Track [32] “If You Have Ghosts”/Roky Erickson
June
“Not on the baby grand!” I shouted.
“Fennec,” my mother warned. “Why are you angry?”
I took a deep breath as the mover shifted the box from my piano onto the floor. “I am frustrated, not angry. That’s why I’m using my inside shouting voice, not my outside howl.”
“Just checking, my love,” she said, pulling the plastic off a newly delivered armchair. “I wish they would’ve delivered all the furniture at once.”
Me too. Everything was in chaos. The movers were supposed to do their thing yesterday, but that got changed, and now they were running into the furniture delivery people, who were coming in two different groups. I just wanted everything perfect, was that so much to ask?
I checked my phone to see if there were any updates from Jane. Nothing yet.
“Where are the blinds?” Mama asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“You can’t sleep in an apartment without window coverings,” she said.
My father made a gruff noise as he emerged from the bedroom. “It’s one night. Keep the lights off or put a sheet up with thumbtacks.”
“And ruin the window casings?” Mama was horrified.
My father just lifted his hands.
“Tape up newspaper on the windows like they do in old movies,” Ani suggested.
“Yeah,” Ari said, bouncing on the new armchair as he sat. “Make it look like a criminal kingpin’s den up in here. That’ll be more fun when I sleep over.”
“No sleepovers,” I said.
“You can fit a guest bed in that little room back there,” Ani said, pointing. “In case you wanted one. You know, for when Eddie comes home from Grandma and Grandpa Sarafian’s?”
Hell no. Eddie and I were getting along, but not that well. “The tiny room is going to be an office for studying. Everyone stays in their own homes from now on. Can I get an amen?”
My father made another gruff noise.
“Hey, wait a minute…,” Ari said, tilting his head as he draped himself over the armchair and peered into the bedroom doorway. “Did you know that you can see into the record store office from your bedroom?”
Yes, I knew all too well. Someone knocked on the apartment’s front door, which was cracked open slightly. “Hel-lo? We come bearing tidings of comfort and joy.”
A mermaid-dyed head appeared in the door, followed by Starla’s body. She smiled as she entered, carrying a box filled with food containers. Exie followed behind her with another box, and suddenly the scent of rosemary and mint filled the apartment.
“What is all this?” Mama said as my father helped Exie with the box, hefting it on the kitchen counter.
“Just some nourishment to keep you going for a few days,” Exie said. “Mostly picnic stuff that doesn’t need to be heated. Got paper plates and napkins in here too, in case you don’t have any yet.”
“And homemade cheese crackers so good, they’ll make you wanna slap yo mama,” Starla said. Then she glanced at my mother’s arched brow and amended, “Not literally.”
“Thank you,” I told Exie. “This is too much.”
She gave me a dismissive shrug. “All good. Just didn’t want you eating a bunch of junk. Whoa—look at that, Starla. Really is a nice view, huh?”
Starla was already heading to the living room windows to peer outside at the lake, where afternoon sun was glinting off the water. If you squinted hard enough, you could see the villa from here—sort of—and Moonbeam’s place. And at night, you could see all the lights on the Strip.
It really was a dream apartment.
The movers from L.A. were finished. I signed off on their paperwork as Starla and Exie chatted with my family, and as the movers were hauling out their dollies, a shadow darkened the doorway.
Mad Dog and his ginger beard stepped inside. He looked lost for a moment, or maybe that was just the dark sunglasses that he refused to take off.
“Hey there,” I said. “Sir.”
He nodded. “This must be the place. Guess I beat Leo and Jane here.”
Jane’s father was driving Mad Dog’s Mercedes up to the lake from Los Angeles. Jane was following him with Frida in her new car—new to her. It was an old beater that Leo had fixed up as a surprise for her having finished a year of community college. And she’d need it here at the lake, not just this summer, but this fall, when she transferred her credits to the university up the freeway from the lake.
“Hey, big dog,” my father called from the living room. “What do you think?”
“Small but serviceable,” the producer said. “Planning to film here?”
“My videos? Yeah. There’s no one in the apartment below this year. The owners are in Africa, so I don’t have to worry about noise, or anything.”
“Just a little tight on space,” Mad Dog said, surveying with an engineer’s gaze.
“Same size as the Grotto Cabin,” Exie said.
Mad Dog groaned. “Not staying up there this summer until we fumigate the grotto three or four times in a row. You fumigated this place yet?”
He was talking to me? What the hell did I know about fumigation? Or anything. I just blindly signed off on moving paperwork that may or may not be right. For the love of the saints, I had no idea how to be an adult. I’d thought living in Aunt Zabel’s barn had prepared me for a life of easy independence, but maybe I’d been fooling myself.
Right now, I was just flying by the seat of my pants and hoping I did something right.
My parents discussed fumigation with Mad Dog—a conversation that somehow derailed into Velvet, who was on her way back from Europe and coming to the lake for the summer. Meanwhile, I checked my phone again. Nothing. My nerves were starting to jangle, and now I was acutely aware of Mad Dog’s complaint about the size of the apartment. With all these people? Yeah, this place was sort of small. It definitely wasn’t a party apartment. Or fancy like the lodge. Or homey like the villa. Or big like my barn.
But it did have one thing that all those places didn’t have.
And she was walking in the front door now with a tiny dog on a leash.
Jane.
Leopard-print shoes. Tiny swoop of hair like meringue.
The girl of my dreams was now a real live person who had somehow agreed to move in here.
When our eyes met, my gut knew something that my conscious brain didn’t understand. My head felt as if it were waking up for the first time, and my chest was full of bees. It was as if my entire body was singing a song that it knew by heart.
“We made it,” she said with a smile that I felt in my chest.
“Indeed,” I murmured.
Maybe the gods of music had a soft spot for sentimentalists and the downtrodden, sure. But I’d add another group into the mix too.
Survivors.
That’s what Jane and I both were. Not rescuer and rescued. Survivors.
We’d survived what happened at the dam, hauntings, and our messy families. We’d survived being apart. And if everything we’d endured over the past few years meant we could be together now, it was worth it.
Don’t get me wrong. Love is horrible. Excruciating. Confusing. Painful.
But I wouldn’t trade my ghosts for anything in the world.