Vintage: A Ghost Story (9 page)

Back at my aunt’s house, I collapsed onto the sofa. A newspaper, open to the crossword, lay on the coffee table.. Aunt Jan had filled in only a third of the puzzle. Maybe she lost interest? Who really cares what German port city is on the Rhine or a five-letter word for tearjerker? I took up the pen and be gan filling the boxes with words that mattered. Josh became 33 down. Trace 12 across. I saw that 2 down started with M; without thought I filled in Mike and blackened in the final empty box so the name would fit. Then came ghost and passion and why not 1957 as well.

My aunt startled me. I looked up to see her reading over my shoulder.
She groaned playfully. “Have you been reading my driver’s license?”
“No. Why?” I quickly pushed away the paper. “You were born in ’57?”
She nodded and sat down in the recliner.
“So you’ve lived your whole life here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Ever hear anything strange happen? Say out on Rt. 47?”
“Has Trace been telling you about the ghost?”
I had been hoping she would say something like that. “Ghost?” I tried to act ignorant.
“Yeah, well I guess every kid in town hears it at one time or another. It’s our own little spook story. In the 50s, some high school student got run down on 47. A couple people say they’ve seen him walking the road. Like that legend of the ‘phantom hitchhiker,’ only our town ghost never stops or speaks to anyone. Just keeps walking until he disappears.”
“Have you ever seen him?” My voice had dropped low, like a conspiratorial whisper.
My aunt laughed and blushed. “Well, when I was your age, some friends and I went out to 47 real late at night, hoping to see the ghost. It was a warm summer night. We hid in the bushes along the roadside. Your grandmother gave me no end of grief when she found twigs and dirt all over my clothes the next morning.”
“And?”
My aunt shook her head. “We never saw anything other than a couple of deer. All that happened was we smoked a few cigarettes and finished off a bottle of Scotch Sheila Michaels swiped from her father’s stash.”
“Heh. Never thought of you as a wild one.”
Aunt Jan gave me a little smile. “I wasn’t always the upstanding citizen you know now.”
“So what was the craziest thing you ever did?”
“Sounds like the truth or dare games I played as a kid. I guess the worst thing I ever did was steal a car.” Her eyes looked out toward the bay window.
“Grand theft?”
From her unfocused gaze, I imagined she was seeing the past. “Not really. I was twenty and met this boy one summer at the shore while visiting friends. He lived in the next county and I wanted to see him after we both went home. So I borrowed your grandmother’s car.”
“Let me guess. This was not your normal borrowing?”
She chuckled. “Your aunt Becky was the responsible one. Your mother was the favorite. Me… your grandmother called the police when she woke and found both the car and that troublesome middle child of hers gone. I didn’t even reach the county line when the police pulled me over.”
“Damn.” What a bitch I had for a grandmother. I didn’t remember her at all; she had died when I turned four. Still, I could see where my mother’s moods came from.
“Your turn. What’s the worst thing you ever did?”
That was easy. But I couldn’t tell her.

There was this boy who lived a block away from my folks’ house. We were in the same grade and not really friends, but I hung out with him now and then. Mostly because he wasn’t bad looking and had a ton of underground music burnt on CDs.

We cut school one afternoon late last spring and were hanging out in his bedroom when he pulled a few magazines out from under the cushion of a chair. I had never seen porn before. The boy tossed me one then began leafing through another. I opened the magazine. The naked women spread wide on the page looked as though they had been airbrushed, their skin too tan, too glossy.

The other boy started talking about girls. He did that a lot. This time though he was explicit, telling me what he wanted to do with the ones in his lap. I glanced up to see him rubbing the crotch of his jeans. I blushed and looked back to the magazine, but kept on sneaking peeks at him squeezing the outline of his dick. He asked me what I thought of the girls. I shrugged and stupidly told him, “Okay, but not really my thing.” He laughed at me, asking if I got off on kinky stuff. He mentioned pictures of women in high heels and shiny vinyl corsets leading men around on leashes he found online. He wondered if I wanted some girl at school to spank me and make me bark like a dog.

“No,” I said, “not that.” In my head, I told myself to shut the hell up.
But he went on, mentioning really demented things. Stomping mice, being swallowed by gigantic women, and even eating shit and I kept on shaking my head, totally amazed he knew about such things. Finally, he flat out asked me what I wanted.
I don’t know why I told him. Maybe years of desire, feeling the need to touch and taste another boy had driven me so much to the edge that I lost all control. Or maybe I was just stupid. Without even thinking, I said, “I want to give you a blowjob.”
His face fell, the skin turning gray. I knew I had made a mistake, had let my disguise fall. I stood up, the dirty magazine falling from my lap, and headed for the door.
“Faggot,” I heard snarled at my back and something hard and fast hit my head above my left ear. I saw the tennis ball bounce between my feet. The first tears started to fall as I looked over my shoulder at him. He held his alarm clock ready to throw. I heard it crash against the door I shut behind me a moment later.
Afterward, I hid in my room. Sick to my stomach with selfloathing and pity. It only took four hours for all the local kids to know, two days for the neighborhood to whisper behind my back, and a week for my parents to threaten to kick me out. They told me I was a tremendous disappointment as well as a sick child. I left the very next morning. The bus station opened before my folks even woke up.
All of this went through my head in a matter of seconds. “Nothing really. Staying out all night. That’s the worst.” I hated lying to her. “I’m beat. I think I’ll go lie down.”
But I didn’t sleep. Rather, I lied in bed, dressed warmly, sniffling and waiting and hoping for
him
to come. I tried to relax, yet I kept glancing back at the clock. When I yawned and saw my breath hanging in the air, the room suddenly cold, I knew he was near.
I heard his voice before I saw him. He called my name softly. I shivered in anticipation. He appeared beside the bed, close enough that he startled me. He sat down next to me, the mattress unmoving beneath him, and began teasing me, rubbing my chest. At first I could not feel his touch, but as I grew colder he seemed to gain more substance until he finally tugged up my sweater to uncover me.
I looked into that beautiful face. If being a medium, being a freak, meant that I could have someone like him, I was more than willing to risk scares from all the other spirits.
“You’re mine,” he whispered, his face moving close to my bare skin. My hands clutched the sheets tightly as I fought to keep still while he tickled me with his mouth below the ribs. I gasped, the touch of his lips almost painful, but delightfully so.
He gazed up at me then and smirked, looking smug and sure of himself. He moved up to my face. I remained rigid beneath him.
“You feel so warm.”
When he kissed me, I forgot all about last night’s embrace. This set new standards, chilling my mouth and tongue, making it difficult to breathe, an effort to talk. But I needed to tell him how he made me feel. “Josh… I could… I’ve never wanted anyone so much… so fast”
He chuckled. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he murmured.
Just that simple word was enough to splash cold water on the beguiling moment. Instead of another kiss, I wanted to know who else he had loved. “Tell me.”
Josh shook his head and drifted toward my ear, making me tremble as he nuzzled it.
“Tell me,” I said again, though much weaker.
“Roddy razzing my berries under the bleachers.”
“Was he… in the yearbook…” He felt heavier atop me than moments ago. Every time I inhaled, it hurt. “That picture… was of you both?”
“Yes. Even after he took up with that sophomore from the sticks, Roddy wanted me.”
I think he began licking my neck but everything felt so cold I could not be sure. Something chilled began to slip down below my waistband.
A knock on the door stopped me in midmoan.
“Oh fuck,” I muttered.
Another knock and my aunt’s voice calling my name. I heard the knob rattle, maybe turning.
“No!” I cried out. My hand rose up, sinking into Josh an inch or two, I pushed him off me. With that sudden, frantic touch an eruption of new memories flooded my head.

I’m lying on the sofa in the family living room, the sound turned down on a black and white set so huge it dominates the rest of the furniture. Wagon Train is on the air and Roddy hates the show, doesn’t understand why it is so popular, so it’s easy to distract him. He lies on the floor next to me, his head leaning back so that soft, dark hair brushes my arm. Both our pants are undone and slipped down while our hands jack each other off. I can hear his heavy breathing and know he’s close. I stop and reach down to clamp my hand over his lightly haired chest, squeezing where his heart is. Roddy arches back and even though he doesn’t utter a word, I could see he mouths my name. Josh. He shudders and comes and the tips of my fingers slide through the sweat and spunk on his chest.

It lasted only a moment and then I was alone in bed. The door had opened an inch before my aunt pulled it shut.
I panted, rubbing my face, feeling lost. As I rose up, a bit unsteady, I could not focus on a lie for my aunt. I kept wondering if Josh, even as he made out with me, was thinking back to Roddy.

I popped a couple of cold medication tablets as I read the note my aunt had left behind on the kitchen table. She had to attend a seminar up in Parsippany and doubted she’d be coming home that night. After what had happened yesterday, I was a bit thankful.

I called Malvern at home and he was happy to hear that I felt a bit better and would open the shop for him. He started in on a long list of packages that came in, went out, and the gripes against the local college’s theater department that always wanted clothes for next to nothing.

A few blocks from the store, a boy on his bike caught my eye. His breath steaming in the cold morning and face flushed from riding fast, Second Mike braked, inches from me

“Hey,” I said, surprised but glad to see him. What must it be like growing up named after a dead brother? Did he feel like a replacement? Maybe without Trace’s influence, he would have ended up a freak.

As we walked, I asked him if he had sculpted anything new. That opened the floodgates. He started telling me the trick to applying the proper underglaze. Then he mentioned that in art class he had seen slides of Dutch pottery. Barely taking a breath or letting me say a word, he went off on these plates decorated with scenes from Napoleon’s life. I listened, staggered more at how he spoke, an excited chatter that made his entire face shine, than at what he said. Only when he started going on about how Napoleon devised his battle plans in a sandbox, did I stop him.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“You’re not,” he said matter-of-factly.
He had me there. Back when I moved in with my aunt, I

kept out of sight for a while, trying as little as possible to throw her life off track. That meant me wandering around town at all hours. Avoiding high school had been a bonus that became routine. Aunt Jan soon made it clear though it was “school or job.” That next day I passed by the vintage clothing shop, took one look at the dead but elegant fashions, then stepped inside and found myself working for Malvern.

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “One day won’t matter.”
We reached the shop and I took out my keys. I half-expected him to say good-bye and head off but instead he stood there on the stoop, telling me all about the stink from the fruitfly experiment they were doing in the boring science class he was missing.
“Do you want to come inside for a while?”
He stopped in mid-sentence, swallowed hard, and hesitated a moment before nodding, as if following after me was a momentous decision.
I turned the clunky, old-style switch on the wall and the ceiling lights flickered into life. The temperature in the shop felt colder than outside and Second Mike began rubbing his arms. I moved to the thermostat, juggling the tiny lever to coax the furnace into warmth.
“Ugh, might take hours to heat up this place. I think Malvern has a space heater somewhere.”
He explored while I searched for and found the small unit tucked away in the back of the utility closet. Its slightly frayed cloth-covered cord looked dangerous but I didn’t want us to freeze, so I dared plugging it into an outlet. A few moments later, the heater’s grill turned a welcome orange.
“Cool,” I heard Second Mike say. I looked over at him admiring the mannequin in the window display. It wasn’t wearing the charcoal gabardine suit and felt hat that I remembered from the other day. I almost cried out when I saw the khaki uniform, nearly identical to the one worn by the spectral soldier from the graveyard.
Second Mike never noticed my reaction. “A Vaughn fought in the war. Brady Vaughn.” He dropped the sleeve of the cotton tunic. “He was a great-granduncle. I once found all my relatives dating back generations. Trace thinks I should be a genealogist or something. Not sure though.” He went over to where I stood by the heater. “I mean, it doesn’t sound really artistic.”
I still stared at the mannequin. Malvern must have changed the display yesterday, maybe for Halloween. I wondered if he would be upset if I covered the dummy up with the moth-eaten fox fur coat kept in the back. The sight of it standing there, its back to me, was too creepy. Looking away left me nervous. I glanced at the figure out of the corner of my eye and halfexpected it to start moving.
“So what happened to Brady Vaughn?” I asked, finally realizing that Second Mike stood beside me, waiting.
“Died.” Second Mike spread his hands out to the heater.
“Bullet? Cannon?”
“Arsenic poisoning treating venereal disease.”
I had to laugh out loud. Second Mike blushed. His obvious embarrassment only made it worse, and I doubled over, eyes teary, almost howling.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say between remaining chuckles. “Just… that’s the last thing I expected you to say.”
That seemed to mollify him and he smiled back. “So what about you? Vesely’s an odd last name.”
“Guess so. I think it’s Czech.” I really didn’t want to go into my family story. If I could forget about all of them but my aunt, I’d be much happier.
When I grabbed the broom, he offered to help sweep. Our eyes met and locked for more than a moment. I felt suddenly unsure of things, especially why I could feel my heart beating faster as I handed the broom over. He started cleaning the corners of the room and I pretended to busy myself organizing receipts, all the while stealing glances at him.
I understood the urge to play hooky, but why would he want to spend time here? The one possible answer that I could think of, the one that made sense, also made me a touch nervous.
Second Mike had removed his jacket. The T-shirt underneath would have been turned down by a thrift store. I considered handing over one of the fine shirts hanging nearby to see how nice he’d look wearing it.
“Guess the furnace finally woke up.” He wiped some sweat from his forehead.
“Hmm? Oh yeah.” I unplugged the heater. Blue sparks snapped at my fingers and I fell back onto the floor, narrowly missing electrocution. Second Mike came over and offered me a hand up. I noticed his grip stayed on me longer than necessary. When I smiled my thanks, he bit his lower lip and nodded.
“I have to go through some of the old merchandise.” I motioned upstairs with a nod of my head. “If you want to help….”
“Sure,” he answered quickly.
The second floor of the shop held more merchandise and a small, curtained section for changing. The third floor, really the attic, Malvern used as storage. Boxes crowded the lofty room.
“I know it looks bad.”
“I’ve never seen so much dust in my life.” Second Mike’s soft voice trailed behind him as he went over to the nearest stack.
“You should look in my bedroom.” Right after saying that, I realized how risqué it sounded and felt my cheeks grow warm.
I kept wiping the dust from the box tops on the knees of my jeans to keep from soiling the clothes inside. By the time I had opened and rummaged around three cartons, I looked as if I had been kneeling in oil. Sweat dripped down my face and burnt my eyes.
Second Mike came over to me, and I could not resist grinning. A coating of dust darkened his upper body. He looked down and tried to wipe away some of the grime, succeeding only in spreading it further over his clothes and arms. A faint whiff of peppermint drifted from him. He must have been chewing candy mints. When had he done that?
He leaned closer and kissed me on the lips. Sudden. Just a little kiss, no more than a cautious peck. Then the buzzer sounded, startling both of us. Of all the times for a customer to show! He gave me a sorry, almost pleading look, then dashed down the steps. I sat there a moment, stunned, trying to figure out what was happening between us.