hope, pt. 5

Nicholas.
Telling you that you bugged the shit out of me is probably not going to come as a great surprise, since I'm pretty sure you did it on purpose. But there was still something compelling about you, even if I couldn't figure it out. I remember sometimes you'd ask me why I even liked you, which was a fair question, and I'd always say something like "I don't know; you're a mystery, I guess."

And it's true. You were really the only thing I cared about, and it was as inexplicable as you were, and it was spiraling out of control and I had no idea how to stop it, and everything I did just made things worse. Then, without any sort of warning, you disappeared. You'd gone off to London, according to the letter I got weeks later. And you seemed almost apologetic.

You needn't have been. You needn't have worried about anything. I was relieved, at first, and then the future seemed brighter, like a cloud had been lifted from my life. There was nothing left to worry about. I could conquer the world, just then.

The feeling didn't last, of course, but that's the thing about hope, isn't it? It never does.

hope, pt. 4

Melissa.
I've never been easy to get along with, and I've never been good at actually dealing with the problems that causes. That's life, I guess. I always believed that it would all work out somehow, which maybe is why I never got good at dealing with it. It always worked out without my help, so why bother, right?

So that's why I disappeared without telling anyone. I was angry and confused and afraid, and I made some mistakes. We both made mistakes, I think. For a few months I didn't have to worry about that. I could focus on enjoying myself, seeing the sights--I never told you about that trip, did I? I brought back all these stories and I never got to share them.

Finally I bought a return ticket, and the first thing I did is I called you and I asked if you could pick me up at the airport. I was elated that you said yes. We hadn't left on good terms, and you probably had every right to be angry at me for disappearing. And you didn't ask where I'd been or why I'd left without saying goodbye or anything. You just asked when and where.

I also never got to thank you for that. For the last week of my vacation I felt utterly serene, convinced that I had changed, that the world had changed, all of it for the better. There was nothing at all to fear about anything. I loved you for that.

hope, pt. 3

Alex.
I guess I was pretty depressed for a while after it all went down, but I never paid attention to that sort of thing. There's too much life going on to worry about feeling sad, you know? That was her problem, really. We weren't so different, but instead of soldiering on she'd just spend all her time worrying about it, like worrying ever did anything. The best cure is to just pretend nothing's wrong.

It was the weirdest thing, though. Suddenly I come home from work and she's just waiting for me like nothing changed, and I felt like . . . like feeling the first raindrops after months of nothing but sunshine. I'd been in this long stagnant period and suddenly things were alive again. I guess I was afraid, too, because what the fuck did she even want? But it was like getting a second chance.

That's the thing about hope. When it's strong enough, when it's real, it makes you ignore everything else, especially when you're someone like me, who says "fuck it" to all the second-guessing bullshit. Because I realized right then that life was shit when she wasn't around, and I was just lying to myself. And all these visions of a beautiful future started dancing through my head. And for a little while, I really believed it.

hope, pt. 2

Eleutheria.
For the longest time, I thought that plans would be a good replacement for hope. Plans and projects and other things I'd sink my energy into, because all my life I'd been told that's what you had to do in order to get somewhere. It never really agreed with my temperament, but I always thought I could bring my temperament in check. I just needed to work harder, do more.

Then--well, some shit went down, and at some point as I was trying to deal with it all the idea came to me to just let it all go. I quit my job and told my landlord I'd be leaving, packed up, and left. Then I sat down in my living room and turned all the lights out and lay there on the couch staring at the ceiling.

Usually when I tell this story, this part goes at the end. It's strange putting it at the beginning of something. This is the point where everything turned around, the point where I realized that the only person I needed to make happy was myself. I remember then thinking that for once I didn't need to have grand aspirations. All I needed to do was exist.

And of course this has to go at the end of the story, doesn't it? It's a logical end point: a key change, the promise of happiness in the future. That's how stories work. And I'll take stories over the real world any day.

hope, pt. 1

Eris.
One of the most vivid memories I have from the day my entire life quite literally burned down is this: suddenly I felt free. Of course there were all these other emotions going through my head--I still have all the lists I made from the time, all the coincidences. How ridiculously unlikely it all was--not just this, but everything, everything, everything. I still have this whole thing I wrote about how there's really no such thing as coincidence or even probability. Either something happened or it didn't.

My mind, my sense of being, my sense of self, were completely shattered. And yet I remember, somewhere between the panic, this beautiful sense that now I could go anywhere. I could do anything. For once I felt empowered. I didn't care that buying a bus ticket east was a terrible decision. I fucking did it. The consequences didn't matter anymore because there were none left.

And I remember so clearly the feeling that anything could happen. I could make everything right again, all the things I'd fucked up so many years before. My house being destroyed, everything I own being destroyed--I felt this sense of purpose. For a few brief hours, sitting on a bus full of strangers--that was the happiest I'd been in my life.

I don't think I ever told anyone that. I didn't know where it fit in the story. I guess I still don't, but somehow it seems important now. Maybe someone else can make more sense of it than I can.

programming note

First of all: happy 2013. I hope it's a good one.

I've always had a certain affinity for the new year; certainly I've written about it here a few times. Of course, the years all run together eventually, and did that really happen more than two years ago now? and so on and so on. Maybe that's why I think it's important to periodically stop and take inventory.

We're coming up on two weeks into the new year, and I've been putting off this project I've been planning for a while, for reasons which are unconvincing and unimportant. It came from a casual suggestion sometime in November, I think, when I was telling someone about my ghost stories. "Oh, do you do that for every month?"

And I said, "I do now." Not ghost stories, of course, though there are ghosts in all my stories. I tried a bit in November and December but I didn't have the direction I wanted. Then I remembered another project I wanted to do, which is ultimately inspired by Jason Webley's excellent Counterpoint album ("Twelve songs in twelve keys, with recurring themes and each song written with a balancing counterpart," according to the website.)

There are twelve months in the year, and we're starting with the first one. January is a month about hope--there will be plenty of time for regrets later.

Finally, I'm still writing Vaudeville Ghosts, which is different from the things I put up here, and probably a little bit weird, but I'd like it if you would read it all the same. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.

So, I shall leave you with a belated New Year's benediction. We didn't do anything to earn this shiny new year we've been given, but by whatever you hold sacred, I hope you get some damn good use out of it before you have to trade it in. Twelve whole months! Let's build some regrets together.

Ever yours, ever truly,
RM

two zero one two

I. This is more than I ever could have hoped for, and sometimes I wonder if it's more than I deserve.

II. Waiting out the weather.

III. A kiss to remember me by. A strange, fevered evening, watching the world through wormwood. This all has to end soon, and I don't know how to express how perfect it's been. Or maybe I'm just not able to.

IV. We get an actual spring, and it gives way into an endless summer.

V. Irreconcilable differences.

VI. A wedding that actually makes sense, when there are so few things that I understand anymore.

VII. The ivory tower is truly no longer my home. You have shown me this much, and for that I owe you my thanks.

VIII. Music that tears itself apart.

IX. No, really.

X. Escaped, and none too soon.

XI. I wish you would understand: I am not hiding from you. I am hiding from everybody.

XII. Reconciliation after all.

XIII. We keep talking about this. I feel like there is something I need to say, or that you need me to say, and I don't know what it is.

XIV. The storm has let up, I think.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 3

There was a time I was meant to lead my people out of the darkness. Maybe I still am--I don't know. There's a lot of things that seemed certain that have become strangely nebulous in the recent weeks.

It went like this:

The sky was clear, for once. After weeks of what seemed like perpetual darkness and endless cloud cover, the night sky shone cold and bright on the earth. I had spent several weeks without the guidance of the stars, so that night I dropped everything and went out into the garden to contemplate. A crescent moon hung in the sky, and the stars burned brightly. And every single one of them was wrong.

This was not the sky I had left behind weeks before, the sky that told of a golden age for my people. I could not read this one at all. These stars were simply not mine. So, for the first time since I could remember, I found myself feeling doubt. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps everything was wrong.

I had thought myself alone in the garden, but as I stared into these foreign stars I noticed that there was someone else there. He told me that there was another way. He indulged my questions. He convinced me that the life I had been preparing for for so long--the world I had been born into--did not need to be the future. I could be myself, happy and free, untroubled by these stars.

In my weakness, I said yes. In my heart, I hoped to have both worlds.

Not one of my followers heard this exchange, but there must have been some change within me. Over the following days they all left me, one by one. My words no longer held the sway they once did. Ultimately I found myself alone. And the man I had spoken to spoke the truth: in my solitude I found myself free. And freedom was a thing more beautiful and more dreadful than I could possibly have imagined.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 2

The evening was winding down and found us on the porch with a bottle of whiskey to keep us warm as we watched the rain come. Our conversations always took a turn for the philosophical (her influence, not mine), and I mentioned a project I was hesitate to work on because I didn't want to bother anyone. She looked at me with a drunken intensity. "Man, don't be such a fucking coward. The only things I regret are the things I didn't do."

We'd known each other for years. Sometimes I thought of it as more of an alliance of mutual convenience than a friendship--we'd decided to be there for each other because nobody else would. So I was the one she told all of her secrets, just like she was the one who got to see the darkness I tried to hide from the world. We kept each other in check.

I've always felt that anyone who uses the line about regretting things you didn't do sincerely is either a liar or a dangerous sociopath. Every single living human being is capable of acts of unfathomable monstrosity, just as they are capable of doing things so amazingly kind you find yourself telling the story years later. So I said something like "you sure about that?" and hinted at one of the stories she'd told me years before.

"That's not the point. You always miss the point." The point, she explained, was that I needed to stop being such a fucking coward. And she was right, of course. As ever, my quest for accuracy in all things caused me to miss the point completely.

One more thing I regret, I suppose.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 1

She regrets that she believed him, or perhaps merely that she believed in him. She's not really sure what precisely she believed that was wrong, but privately she suspects that she simply wanted him to be an entirely different person than he was. And, worse, she expected him to play along. And he would persist in not doing so, and they would both get angry. She regrets some of the things she said when she was angry--she regrets that anger has a way of making you say things you really mean.

He regrets that he meant every word. He always means every word, and this gets him into trouble, because it's far more important to him than saving his relationships with the people around him. Or perhaps that's simply his excuse. Sometimes he imagines that his obsessive adherence to the truth is really just his way of denying his anger. He regrets that he doesn't understand the self he is so obsessed with protecting. He suspects that she understood his self better than he did, and he regrets that she never shared that understanding.

She regrets the dim sense that she lives in a bubble. She has overcome her reclusive tendencies and surrounded herself with people that are all amazing and brilliant and clever and witty, who talk about the things she likes talking about and make the sort of art that she likes to consume. She regrets that she feels claustrophobic sometimes with all these amazing people around, that sometimes all she wants to do is curl up with a book and shut out the world. She wishes that people understood how wonderful her life is. She wishes that she understood how wonderful her life is.

He regrets his tendency to replay conversations in his mind and relive the moment as if it were happening right now. He has always been fascinated by the idea of alternate history--if this one thing had happened slightly differently, the entire world would be different today. He feels that most of his conversations are similar. He could have done it differently, done it right. He knows that this is wrong, of course, but his mind refuses to listen. His mind refuses to do a lot of things he wishes that it would.

november stories, pt. 1

Let's just make this a thing.

This is a month where change happens, where the wind howls through the streets and rips the leaves from the trees, leaving them to dance and swirl endlessly, tracking themselves everywhere. It's not a gentle breeze, either. It's the relentless kind, the kind that saps the warmth from your bones. It's the kind of cold you can only really get in the death throes of autumn. This is a cold far more real than anything winter can throw at us. This is a month where everything is stripped bare and left raw and gasping for warmth.

I've written so many words about these pale blue skies, about distance and alienation. The skies are never right, especially in November. But it was a November, long ago, off a back road somewhere in Montana, I think, when I last trusted a sky. I stepped out of the car and stared at the stars, so bright and clear on this bitter November night, and I smiled. I could have stayed out there forever if my traveling companion hadn't woken up and ruined the moment with the dome light of the car. "What are you doing? Are you all right?" I let her drive after that.

I never thought I'd have a moment like that in the city, but the other night, between the buildings that make up Seattle's skyline, this beautiful pale moon was rising. I stood there in the middle of the street, with the leaves whipping round me, and suddenly felt like the sky was right. Someone shouted at me from a passing car and I smiled and waved and kept walking. It didn't matter. There would be warmth again. Things were going to change, finally, truly.

echoes

The day before I left for good--right before I actually told her I was leaving for good--she started asking me prying questions. Some of them felt like an interrogation, but mostly it felt like she was trying to get me to open up. (That's probably fair: I'd certainly closed off since I decided I was leaving, which I guess is why I hadn't told her yet.)

What stuck with me about the questions, though, was how her version of events seemed so different from how I remembered. She asked why I'd done something that I remembered her doing. (We had a particularly heated argument. We got drunk and she started kissing me, then abruptly stopped and said she just remembered what I'd said earlier, and she couldn't stand sleeping next to me. I slept on the couch in one of her t-shirts and prayed her roommates wouldn't notice. She asked me why I'd left to sleep on the couch that night.) I wondered which one of us was wrong. Or maybe we were both wrong. I felt certain I remembered things correctly, but I'd long since realized that certainty is usually the best sign that you're very, very wrong.

So I spent the evening lying and evading questions. I probably should have felt guilty about it, but I'd told so many lies since I came (starting with, I suppose, "it's good to see you again") that I hardly even noticed. It seemed easier and more natural than just telling her that I remembered things differently (and starting another argument, prompting a question like "why do you always pretend you don't remember the unacceptable things you've done?"). So I dodged questions for an evening, until it was too much. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I won't be coming back."

Neither of us said another word that night. She kissed me like she meant it then. Until morning we could both pretend things had been different.

ghost story for the day of the dead

You can never cross the same river twice.

One last ghost story, then--though I suppose all stories are ghost stories eventually. This one came after a summer spent at sea on a salvage vessel, so far north there were days where I thought I'd never see another sunset. But even endless days have to end sometime, and eventually the dark crept back into the world. We were trying to get as much done as we could before the winter made our work impossible.

This was the night of the equinox. I didn't have a calendar, but I could feel it in the air: this was the day that summer was finally in retreat. So I went above decks, and I watched the ocean, and my thoughts turned dark. How many men had died here, under this moon, on this ocean? How many had never received a proper burial, and were left adrift forever?

A truly ancient sailor's ghost joined me on the decks, then. I don't know how he got there, or how long he'd been standing there. I didn't dare speak, but I watched. At first I thought he didn't know I was there. Then he turned to me and looked at me with empty eyes and told me his story, which I sensed was no longer merely his story. It was the story of a man who had left everything behind for a life adrift, and who fled that life, terrified that he would be adrift forever. It was the story of a man running: running from stability, running from chaos, until ultimately running was all he knew.

He died at sea. He could just as easily have died in some quiet seaside town. What I think he wanted to impart most is that he did not die at peace. He seemed relieved, having told his story, but he did not go away. I sat with him, and we waited for the first dawn of the winter. Then I went below decks and slept like a stone. I'd never been so eager to return home.

ghost stories for october, pt. 7

There's been a strange flickering light on in front of a house down the street for a while now. It's not flickering in the traditional horror movie sense, where the flickers are fast and faint. It's flickering like someone toggling the switch, on and off, trying to send messages in Morse code. As far as I can tell, no one lives in that house. It's not abandoned, as such, but it's vacant.

I'm okay with abandoned houses, but vacant houses terrify me. There's life to an abandon. A vacant house is a soulless icon of our weird society. So for the longest time I've avoided walking down that street. But then the light started to flicker. I couldn't make out any pattern or code, but I became convinced that it was calling to me. People told me it's probably just the electric going weird. These things happen. But not in a vacant house like that. They keep them pristine.

So tonight I finally went over. The light flickered intensely as I arrived, then went quiet. So I sat on the front porch and said "all right, I'm here." The front door opened, so I walked inside. It was still furnished--or perhaps the furnishings had been provided by the property owners, to make this lifeless space appear lived in. There was about a week's worth of dust on everything, and all trace of the previous residents had been scrubbed clean. Not even a leftover box of crackers in the pantry.

I sat on the pristine couch for a while, not sure what to say. The light started flickering again so I started talking. Just telling stories, mostly. Things that had happened that day, the sort of stories that I would have forgotten by morning had I not told them. The light stayed calm as I talked, only flickering if I would pause or ask a question.

Eventually a silence fell and the flickering did not continue. I let myself out and returned home. It flickered once, as I left, in what I guess must be a gesture of farewell. I'm not sure what I'll do if the flickering comes back.

ghost stories for october, pt. 6

I grew up in a desert of rock and sage, with ghosts haunting the windswept canyons--the ghosts of everyone who died having ever called this place a home. When my lady died, I knew her ghost would find her way back there, and I knew that I'd have to walk through the desolate floodplains to find her. I fancied myself an Orpheus, wandering the desert with a song--her song, our song. I thought perhaps I could bring her back.

I walked the canyon and sang for her until I could sing no more, my throat parched from the unnatural dryness of the desert. I remembered reading long ago that it hadn't always been a desert here. Once it had been green and fertile, but the ghosts filled the wild, and even ghosts get thirsty. They drank until there was no more water to be found, until only the faintest echo of the memory of water remained. I remembered coming here with my lover and telling her that the spot where I now stood was once a grand waterfall. It seemed so implausible.

I found some shade and opened my bottle of water for the first time, and I drank. And that's when the ghosts came. They came at a distance and watched, as if expecting something. I took my time. I was determined not to let them frighten me. I had come here to win back my lover's lost soul. Then, when my throat seemed less parched, I began to sing again, except this time my voice refused to work. The words stuck in my throat. The tune cracked and faltered. And the ghosts, one by one, began to leave.

To this day I tell myself that the last one to leave was not my lady, that I was imagining it. But those eyes--I'd swear I would know those eyes anywhere. But leave she did, and I knew that my quest had failed. I returned from the desert with no water and no voice. And I smiled and told myself that Orpheus also returned home empty-handed.

ghost stories for october, pt. 5

He died in an elevator because he could never find the right floor. None of the buttons made any sense. It's like he entered an elevator that didn't really exist, and couldn't find the way back to the real world. People would come on and off, but they all seemed like ghosts, all weird and insubstantial and kind of fuzzy around the edges. The elevator never reached the ground floor.

He tried leaving once, actually, but he descended several hundred flights of stairs before giving up and trying to take the elevator. He ended up on the same one. From there he just kept trying different buttons, sure that one of them would take him to the exit. Within the confines of the elevator he lost all track of time, if time even still existed. It must have been several days, but eventually he died of thirst.

He doesn't know what happened to his body, but once he died he found his way back to the real elevators and found that even in death he couldn't get beyond them. The people seemed real now, but they didn't notice him. Sometimes they might get a strange chill or notice him reflected in the metal, or hear a strange noise or feel an ominous shudder. One day he expects to find the floor he was looking for. He just won't tell me what it is.

ghost stories for october, pt. 4

The problem with other ghosts, she told me, is they're all terribly provincial. There is no reason, apparently, for a ghost to limit their hauntings to the place where they died, or even a place that has some emotional resonance for them. "Mostly they just do that because they like to, I think." She has been a ghost for five years and she says she is not done seeing the world.

I met her in Brooklyn, a few years ago, at a pizza place that I liked mostly because it seemed so very Brooklyn. She caught me staring and we got to talking. This was her first time in New York, and she wanted to see all of the boroughs before she went on somewhere else. She seemed in a hurry to move on, like she just had this travel checklist she was working her way through.

I convinced her to hang out with me for a while, mostly because her only company for the past five years have been other ghosts. I'd been to New York before so I took her to the places I remembered--all the places a good friend had shown me before he became a ghost as well. Little dive bars and hot dog stands and abandoned subway tunnels.

And all the while she told me about the trips she had planned. Her next stop was Paris, apparently. She was going to haunt a plane out of JFK and see the Eiffel tower, the Champs Elysees, then move on to some vinyards in France. There was so much out there to see, she said. She didn't want to be one of those ghosts who got hung up on a place, who never left it. I asked her if she didn't like exploring every secret a place has to offer, and she didn't seem to understand.

She offered to try to send me a postcard, but coming from a ghost, that's kind of an empty promise. I wished her well and let her haunt some tourists who were heading to the airport.

ghost stories for october, pt. 3

As for myself, I don't think I've ever written about my affinity with ghosts, not really. I've written about ghosts, of course, and probably even about the ones I've seen, but there's always a piece missing. I see ghosts all the time. It's not an occasional thing. I can't turn it off.

It's not as bad as it sounds, but I know I can't talk about it without sounding weird. People think I'm staring into the middle distance or laughing or smiling for no reason. They always ask what's going on in my head, because my thoughts are clearly elsewhere, and I don't know what to tell them. There's just these ghosts here, and sometimes they're fascinating or hilarious or sad. Mostly they're happy to know that someone can see them. I've never been a ghost but it seems like a lonely existence. So when they can really see someone, they like to share their stories. That's what this is all about, right?

That's what this is all about, then. Telling the ghosts' stories. I don't know if they can tell when their story is being told but it feels right. I think they'd appreciate it. I tried asking them, but they never seem to answer. I'm not sure if they're even able to. There's a lot of things I don't think they can say or do. It's like dreaming, I think. Sometimes in dreams there's just something you can't even think, because if you did you'd stop dreaming. I don't know what happens when a ghost wakes up from his dream--maybe that's how you stop haunting, how you finally move on. I don't know.

I don't know why I can see them. I've always been able to and I've only recently come to terms with it. I guess I try to help where I can, but sometimes I wonder if there isn't something more to it, if I'm getting the whole picture, if I'm part of something bigger. But even if they could answer that, I don't think they would, so in the meanwhile I'll be here, telling stories, giving the ghosts a place to really live, at least for a little while.

ghost stories for october, pt. 2

When he died, he received a list of every person he had ever wronged, and he was left to assume that in order to continue to the afterlife, he would have to visit each of them and atone. The problem was this: he did not know what he had done to most of them. It was just a list of people. Some of them he didn't even know.

He started with the easy ones, the ones he knew. Most of them could not see him, but there was an emotional connection there. They could all sense a presence. Some of them called on paranormal experts to try to communicate, to understand what this spirit--his spirit--was doing here. Some of them seemed to feel comforted by his presence, as if they understood what it represented even if they didn't really know or couldn't articulate it. Others were frightened, moved out, avoided the rooms he liked to haunt. That hurt. Only one could actually see and really interact with him, but that story is personal. He made things right, and for that, he decided, an eternity of haunting this mortal coil was worth it.

From there he moved on to the ones he knew but didn't remember what he had done. Only a rare few even suspected the presence of a ghost, and they were the ones who found that sort of thing exciting. The rest had no idea, so he focused on the ones who cared. He gave them little hints and left them with ghost stories to tell their friends, and he felt like he had accomplished something even if no actual atonement happened.

Then he found himself drawn to the names that he did not recognize. Sometimes when he visited them he would recognize their faces, in a distant sort of way: didn't I once see you at a concert? Weren't you standing and smoking at a bus stop forever ago, looking ? But he knew nothing about them, and none of them seemed to notice his presence at all. He learned about each of them as much as he could. Their hopes and dreams and darkest secrets, all the little things they'd do in the confidence that nobody would notice. He watched each time they accumulated another name they'd have to visit when they died, and smiled to himself (because there was no one he could smile to) as they continued on unaware.

The last name on the list was his own. He was no longer frightened to face himself, for he had learned many stories and many secrets since he had died. He knew the truth behind the stories, the stories we don't tell, which are in some ways the most important stories there are. And at last he knew that he could face himself as judge and not be found wanting.

ghost stories for october, pt. 1

She is haunted by the ghosts of her old friends and lovers--all the ones she didn't really like very much, but put up with because she didn't know better. They come every night at midnight, and they sit down in her living room, or around her dining room table, and they drink ghostly red wine and they talk about art and literature, with a capital A and a capital L.

They follow her to bed--one of the old lovers, usually, who has had too much ghost wine. He talks about his disdain for popular literature while she undresses, reads passages disdainfully from the latest Twilight novel while she brushes her teeth, crawls into bed with her and whispers in her ear about things he doesn't feel qualify as art. And the party downstairs continues, so loud that she can't sleep.

They don't listen when she talks back. Sometimes the ghosts will listen politely and then respond as if she has said something entirely different. Other times they will interrupt her and talk over her. On the rare occasion they do actually respond to something she says, it is never in the spirit she intended it: she is singularly incapable of convincing them that she finds all of this insufferable, tedious, pretentious, or repulsive.

She finds it slightly easier to ignore the ghost of her old lover joining her in bed, but even then the whispering, the ghostly presence, makes her uneasy. So one night she tries to tell him a story, and to her surprise she finds that he listens. It's a story about catching the train, about little coincidences, about nothing at all--certainly not the high art he is telling her about as he joins her in the shower. Then, as she finishes the story, he offers a contented sigh and disappears.

The following night he is not present, so she joins the ghostly literature club in the living room and drinks real red wine and begins telling stories. At first she tries the stories that are the closest to their vaunted literature, but these don't seem to work. So she tells stories about the trivial and the inconsequential, about stupid conversations and awkward dinner-dates, stories about the shirt she's wearing and about the first time she tried this bottle of red wine, how she'd gotten so drunk she forgot what it was called and spent the next week trying to ask fellow party guests what wine that was, and how she was never, ever sure if she actually got the right one but the label looked right so she decided it was good enough.

And each time she tells these pointless, inconsequential stories another ghost heaves relief and fades into the ether, until at last all the merrymakers are gone and she is a little drunk and in good spirits (if you'll pardon the pun). She decides to write a story that is stupid and inconsequential and dedicates it to her ghosts. And for the moment, this feels like the most important thing she has done in years.