The Ghost in Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

whatever was threatening him.
    For example right now, before opening his mouth to comment on the turmoil in his tub, Ben fantasized that instead of being togetherin the bathroom, he and German were sitting together at the kitchen table. She would still be naked, of course, adding a delightful intimacy to the moment. Laughing merrily, she would say, “The looniest picture just came to me. I was looking into my cup and imagined for a moment that the coffee was water in your bathtub. And there were
fish
swimming in it! Isn’t that bizarre? Where did that cuckoo idea come from?”
    Ling was closely monitoring Ben’s thoughts. It wanted to see how the man was going to handle this matter. At the same time, the ghost knew the whole situation was artificial and unfair. How could you fairly judge a human’s ability to reason based on something as preposterous as what had just happened to him?
    â€œNo, this is wrong,” Ling said out loud, and with a flick of its mind made Gould’s fantasy into reality. Ben and German were suddenly sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. She was waiting for his response to her vision. She was naked with her elbows on the table, holding a coffee mug in her hands.
    Shocked by the abrupt change from the bathroom to here, Ben grabbed hold of the table with both hands as if to stop himself from falling.
    â€œBen?”
    â€œHold it a sec. Just one second.” He stood up and without another word hurried out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bathroom again. This time the tub was empty. There was no tan water with fish or sea serpents in it. German entered behind him, still holding her coffee cup. She again leaned up against his back.
    â€œHey, what’re you doing?”
    â€œUm. I wanted to see if there were fish in the tub as you said.”
    â€œThat’s sweet of you to look, but it was only a crazy idea I had, Ben.”
    His mind doing somersaults, his eyes darted everywhere around the bathroom, looking for anything in there that might tell him more about what had just happened.
    Its head resting on its bent knees, the ghost sat in the empty tub watching them.
    The theater was in a terrible section
of the city. You wouldn’t want to go there under any circumstance. Vagrants slept sprawled like the dead in doorways. Dogs howled, whores growled, beggars scowled in the most menacing way. The look in their eyes said, Fork over or I’ll get you. One troublemaker got so up in Ling’s face that the ghost reached out and touched him gently on the tip of his runny nose. The man fell to his knees, so crushed by searing pain everywhere in his body that he didn’t even have the ability to scream.
    The inside of the movie theater was much nicer looking than Ling had expected after having just been outside. It was a well-preserved time capsule of the 1950s. A giant, brightly lit refreshments stand smelled of freshly popped popcorn and melted butter. A skinny, pimply kid at the door took your red ticket and, after tearing it in half, gave you back the stub. Comfortable wide velvet seats had so much legroom in front that you could almost stretch your legs all the way out after sitting down.
    Standing at the back of the cavernous theater, Ling counted seventeen people in there waiting for the movie to begin. Most of them were men still wearing coats. One fat woman sat way off to the side. She had filled the seat next to her with many plastic bags full of dubious stuff.
    The Angel of Death was sitting almost exactly in the middle of the theater with a brimming bucket of popcorn in his lap and a very large paper cup of orange soda. The angel had materialized on earthtoday as a middle-aged man. Bald and portly, he wore wire-rim glasses over mild blue nondescript eyes, and was dressed in a green Shetland sweater, an old tweed sport jacket, and green corduroys. The angel looked sort of professorial, but the kind of university professor who