Donald Westlake - Smoke

A midwestern gentleman said, "It's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ."

A midwestern lady said, "I remember that series. But it wasn't Rex Harrison."

"No, no, no," said the gentleman. "This is the original movie."

"There was a movie?"

A Canadian, somewhat younger, said, "There was a television series?"

A midwestern lady gave out a sudden shriek. "It's the ghost!" she cried.

"And Mrs. Muir," said her companion on the sofa.

"No! The ghost ! Colonel Pardigrass!"

That shut them up. For a minute or two everyone in the room just sat and gazed at Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, finding love — or something — across the centuries. So much pleasanter to contemplate than those other people.

Timidly, a midwestern lady said, "Mrs. Krutchfield, does this happen often?"

"My goodness, no," Mrs. Krutchfield said. "I couldn't bear it."

"What does the ghost usually do?" asked a gentleman.

"Well, uh," Mrs. Krutchfield stammered, all undone by events. "Just, oh, rapping and, and creaking, and that sort of thing. The usual sort of thing."

"This is a completely different manifestation from anything that ever happened before?"

"Lord, yes!"

The snip from Brooklyn, seated on the floor in their midst, turned toward them an excessively innocent face as she said, "Looks like, after all these years, the colonel's getting a little randy."

"The ghost wasn't like that with Mrs. Muir," a lady objected.

"Frankly," a gentleman said, "I don't see how it's possible to suffer the pangs of the flesh if you don't have any flesh."

"It doesn't bear thinking about," a lady announced, in an effort to forestall speculation.

Another lady said, "Mrs. Krutchfield, what should we do ?"

Mrs. Krutchfield had been pondering this problem herself. The ghost of Colonel Hesketh Pardigrass had never been any trouble before, had been, in fact, merely another charming part of the decor, like the Laura Ashley curtains and the Shaker reproduction furniture and the print in the entranceway of George Washington crossing the Delaware. An insubstantial insubstantiality, in other words, which was exactly the way Mrs. Krutchfield preferred it.

It wasn't that Mrs. Krutchfield had made up the ghost, or not exactly. The real estate agent, years ago when she'd bought this wreck of a place to fix up for its present use, had told her about the old tales of ghostly goings-on here, though without any specific history or even anecdotes attached. (Privately, Mrs. Krutchfield had always believed that much of what the real estate agent had told her was malarkey, meant to intrigue her, but that was all right. She'd been spending her school-administration retirement funds plus her dead husband's insurance money, and had been in a mood for a bit of malarkey, anyway.)

Then, shortly after buying the place, when Mrs. Krutchfield had been ripping out some horrible old linoleum in the kitchen, with newspapers lining the floor beneath, one ancient newspaper had contained a feature story about ghosts in the Hudson River valley, in which Mrs. Krutchfield had read about this Colonel Hesketh Pardigrass, who had been having some sort of liaison with the wife of a farmer in the area and had been murdered in the farmhouse, presumably by the farmer, though possibly by the wife. In any event, it had been claimed for a while that Colonel Pardigrass roamed the site of his demise on windy nights, still vainly trying to get back to his old regiment, though no one, even at the time this old newspaper had been printed, claimed to have had personal experience of the wayward colonel. As to the farmhouse, the description of the place and its whereabouts had been vague, but this house here could just as well have been the one where it all happened, so why not say so? What was the harm?

And how much cosier for a nice B-and-B like Mrs. Krutchfield's to come equipped with a ghost. A nice gentlemanly ghost, like Rex Harrison over there, though less intrusive. And that was how it had been.

Until tonight, that is.

After a few minutes of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, when nothing further of an untoward nature happened — and now, more than ever before, Mrs. Krutchfield understood the concept of happenings of an untoward nature — one of the Canadians timidly asked if it might be possible to return to Kitty's Diner, but one of the midwestern gentlemen said, "Seems to me, this is what the colonel wants to watch. I don't know that we oughta cross him."

Which ended that discussion, and everybody settled down to make some sense out of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, if possible. However, without color to soothe their eyes and a laugh track to let them know when things were supposed to be funny, they soon became restless and uneasy. There were murmurings among the guests, who were clearly suggesting to one another it was time to give up television for this evening and go to sleep instead — what else was there? — until Mrs. Krutchfield, who was not a timid woman, suddenly said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm just not in the mood for this particular movie this evening. I want to go back to Kitty's Diner."

"So do I," said several other people.

"Good," Mrs. Krutchfield said, and reached to the end table, and found nothing. She looked — the remote wasn't there. On the floor again? Grunting, she leaned forward to look under her chair, and it wasn't there either. " Now where's that remote doodad?" she asked, and implode click picture it was those people on the bed again!

Indefatigable, inexhaustible, and now there were four of them! A second naked woman had joined the other depraved souls, and this one had something strapped around her mid-section. What is that?

"Aaaaa!" said many people in the room.

A mad scramble took place to find the remote, while onscreen the four naked people displayed various mathematical formulae. Two into one does go, as it turns out.

The remote was in a midwestern lady's purse, which caused her to turn as red as Rudolph the Reindeer's nose. "I'm sure I — I'm sure I — I'm sure I—" was all she could manage to say.

"No one blames you, Edith," her husband assured her, patting her arm.

Mrs. Krutchfield had, the instant the remote was in her hands, used it to off the TV, with extreme prejudice. "I think," she said, "that's enough television for this evening."

No one disagreed. One of the ladies, on quitting the parlor, said rather waspishly in Mrs. Krutchfield's ear, "I don't think much of that colonel of yours."

"I don't know what to think of him," Mrs. Krutchfield replied, which was only the truth. A dubious character from two dubious sources, dubiously yoked together into one fanciful whole, and now was it to come to life? Would Mrs. Krutchfield never be able to watch television peaceably in her own parlor ever again? Would she have to remove those handsome write-ups about the colonel from her guest rooms, the ones the guests were free to take along with them on departure, if they so chose? (No one from this group would so choose, you could be sure of that.)

How did one find an exorcist? Were they in the Yellow Pages?

Mrs. Krutchfield went to bed with a severe headache, and tossed and turned all night; alone, at least, thank heaven.

Most people, including the grinning snip from Brooklyn, left the parlor when Mrs. Krutchfield did, but a few of the midwestern gentlemen stayed behind to try to find those naked people on the bed in the airwaves just one more time. They never did succeed.

20

"That wasn't very nice."

"Then how come you're still laughing?" came the unrepentant voice from the rear of the van.

"I didn't say it wasn't funny, " Peg pointed out, "I said it wasn't nice. "