Heart-shaped box by Joe Hill Page A

“Picture of health. Get rid of it.”
    He gently set the snuff film back on the shelf. “Get rid of what?”
    “The dead man’s suit. It smells bad. Didn’t you notice the way it smelled when you took it out of the closet?”
    “It isn’t in the closet?”
    “No, it isn’t in the closet. It was lying on the bed when I woke up. It was spread out right next to me. Did you forget to put it back? Or forget you took it out in the first place? I swear to God, it’s a surprise sometimes you remember to put your dick back in your pants after you take a piss. I hope all the pot you smoked in the seventies was worth it. What the hell were you doing with it anyway?”
    If the suit was out of the closet, then it had walked out on its own.There was no percentage in telling Georgia that, though, so he said nothing, pretended an interest in cleaning up.
    Jude went around the desk, bent, and turned over the framed record that had dropped to the floor. The record itself was as busted as the plate of glass on top of it. He popped the frame apart and tipped it on its side. Broken glass slid with a musical clash into the wastebasket by his desk. He plucked out the pieces of his smashed platinum album— Happy Little Lynch Mob —and stuck them in the trash, six gleaming scimitar blades of grooved steel. What to do now? He supposed a thinking man would go and have another look at the suit. He rose and turned to her.
    “Come on. You should lie down. You look like hell. I’ll put the suit away, and then I’ll tuck you in.”
    He put his hand on her upper arm, but she pulled free. “No. The bed smells like it, too. It’s all over the sheets.”
    “So we’ll get new sheets,” he said, taking her arm again.
    Jude turned her and guided her into the hallway. The dead man was sitting two-thirds of the way down the corridor, in the Shaker chair on the left, his head lowered in thought. A drape of morning sunshine fell across where his legs should have been. They disappeared where they passed into the light. It gave him the look of a war veteran, his trousers ending in stumps, midway down his thighs. Below this splash of sunshine were his polished black loafers, with his black-stockinged feet stuck in them. Between his thighs and his shoes, the only legs that were visible were the legs of the chair, the wood a lustrous blond in the light.
    No sooner had Jude noticed him than he looked away, did not want to see him, did not want to think about him being there. He glanced at Georgia, to see if she had spotted the ghost. She was staring at her feet as she shuffled along with Jude’s hand on her arm, her bangs in her eyes. He wanted to tell her to look, wanted to know if she could see him as well, but he was too in dread of the dead man to speak, afraid the ghost would hear him and glance up.
    It was crazy to think somehow the dead man wasn’t going to noticethem walking past, but for no reason he could explain, Jude felt that if they were both very quiet, they could slip by unseen. The dead man’s eyes were closed, his chin almost touching his chest, an old man who had nodded off in the late-morning sun. More than anything Jude wanted him to stay just as he was. Not to stir. Not to wake. Not to open his eyes; please, not to open his eyes.
    They drew closer, but still Georgia didn’t glance his way. Instead she laid a sleepy head on Jude’s shoulder and closed her eyes. “So you want to tell me why you had to trash the studio? And were you shouting in there? I thought I heard you shouting, too.”
    He didn’t want to look again but couldn’t help himself. The ghost remained as he was, head tipped to the side, smiling just slightly, as if musing on a pleasant thought or a dream. The dead man didn’t seem to hear her. Jude had an idea then, unformed, difficult to articulate. With his closed eyes and his head tilted just so, the ghost seemed not so much to be asleep as to be listening for something. Listening for him , Jude thought.