The Ghost in Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ben Gould entered.
    â€œHowdy,” he said to her, but his eyes were caught by what was in the draining bathtub. He stared at it instead of his splendidly naked girlfriend. Because the bathwater was the color of sand. Ben’s eyes widened but he did not say a word. German and he were so new at living together that he was still embarrassed she might hear the sound when he was peeing in the toilet. Consequently, he wasn’t about to ask now why the water in the tub was solidly beige after she’d just bathed there.
    â€œWhat’s up?” She looked over her shoulder at him and said the words around the toothbrush in her mouth.
    Ben blinked uneasily several times and, mustering a strange high voice, chirped, “Not a thing!” Then he exited the room fast, closing the door behind him.
    The ghost stepped down from the toilet seat and followed him. Ling walked through the closed bathroom door and into the narrow hall outside. The dog was lying on the floor there, waiting for the woman to reemerge. The two looked at each other. The ghost smiled at the dog and said, “Hiya.”
    Pilot looked at it but didn’t respond to the greeting.
    Ling didn’t care and walked down the hall.
    Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They’re there but they’re no big deal.
    Ling’s first thought had been to follow Gould awhile and observe him. But then the ghost changed its mind and chose to have a look around the man’s living quarters instead.
    Ben worked as a waiter in a restaurant. He was good at his job and genuinely liked the work, but he did not earn much money. That was okay, though, because there was not much he wanted beyond what he already possessed. In that respect he was a contented man.
    His apartment was bare, but not the dismal, depressing bare of the impoverished. Rather, it was the home of a person who doesn’t care much for belongings. He liked food, he liked books; he owned one nice suit and a decent sound system. His parents had given him several pieces of sturdy nondescript furniture years before that fit just fine into his lifestyle. The well-crafted wooden bookcases in the living room he had built himself. Covering the floor in there was a faded red-and-black Persian carpet that he’d bought for eighteen dollars at a yard sale and then paid fifty dollars to dry-clean.
    German liked Ben’s apartment because, although sparse, it was obvious her new boyfriend enjoyed and took good care of his few possessions, polishing wood that had never been polished before on a scarred old school desk he’d bought at the Salvation Army. Or handmending a large hole in the Persian rug that had been neglected for years. In the center of the living room table were three beautiful large black stones that he’d found in an Italian river. His two pairs of shoes were always polished and lined up by the front door. One peek at the selection of books in his library said that whoever owned them had an inquisitive, wide-ranging mind.
    The ghost walked to one of these bookshelves now to check it out. There were an inordinate number of cookbooks, but Ling already knew that Gould loved to cook. His dream had once been to become a great chef. But he was neither talented nor patient enough and in the end had to admit it. He possessed the enthusiasm and dedication necessary but not the creative imagination. A great cook was like a great painter: they saw the world as no one else did. Further, they had the requisite skills and talent to both manifest that vision and share it with others. Ben eventually accepted the fact that he didn’t after several wholehearted attempts, including a yearlong stint at cooking schools in Europe. That was why he ultimately became a waiter: if he couldn’t make his living cooking exquisite food for others, at least he could