The Haunting of James Hastings by Christopher Ransom

Belgian waffles with fresh strawberries (her favorite breakfast) and eat them today, in recognition. I carried the most expensive Braun they had up to register twelve.
     
    A beautiful black girl with a cleft lip or some unfortunate facial irregularity rang me up. Her nametag said Naomi. She might have been nineteen or thirty-two.
     
    I could ask her out, I thought. She probably doesn’t have a boyfriend. And because I was in my misery a shallow and deluded idiot, I did not stop there. If she did have a fella, he was similarly maimed, a club foot, was cruel to her, because he could be, because they had no one else. They lived in a one-room apartment with a hot plate. She had gout. Standing here all day was agony for her. I had a house, money in the bank. I could rescue the shawty in a weekend, move her in and buy her a whole new wardrobe, a new convertible whip, get her on a health plan to cover the surgeries so that, having nothing left to complain about, she could go about the business of saving me. Oh, Naomi, don’t you see? We’re perfect for each other. Damn, girl, I think I luh you.
     
    And perhaps most indicative of my deteriorating state of mind that day, I found myself regretting letting my Ghostness go to hell. If I still had the hair, the clothes, the tatts, she probably woulda . . .
     
    I didn’t remember leaving the store, and it took me almost fifteen minutes to find the Audi in the parking lot. On the way home I stopped at Dennis’s Tap Room, which is probably the worst bar in West Adams. I sat in a red leatherette booth and consumed eleven whiskey sours, occasionally caressing the waffle iron at my side. The bartender came around and asked me if I wanted a hot dog or ‘something to anchor the juice’. I said no but could he bring me a couple more sours, and make them doubles? He obliged but said that was it, after those I had to leave. I did as I was told and stepped outside and discovered the day was almost gone.
     
    When I got back to the house, I drove in from the rear, idling in the alley. I stared at the spot by the telephone pole for a while, waiting for it to make me scream or cry or feel something, anything other than dead. It didn’t.
     
    I pulled into the garage, hooked the bag with the waffle iron over my elbow, and leaned my way across the lawn. I spent almost half an hour setting up the waffle iron and reading the instructions. I debated going back out for strawberries, but realized I was too drunk to say the word ‘strawberry’ let alone navigate the produce section at Ralph’s.
     
    I did not bother checking the phone for messages. If I had, I would have heard Lucy asking if we were still on for dinner at C&O’s.
     
    I grabbed a cold beer from my arsenal, opened it and fell onto the couch, passing out instantly, the Dos Equis gurgling across the floor. A little more than five hours later I stirred as something in the air around me changed. The sensation was always the same. It was the feeling that someone was standing at the end of the couch, tugging a cool fleece blanket over my bare toes.
     
    I rose to find myself in darkness, all the lights out. I was no longer drunk, merely intoxicated back to a semblance of sobriety by cold, undiluted fear.
     

6
     
    If every house comes with one special feature - a turret made for reading in a shaft of sunlight, a gentleman caller’s bench with the suitor’s initials carved into the seat - the clincher that convinces her she cannot live anywhere else, then Stacey’s special feature was the ballroom. It wasn’t as grand as a hotel ballroom, of course, but we made it splendid. It was a thing to stumble upon, its main entrance being two floor-to-ceiling doors at the end of the second-story hallway. It was architecturally and metaphorically the heart of the house. I guess that made Stacey the soul.
     
    During our first tour, Stacey said it would be a great space to throw a party, and we proceeded to throw our share. Euro Cinema