town, runs into a man who is handsome, tall, with old wealth; she shades her eyes with a hand to see him. She pushes his shoulder in jest at something said, something suggested. And when the woman envelops that other flesh, you lose your sun, you lose your life, because she can say any damn thing about you to clear you away from her like debris, like detritus; it is amazing how swiftly a woman can do this. You break off from your orbit and spin into space, wildly. It drives you to your knees, woman-loss, end of woman agenda. Ghost-Man knows all about it.
âOkay, Iâm back, sweetie,â Alison Tiner says. She is leaning down now, and Ghost-Man can see her form lurching a moment across the curtains. âFlight 202C coming in from Atlanta. Two-seventeen ⦠No, honey, itâs fine. Itâs not like I have to get anywhere in the morning. Iâll even whip us up something to eat when we get in tonight.â
Ghost-Man breathes the scent of the sunflowers in the darkness. They are nodding toward the window, whispering. She and she and she and she . Down the street a dog, a shepherd, goes into a fit of deep barkingâthe dog is to the right there, in the brownstone at 26. Dogs are like women, this extraordinary instinct that something is very wrong.
âGood, honey. I canât wait to see you, too.â Alison Tinerâs shadow hangs up the phone. The dog barks again suddenly, frantically. You are right, dog, Ghost-Man thinks, but Iâm afraid youâre giving me away. There is a female voice of admonishment, and the barking stops, and another angry male voice rises, and then all is quiet: The dog has been put out on a line. And then Ghost-Man can hear all of the things the dog does, as if he has the ears of that canine: hears cutlery in that house snapping and clashing, a reaction to the emotion of the shepherd, to the emotion within that place; something is not right with that young couple (their name is Meachamâthey moved in just one month ago, the wife precisely directing the husband and his friends as they bumped with all the furniture into the building. Valerie Meacham has many versions of sleeping pills and relaxants in her medicine cabinet, Halcion, Valium, Xanax). Ghost-Man hears metal runners as the dog goes, back and forth, on his line, this harsh sound of frustration. Later, the shepherd will be banished to his clean, shining-metal doghouse, but his ears, his senses, will be quick to alert.
Above, there is the language like the Russian Ghost-Man heard sometimes in the Mideast, but with more of a hushing quality to it; he ducks a little into the shadows and looks up, but the window of the old European couple is at too steep an angle for him to be noticed. The voice of an American woman says, âIâll get that, Anna,â over running water. This is Tika LaFond, who dines there often: Ghost-Man closes his eyes in this sunflower darkness, breathes deeply, imagines the scent of Tikaâs white cotton coverlet, the fragrance of skin lotion there, just after she has showered and gone out. He was there this evening when she was showering, pressed to the wall just beneath the bathroom window, listening to that water, how her body altered the velocity of the spray. He was there earlier this morning. Sunflowers before him grow; he hears a steady crackle of stems and capitula, thousands of eyes stare from endless circles of orange black. Alison Tiner is bending, writing something.
He can sense the rush of fire: this from the street performers blocks away in Harvard Square who, with a gaggle of people around them, take torches and dip them into raised mouths, so that the flame is burning within their throats (Ghost-Man imagines fire smoldering within human red, tunnels of wet flesh), then removed, swaths of orange blue heat against the night. Alison Tiner is gone from the window now; later, he shall find out what sort of evening she has in mind for her gentleman. But first
âOkay, Iâm back, sweetie,â Alison Tiner says. She is leaning down now, and Ghost-Man can see her form lurching a moment across the curtains. âFlight 202C coming in from Atlanta. Two-seventeen ⦠No, honey, itâs fine. Itâs not like I have to get anywhere in the morning. Iâll even whip us up something to eat when we get in tonight.â
Ghost-Man breathes the scent of the sunflowers in the darkness. They are nodding toward the window, whispering. She and she and she and she . Down the street a dog, a shepherd, goes into a fit of deep barkingâthe dog is to the right there, in the brownstone at 26. Dogs are like women, this extraordinary instinct that something is very wrong.
âGood, honey. I canât wait to see you, too.â Alison Tinerâs shadow hangs up the phone. The dog barks again suddenly, frantically. You are right, dog, Ghost-Man thinks, but Iâm afraid youâre giving me away. There is a female voice of admonishment, and the barking stops, and another angry male voice rises, and then all is quiet: The dog has been put out on a line. And then Ghost-Man can hear all of the things the dog does, as if he has the ears of that canine: hears cutlery in that house snapping and clashing, a reaction to the emotion of the shepherd, to the emotion within that place; something is not right with that young couple (their name is Meachamâthey moved in just one month ago, the wife precisely directing the husband and his friends as they bumped with all the furniture into the building. Valerie Meacham has many versions of sleeping pills and relaxants in her medicine cabinet, Halcion, Valium, Xanax). Ghost-Man hears metal runners as the dog goes, back and forth, on his line, this harsh sound of frustration. Later, the shepherd will be banished to his clean, shining-metal doghouse, but his ears, his senses, will be quick to alert.
Above, there is the language like the Russian Ghost-Man heard sometimes in the Mideast, but with more of a hushing quality to it; he ducks a little into the shadows and looks up, but the window of the old European couple is at too steep an angle for him to be noticed. The voice of an American woman says, âIâll get that, Anna,â over running water. This is Tika LaFond, who dines there often: Ghost-Man closes his eyes in this sunflower darkness, breathes deeply, imagines the scent of Tikaâs white cotton coverlet, the fragrance of skin lotion there, just after she has showered and gone out. He was there this evening when she was showering, pressed to the wall just beneath the bathroom window, listening to that water, how her body altered the velocity of the spray. He was there earlier this morning. Sunflowers before him grow; he hears a steady crackle of stems and capitula, thousands of eyes stare from endless circles of orange black. Alison Tiner is bending, writing something.
He can sense the rush of fire: this from the street performers blocks away in Harvard Square who, with a gaggle of people around them, take torches and dip them into raised mouths, so that the flame is burning within their throats (Ghost-Man imagines fire smoldering within human red, tunnels of wet flesh), then removed, swaths of orange blue heat against the night. Alison Tiner is gone from the window now; later, he shall find out what sort of evening she has in mind for her gentleman. But first
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