"Right then, let's find out exactly who this guy is" Jake said gritting his teeth at the idea of some guy in his little sister's room.
"Or whether or not she's mental" Brad added with a snigger.
To say that the guy looked surprised to be addressed in this manner would have been a massive understatement. He didn't just look surprised. He actually looked over his shoulder, to see if it was really him I was talking to.
"Well I suppose spending a long time dead with people walking through you, you wouldn't expect someone to start talking to you" David said smiling.
But of course, the only thing behind him was the window, and through it, the incredible view of Carmel Bay. So then he turned back to look at me, and must have seen that my gaze was fastened directly on his face, since he breathed, "Nombre de Dios" in a manner that would have had Gina, who has a thing for Latino guys, swooning.
"Looks like you're out of luck mate" Brad said. "You're no where near being Latino, at least I have dark hair and speak some Spanish"
"Oh shut up" Jake grumbled.
"It's no use calling on your higher power," I informed him, as I swung the pink-tasselled chair to my new dressing table around, and straddled it.
"Suze! You're not supposed to sit on your chair like that!" Helen scolded.
"In case you haven't noticed, he isn't paying a whole lot of attention to you. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left you here to fester for-" I took in his outfit, which looked a lot like something they'd have worn on The Wild, Wild West. "What is it, a hundred and fifty years? Has it really been that long since you croaked?"
"He's not going to understand that" David said shaking his head.
He stared at me with eyes that were as black and liquid as ink. "What is...croaked?" he asked, in a voice that sounded rusty from disuse.
I rolled my eyes. "Kicked the bucket" I translated. "Checked out. Popped off. Bit the dust." When I saw from his perplexed expression that he still didn't understand, I said with some exasperation. "Died"
"Oh yes, very tactful Suze" Andy murmured sarcastically while his sons were snickering quietly to themselves at Suze's attitude.
"Oh" he said. "Died." But instead of answering my question, he shook his head. "I don't understand," he said, in tones of wonder. "I don't understand how it is that you can see me. All these years, no one has ever-"
"Yeah" I said, cutting him off. I hear this kind of thing a lot, you understand. "well listen, the times, you know, they are a'changin'. So what's your glitch?"
"Again, he's not going to understand that"
He blinked at me with those big dark eyes. His eyelashes were longer than mine. It isn't often I run into a ghost who also happens to be a hottie,
"Thank god, I hate to think there's guys I can't threaten to take care of our little girl" Andy said to Helen, while looking worried at the fact that this guy, this ghost was not only good looking but in his stepdaughter's room.
but this guy...boy, he must have been something back when he was alive because here he was dead and I was already trying to catch a peek at what was going on beneath the white shirt he was wearing very much open at the throat,
"I don't want to know!" Brad wailed clutching his ears. "Suze is supposed to be a loser who has no sex life, stop ruining my view of the world!"
"Brad...she has a sex life get over it" David said rolling his eyes at his older brother's stupidity.
"Suzie hasn't really got one has she David?" Helen asked worriedly.
"Honestly Mom...i think Jesse's far too honourable to do anything before marriage much to Suze's everlasting disappointment" David whispered. "Just don't tell Brad that"
Exposing quite a bit of his chest, and some of his stomach, too. Do ghosts have six-packs? This was not something I had ever had occasion – or a desire – to explore before.
Not that I was about to let myself get distracted by that kind of thing now. I'm a professional, after all.
The three brothers snorted.
"Glitch?" he echoed. Even his voice was liquid, his English as flat and unaccented as I fancied my own was, slight Brooklyn blurring of my t's aside. He clearly had some Spaniard in him, as his Dios and colouring indicated, but he was as American as I was – or as American as someone who was born before California became a state could be.
"Oh dear" Helen said. "Poor Jesse, this ghost sounds like he looks just like him. I hope Suze isn't rebounding or anything"
David was finding it very difficult to keep a straight face.
"Yeah" I cleared my throat. He had turned a little and put a boot up on the pale blue cushion that covered the window seat, and I had seen definitive proof that yes, ghosts could indeed have six-packs. His abdominal muscles were deeply ridged, and covered with a light dusting of silky black hair.
Brad had now shut his eyes and began to sing loudly to block Jake's reading.
"Brad shut up! Your sister is allowed to have thoughts" Andy snapped, irritated at his middle son's reaction. "Just as long she doesn't act on them, everything is fine"
I swallowed. Hard.
"Glitch" I said. "Problem. Why are you still here?" he looked at me, his expression blank, but interested. I elaborated. "Why haven't you gone to the other side?"
He shook his head. Have I mentioned that his hair was short and dark and sort of crisp-looking, like if you touched it, it would be really, really thick? "I don't know what you mean"
"See, he really sounds like he looks like Jesse" Helen said to the others.
I was getting sort of warm, but I had already taken off my leather jacket, so I didn't know what to do about it. I couldn't very well take off anything else with him sitting there watching me.
"You better not take anything else off in front of him!" Andy and Helen shouted at the book.
This realization might have contributed to my suddenly foul mood.
"What do you mean, you don't know what I mean?" I snapped pushing some hair away from my eyes. "You're dead. You don't belong here. You're supposed to be off doing whatever it is that happens to people after they're dead. Rejoicing in heaven, or burning in hell, or being reincarnated, or ascending another plane of consciousness or whatever. You're not supposed to be just...well...just hanging around"
"We really should enrol Suze into some anger management classes" David said. "Especially if one comment is going to set her off onto a rant"
He looked at me thoughtfully, balancing his elbow on his uplifted knee, his arm sort of dangling. "And what if I just happen to like just hanging around?" he wanted to know.
"He's teasing her!" Brad said gleefully. "She hates being teased"
I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling he was making fun of me.
"Duh!"
And I don't like being made fun of. I really don't. People back in Brooklyn used to do it all the time –
"Oh...well..." Brad looked uncomfortable. "Sorry" he mumbled.
Well, until I learned how effectively a fist connecting their nose could shut them up.
"And suddenly all my sympathy for her vanished" Brad said flatly remembering very well how hard she can hit.
I wasn't ready to hit this guy – not yet. But I was close. I mean, I'd just travelled a gazillion miles for what seemed like days in order to live with a bunch of stupid boys; I still had to unpack; I had already practically made my mother cry; and then I find a ghost in my bedroom. Can you blame me for being...well, short with him?
"Look," I said, standing up fast, and swinging my leg around the back of the chair. "You can do all the hanging around you want, amigo. Slack away. I don't really care. But you can't do it here"
"Jesse" he said, not moving.
Everyone was silent. David suddenly found a hole in his jumper more interesting while his family processed what they just found out.
"Jesse...is...alive isn't he?" Helen asked Andy.
"Of course he is" Andy said firmly. "We've met him, we've eaten with him, talked to him, shook his hand..."
"So...somehow he was brought back to life" Brad said. "Or...Suze is completely insane, met him somewhere else and created a supernatural story for their 'love'...i like the insane theory better"
There was more silence.
"No way that this ghost is Jesse" Brad said crossing his arms. "I'm willing to bet my surfboard on it"
"If it is Jesse..." Jake said finally. "That means he's been in Suze's bedroom before we met him...probably seen her undress. I'm going to kill that guy! I'll make sure his ghost won't be able to come back again to perve on Suze!"
"What?"
"Yes that's how we feel" Helen muttered.
"You called me amigo. I thought you might like to know I have a name. It's Jesse"
I nodded. "Right. That figures. Well, fine. Jesse, then. You can't stay here, Jesse"
"You tell him Suze!" Jake said before going back to reading.
"And you?" Jesse was smiling at me now. He had a nice face. A good face. The kind of face that, back in my old high school, would have gotten him elected prom king in no time flat. The kind of face Gina would have cut out of a magazine and taped to her bedroom wall.
Not that he was pretty. Not at all. Dangerous was how he looked. Mighty dangerous.
"Jesse never acted dangerous, he was always ever so polite and such a good boy" Helen said smiling. "This can't be him, must be some other Jesse. Our Jesse is probably a replacement...oh dear...poor Jesse"
"And me, what?" I knew I was being rude. I didn't care.
"What is your name?"
I glared at him. "Look. Just tell me what you want, and get out. I'm hot, and I want to change clothes. I don't have time for-"
He interrupted,
"Brave man" Brad muttered.
As amiable as if he hadn't heard me talking at all. "That woman – your mother – called you Suzie" his black eyes were bright on me. "Short for Susan?"
Helen wrinkled her nose. "Susan is far too boring for her"
"Susannah" I said correcting him automatically. "As in, 'Don't You Cry For Me'"
He smiled. "I know the song"
"Yeah. It was probably in the top forty the year you were born, huh?"
"He's not going to understand that"
He just kept on smiling. "So this is your room now, is it Susannah?"
"Yeah" I said. "Yeah, this is my room now. So you're going to have to clear out"
Helen sighed. "Didn't I teach this girl any manners?" she asked the ceiling.
"I'm going to have to clear out?" he raised one black eyebrow. "This has been my home for a century and a half. Why do I have to leave it?"
"Because." I was getting really mad. Mostly because I was so hot, and I wanted to open a window, but the windows were behind him, and I didn't want to get that close to him. "This is my room. I'm not sharing it with some dead cowboy"
"Ooh he's not going to like that" David said. "If he was staying at the boarding house he was most likely rather rich and owned some land. Calling him a cowboy would imply he had no home or family to care for. It would also imply he was poor"
"Suze always had a knack of insulting people" Brad said knowingly.
That got to him. He slammed his foot back down on the floor – hard – and stood up. I instantly wished I hadn't said anything. He was tall, way taller than me, and in my ankle boots I'm five eight.
"I am not a cowboy" he informed me, angrily. He added something in Spanish in an undertone, but since I had taken French, I had no idea what he was saying. At the same time, my antique mirror hanging over my new dressing table started to wobble dangerously on the hook that held it to the wall. This was not due, I knew, to a California earthquake, but to the agitation of the ghost in front of me, whose psychic abilities were obviously of a kinetic bent.
"Not possible, can't be...how many ghosts had we been near?!" Jake muttered under his breath.
That's the thing about ghosts: they're so touchy! The slightest thing can set them off.
"Nah, that's just people. Suze isn't a people person is she?"
"Whoa," I said, holding up both my hands, palms outwards. "Down. Down boy"
"My family" Jesse raged, wagging a finger in my face. "Worked like slaves to make something of themselves in this country, but never, never as a vaquero-"
"Huh...what's that?" Jake asked.
"Cowboy" Brad said automatically.
Everyone stared at him.
"What? I paid attention in Spanish!"
"Hey" I said. And that's when I made my big mistake. I reached out, not liking the finger he was jabbing at me, and grabbed it, hard, yanking on his hand and pulling him towards me so I could be sure he heard me as I hissed. "Stop with the mirror already. And stop shoving your finger in my face. Do it again, and I'll break it"
"Suzie!" Helen shouted, shocked at her daughter's behaviour.
"Hang on, the dude's a ghost, shouldn't she gone right through him?" Brad asked.
I flung his hand away, and saw, with satisfaction, that the mirror had stopped shaking. But then I happened to glance at his face.
Ghosts don't have blood. How can they? They aren't alive. But I swear, at that moment, all the blood that had once been there had evaporated just at that moment.
Not being alive, and not possessing blood, it follows that ghosts aren't made of matter, either. So it didn't make sense that I had been able to grab his finger. My hand should have passed right through him. Right?
"Right"
Wrong.
"Eh?"
That's how it works for most people. But not for people like me. Not for the mediators. We can see ghosts, we can talk to ghosts, and if necessary, we can kick a ghost's butt.
"Great, so now we have a guy that we can't see, hear, feel but Suze can, in Suze's bedroom without us knowing" Jake said summing up the situation.
"I really, really don't like this" Andy said gritting his teeth.
But this isn't something I like to go advertising. I try to avoid touching them – touching anybody, really – as much as possible. If all attempts at mediation have failed, and I have to use a little physical coercion on a recalcitrant spirit, I generally prefer him or her not to know beforehand that I am capable of doing so. Sneak attacks are always advisable when dealing with members of the underworld, who are notoriously dirty fighters.
"Nah, they're just probably good and she won't admit she got her butt kicked fair and square" Brad said.
Jesse, looking down at his finger as if I'd burned a hole through it, seemed perfectly incapable of saying anything. It was probably the first time he'd been touched by anyone in a century and a half. That kind of thing can blow a guy's mind. Especially a dead guy.
"Let's hope that's all you touch"
"Oh Andy, Suzie isn't likely to hop into bed with him. She has values and is a good girl deep down" Helen said. "And this boy sounds far too honourable to do anything, like our Jesse, the alive one"
I took advantage of his astonishment, and said, in my sternest, most no-nonsense tone.
"Her teacher voice" Brad translated.
"Now, look, Jesse. This is my room, understand? You can't stay here. You've either got to let me help you get to where you're supposed to go, or you're going to have to find some other house to haunt. I'm sorry but that's the way it is"
"So this is the end of dead Jesse? I hope so because if that guy comes back to perve on her while she's changing..."
Jesse looked up from his finger, his expression still one of utter disbelief. "Who are you?" he asked, softly. "What kind of...girl are you?"
He hesitated so long before he said the word girl that it was clear he wasn't at all certain it was appropriate in my case. This kind of bugged me.
"Rightly so" Helen murmured in agreement, feeling a twinge of irritation of the implication that her daughter wasn't female.
I mean, I may not have been the most popular girl in school, but no one ever denied I was an actual girl. Truck drivers honk at me at crosswalks and then, and not because they want me to get out of the way. Construction workers sometimes holler rude things at me, especially when I wear my leather miniskirt.
"I don't like the sound of that" Andy frowned.
"Oh leave it Andy, it was in New York" Helen sighed.
I am not unattractive or mannish in any way. Sure, I'd just threatened to break his finger off, nit that didn't mean I wasn't a girl, for God's sake!
"I'll tell you what kind of girl I'm not," I said, crankily. "I am not the kind of girl who's looking to share her room with a member of the opposite sex. Understand me? So either you move out, or I force you out. It's entirely up to you. I'll give you some time to think about it. But when I get back here, Jesse, I want you gone"
"YES GO YOU PERVERT!"
I turned round and left.
I had to. I don't usually lose arguments with ghosts, but I had a feeling I was losing that one, and badly. I shouldn't have been so short with him, and I shouldn't have been rude. I don't know what came over me, I really don't. I just...
I guess I just wasn't expecting to find the ghost of such a cute guy in my bedroom, is all.
God, I thought, as I stormed down the hall. What am I going to do if he doesn't leave? I won't be able to change clothes in my own room!
"You do what you always do" Brad said patronisingly to the book. "Punch his face in, get rid off him and trash a room"
"She's going to punch your face in if she hears your tone" David pointed out.
Give him a little time, a voice inside my head went. It was a voice I'd very carefully avoided telling my mom's therapist about.
"Hearing voices is the first sign of insanity" Brad sang to the book.
"Talking to objects must be the second then" Jake shot back on Suze's behalf.
Give him a little time. He'll come around. They always do.
Well, most of the time, anyway.
"And that's it" Jake said. "Who wants to read the next entry?"
"I will" Brad said taking the book from Jake. "I love hearing all of this, it's prove that Suze is a nutcase and I'm the good one"
"Yeah but it doesn't stop you being the annoying one" Jake pointed out.
"And the lazy one" David added.
"And the dirty one" Andy said grinning.
"And the smelly one" Helen giggled.
Brad looked much put out that even his parents were teasing him and huffily turned the page for the next instalment of Suze's insane ramblings.