26

Maybe it was finally over.  They asked a lot of questions while I got dressed.  It was clear they thought I was drunk or on drugs or had just gone off the deep end.  They wanted to know how I’d gotten into the room.  They wanted to know who had bitten me.  Vince’s face was full of shame and terror.  His eyes were bright with emotion.  He knew I’d buckled.  He knew the project was dead.  The best fiction comes from catharsis and human truth.  Maybe this was the price that had to be paid.  

I said nothing.  There was nothing to say.  I didn’t know how to tell him that the ghost of his living wife let me in, that she had chewed into me, that the fantasy of her was so eager and wonderful in my own head that she had opened the door and made love to me.  I brushed past him.  I glanced back once.  Christina looked at me like she knew this would happen the from the second she had met me.  Maybe it was supposed to happen.  Maybe this was a saving grace.

I walked crosstown toward my apartment.  Fire engines screamed along Columbus.  On the way I called Gray again.  Like before, he answered on the first ring.  Before the first ring.

“Hello, Thomas.”

“Hello, Gray.”

“I know what you want.”

“You always did.  Or thought you did.”

“You want to know if I’m a ghost or if this is all in your head.”

“It would ne nice to be certain,” I admitted.

“Which would make you happier, do you think?  That you’re completely out of your mind or that you’re talking to your dead friend who committed suicide after butchering his wife?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I won’t spoil it for you then.”

“You’re a real prick.”

It got him laughing.  His chuckling worked across the length and breadth of the city and carried me along with it.

I couldn’t help posing a question.  “So how is it?”

“Like nothing you or anyone else has ever imagined.”

I took a breath.  “Why’d you do it, Gray?”

“Because you took my last shred of hope away, Thomas.  There was always the chance that critical vindication might bring me some small happiness. That money and success might somehow make life bearable.”

“But it didn’t help me.”

“No, it didn’t help you.  And so I knew.  I knew there was nothing left for me just as there is nothing left for you.”

“You’re even more bitter now that you’re dead.”

“You will be too, Thomas.”