Ivory and the Horn (16 page)

Jilly shook her head. “No, he works in admin. I dropped by to see how the registration was coming along for that drawing class I’m going to be teaching next semester, and he started talking to me about Brenda.”

“How’d he know you knew her?”

“She’d talked to him about us, I suppose. Anyway, he was wondering if I knew when she’d get back and I almost blew it by saying I’d just run into her on Yoors Street that week, but I caught myself in time. Turns out, he thinks she’s out of town on business. She calls him every few days— supposedly from this hotel where she’s staying—but she’s been very evasive about when she’s due back.”

“That is so not like Brenda,” Wendy said.

“Ignoring a nice guy who’s showing some interest in her?”

“That, too. But I meant lying.” -

“I thought so, too, but who knows what’s going on with her sometimes. Did you know she quit smoking?”

“Go on.”

“Really. And that last time at the restaurant—before you showed up—she was telling me how she was finally taking your advice to heart and wasn’t going to throw herself all over some guy anymore.”

“Yeah, but she always says that,” Wendy said. She swung her legs down to the floor and hopped down from the window seat. “I’m going to give her a call,” she added.

Jilly watched her dial, wait a moment with the receiver to her ear, then frown and hang up.

“She didn’t leave her answering machine on?” she asked as Wendy slowly walked back to the window seat.

“The number’s not in service anymore,” Wendy said slowly. “Her phone must be disconnected.”

“Really?”

Wendy nodded. “I guess she didn’t pay her phone bill. You know how she’s always juggling her finances.”

“I don’t get it,” Jilly said. “If she was that short of cash, why didn’t she just come to one of us? We’re not rich, but we could’ve helped out.”

“Has she
ever
asked you for a loan?”

Jilly shook her head.

“Me, neither. I think she’d die before she did that.”

Wendy packed her notebook away in her knapsack. Turning from the window, she added, “I think I’m going to go by her apartment to see how she’s doing.”

“Let me clean my brushes,” Jilly said, “and I’ll come with you.”

17

Well, I didn’t have to ask Rob if I could get a leave of absence from the paper for a couple of weeks. After I left work last night, it came out how I’d been using
In the City’s
Visa card. Rob confronted me with it this morning, and since I couldn’t tell him when, or even if, I’d be able to pay it back, he gave me my pink slip.

“You’ve been impossible to work with,” he told me. “I realize you’ve just quit smoking—”

I hadn’t told anybody, wanting to do it on my own without the pressure of feeling as though I were living in a fish-bowl, but I suppose it was obvious.

“—and I can certainly empathize with you. I went through the same thing last year. But I’ve had complaints from everyone and this business with the Visa is just the final straw.”

“No one said anything to me.”

“Nobody felt like getting their head bitten off.”

“I’m sorry—about everything. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“It’s not just about money,” Rob said. “It’s about trust.”

“I know.”

“If you needed a loan, why didn’t you come talk to me about it?” he asked. “We could’ve worked something out.”

“It… it just happened,” I said. “Things have been getting out of control in my life lately.”

He gave me a long, considering look. “Do you have a problem with drugs?” he asked.

“No!” That was one of the few areas of my life where I hadn’t screwed up. “God, how could you even think that?”

“Because frankly, Brenda, you’re starting to look like a junkie.”

“I’m on a diet, that’s all.”

The concern in his eyes seemed to say that he genuinely cared. The next thing he said killed that idea dead in the water.

“Brenda, you need help.”

Yeah, like he cared. If firing me was his idea of compassion, I’d hate to see what happened if he really started to be helpful. But I was smart this time and just kept my mouth shut.

“I’m sorry,” was all I said. “I’ll pay you back. It’s just going to take some time.”

I got up and left then. He called after me, but I pretended I didn’t hear him. I was afraid of what I might say if he kept pushing at me.

I was lucky, I guess. He could have pressed charges— misappropriation of the paper’s funds—but he didn’t. I should have felt grateful. But I didn’t walk out of there thinking how lucky I’d been. I felt like dirt. I’d never been so embarrassed in all my life.

That was Friday. I’m trying to put it behind me and not think about it. That’s easier said than done. I’ve been only partially successful, but by this morning I don’t feel as bad as I did yesterday. I’m still a little light-headed, but I’m down another couple of pounds and I still haven’t had a cigarette. Day twenty-nine into my new life and counting.

I’ve moved into The Wishing Well, in unit number twelve—that’s the last one on the north wing. I didn’t bring much with me—just a few necessities. A few changes of clothing. Some toiletries. A sleeping bag and pillow. A kazillion packages of popcorn, a couple of heads of lettuce and some bottled water. A box of miscellaneous herb teas and a Coleman stove to boil water on. A handful of books.

I also brought along my trusty old manual typewriter that I used all through college, because I think I might try to do some writing again—creative writing like I used to do before I got my first job on the paper. I would’ve brought my computer, but there’s no electricity here, which is also why I’ve got a flashlight and an oil lamp, though I wasn’t sure I could use either until I checked if they could be seen from the highway at night. It turns out all I had to do was replace a couple of boards on the window facing the parking lot.

And of course I brought along my bathroom scale, so I can monitor my weight. This diet’s proving to be one of the few successes of my life.

I’ve hidden my car by driving it across the overgrown lawn and parking it between the pool and my unit. After I got it there, I went back and did what I could with the grass and weeds the wheels had crushed to try and make it look as though no one had driven over them. A frontier woman I’m not, but I didn’t do that bad a job, I doubted anybody would notice unless they really stopped to study the area.

Once I had the car stashed, I worked on cleaning up the unit. I had to keep resting because I didn’t seem to have much stamina—I still don’t—but by nine o’clock last night, I had my little hideaway all fixed up. It still has a musty smell, but either it’s airing out, or I’m getting used to it by now. The trash is swept out and bagged in the unit next to mine, along with the mattress and a bundle of towels I found rotting in the bathroom. The plumbing doesn’t work, so I’m going to have to figure out where I can get water to mop the floors—not to mention keep myself clean. I found an old ping-pong table in what must have been the motel’s communal game room, and I laid that on top of the bed with my sleeping bag unrolled on top of it. It’ll be hard, but at least it’s off the floor.

I finally made myself a cup of tea, boiling the water on my Coleman stove, and settled down to do a little reading before I went to bed. That’s when things got a little weird.

Now usually I’m asleep when the well’s ghosts come visiting, but last night… last night…

I’m not really sure what she is, if you want to know the truth.

I was rereading my old journal—the one I kept when I was still a reporter—kind of enjoying all the little asides and notes I’d made to myself in between the cataloguing of a day’s events, when the door to my unit opened. One of the reasons I’d chosen number twelve was because it had a working door; I just never expected anybody else to use it.

I almost died at the sound of the door. The fit’s a little stiff, and the wood seemed to screech as it opened. The journal fell from my hands and I jumped to my feet, ready to do I don’t know what. Run out the front door into the parking lot. Pick up something to defend myself with. Freeze on the spot and not be able to move.

I picked the latter—through no choice of my own, it just happened—and in walked this woman. The first thought that came to mind was that she was some old hillbilly, drawn down from the hills after seeing the fight that spilled out of the window on the pool side of the room. When I was cleaning up the unit, I took the boards off that window and, miracle of miracles, the glass panes were still intact. I never did bother to tack the boards back up when night fell.

She had to be in her seventies at least. She looked wiry and tough, face as wrinkled as an unironed handkerchief, hair more white than grey and standing up from around her head in a wild tangle. Her eyes were her strongest feature—a pale blue, slightly protruding and bird-bright. She was wearing a faded red flannel shirt and baggy blue jeans, scuffed work boots on her feet, with a ratty-looking grey cardigan sweater draped over her shoulders, the sleeves hanging down across the front of her shirt.

She looked vaguely familiar—the way someone you might have gone to school with looks familiar: The features have changed, but not enough so as to render them unrecognizable. I couldn’t place her, though. When I was a reporter I met more new people in a month than I could ever hope to remember, so my head’s a jumble of people I can only vaguely recognize. Most of them were involved in the arts, mind you, and she didn’t look the type. I could more easily picture her sitting on a rocking chair outside some hillbilly cabin, smoking a corncob pipe.

I wasn’t thinking about ghosts, then.

She seemed to recognize me, too, because she stood there in the doorway, studying me for what seemed like the longest time, before she finally came in and shut the door behind her.

“You’re the one who comes to the well on Sundays,” she said as she sat down on the end of my bed. She moved like a I man and sat with her legs spread wide, hands on her knees.

I nodded numbly and managed to sit back down on my chair again. I left my journal where it lay on the floor.

“Got a smoke?” she asked. ; How I wished.

“No,” I told her, finally finding my voice. “I don’t smoke.”

“Don’t eat much either, seems.”

“I’m on a diet.”

She made a hrumphing sound. I wasn’t sure if it was a comment on dieting or if she was just clearing her throat.

“Who… who are you?” I asked.

The sense of familiarity was still nagging at me. Having pretty well exhausted everyone I could think of that I knew, I’d actually found myself flipping through the faces of the ghosts I’d called up from the well.

“No reason to call myself much of anything anymore,” she said, “but once I went by the name of Carter. Ellie Carter.”

As soon as she said her name, I knew her. Or at least I knew where I’d seen her before. After I first found the motel and then started coming by more or less regularly, I’d tried looking up its history. There was nothing in the morgue at
In the City,
but that didn’t surprise me once I tracked down a twenty-five-year-old feature in the back issues of
The New-ford Star.

I’d had a copy made of the article, and it was pinned up above my desk back home. There was a picture of Ellie accompanying the article, with the motel behind her. She looked about the same, except shrunk in on herself a little.

She’d been the owner until—as an article dated five years later told me—business had dropped to such an extent that she couldn’t make her mortgage payments and the bank had foreclosed on her.

“So’ve you made yourself a wish yet?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, don’t. The well’s cursed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you clean your ears, girl? Or is that a part of your diet as well?”

“My name’s Brenda.”

“How long are you planning to stay, Brenda?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Well, the rate’s a dollar a day. You can give me a week in advance and I’ll refund what you’ve got coming back to you if you don’t stay that long.”

This was insane, I thought, but under her steady gaze I found myself digging the seven dollars out of my meager resources and handing it over to her.

“You need a receipt?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Well, have yourself a nice time,” she said, standing up. “Plumbing’s out, so you’ll have to use the outhouse at the back of the field.”

I hadn’t got around to thinking much about that aspect of the lack of bathroom facilities yet. When I’d had to pee earlier, I’d just done it around the corner near some lilac bushes that had overgrown the south side of the motel.

“Wait,” I said. “What about the well?”

She paused at the door. “I’d tell you to stay away from it, but you wouldn’t listen to me anyway, would you? So just don’t make a wish.”

“Why not?”

She gave me a tired look, then opened the door and stepped out into the night.

“Listen to your elders, girl,” she said.

“My name’s Brenda.”

“Whatever.”

She closed the door before I could say anything else. By the time I had reached it and flung it open again, there was no one to be seen. I started out across the parking lot’s pavement until I saw headlights approaching on the highway and quickly ducked back into my room and shut the door. Once the car had passed, I slipped out again, this time shutting the door behind me.

I walked all around the motel, but I could find no sign of the woman. I wasn’t really expecting to. I hadn’t found any recent sign of anyone when I’d explored the motel earlier in the day, either.

That’s when I started thinking about ghosts.

So tonight I’m waiting to see if Ellie’s going to show up again. I want to ask her more about the well. Funny thing is, I’m not scared at all. Ellie may be a ghost, but she’s not frightening. Just a little cranky.

I wonder how and when she died. I don’t have to guess where. I’ve read enough ghost stories to be able to figure out that much.

I also wonder if the only reason I saw her last night is because I’m so light-headed from my diet. I’d hate to find out that I’ve suddenly turned into one of those people that Jilly calls “sensitives.” I’ve got enough problems in my life as it is without having to see ghosts every which way I turn when I’m awake as well as when I’m asleep.