Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss

“Sophie,” Scott said urgently, “no one is fucking with you…not that I wouldn’t like—”

“Don’t even start!” I snapped.

“Right, what I meant was that everyone here is serious about the sale, right, Kane?” he said, pronouncing his question like a warning. “You don’t expect Sophie to agree to move in here and go through all the trouble and stress of escrow knowing that you could call the whole thing off and throw her out at any moment for something as ambiguous as her not respecting the place. That would be crazy and we all know you’re not crazy. You’re a businessman. A reasonable businessman.”

I heard the house exhale in a roar as hot air rushed through the vents. Central heating. Was there anything that this place didn’t have? I imagined myself standing up against those vents on the coldest of days, letting the air press against my feet and ankles until they prickled from the heat. Somehow I had to make this work.

“I’m sorry you think I’m being unreasonable,” Kane said, seemingly nonplussed. “I certainly don’t want you to think I’m not earnest in my intent to sell to you. How about this, we’ll let an attorney find a word that’s more to your liking than respecting. I’ll pay for all the utilities during that month…in fact, why don’t we cut escrow in half and make it two weeks. And we’ll put in a clause stating that if I do put an end to our deal before escrow closes I’ll have to pay you…how about twenty grand? That should cover the rent for your apartment for almost a year, right?”

Now I did turn around, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember how to speak.

Scott had no such problem. “Yeah,” he said, his voice an octave higher than normal, “that’ll work.”

Kane beamed. “Great! Then get the contractor out here so you can start moving in.”

“I feel there has to be a catch,” I choked out.

Kane laughed. It was the least contagious laugh in the world. “Sophie,” he said, “I may be a bit different, but I’m not so peculiar that I relish the idea of giving huge amounts of money away at the drop of a hat. If I thought there was a good chance that I would need to pay you the $20,000 I wouldn’t be making the offer. But this was once my mother’s house. It was her dream home. I just need to be assured that whoever ends up here will love it the way she did and not just flip it the moment the market improves. Can you understand that?”

No. I didn’t understand anything about Kane. But how could I say no to this? “When’s the first Specter Society meeting?” I asked.

Kane’s grin widened. “In three weeks,” Kane said. “Why don’t we have it here? It could be your first social gathering in your new home.” Kane ran his hands along the wall with the gentleness that one usually reserves for a lover. “It would be a great way for you to introduce yourself to all the members…and to anything else that might make an appearance.”

Anything else. I understood his meaning, but it didn’t bother me. It was, after all, the most conventional thing he had said in the five minutes I had known him. “I’m going to want my own lawyer to go through this escrow agreement with a fine-toothed comb,” I said.

“Of course, Sophie,” Kane said. “Whatever it takes to get you to trust me.”

I tried not to smile. I’d sooner trust my ex-husband. But if a lawyer gave me a thumbs-up it really was a spectacular deal. If I could get a contractor and a lawyer to work with me right away, I might be able to start the escrow process in about two weeks, which meant that in four weeks I would either get a fantastic house well below market or I would get $20,000.

What did I have to lose?

4

Dinner parties would be so much more fun if you were allowed to actually throw your dinner at the guests!

—The Lighter Side of Death

I DIDN’T WASTE A MOMENT. I HAD A CONTRACTOR COME OUT TO THE HOUSE and a lawyer storm Scott’s office. And as soon as I was told that both the house and the escrow agreement were in good condition I signed on the dotted line. I had moved over the furniture from my apartment, and although many of the pieces didn’t really suit the new space at least they were mine. In a fit of optimism, I had put the bulk of my belongings in boxes and brought them over, as well.

During the first week of escrow Kane had come over for a visit, and while he seemed slightly disappointed that I hadn’t heard any thumps in the night, he did praise the passion I had for the house. I was just one week away from officially owning my own home, and now I was preparing to pay for it. Not with money, but with a combination of time and lies; time that I would spend at my first Specter Society meeting and lies that I would tell to convince my guests and fellow members that I desired their company. Scott had explained to me that if I wanted escrow to go through I had to pretend to believe in ghosts and the mystical power of the séances that supposedly called them to this world. It was a stupid but acceptable compromise of my integrity.

Of course the gathering required some planning and for that I had called in the big guns—or to be more accurate, the big gun, my sister and special-event-coordinator-extraordinaire, Leah. At my request she had spent most of the afternoon (and the better part of the past week) setting up for the séance I would be holding that evening. All my unpacked boxes had been moved into the bedrooms and the garage and there was a rented round table in the middle of the living room covered with a white linen tablecloth. In its center were three thick beeswax candles that Leah had strong-armed me into buying despite their ridiculously high price point. And in front of ten antique wood dining chairs there were metal place-card holders molded into the shape of fallen leaves. Many of the names they held were foreign to me and the few that I knew—Venus, Scott and Kane—didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy. Enrico was the only person I was looking forward to meeting. I had spoken to him on the phone several times in the last few days, and now Leah and I were waiting for him to arrive before the others, with trays of delicacies that would undoubtedly make the rest of the evening a bit more tolerable.

Mr. Katz let out a mew of protest as Leah removed him from one of the chairs and dropped him unceremoniously on the floor.

“Hey, be careful with my baby,” I admonished.

“The only baby here is sitting on the couch,” she said distractedly as she rearranged the candles one more time, pulling at their wicks until they stood up like little soldiers trying to impress a drill sergeant. Of course she was referring to her two-year-old son, Jack, who was at that moment quietly watching her every move. It was unclear to me if his gaze was one of admiration or calculation. His pudgy little hands looked innocent enough while they rested on his lap, but they had often been used as the instruments of destruction and torture, like the time he had tried to clean my cat with Clorox or when he pulled out a fistful of hair from his swim instructor’s chest.

“It’s a shame I can’t stay for the actual event,” Leah said, although we both knew she was grateful for the exclusion. Scott had explained that the number of people in attendance had to be an even number and if Leah took part in the proceedings there would be eleven of us. Leah couldn’t have handled the quiet meditative atmosphere of a séance anyway. We were both sure that spirits could not be summoned, which meant that any communication with the dead would be imaginary. The imaginings of other people cannot be monitored or predicted and Leah didn’t like events that she couldn’t control.

“At least you’ll get to taste the appetizers. Enrico promised me he’d make enough so that you could bring a few home with you.”

“Sweet of him.” She glanced at the metal hands of my walnut-finished clock and the smooth skin between her eyebrows wrinkled in disapproval. “He should have been here by now. We want to make sure that we have time to clean up after any last-minute preparations before the guests arrive. Nothing undermines a party as quickly as a messy kitchen.”

Clearly the parties Leah attended were a lot tamer than the ones I went to. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” I said sweetly.

“Mmm, well, since we can’t do anything else until he arrives, let me take this moment to give you your housewarming gift.”

“Housewarming gift?” I repeated. Visions of Pottery Barn throw pillows danced in my head.

She grinned and crossed to the large UPS box she had placed on my window seat. Full of props and decorative items upon her arrival, I had assumed it was now empty. But from it she pulled out a carefully wrapped large rectangular gift.

The paper was a pale gold and gleamed in the dwindling light coming from the window. I found a weak spot and pierced the paper with my fingernail then tore into the wrapping. Shreds of gold fell to the floor like oversize confetti.

And when the covering was gone I was left with a black-and-white photograph of myself as a little girl. My hair was the same unruly challenge it was now and my features hadn’t changed much, but the eyes of the child-me lacked the cynical skepticism that I had cultivated over the years. It was me in my own age of innocence. My arms were wrapped around the neck of the man who gave me that hair. His own curls were cut short and a cluster of them embraced his chin in a well-trimmed beard.

“Thank you. I forgot about this picture,” I whispered, although this very photo had graced our mother’s dresser for at least ten years. “I’ll have to find a good place for it.” I turned it over and touched the cool black metal that held the photo in place. A silver wire stretched from one side to the other, waiting to be draped over a nail.

“There, over the side table with the other pictures,” Leah said without hesitation.

I looked at the newly mounted images on the wall. There was a small picture of a blue jay swooping down to snatch a peanut out of my friend Mary Ann’s hand. Next to that a framed newspaper article, the first critical review my work had ever received. I had highlighted the words highly enjoyable and then blacked out but at times trite. Then the nighttime picture Dena had taken of our friend Marcus, his hand extended up into the air so that it looked like he held the moon in the sky. There was also a picture of Leah holding Jack shortly after his birth. In that picture my mother bent over the swaddled infant, her lips shaped into an exaggerated kiss. But all these people were alive. Even the review referred to a book that I still had access to. What I held in my hand was a tribute to a man who was gone. It felt like the Sophie-child in the picture was laughing at me, saying, “Remember this? Remember what it was like to touch him? Remember what it was like to feel safe?”

I did remember, and it made me heart-achingly sad and I had no desire to hang my grief on my living-room wall.

Leah waited a respectable amount of time for me to come up with an excuse for why the picture shouldn’t be placed with the others before taking it from me and holding it up above the fireplace. “Fine, we’ll put it here. He’s been gone for twelve years, Sophie. It’s time you said goodbye to the man and hello to your memories. Besides,” she glanced at the staircase and pressed her full lips together as if working out some complicated equation, “he belongs here. I don’t know why, but it just feels like some part of him should be here.”

“Some part of him?” I repeated. “That sounds like the premise of some part of a poltergeist movie.”

“Not literally a part of his body, but this.” She pressed the picture against the wall and admired it. “This belongs here.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“There’s nothing to think about. Give me a hammer and a couple of nails.”

“I only have one left,” I said. “Wait ’til I go to the hardware store later this week. You know how hard it is to hang a picture straight with just one nail.”

“Well, we’ll just have to try to make it work. Bring me the one nail.”

I suppressed a couple of swear words and reluctantly brought her what she asked for. I turned away as the hammer struck the nail and reached for my cell phone. Leah was right about one thing; Enrico should have been here by now. He picked up on the second ring.

“Yes?”

It took me a second to respond. Enrico had always been warm on the phone and the question he had used to replace a greeting jarred me. “Enrico?”

“Yes?” he said again, this time with even less patience. Behind me Leah was banging the hammer in a quick but steady rhythm.

“Um, it’s Sophie Katz. I was just wondering if you were on your way?”