers. If you find her, get her on
the phone for me. Also, he says his parents are named Bill and
Florence Rogers, and they live in Salem, Virginia. He has even been
obliging enough to give us a phone number, but do a search to see
what you come up with. I don't want to call this number until we
get a little more information."

Richard received this news with a bit of
frustration. He had already dialed the number, and had the
heartbreaking experience of hearing his mother's voice but being
unable to speak to her. Still, Father Leibowitz seemed confident
and professional. Richard took a seat on the bed and decided to be
patient.

"Richard?" asked Father Leibowitz. "Can you
hear me?"

"Sure," said Richard.

"Richard, if you can hear me, give me some
sign."

Richard got up and went to the mirror. He
reached for the lipstick. It slipped through his ghostly
fingers.

"Figures," he said. But, he wasn't beaten
yet. He walked past the priest and went to the kitchen, picked up
two pots and banged them together, twice.