Ghost Lights Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Anyway. Good luck with the job search.”
    Inside he heard the shower running. A sealed manila envelope lay on the dining room table, along with the mail. The dog must be upstairs with Susan. But climbing to the second floor, he shivered with a passing chill—the house felt wrong. He and Susan needed to go away somewhere, he thought: since the accident they never traveled much, fearing Casey would suddenly need them.
    “Susan?” he called, and the dog came galumphing out of the bedroom.
    “In here,” came her voice, and he went into the bathroom, where the mirrors were steamed.
    “Ran into Robert on his way out,” he said to the shower curtain.
    “Uh huh? What are you doing home, honey?”
    “Car accident.”
    She pulled back the shower curtain. Her face was flushed; she looked lovely.
    “You OK?”
    “Maybe a little headache. No big deal. But I have a rental.”
    “No one was hurt though?”
    “Zero casualties.” He reached out and kissed her. “You smell so good.”
    “It’s the shampoo.”
    He wanted to go to bed with her. He held her and kissed her more, water falling on both of them.
    “Oh, Hal, not this second,” she said. “I’m all wet.”
    “That’s fine with me.”
    “Later. I promise.”
    He let her go and stepped back, his hair plastered.
    “You look cute,” she said, and swatted the wet mat of it before she pulled the curtain closed again. He gazed at the blur of her form through the blue plastic, which was covered in raised dots. He could barely tell what she was doing. One of her arms stretched up and back again. Had she put a hand up to adjust the nozzle? Her movements were shrouded. Equally she could have been reaching for a razor. She could be anyone, seen through this filter, doing almost anything. She was unknown to him.
    “So what happened, exactly?” she asked through the curtain.
    “I swerved to avoid a pedestrian.”
    He turned around and went into the bedroom, sat down on his side of the bed. The stillness from outside was with him here, ongoing. In the doorway stood the dog, watching. Their bed linens were still wrinkled and mounded from the morning; the triangle of sheet he sat on was warm. She must have been napping. But then, when Robert arrived, she would have risen. Why was it still warm now?
    Maybe the dog had been sleeping there.
    Hal’s stomach felt nervous.
    In a minor panic he pulled back the coverlet, checked the sheets. Nothing, of course. Paranoid.
    Usually—only on weekends of course—she took a brief afternoon nap on her own side of the bed, just as they kept to their own sides at nighttime, but it was warm on his side today. Still, it was a trivial anomaly. A young man coming out of his house at midday and for this he was suspicious? He had turned into a middle-aged cliché. Suddenly a blip in the routine had become a conjugal violation.
    He stood and began to straighten the blankets, unthinking. The dog lay down, head on paws, in the hallway. He finished with the coverlet and the pillows, hospital corners because he kept on perfecting them mechanically, at the same time struck by the phrase: cuckold . But someone had to do it. The bed had to be made. A bed unmade in the afternoon seemed decadent, even ugly.
    When it was accomplished he turned toward his nightstand. The alarm clock had fallen on its face; he set it upright again. Otherwise the order was usual—all of it familiar except for, wait, a very small piece of plastic.
    It was minuscule, a triangle maybe three millimeters long with a couple of scallops along the edge, and shiny black or maybe even dark green. It could be anything. He thought about this, his heart racing. He held the dark piece of plastic between thumb and forefinger. A small scallop, a small serration.
    He was paranoid. He should seek help.
    In the meantime, it was an itch that had to be scratched.
    With difficulty he deposited the fragment on the nightstand again, careful not to drop it on the carpet and thereby lose it,