“THERE‘S ELEVEN BILLS HERE.” PACKY HELD UP THE MONEY. “Your ghost girl pays interest.”
I had told him the whole story of Andrea/Maggie, leaving out only the details of our lovemaking—lest I shock his youthful, seminarian ideals. Or make him think less of Maggie.
“I prayed at her grave,” I muttered, still overwhelmed.
“She does look a little ghostly, to tell the truth,” he said as he picked up the enlargement I had made of the slide, “but gorgeous ghostly. And you slept with her … as I said, bro, you astonish me! Make me kind of envious too.”
“You’re going to be a priest!”
“Doesn’t mean I give up fantasies.” He turned the picture to consider Maggie’s misty bare shoulders from another angle. “Well, I suppose we have to find her, right?”
“We can’t find her, Pack,” I said wearily, schoolmaster to slightly retarded student. “I told you she’s dead.”
“Ghosts don’t return loans”—he waved the money at me—”with interest; loan-shark rates, too. Let me see … you gave her the money in August, no, she took it from you in August, this is December, four months … that’s forty percent per annum. You ought to be ashamed, bro”—he laid the money respectfully on my rolltop—”of exploiting the poor kid. Think of how many houses she had to haunt to make that money.”
“She’s probably a waitress somewhere.”
“A haunted restaurant? I can see the ads: ‘Ghoulish Goulash, served by the prettiest ghost girls this side of Transylvania. Bring your own garlic.’ ”
“Packy, it is not funny,” I said, but I was laughing too. “I prayed at her grave.”
“Someone benefited by your prayers, but not Maggie or Andrea or whatever her name is. I think I’ll picture her as Maggie, you wouldn’t fall so heavily for an Andrea.…”
“I did.”
“Only because she looked like a Maggie.” He considered the enlargement again. “A spectacular Maggie at that. No wonder Kate couldn’t hold your attention.”
“She’s dead, Packy. She’s haunting me.”
“Baloney.” He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t care what happened in those weird mountains or what grave you prayed at, these worn ten-dollar bills are as solid as gold, even with inflation. She’s alive somewhere and findable. What’s the postmark on the envelope?”
“Postmark?” I tried to focus my attention.… If Maggie really were alive …
“Sure.” Packy snorted impatiently. “Every letter mailed in the United States has the name of the post office from which it is sent, usually smeared and almost illegible, but we’ll make it legible and start searching there.”
“And I’m Don Quixote!”
“Shape up, sailor. Where’s the damn envelope?”
“I threw it away.” I rose from my desk chair, still disoriented and confused but beginning to hope.
“You did what?”
“I didn’t notice the money till today. I tossed the envelope in my wastebasket”—I searched frantically under the desk for the wire basket—”yesterday afternoon.”
Empty.
“You know Mom, a wastebasket with waste in it is as bad as an idle mind—both are the devil’s workshop. I suppose you didn’t notice the postmark.”
“I didn’t pay any attention.…”
“Well.” Packy leapt enthusiastically to his feet. “The garbage pickup isn’t till tomorrow morning. Let’s go out back and find her envelope.” He glanced at the notepaper. “It’ll be cheap stationery, she’s obviously been saving her nickels and dimes to pay you. More and more do I like this Maggie Ward. She’s certainly too good for you, bro.”
He rushed out of my room and banged down the stairs, like the overgrown adolescent ox he was. I straggled along after him, not caught up yet in his enthusiasm and not sure even that I wanted to renew my madcap pursuit of the elusive Maggie.
Still, I joined Packy in the chill, damp mid-December dusk as we hunted for an envelope that may have been mailed from beyond the tomb but had also certainly been sent through the United States Mail.
We had no trouble finding my little stack of white, beige, or red-and-blue-trimmed, 5-cent airmail envelopes. But none of them seemed to be from Maggie. I rushed back into the house to find the letters so we could match them.
“Bring a flashlight,” Packy yelled after me.
“Whatever are you and your brother doing out there in the garbage can?” my mother asked hazily as I ransacked the kitchen for a flashlight with batteries that worked.
“An envelope from a ghost.”
“Oh.” She considered my reply judiciously, spatula dipped in cake frosting in her hand. “Well, wear a jacket, don’t catch cold.”
I grabbed my Ike jacket and Packy’s Quigley basketball jacket and flashlight and, letters stuffed in my pockets, raced back to the alley. The adrenaline was pumping in my blood now. Packy’s enthusiasm had infected me. The chase was on.
“Hurry up, Don Quixote,” Packy demanded as I rejoined him, “the game’s afoot and we haven’t a second to lose.”
“Wrong book.”
“I’m not so sure.” He began to sort the letters and the envelopes into matching piles. “You better do this, Jer. I don’t know these people.”
It took a few minutes. Every letter was matched with an envelope. Left over was Maggie’s little piece of lined note paper.
“Damn the bitch,” I shouted, “she’s taken the envelope back.”
“Great.” Packy pounded me on the back. “You’re entitled to be angry. But in River Forest we don’t permit ghosts, and certainly not in our garbage cans. Did you tear it up, by any chance?”
“I might have.” I tried to remember, shivering now from the cold. “I don’t usually …”
“Let’s look for scraps of white paper.” He shoved the flashlight at me. “You hold this and I’ll go through the mess again.”
“I’m not sure that it’s worth it.” The beam of light was shaking as my hand trembled in the cold. The weather forecast said the temperature would drop to zero tonight. It was already dropping.
“Hold the damn thing still.” Packy was arranging several pieces of paper like a jigsaw puzzle. “This look like it?”
It was the right size and had the right feel. “I think so.”
“Now to find the postmark. I hope you didn’t tear it in half. Where the hell is it?”
We dug back into the heap of garbage searching for a few scraps of white envelope paper.
“I think this might be …” I held up a tattered bit of white.
“Aha.” Packy grabbed the scrap and my flashlight. “Oh my God! Look at this!”
The light was shaking in his hand too. But while the substation number was illegible, there was no doubt about the rest of the postmark:
December 13, 1946. Chicago, Illinois.