More than a Ghost Ch. 02

4

The coffee pot bubbled upstairs, its thick morning smell slithering down the cellar steps to bring my thoughts back to earth. I had been elsewhere, it seemed.

I set eight-six-one back in his cage and changed the water, the food. Then I checked the other cages to make sure the other creatures were still visible, or alive. They were both. I stumbled over to the rack of coats and robes that hung under the basement window and behind the stairs. Then I tied the rope around my naked body and heavily mounted the steps.

It was no use to a logical mind to think, what had I done? I knew perfectly well what I'd done and I'd enjoyed it. A little too much in fact. My fingers kept making contact with the smooth pine of the bannister and feeling the soft down of Amber's stomach flexing under my grasp. Halfway up the stairs I stopped and drew my fingers to my face.

Her smell was almost gone, replaced by eight-six-one and the familiar aroma of wood and must. What if I had fathered another child tonight? What if I was unfaithful to Margaret?

What if that was just a malevolent spirit who haunted the neighborhood?

I smiled. My heart pounded under my chest from confusion and excitement and fear. And yet I was giddy; innocent; powerful and yet humbled by either the girl's bold concupiscence or my own singular triumph. Hell, why not make it a double. Amber certainly left a good deal of restraint at the window; I couldn't speak for the girl but there was certainly an aura of triumph about her all throughout her several climaxes... And I, what had I achieved? Everything.

I traipsed into the kitchen in my bare feet, my wife catching my eye over her pointed shoulder and simultaneously smiling into her phone and glowering at me. She was speaking enthusiastically - far too energetically for so early on a Saturday (was it Saturday?) but it was none of my business, or I chose to leave it as none of my business.

As I poured the coffee I suddenly realized that I felt shell less. Naked, obviously, beneath the robe, but that in itself was not uncommon. Rather, before no matter the woes and hormonal highs of Rebecca or the cold reluctance or alien sociability of my wife the words seldom penetrated because the latest failure, theorem, confounded hypothesis, existential convolution of algorithmic righteousness, boredom, numbers and dead mice were cloistered about my brain like cotton pulled over my ears and eyes.

"Ha!"

My wife spun on me.

I had laughed aloud. She gave me a dirty look and stomped out of the kitchen, all the while carrying her high, boisterous enthusiasm over the conversation. I smiled bashfully to myself. I had not meant to let that escape but the wave had washed over me all at once.

I was suddenly free from that. Because it worked. After so long.

Not that I held the illusion that I was free from scientific (or perhaps moral, at this point) inquiry. There were still years of tests ahead of me, ahead of the Institute, of all of us. But... Hell...

"Ha-ha!"

I didn't see Margaret for most of the day. We went to bed in silence that night (I having slept most of the day, waking briefly to drive Rebecca somewhere that was going out of business or going on sale, then coming home and devouring most of what remained in the refrigerator). In the morning of course she was already awake and straightening her hair.

Margaret, my wife, hated her curls. I had always loved them, the original trait that spurred my attraction to her, but she straightened them whenever she could; I disapproved but said nothing; she straightened them more. I sensed that in this, like in so many minute conflicts between us, there was always the brief opportunity for resolution. But we had been married a long time now, almost nineteen years (as long as I had lived without her) and we gradually let the unsaid stay unsaid, the gulfs of unpleasantness that could erupt at the mildest comment soon growing so wide that there was little to bridge the gap between what we had in common - which was little. Ultimately we, like her parents before us, stopped trying. It was easier and happened as naturally as one year following another. I knew this before now and simply not cared.

I continued to stare at her through the high french doors of the bathroom. I rolled over to my side and watched her in the bright light of the morning window; that heavenly light dwarfing the harsh artificiality of her vanity mirror. Her hair was shorter than when we first met, darker too because she dyed it. Her mother went gray at a young age and she was adamant to never find out what that meant for herself.

Margaret was older than I. She had been a Junior in college at the same time I was completing my accelerated sophomore year. Because I had graduated high school early she had been fascinated with me. Maybe, I thought, in bitter moments when I wondered how it had come to this, she gravitated to me because she was less intimidated by a younger man, thinking too that my intelligence and drive would render me low maintenance. She was right. But I wondered, as I was told by men who were not quite friends but nevertheless valuable companions in my final bachelor days, if she had planned it all. The sudden sexual bouts, the demure outer Catholic mask shed the moment we were far (far) away from students and teachers who knew her and safely ensconced in my dormitory where she unleashed herself on me. She needed very little in return and rewarded my occasional attentions with all that my studies could not relieve. It was perfect.

But I'd never asked about the precautions she was taking. I certainly wasn't.

I was a young and selfish man. But smart enough to know when I was in trouble. Was I stupid enough to be duped? I always wondered.

But I had to smile now. Because it didn't matter now. I stared at Margaret in the mirror, at her long lashes that her girlfriends endlessly coveted, telling me how lucky I was to have a wife with such bedroom brown eyes, telling me how impressively she had kept her figure. Margaret was a vegetarian, thin though never much for fitness, with teardrop breasts that sagged but in a full, heavy fashion. She had softened some, from her eyebrows to her ears and her nose, her pale lips. It did her complexion good, the way her chin no longer seemed so cruel or her long neck so strained.

I had been with another woman last night but I... I couldn't tell where my new happiness sprouted from. Was it finally realizing I had won? Was it conquering that young, brazen runner? Was it just staring at my wife in her mirror? Perhaps it was all these things and more, or less.

"Where were you last night?" she asked.

I cleared my throat. "I worked late in the lab. You probably heard me..."

She pulled the iron away from her hair and squinted at me. "You weren't in there."

"I ran. Intermittently."

"Oh," she said, and turned back to her mirror. I rolled awkwardly in the bed and her voice floated back to me. "Has the Institute called you?"

She wanted me out of the house. "Not yet," I said. "But I'm going to speak with some of the lab tomorrow."

"After the carpool."

"After the carpool," I agreed.

"I'm going grocery shopping later. Do you want anything?"

"No," I said. And that was our last conversation of the day.

I sat behind the wheel in our slanted driveway wondering how it would be to see Amber again. Rebecca had dashed next door to go get her, as she did every morning, and the two would walk back to the car - slower or faster depending on all the important events I was too square to hear.

They came back breathless, both of them wearing enormous grins and Amber especially looking healthy, happy and mischievous. "Well?" she asked my daughter after giving me a hurried hello. I put the car into reverse and rolled into the street while Rebecca pondered aloud.

"Ohhh, I don't know!"

"Come on!" Amber chided.

Rebecca only laughed in reply.

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

I swerved the car and nearly flattened Mr. Potacki's little Pomeranian. The girls shrieked and I quickly righted the car.

"What the hell, dad?!" Rebecca screeched.

"Dog in the road," I said.

"I don't see-" Amber started but I was already turning the corner.

It didn't take long for the girls to calm down enough to resume their previous conversation.

"No," said Rebecca, "that's so stupid."

"I think my house is haunted," Amber whispered. She was downright giddy.

I watched Rebecca smirk in the mirror. "Haunted, huh? You don't seem scared."

"No..." Amber taunted. "I think it's a lonely ghost."

"Oh yeah?" Rebecca said. The fire was suddenly in her eyes. I realized the two girls were communing in secret right behind me in some significant but abstruse way. "What's his name?"

Amber shook her head forcefully and Rebecca suddenly attacked her with a furious reaching of fingers and pokes. "Tell me! Tell me!"

"Ow!" Amber groaned. "Stop, stop..." The two were already huffing against each other in a giggling pile.

I regarded them coldly in the mirror. "You're both far too old to be behaving like that."

Rebecca rolled her eyes. "Lighten up, dad, this is a big deal."

"I don't understand."

Both girls resumed their conspiratorial smiles. "We know."

I left them to their huddled whispers, sure of nothing else but the fact that I was most definitely not the subject of their conspiracy. Rebecca knew enough that Amber had had some sort of experience in the last 48 hours. How deeply Amber herself believed in its supernatural validity was debatable, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. My heart was going to beat heavily all throughout that day, seeing Amber or being found out, what I was about to do after I dropped them off, everything in my mind ensured that my body would be rapt and waiting for the slightest physical incitement.

Rebecca planted a swift kiss on my cheek and hurried out of the car to join the gaggle of girls gathering in the school's parking lot. Amber pulled her long legs from under her and left her seat, closing the door promptly and pulling her dainty skirt around her calves. I was pulling the car out of neutral when she stepped back to the window.

"Mr. Beal...?"

I froze. I locked the car into park and lowered the passenger side window. She smiled shyly and leaned in.

"What is it, Amber?"

"I want to thank you."

I raised my eyebrows in an attempt to mask the building tension in my jaw. "What?"

She pulled a lock of hair away from her lip and studied me for half a second before swallowing. "Just...the other night, talking to me."

"Oh!"

"What?"

"Oh. No. No, not a problem, Amber. Cleared my head too, really."

"Really?"

It was my turn to smile. "Yes," I said.

"Okay," she said happily. "Thanks again, Mr. Beal. Have a nice day!"

I waved back at her as she strode away from the car and joined Rebecca in the lot. It took five minutes to clear out of the parking lot behind the endless red lights of other vans and SUVs and then another five to get on the highway toward downtown.

Thankfully I wouldn't need to go all the way into the city and could avoid rush hour traffic. Instead I turned off halfway down the pike and sped through the outskirts of Boulder towards the outer city park and the imposing acreage of one of the Institute's many commercial research facilities.

I stuck my permit on the dashboard and waved at the security as I coasted in, parked, and walked determinedly up the peaceful brick walk between the glass and steel cyclinders of the complex, my hand in my pocket all the while fingering the glass vial in my pocket.

I encountered more and larger crowds of people the closer I got to Building G, most of them enthusiastic looking gentlemen in suits, some old, some surprisingly young. All of them looked hungry for something. I stopped at the employee entrance to the research zone and allowed the security officers to take my badge and frisk me (shifting my leg so that the small vial inconspicuously rolled behind my wallet). I glanced over my shoulder at the men in suits; they watched me curiously in turn. I had seen this before and I knew what it meant: the Institute was ready for business again.

After another kindly wave I was inside the building, my identity card swinging around my neck and my soles making authoritative smacks on the abandoned linoleum. Since disbanding the greater body of its advanced researchers the building was only occasionally used. The Institute had no qualms with allowing its senior staff to use the place but it discouraged too many of us gathering at once. After placing a call late Saturday evening I knew Pris would be working in G all day. After the mass outside I suspected that Pris would be doing more than working.

Priscilla Coker M.D. (with another Ph.D. on the way in advanced theoretical cellular electronics) was not a cold woman by any stretch of the imagination. At 31 she was already a leader in the field of both biological mutation and the budding nanotechnology industry, vivacious and endearing and outwardly one of the key faces of the Institute. She was 5'8", platinum blonde (not naturally) and - as one of the key faces of the Institute - had to smile a lot and wear the sort of outfits that made lab work potentially hazardous. But the Institute needed that because most of us were not so striking to look at. Behind the veneer of Priscilla's bright white smile, however, was an exacting, even cruel ambition. She was not, despite her high praise in the industry, its leading figure in theoretical transhumanist research. She had a good team of energetic graduates behind her that did what they were told and were rewarded accordingly. And many times over, if tales told out of school are to be believed. But there was a high burnout rate and young men in her brilliant cabal tended to last only so long. Which is not to say that Priscilla didn't have talent. The girl could thread DNA like a fabled tailor if she ever got her hands on the right tools, and few understood the chemical reactions on the molecular level the way she did. It was never overtly clinical, her methods, but something emphatically instinctual. Public relations were as natural to her as being undressed. She was dangerous but valuable. And, after all, weren't we after the same thing?

I found her door open, her legs shining under the heat of a solitary lamp at her desk and her knees crossed over each other in a short, red skirt. She looked up when I knocked on the door, her pale green eyes going from curious to tight in the time it took her to recognize me.

"Good morning, Pris."

She smiled coldly. "Beal. I didn't think you'd actually show up."

I crossed her sterile and ordered office and sat down across from her on the other side of the desk. I appraised her shelves. "Your office is neater than anyone else I know. I suppose that's one way to keep clean - don't read the books."

She sneered. "I heard one of the janitors nearly killed himself trying to get into yours. Bit of a health hazard, isn't it? And besides," she uncrossed her legs and leaned back, "at least I have friends."

I leaned forward, my elbows on her desk. "You've got me there, Professor Coker. That's exactly why I'm here."

She gave a high, hollow laugh. "Moses comes down from the mountain, huh? You're lucky you're smart, Abner. Otherwise people might think you're irrelevant."

"Better that than illiterate, I always say."

She frowned. "Why ARE you here? I really didn't expect to see you. You're always working."

"I work until I get results."

"Very funny," she said. And stopped.

Her chair cracked as she slowly came upright. "What do you mean?"

"How are the nanites coming?" I asked casually.

"They're still... they don't seem to respond to photons the way we expected. The way I expected." Ask Priscilla the right question about her work and she became just enough of a tolerable person. I never managed that trick myself. "I keep telling Corman that nanites are the wrong way to go about combatting the spectrum. I should be shifted over to neural engagement and let you and the rest of the sci-fi scum work on this whole optical nonsense."

"Nonsense, is it?"

"It is..." She studied me coolly. "What's up, Abner? You're awfully pleasant for so early in the decade."

I shrugged.

She sighed and shook her head. "I don't have time for this now anyway. I have a presentation before the investors. Remember that atmospheric shield you opposed?"

"I don't oppose the idea but the method is entirely wrong. If you want to create a barrier that large you need ten times the output and a completely different agent for the plutonium. It will dissolve at that speed."

"That's not what Bostwick says."

"Bostwick is a quack who still thinks he can send amphibians back in time."

Priscilla waved her hands in the air, dispelling the possibility of my rambling on about meteorological endogenics. "Whatever," she said. "The Institute wanted me to sell it to the money."

I stood up. "What do you mean?"

She tightened her blouse around her shoulders and gathered her papers. She grinned like a jack knife. "It means they're apt to take me at my word, Professor, which is more than I can say for you."

"If the Institute gets that project up and running the whole Advanced Espionage unit will be shuffled back another decade. Even if they spent half the budget recruiting new blood there's no way they'd have the manpower and money to sustain the rest of our research."

"So wait till next decade." She strode out of her office. I pursued hot on her stiletto heels. "I don't know what you're so pissed about, Abner," she continued, "you'll probably be picked to lead it."

"Over sixty five individual devices and more than two dozen research units will be compromised by investment in some ridiculous vanity project that wouldn't pass muster at a grade school science fair!"

Pris tossed her hair over her shoulder and laughed in my face. "That's so cute! Since when did you give a shit about other units' research?" She continued to march determinedly down the hall to the massive auditorium across campus.

"There's a difference between science and fiction, Priscilla. And there's such a thing as principles."

She spun on her crimson heel. Thrusting a hand into my chest she stared up into my eyes. "Stop it right there, Abby. The Institute cares about two things: money and money. I'm sure you're aware that you are dispensable, no matter how big your brain is. In the meantime though, why not enjoy that sloppy paycheck that comes your way every two weeks and get with the fucking program." She narrowed her eyes.

I casually pried her fingers back from my shirt. "Language, Pris."

She laughed another high, hollow laugh, each one of her pearly teeth glinting in the hallway lights. I watched her swallow that sound, her ruby lips puckering for a moment while she thought about what to do with me. Finally she said, "I'm going to enjoy watching you lead this vanity project. I hope your principles don't send you and your musty office packing in a cardboard box because it," she leaned in close, the words cutting through her teeth, "is going to feel so good to watch you try to figure out how to make Bostwick's project fly. Because if I know anything about men with principles it's that they'll try to make shit smell like flowers before they admit defeat. Even you, Abner," she pointed, again making sure she touched my chest, "will admit that. Are you really going to throw a tantrum to the Institute...just because you know the project's a waste of your time?"

"So we're agreed it's a waste of time."

She smirked and retreated back down the hall. "Of course it is. But I, unlike you, Professor Beal, have more on my mind than how super smart I am. I like to think about the number of bathrooms I'm going to have when this is all said and done." I watched her shoulders tense as she drew her hands together. "I'm thinking six - just one more than I really need."