J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

In the kitchen, he washed it, placed it in the dish rack, and sat at the table to wait for Lurene.

Thirty minutes later she walked in the door. She dropped her briefcase on the floor, hung up her coat, did a little pirouette, then came to Carl for a kiss hello. Up close, she looked different. At first he thought it was merely in contrast to the thing in the bedroom. But no: she was different. Her skin was clear and soft as an infant’s, her hair thicker, her eyes brighter. It wasn’t a question of age. Tiny lines still fanned out from her eyes; her cheeks betrayed the slightest hint of future jowls. It was a question of pain. In her face, there was none. It was a face to which no insults had ever been spoken, that had never been slapped or seen a hooded man with electrodes attached to his arms. The scar on her chin was gone. She was utterly, frighteningly unscathed by life.

“Good day?” she said.

“No.”

“No?” She skipped to the sink and began to fill a glass with water.

“I didn’t get anything done.”

“How come?” She sipped her drink, cocked her head, gave him a little grin.

He didn’t answer.

“Maybe you didn’t get anything done for the same reason I didn’t get anything done.”

“What,” he asked, “is that?”

She winked. “Distraction.”

“Okay …”

“I was thinking of other things ,” she sang.

“Ah.”

She put the glass down, came to him, and kissed him. She plucked his hand from his lap and pressed it to her breast. “Sexy time!”

“Well …”

“C’mon, don’t be a poop,” she said, hauling him to his feet. She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him to her, pressing herself against him. “Let’s go.”

“I think you should go in there alone, first.”

“You want me to get all ready?”

“No,” he said. “I mean — there’s something in there.”

His voice, he thought, was dark with foreboding. But she didn’t seem to notice. She had the cheery obliviousness of a character on television. It was as if he were setting her up for a punch line.

It occurred to him that she was nearly as frightening as the thing on the bed.

“Something special?” she cooed.

“No, Lurene. Really.” He gulped. “Something scary. Something you left there this morning.”

She let go of his shirt, fell back on her heels, pouted. “Are you trying to ruin my fun?”

“Lurene,” he said. “You cut yourself this morning. With the knife. And it … left something. In the bedroom.”

Now, at last, a look of annoyance crossed her face. And perhaps a tiny spark of fear. She held up her hand and unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse.

“Look,” she said. “Nothing. No cut.”

“There was blood in there.”

She scowled.

“And the other thing,” he said.

“The knife?”

“No.”

She stared at him with can-do intensity, like a fighter pilot.

“Okay, ya lunk,” she finally gushed, slapping his chest with a fine ivory hand. “You need a shower anyway. Come to think of it, so do I. I’ll go in there and clean up whatever mess I left and I’ll meet you in the bathroom, whaddya say?”

He swallowed, nodded.

She spun and marched off. Carl remained in the kitchen, standing, listening. Her hard-soled office pumps clomped the length of the hallway, passed onto the carpet of the bedroom, and then stopped. He bent over, straining to hear. Would she scream? Would she run out?

She wouldn’t. She didn’t. She was absolutely quiet, for at least a minute. Carl continued to sweat. The wall clock thunked out the seconds.

And then, at last, her footsteps started again. Slowly now, gently, she took three, four, five steps, and again stopped. The silence this time was longer: two, three minutes. And then he heard the bedsprings creak, and a small, guttural yelp, and a ragged release of breath.

“Lurene?”

He moved to the entrance of the hallway, gazed down at the inch of bedroom he could make out through the distant, foreshortened door.

“Honey?”

A groan, movement on the bed. And then Lurene’s shoes touching the floor, one, then the other. A grunt, and footsteps. One, two, three, four. And on five, she appeared.

Her hand was wrapped around the wounded wrist. Blood seeped from underneath. Her shoulders were sloped, her back bent, her face a mask of misery. “Carl,” she said. “Find the bandages.” And she fell, gasping, to her knees.

Every morning for a week, she disappeared into the bedroom to get dressed and emerged cheery and full of life. Every morning she left the thing behind, with Carl, in the apartment. He managed to work with it there — he had to. Sometimes he heard it get up and move around. He had found, on the internet, the word: wraith. The ghost of a person still living. He didn’t know if that’s what it was, specifically; the proper nomenclature hardly seemed important. It was a handy nickname for something that he sure as hell was not going to call “Lurene.” The wraith. Sometimes he could swear it was standing in the hallway, waiting for him. But he never budged from the study except for a quick dash to the kitchen for food, or the bathroom. He did not attempt to talk to it. He tried to be quiet, so as not to bother it.

When Lurene came home from work each day, she would draw him into the bathroom, into the shower, and make love to him there. Never before had she taken the initiative in an act that, under ordinary circumstances, she lacked the reserves of joy even to contemplate; he had always demanded (well — requested, really), she had always submitted. Now, though, he found himself shocked and embarrassed, embarrassed by her ardent desire, by his sudden, livid physical response. Her body was so light, so unencumbered by its own corporeality; every motion was effortless and perfect. And then, even before his lust had managed to leave him, she would go — leave the shower, dry off in silence, and return to the wraith. She could feel its need, she told him. She had to go to it, or it would come to her.

One afternoon it was waiting outside the bathroom door.

The next, it was inside the bathroom — behind the curtain when they pulled it aside.

The day after that they locked the door.

Over that weekend, and the next, Lurene stayed Lurene, and said nothing about the wraith, and so neither did Carl. But on Monday morning, he asked her, as she got up from the breakfast table, if he could see.

“See,” she repeated, as if she didn’t know what he meant.

“See it happen.”

Her frown deepened, her eyes narrowed.

“I want to know,” he said. “I want to know how it happens. How it comes out.”

For a moment he thought she would strike him, but what she did instead was begin to weep. “I don’t think I could,” she whispered. “I don’t think it would work. With you there.”

He stood, took her into his arms. He had not made love with his wife, his entire wife, since these strange days began. He missed her. The other one, the happy one — with her it was too easy. His love needed something heavy to hold it down. He said, “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

“This can’t go on,” she said.

“It can. It can go on.” Though he knew she was right.

They stood in silence for a time, gripping each other so tightly they could barely breathe. Then she pushed him away, walked down the hall, and emerged a new woman.

That afternoon, around lunchtime, he was working on some text formatting, trying to convince a client she didn’t want blinking letters with sparks shooting off them, when he heard the wraith get out of bed. Its feet thudded on the floor, and he heard them dragging dryly across the room, like a pair of sandbags.