CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

After dinner, Jennifer felt as nervous as if she were getting ready to go on a first date with a new beau. She glanced down at the grubby clothes that she had worn that day to bicycle up to Mrs. Petris, to shop, and to work in the garden, and had a sudden desire to change into something feminine and pretty. How absolutely ridiculous. Here she was, a sensible, twenty-first century woman, thirty years old, sitting around alone in her house thinking she should dress up for an apparition that was surely nothing but a creation of her own overwrought imagination.

She could see her epitaph now, “Here lies Jennifer Barrett, the mad hermit of Brynstol.”

On the other hand, this was her daydream. If she wanted to dress up for it, so what? Who was going to stop her?

From the bedroom closet, she pulled out her most alluring dress. In fact, her only alluring dress. It was a yellow floral print, sleeveless, with a plunging V-neckline. It showed off her newly acquired tan. She let her hair down and used a flat-iron to make it fall shiny and sleek over her shoulders.

In the living room, she put a recording of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto—the one whose big melody was lifted for the pop song “Full Moon and Empty Arms.”

Next, she took the book of poetry that she had looked at earlier, sat in one of the large chairs, and began to read.

When an hour went by she wondered if she wasn’t going to be stood up by her own imagination. After another hour, as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade played, she decided she must be the most foolish creature on the face of the earth. At least she was able to take some comfort in enjoying the poetry she continued to read. She thought she probably ought to just go upstairs to bed and forget all this foolishness, but she decided to read a bit more before that. Her eyes were becoming heavy, and she felt sleepier and sleepier…

She heard a light cough and opened her eyes to see Paul Squire, or whoever he was, standing by the fireplace.

She couldn’t stop her smile as happiness to see him again filled her. For a quick moment, she was bothered by the feeling. And then, she decided, to hell with worrying about what others might think—or even worrying over what was actually going on. For right now, for her, he was Paul Squire. He was a ghost. And she was damned happy to see him. Take that, world.

“Good evening,” she said, putting the book down on the lamp table.

“You look very lovely tonight.” He gave her a rare smile. He had a very nice smile, she noticed, one that caused his gray eyes to twinkle. Who ever thought a ghost could have sparkly eyes? She was obviously mad as a hatter, and yet, when she looked at him, her heart began a two-step.

“Scheherazade?” he said. “Are you planning to captivate me with a tall tale each evening?”

“Of course, stories from my exciting life,” she said wryly.

He chuckled as he sat in the chair opposite her. “Do you mind if I smoke?” He took his pipe and tobacco pouch from his jacket pocket.

“It’s your home,” she admitted.

He filled his pipe, leaned back and soon the smoke circled him.

“I would have thought such worldly things would not be of any interest to you anymore,” she said, “despite, as you explained, your sense of taste and smell and so on.”

“What could be more ethereal than smoke?” Paul replied.

“True enough,” she said.

“It is good to be here.” He looked around the room, and she wondered if he were purposefully changing the subject away from his strange—if true—state. “I’ve always felt this house should have more than one person in it.”

“It would be a fine home for a family,” Jennifer agreed. “How did you come to build it?”

“It’s a fairly lengthy story,” Paul said. “Suffice it for the moment to say that when I built it, it was not my intention to live in it alone. But life is full of the unexpected, as I learned much to my unhappiness and eventually to my ruin.”

“I’m interested in your story, if you would like to tell it to me,” she said. “I can’t help but imagine it has something to do with the portrait of the woman who resembles me.”

“Ah, yes. I’m not surprised to hear you say that.” He admitted.

“I’ve made some assumptions about her. I wonder if I’m right.”

“You make it sound like a scientific experiment,” he said with an amused smirk.

She laughed. “Believe me, there is nothing scientific about this conversation. But seriously, I am interested in you. And her. I wish you would tell me about you both.”

He took a few puffs. “They always say the best way to flatter the male ego is for a woman to beg him to talk to her about himself. But not now. I’d much rather hear about you.”

She spent that evening telling him about her life, which she considered dull, and he seemed to find fascinating.

The next night, after dinner, he visited her again, this time filled with curiosity about her CD player. “I enjoy symphonies and concertos,” he said. “But I had to go to a concert hall to hear them. To have so much music come from a small silver disk is beyond my comprehension. Do you play any instrument?”

“Me? Oh…once, but no more,” she replied.

“Why not? What was it?” he asked.

“A violin. I wasn’t any good, however. When I’d practice, my mother would run around the house with her fingers in her ears and ask who was killing cats.” She shrugged. “It took a few years, but eventually I got the message.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “The violin has always been one of my favorite instruments. I don’t suppose you sing?”

She chuckled. “Not a note.”

“I guess I’ll never hear opera again.” He sounded morose.

“Why not?” She pointed at her opera collection.

“Those? Really? You mean those little disks can hold an entire opera?” He was stunned.

“Which is your favorite? I might have it.”

He pondered a moment. “I can think of one that would be very appropriate at this moment. I wonder if you know it. It’s by a German composer named Richard Wagner.”

“He’s quite famous,” she said.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Anyway, it’s called The Flying Dutchman, and it’s about a ghost captain doomed to roam the earth forever in his phantom ship. Clearly,” he added with a smile, “a man after my own heart.”

Of course she knew the opera. It was a staple for many opera lovers. She thumbed through her collection.

What Paul Squire didn’t say was that the story’s theme was redemption through love, that only by finding the love of a good and true woman could the ghostly captain’s curse be removed. “Ask and you shall receive,” she said. She found the opera and put it on her stereo, much to Paul’s astonished delight.

After that, he returned night after night and each time he and Jennifer spoke into the early morning hours. He had opinions on everything, and there was much he wanted to learn—particularly about modern art.

Jennifer showed him online depictions of artworks by Picasso, Dali, Klee, Miro, and others. They opened up a whole new world to him. She resorted to the mobile lending library and ordered books to answer many of the questions he had. No sooner did he learn something new than, to her amusement, he would form an opinion on it and passionately argued in favor of his position. She’d never known such an exasperatingly arrogant man, or such an unapologetically macho man, but at the same time, she also found him completely intriguing.

Yet, despite her questions, he would never talk about his days on earth, and refused to speak of the woman in the portrait.