The Clairvoyants(62)

“The neighborhood clairvoyants,” Geoff said, sprinkling pot onto a rolling paper. “Anne is still waiting to see your talents.”

“We had a whole system.” I spread my two hands out on the tabletop. “Didn’t we, Del?”

Del’s face was shadowed by the candlelight.

“We would alternate. Whoever wasn’t playing the medium would be in charge of the tapping.”

Del began to gather the plates.

“What was it we said? ‘Please give us two taps if you’re here,’” I said.

William looked at Del, adoringly, I thought. Why would he ask me to marry him if he was going to run around with Del? Would he ask me for a divorce because I’d gone through his things? He’d already shifted his attention, wanted or not, to her.

“Sometimes I was afraid the spirits were really there,” Del said. She stood over us cradling the plates. “It was eerie in that little pool shed.”

Geoff lit his joint and inhaled, then exhaled. “You two were regular flimflam artists.”

“There were things that felt real.” Del looked at me.

“No,” I said. “It was never real.”

Jane Roberts’s earrings caught the light and trembled in Del’s earlobes.

“Hey, now,” Geoff said. “I’ve got a story for you.” The room’s shadows wavered with candlelight. The radiators clanked. Outside, the snow filled the streets and drives, obscuring the routes into and out of town. Geoff had opened another bottle of wine. His story was a confession of sorts, in the dim, incense-filled room.

“I was driving along,” he said. He took a sip from his glass. “It was night, with no moon, and I didn’t know the road. I’d just dropped off a girl I’d been seeing—Eloise, I think it was—soft brown hair, wonderful legs, I thought, well, from what I could see up under her skirt.”

“Go on already,” William said, reaching for the joint.

“Yes, please.” Del set the plates in the sink and returned to the couch beside me.

Geoff liked to digress, and we knew the story might have changed if we let him go on about Eloise.

“I thought I’d hit something, but I was afraid, really, to stop in the dark. It was well past midnight. I assumed it was a hare or a stray dog.”

Del reached out and touched Geoff’s arm. “What was it?” Her eyes shone.

“Oh, well,” Geoff said. “I’d driven through, and was miles away by morning. It came to me months later, when I’d revisited that part of the country again, and heard the story of the little girl who wandered the moor in her white cotton nightgown, how some used to see her, a daft girl, out late at night. And then how she disappeared, and how her body was found, hit by a car. It was a ghost story they were telling. And then I put it together.”

The space around us swelled with the darkness beyond the candles’ flames.

“You see, I remembered something when I heard the story,” he said. He had set down his glass and was rolling another joint. In the morning the floor would be speckled with flakes of the pot. “It was the nightgown, you see. I had seen a bit of material, the child’s gown, float across my dash.”

We sat quietly then, drinking.

“Good one, Geoff!” William said, his face open with amusement. He settled back into the chair cushion. “You’re actually a decent storyteller.”

Del wasn’t amused. “Do you think it was you that hit her?” she asked.

Geoff lit the joint from the pillard candle on the coffee table. “I tell myself it was the ghost I saw,” he said. “But it wasn’t something I could ever know for sure, was it? The timing was right, it could have been me.”

The smoke from his joint rose from the lit end. I felt Del’s body tense beside me on the couch.

“It must be awful to think it was your fault,” she said.

We all sat, puzzling, drunk. Del stood and gathered the glasses, as if the party was now over, and William reached out and grabbed her wrist. “She’s not done,” he said, and he returned my glass to me and took Del’s spot on the couch.

I watched Del’s reaction to William’s hand on her wrist. It was an odd feeling to suspect I was being duped. It made me feel a little sorry for myself, but it also gave me some power. I took a sip of my wine.

“If the roads are clear, maybe we can go to Buffalo State tomorrow.”

I was testing him, I suppose, trying to see if he would placate me. It was fine to play these games now that I believed my feelings for him had changed.

“Sure,” he said. He relaxed a little, as if he’d just been waiting for me to reveal some sign that I still loved him.

“What’s this now?” Geoff said.

“The old asylum,” William said. “Martha was talking about getting some shots before it’s gone for good.”

Del was wrapping a dish towel around her hands. “Do you really want to go there?” she said. “Should I call Randy and everyone?”

William got up from the couch and walked over to the window. He parted the curtains and made a show of looking out. “Why do they have to be dragged into it?” he said.

“That was the plan originally,” Del said. “Wasn’t it?”

“I’m too tired to think,” I said.