A/N: You didn't ask for it. But now you've got it. With apologies, it's time for...
GHOSTLIGHTS
Paul Shackleton is taking a sabbatical. He announces it right before the start of the fall semester, having forgotten to do so earlier. The delay, or forgetfulness, or whatever we care to call it, while indicative of Shackleton's shopworn incompetence, is not, unfortunately, great enough to get him fired. But the buffoon is gone, for three months at least, and this, I think, is cause for one or more silent Huzzahs!
Until I meet his replacement.
#####
I'm running late, and when I get to campus, the department secretary informs me that Dr. Peter Venkman has relocated his class. They're in the gym. And then, Miss Danton informs me, only because the pool wasn't free this period.
#####
When I enter the gym, Venkman's "class" is already in session, and Tom has arrived ahead of me.
Tom, I think, needs to get more sun. Oftentimes he has what I might describe as a slightly greenish tint to his skin.
Today that tint is more blue than green. Possibly because Tom is soaking wet.
#####
Tom is wearing his usual: rumpled blue suit jacket, white dress shirt, black tie, gray Dockers. He stands in the water puddling around his brown leather chukkas. The muscles of his jaw are quivering. He looks stunned.
"What happened?" I ask.
Since Tom, for the moment, seems disinclined to anything but sputtering, Doctor Venkman answers for him.
Venkman resembles a Lab mix that has spent the last hour with its head hanging out of a car window traveling at speed. The halves of his face don't seem quite aligned. He appears to be in his mid-fifties. His eyes are brown, his thinning hair less so. It may have encountered a comb within the last decade; then again, maybe not. The length of his torso implies that he is genetically disposed to above-average height; his slouch, however, suggests that several of his vertebrae are missing. He is wearing jeans and a ratty black-blue cardigan over a gray t-shirt on which is appliqued, in yellow, the silhouette of a bear with antlers on its head and, below it, a single word: "BEER." He smirks patiently in Tom's direction as he replies: "Doctor Buckley was inspecting the immersion apparatus."
Thirty feet away, in front of the fold-back bleachers, stands a large cage. Inside the cage is a tank approximately five feet tall. The sides of the tank are covered in blue plastic printed in bright yellow with the phrase PHIL'S E-Z RENTALS. On a board suspended above the top of the tank sits one of my best students, dark-haired Ben. Ben appears to be wearing nothing but red-and-blue tartan swim trunks. He is as wet as Tom, and he is looking out, at us, at the gym, with a look of pinched anticipation.
The corners of Tom's mouth look a little too tight. He's making a point not to make eye contact with Venkman. "It's a dunk tank, Margaret."
"Immersion apparatus," Dr. Venkman clarifies.
"Dunk tank," says Tom.
"You fell for it." Dr. Venkman turns his attention back to me. "You must be the lovely— and, I must say, very tall— Doctor Matheson."
"I must be." I shake the hand Venkman offers. I don't smile. "You're dunking your students, Dr. Venkman...?"
"The Effects of Sudden Changes in Humidity on Pre-Cognitive Ability," Venkman replies. "My latest study."
"It's a dunk tank," Tom repeats. There's a tremor in his voice. His tone is dangerously low. He seems to be staring at a point on the floor. (A note about Tom's eyes: they're very pale and very blue. At times, the combination can be, for want of a better word, disconcerting. I have heard the phrase "the Buckley death-stare" not only from students but from fellow faculty.) Right now, his eyes look a bit watery and red. Although we are on the far cusp of allergy season, I suspect he might be close to tears.
"Do you want to go home and change, Tom?"
Tom hesitates, looking pained. From far above our heads comes a whumph sound.
"Duck," says Venkman. I duck; Tom does, too. "No—" Venkman gestures at the ceiling. "A duck hit the skylight."
Tom looks from me to Venkman and back again. "Margaret, I don't think I should leave—"
"— but I think it's okay." Venkman peers up at the skylight. "Yep: he's okay. Walk it off, man! Just waaaalk it off!"
"Go home and change, Tom," I say.
"Margaret—"
"Go."
Venkman says, under his breath, as Tom squelches away: "'They're always after me Lucky Charms.'"
I frown at him. "Pardon me, Doctor Venkman?"
"Nothing." Venkman smiles. Suddenly, I'm ten years old, and his expression is that of a Midway carney at the New York State Fair. In keeping with which, he continues: "Allow me to demonstrate, Maggie. Steve—?"
There's another person at our end of the gym; at this point, I recognize him. Stephen Mace, six-foot-three, approximately two hundred pounds. At least one hundred and eighty pounds of which appears to be pure muscle. A dimpled grin, sapphire-blue eyes, golden-brown hair trimmed in a perfect crew-cut. All the other cliches one might append to a fourth-year sophomore riding on a baseball scholarship. He's been slouching off to the side on a folding chair, thumbing the keypad of a cell phone. A steel bucket filled with old baseballs sits on the floor next to the chair. He puts down his phone and looks over. "Yeah, Doc?"
"Do your stuff, Steve-O. You ready, Ben?"
Ben, as I noted, is dressed in swim trunks. Some underclassmen, thus dressed, would serve as a reminder not only of the inexorable march of time but of the beauty of youth, however fleeting. Ben, unfortunately, is not one of them. Right now, sitting on that board above the tank, his bare feet dangling, he looks not unlike an escaped cave-dwelling amphibian frozen in a searchlight.
"I guess." Ben watches with an expression taxonomically similar to raw fear as Steve picks up the bucket of baseballs and ambles over to where Venkman and I are standing.
"No guessing, Ben," Venkman calls. "This is science, right?"
"Uh... right."
Venkman takes a deck of Zener cards from the pocket of his cardigan. He holds the deck out, face-down, to Steve. Steve takes a card, looks at it, and calls to Ben: "Whattaya see, loser?"
"Umm... a circle?"
"Wrong, dumbass!"
Venkman air-punches the floor. "Looks like you are going dowwwwn, Ben! Ouch!"
Thirty feet away, Ben closes his eyes and pinches his nostrils with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. Steve puts his cell phone in his pants pocket. He bends down and picks a baseball from the bucket, casually hauls back, and lets fly. There is a round steel pad the size of a dinner plate affixed to the left side of the cage in which Ben sits. The baseball hits the pad with a resounding clang; the pad flips sideways. The bench on which Ben sits is apparently split midway along its length, the halves hinged. When the baseball knocks the pad sideways, the hinges give way. Ben vanishes from sight with a lurching splash. We wait for eight to ten seconds while he either regains his footing in the tank or drowns. Water sloshes from the tank onto the gymnasium floor.
Ben staggers to his feet. He leans against the front of the tank and wipes his eyes with one hand while giving us a thumb's-up with the other.
"Way to go, sport!" Venkman whistles and claps. "And... re-set!"
However, I, for one, have seen enough. "Get out of there, Ben."
Ben is trying to re-join the halves of the board, a task that may be complicated by early onset hypothermia. He gives me a confused, potentially hurt look. "But, Doctor Matheson, I'm only two dunks away from the armadillo."
I turn on Venkman. "You're offering prizes for this?"
"Well, that. And pizza. And extra credit."
Ben has stopped trying to re-set the board. He is looking at us yearningly. Like he can see a dream slipping away. "Ten dunks gets the armadillo, Dr. Matheson."
"Ben, get out of there and get dressed!" I snap.
Crestfallen, Ben climbs down out of the cage and patters off across the gym floor, leaving a trail of wet footprints.
Venkman looks after him. "He really wanted that armadillo." He turns to pat Steve's shoulder, and, in so doing, passes him what looks suspiciously like a folded twenty-dollar bill. "Thanks, man."
"Any time." Steve shoots a smirk in Ben's direction. "Always happy to help out, Doc."
He takes his cell phone back out of his pocket and drops the Zener card as he saunters away. I pick it up. It's a circle.
"Far be it from me to judge, Doctor Venkman, but, at a guess, I would say this is just about the shoddiest display of 'research' I have ever seen."
"Dream-killer." Venkman winks at me. "Bet all the boys call you that. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Maggie? Can I call you 'Maggie'?"
"I really don't think that would be appropri—"
"How about a beer?"
"You can't be serious."
"C'mon: we've got at least half an hour before Tonya gets back."
It takes me a second. "'Tom,'" I say.
"Oh, yeah. Right."
#####
The head of our department, Dr. Muffley, suggests that, as an interdepartmental gesture of goodwill, that Tom and I allow Dr. Venkman to accompany us on one of our debunking excursions. To that end, Tom visits Venkman's office, to brief him on our techniques and equipment and on what he can expect to experience in the field. Tom, however, encounters Venkman's secretary. "Encounters" having potentially salacious connotations, allow me to elaborate:
At three o'clock on the day in question, Tom enters the anteroom of Venkman's office. Venkman's secretary, one Janine Melnitz, a brunette woman in her late thirties, is on the phone, making entries in an Excel spreadsheet, and watching three separate soap operas— at least one of which appears to be in Russian— on her computer monitor. When Tom approaches her desk, she removes an earpiece from her right ear, says "Hold, please" to whomever is on the phone, and looks up at Tom through glasses large enough to keep Essilor, Optima, and Varilux in the black well into the next century.
"I'd like to see Doctor Venkman," Tom says.
"He's not in right now." Miss Melnitz, Tom tells me later, has an accent that suggests that, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Brooklyn has declared war not only on the remainder of New York City but on the United States as a whole. "You'll have to make an appointment."
"Okay. Umm. I'd like to make an appointment, then."
"To see—"
"Doctor Venkman."
"He's not in right now. Would you like to make an appointment?"
"Yes, please."
"With whom?"
"Doctor Venkman."
"He's not in right now."
"That's why I'd like to make—"
Doctor Venkman emerges from his office. "Janine, cancel my appointments for the rest of the afternoon, would you? Got a hot date with Dr. Margaret Matheson." He pats Tom's shoulder in passing. "Tina: hi. Good to see you."
"The fu— Wait—" Tom says.
But Venkman is already out the door.
"I'm sorry," says Miss Melnitz. "Doctor Venkman has canceled his appointments for the rest of the day. Would you like to see if he has anything available tomorrow?"
#####
So now Venkman is, to paraphrase popular parlance, along for today's ride. Tom is against it. I don't blame him.
But I really want to give Venkman enough rope to hang himself in the eyes of his department head. What an asshole. Venkman, that is.
And, come to think of it, his department head, too.
#####
Tom is hunkered down in the back seat. The collar of his brown mac is nearly swallowing his head. He looks pale. Moreso than usual. For some reason, he suggested that I drive. Venkman immediately called "shotgun." Tom didn't argue it.
In the rearview mirror, I see him scrunched into a corner. Not entirely of his own choosing: a stack of equipment boxes is crowding against him on the seat. This is odd: the trunk of the Bonneville is so large that it practically qualifies as rentable space.
I frown. "Tom, why is there equipment in the back seat?"
"Because there wasn't enough room in the trunk, Margaret."
"And why is that?"
"I brought along a few things of my own, Maggie," Venkman says casually. "Hope you don't mind."
"What sort of 'things'?" I ask.
In the mirror, Tom visibly shudders. "I think they're particle accelerators, Margaret."
We're on a county road. It's dusk. In my left-hand peripherals, from the midst of a stubbled corn field, I think I see a dark something running toward the car.
"Gonna be nice having a physicist around," Venkman says. "Those babies are really overdue for a tune-up."
"Particle accelerators—?" I try to focus on the road. Whatever is in the field is approaching us at a perpendicular angle. "Are they safe?"
Venkman looks hurt. "That's kind of a loaded term, Maggie, don't you think?"
Now I know why Tom wanted me to drive. For all the good it might do, he's putting himself between me and the bombs in the trunk. (And he has a tendency—occasionally— to get— distracted when he drives. But that's not the point.) "There's something in my car that could potentially blow us up?"
"Half of Illinois," Tom intones. His normal pallor has crossed the line to "sepulchral." "A something that could potentially blow up half of Illinois, Margaret."
The thing running at us: it's a turkey. A wild tom turkey. It bolts out of the field and onto the shoulder of the road. Onto the road itself. I slow the Pontiac.
"For starters, maybe." Venkman snorts at him. "Try life as we know it, Tammy."
The turkey is still on a collision course. There's no other traffic; I pull over and stop the car. The turkey should miss us. It doesn't. At the last moment, it veers. It hits the driver's side of the Bonneville like a thrown ottoman. The driver's-side mirror snaps off with the force of the impact. The turkey takes a stunned step back. For a moment it stands and looks at us with beaded-hematite eyes, as if it's debating whether to ask us to exchange insurance information. Then it waddles around the front of the car and takes off running again.
"Now, that's something you don't see every day," Venkman says.
Tom gets out and picks up the mirror. He gets back in and sets it beside him on the rear seat. For some reason, he looks guilty.
#####
Strip malls, I think, are rings in the social tree, demarking decades of cracked-asphalt suburbia. Perhaps it is time to invest in a GPS device. One that I will not allow Tom to repair. We've been driving, it seems, for hours.
"What was that— the fourth Olive Garden?" Tom asks, turning his head to look out the window.
"Number three, Tom," I reply.
"Don't know about you two, but I am craving spaghetti right now," Venkman says.
Beyond the second iHop— and, thanks to Venkman, I find myself fighting an urge to stop and get an order of pumpkin pancakes to go— we spot the theater.
#####
At the center of a parking lot of a size suggesting a zoning mishap that led to the paving of Indiana sits the Brooker. The theater resembles a mammoth half-fallen souffle. It is round; it is tall; its top slants from back to front. The building is a vertically ribbed rose-pink; the letters of the word "Brooker," splayed across the forward-facing wall of the souffle in a font archived for public purposes sometime around 1971, are neon-green and exclamatory.
LOOK! they seem to say.
Or RUN!
The parking lot immediately in front of the building is packed with cars; jarringly enough, given the sense that we've traveled back in time at least to the Sixties, those cars are of modern makes. I leave Tom and Venkman on the sidewalk in front of the glass doors of the main entrance amid cases of equipment and Venkman's supposed particle accelerators and go to find a berth big enough for the Bonneville.
#####
The lobby of the Brooker Theater could serve as a public-service announcement for why nostalgia is just that: some things are better, or at least survivable, when wrapped in the gauze of recollection, not experienced— or re-experienced— first-hand. The color scheme in general suggests Andy Warhol by way of Dante Alighieri: swaths of burnt orange and hellish red, with the occasional burst of lime-green thrown in for contrast. There is furniture— the semi-circular spread of the space is large enough to serve as a good-sized lounge— in shiny black leather. Minaret ashtrays stand at the sofa-ends beneath NO SMOKING signs; the ash permanently ground into the carpet around those ashtrays, said carpet being an optical-illusion sea of gold and green and red whorls bringing to mind a Puff meant as a metaphor for bad acid rather than good weed, could easily pre-date the Kennedy administration.
A Mr. Gary Morrison, the Brooker's manager, meets us at the box-office window, just before a theater employee, a flat-stared, spike-haired blonde girl who is eighteen going on thirty-six, can browbeat Tom into paying for three adult admissions. Morrison is roughly fifty years old, average in height, soft through the middle. He wears a J.C. Penney suit, circa 1989, in dark blue, and a Windsor-knotted tie bearing a full-length picture of Godzilla. His face is round, his cheeks holding more sway than his chin; his hair is a frizzy black nebula set well back from his forehead. He has watery hazel eyes; he is also, I must add, a bit chameleonic— literally— in his outlook. As we shake hands, his right eye focuses on me. The left watches Tom.
#####
What, exactly, has brought us to the Brooker Theater? Venkman gave us a piecemeal overview on the way down, and now Mr. Morrison confirms my suspicions. This is yet another lark. Or, for those of coarser-than-Masterpiece-Theatre sensitivities, a total load of b.s.
The Brooker has three auditoriums. The two smaller houses handle screenings of conventional film prints; the third, and by far the largest, which accounts for the building's rounded shape, was built to handle Cinemascope projection. At present, the Brooker is proud to present a restored Cinerama print of 2001: A Space Odyssey; for our immediate purposes, it being just past eight and all three of the theater's mid-evening screenings currently in progress, Morrison is spinning his load of folderol to us in a lobby populated only by a handful of concession-stand workers and ushers chasing stray pieces of popcorn with carpet sweepers.
Morrison shudders as he tells us of the ghost of a concession worker from the Eighties— "That far back, huh?" I mutter.— who was killed when a truck carrying a load of frozen turkeys rolled over on her AMC Gremlin the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
"We ran out of Mister Pibb, right in the middle of the seven o'clock rush," Morrison says. "She volunteered to drive over to the Scopa 16 to pick up a box of syrup. She never came back."
"Only now, she is back," Tom says quietly.
At least I think that's what he says. Morrison's eyes blink nearly in unison. "What—?"
"Mumble much, Tombles?" Venkman leaves off fiddling with one of his "particle accelerators" on the lobby floor and strolls over to the concession stand. He goes behind the glass-fronted counter and helps himself to a bag of Twizzlers. "You lose a lot of stock?" he asks Morrison.
"Not especially—"
"Can't trust anyone, man, I'm telling you." Chewing a Twizzler, Venkman looks thoughtfully across the lobby at the poster for 2001 hanging in a case outside the doors of the main auditorium. He turns his attention to Tom. "Y'know, you really look like Keir Dullyea."
"I do not."
"Well, okay: not through the face so much. But you've got that creepy dead voice and those boogada-boogada eyes."
"I've got boogada-what?"
"Say 'Open the pod-bay doors, HAL.'"
"No."
"C'mon: just say it." Venkman winks at me. "See, I always thought HAL could've been a little more bad-ass."
"He killed the entire crew of the Discovery, Doctor Venkman."
"But he was so nice about it." Venkman turns back to Tom. "C'mon, Tina: 'Open the pod-bay doors, HAL.'"
Tom takes a deep breath. He's thin but wiry-tough in general, and lean through the face, and his cheekbones are sharp. If the muscles of his jaw burst through his skin like steel springs right now, I wouldn't be surprised. He looks at Venkman with what might be described either as the perfect poker face or, more accurately, and with an eye toward potential legal consequences, as flat-affect hatred. "Open the pod-bay doors, HAL."
"There. You see? Perfect." Venkman adds, as he takes another Twizzler from the bag: "Eat me, Pollyanna."
"What—?" says Tom.
"'Open the...'"
"'Open the pod-bay doors, HAL.'"
"Up yours, dickwit."
Tom's fingers knot into fists.
"I think we should get set up," I say.
#####
According to Morrison, the theater's "ghost" frequents two hot spots, both of which are upstairs: the main stock and supply room and the area just outside the projection booth. The projection booth runs practically the width of the theatre. To monitor both areas simultaneously, and the theatre as a whole, we'll need a central location that will be clear of foot traffic. Morrison suggests his office, which is on the main floor behind the box office.
There's one other thing we need to be aware of, Morrison tells us: Karl, the theater's projectionist.
"He's... union," Morrison says carefully.
Though I am loath to admit it, I am beginning to lose patience with Mr. Morrison and, truth be told, with the situation in general. "Meaning, Mr. Morrison...?"
"He gets a bit, umm, territorial."
"When's the last time you spoke to Karl?"
Mr. Morrison takes a purple handkerchief from his pocket and dabs at his domed forehead. His eyes gaze separately off into the distance. "He gets here before the rest of the staff. His paychecks are on direct deposit—"
"When is the last time you saw Karl, Mr. Morrison?"
"September... 1998. I think. Yeah, that's it."
"Okay," says Venkman. "Tom, you take the projection-booth area. I've got the supply room."
At this point, he and Tom each have one of the so-called particle accelerators strapped to their respective backs. The things look like air-conditioning units subbed in as alien technology in any of a hundred black-and-white Bronson Canyon cheese-fests from the Fifties. Only, unlike the cardboard control panel of Xaxxor's flying saucer, Venkman's contraptions are steel-cased and ridiculously heavy, and they're accessorized with holstered rifle-like devices.
Venkman unholsters his rifle and shows it to Tom. "Trigger here," he says, indicating. "Just point and shoot." Before Tom can reply— his mouth opens, but nothing comes out— Venkman reaches behind him and flips what looks like a Johnson Controls standard-issue light switch on Tom's accelerator. An ominous hum fills the air. All three of us— myself, Morrison, and Venkman, too— take a step back.
"And you are good to go, Doctor Boolittle...!" Venkman says.
For a second, Tom looks at me helplessly. Our eyes meet. He nods. Then he takes three steps and lurches into a wall, cracking the Plexiglass case over a poster for Lawrence of Arabia.
"You want a hand with that, Tom-Tom?" Venkman asks, as he switches on his own accelerator. "These things are kinda heavy."
An audible growl from Tom. He heaves himself away from the wall, staggers up the steps at the far right side of the lobby, and disappears from view. Venkman goes up the stairs to the left. I finish powering up our equipment in Morrison's office.
#####
Forty seconds later, we are live.
I'm in position, Margaret, Tom pants over the audio feed.
Bite me, Dave, Venkman says. Just kidding. In position, too, Maggie.
#####
The Phantom Concessionaire. As close to a joke as— No, this is a joke. And a badly staged one, too. If Morrison told us to close our eyes and then stuck our hands in a bowl of cold noodles— "Oh, my God! Intestines!"— I wouldn't be surprised.
The apparition— and I reluctantly forgo the use of quotation marks— is that of a stocky female, twenty to twenty-five years of age, wearing what appears to be a short-sleeved black-and-white polyester uniform dress and hiking boots. She has short, straight dark hair; she wears glasses. Tom provides us with the description later. Right now, all we hear from him over the radio feed is "YARRRGH!"
#####
Tom is lying flat on his back outside the projection-booth door. Or he would be lying flat if he wasn't strapped to a hundred pounds of junk technology. When Venkman and I reach him, he's rocking from side to side like an upturned turtle on the floor.
The "ghost," of course, is nowhere in sight. "You let her go, man." Venkman looks genuinely disappointed as we help Tom to his feet. "Tell me you at least got in a shot."
"No, I didn't get in a fucking 'shot.' Are you insane...?"
"On the advice of counsel," Venkman replies primly, "I decline to ans—"
"Shut up, Doctor Venkman," I say. "Please."
As the three of us head back down to the lobby, Tom tells us how the Phantom Concession Worker barreled past him, out of nowhere, and went down the stairs leading to the emergency exit on the south side of the building. He managed to trip himself when he tried to run after her. (Or him. Or it. Tom later appends the adjective "androgynous" tactfully to the final description.) Three theater-grade sets of Dolby speakers are currently doing impressions of major seismic events on the premises; the fact that we didn't hear the alarm from the emergency exit doesn't mean a thing.
For now, save for frustration, indignation, and a side order of humiliation, Tom appears to be okay. Except for one thing. One minor thing.
He's covered head-to-toe in some kind of green slime.
#####
Morrison is waiting for us in the lobby. Under the nicotined light of the Brooker's stalactite deco-nightmare chandeliers, we examine the slime more closely. Venkman scrapes some of it into a petri dish "for a friend."
I swipe my own fingerful from Tom's shoulder and sniff it. "It smells like lime jello."
"It's not lime jello, Maggie," Venkman says, as he Sharpies a label on his "friend's" sample.
I snort at him. Tom is staring at my finger. "Please don't eat that, Margaret."
Frankly, I've had enough. Of Venkman, of Tom being... Tom. Of the whole ridiculous scenario. I taste the substance. "You're right, Doctor Venkman. It's not lime jello. It's key-lime pie filling."
Tom's expression has morphed into a strange mix of intense focus and utter horror. A long urping sound burbles up from his gut. Then he's running for the men's room with the particle accelerator still strapped to his back. Plaster chips from the walls as the case wedges sideways in the doorframe.
At that moment, 2001 lets out. The auditorium doors open to the sweeping strains of "The Blue Danube," and people throng the lobby. We shift back, out of the flow of traffic. Tom remains absent. A young man walking by with his friends holds up his phone for them to see. "Check it out. Keir Dullyea was puking in the men's room."
Not a blip from any of our equipment, I think. Which might be accounted for by the lead shielding traditional to theater projection booths. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I wait for Mr. Morrison to finish overseeing the exodus from the main auditorium. When the lobby is empty, I motion for him to re-join us.
"Prepping for your Halloween Haunted Spectacular, Mr. Morrison? Nice." I hand Morrison the flyer I found in his office. One of a bundled hundred or so he left in plain view on the top of his desk. "We just drove seventy miles so that you or your employees could ruin my colleague's suit."
"And potentially blow up half of Illinois," Venkman says. "Just a minor detail—"
"Doctor Venkman," I intone, "stop."
Venkman winks at Morrison. "Large and in charge: that's our Marge."
Morrison refuses to stop the act. He looks from Venkman to me with an expression of confusion worthy either of an Academy Award or a major political nomination. "But— but—"
Tom joins us. His face is clammy. His skin looks like the white of a hard-boiled egg. He's made a half-hearted attempt to clean his face. His suit, however, is a total loss.
I swipe a fingerful of the guck remaining on his left shoulder and hold it up for Morrison to see. "Pudding, Mr. Morrison? I suggest that you use less food dye for the actual event. Otherwise, it might stain the carpet. Not that anyone would notice."
A whump from the direction of the main entrance. All four of us turn to look. Outside, a large brown tweed overcoat seems to lie crumpled on the sidewalk. Then the overcoat flutters loosely around the edges, gets its legs under itself, and transforms into a great horned owl. The owl glowers in at us though the double set of heavy glass doors, takes three hopping steps, and wings off into the night.
I wipe my finger on Morrison's lapel. "And with that, Mr. Morrison, we are leaving."
#####
One of the letters in the neon above the theater entrance has shorted out during the time we were inside. BRO KER, the sign now reads. I have to admit it makes a sad kind of sense.
#####
We're back in the Bonneville, heading home. Again, I am driving; again, Venkman has called shotgun.
"It's okay, Toni," he calls, over his shoulder, to Tom. "Everyone barfs the first time they get slimed— Well, some people— Well, okay: not everyone. I didn't. But, for you, it's totally understandable."
Tom, surrounded by equipment cases and Olive Garden take-home boxes, glares at the back of Venkman's head. His pale eyes seem to glow in the dim light. The whole car smells like spaghetti.
#####
Venkman's "It's okay" in the Pontiac is one of two. The second comes a week later, in the form of an e-mail:
It's okay, Maggie. I took care of Shackleton. Coffee? Luau? Breakfast in bed?
I won't give him the satisfaction of asking what in the hell he means. "Reply," "NO," and "send": that's all you get, Doctor Venkman.
As for what Shackleton gets: a can of cat food with four holes punched in the lid, duct-taped to the underside of his desk. A note that reads "You stink, Shittleton." Shackleton will find the note— and the can— one month from now.
In the meantime, I file a complaint regarding Doctor Venkman with his department head. But, as usual, Doctor Egon Spengler refuses me the courtesy of a response.
#####
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THE END