’em to check over here. Now, I’m not an expert on that stuff, I don’t check for it. You might have your dampwood termites or worse, your subterranean termites, or your fungi, carpenter ants, wood-boring beetles…house could be riddled.”
She wished he wouldn’t characterize all these pests as hers.
“Another thing,” he said, dusting off the knees of his pants as he rose.
Wendy groaned inside. Then she wondered what these groans would do, bouncing around inside her with no outlet. Build up ricochet momentum and punch a hole in her?
“You got your ghost turds. Mostly inside.” He patted the wall.
“What on earth is a ghost turd?”
“Evidence,” he said. “Eck-toe-plas-mick evidence.”
“What?” asked Wendy, slightly panicked, keeping that inside too.
“They’re hard to examine, being kinda slippery,” he said. “I did not discover if they was fresh or if the old lady is not much of a housekeeper and they’ve been around a while. But you got your ghost turds in a couple corners. Now I have not hit on a surefire method for exterminating ghosts. If there’s much trouble, though, you give me a call. I got a couple guys I can refer you to.”
“Trouble?” said Wendy. She licked her upper lip.
“Now some ghosts will respect your privacy and only haunt and such when you’re out of the house, but others will make a nuisance of themselves, and you don’t want that. Let me know how it goes. Here’s my card. Call me if you have any questions.”
“But—” she said.
He smiled, spat some more juice, and nailed a dandelion. “I’ll get that report to you by Friday, barring accidents. You want any of this work done, I can recommend independent contractors to you. Only if you want me to.”
“Thanks,” she said, still smiling, and shook hands with him. She didn’t wipe her hand off on her jeans until he had driven away in his truck.
Malcolm was waiting in the hotel room for her, since she had left the locket there. It was so much easier for her to deal with real-life situations without him there to distract her that she had done it deliberately.
She could tell he was going to kvetch. She sighed.
He changed his mind. “So what happened?”
“Fifteen more things wrong. Look at this list. You really, really want that place?”
He looked surprised. “I thought you did.”
“Yesterday I did,” she said, “enough to overlook that red plaid rug and those terrible fifties light fixtures. But today…what with the foundation cracks and the standing water and the pest super-highways.…”
Malcolm flickered a little, the way he did when he was feeling uncertain. “Wendy, the psychic climate in the house.…”
“Oh, yeah. That’s another thing. He says there’s a ghost there already.”
“What?” He solidified and stared at her.
“Apparently ghosts leave debris the way termites do,” she said, and grinned. After a moment she lost her grin. She looked around the floor, wondering if Malcolm had left any signs; but the carpet looked fairly clean except for a few cigarette burns near the bed.
“I wish I had been there,” he said wistfully.
Of all his tactics, she hated wistful the most. He had never been wistful when he was alive, but it was something his mother had done quite well. The fact that he had adopted it since dying made her wonder what other unpleasant surprises might be in store in their relationship’s future.
“Shut up about it,” she said.
“Wendy!”
“When you get the what-might-have-beens, you drive me crazy!”
“When you get rude, you drive me—” he began, then appeared to think better of it.
“You want to spend the night in the car, parked someplace else?”
He faded away, then reappeared, looking extra-solid. He frowned at her. “No. I hate it when you threaten me! That’s no way to run a relationship.”
She was already cringing inside, because she knew he was right, but she didn’t feel like apologizing. “Let’s go to bed,” she said gruffly.
“I don’t think we should let the sun set on this. Besides, you haven’t had any dinner.”
“Quit being such a mommy.” Her stomach was starting to relax as the tension drained out of her. Sometimes her moods would shift without her understanding why. Only since he died. Before he died, they could have kept the argument going all night, orchestrating dynamics from piano to fortissimo and back.
“You have to eat.” He shook his finger at her, looking stern, then put his hands behind his back.
“Oh, yeah, rub my nose in it,” she said, but she could feel the laughter bubbling up, inexplicably. “What are you doing?”
“What could I be doing?” He gave her his heavenly angel smile, his hands still hidden.
Her stomach growled and they both stared at it.
“What did I tell you?” he asked.
“Okay, okay.” She got the locket out of the secret compartment in her suitcase (it made him really nervous when she left it there—what if, he asked her, someone stole her luggage? Where would he be?) and fastened the chain around her neck, and they left together.
* * * *
She got drive-through tacos. When he was with her, she ate in the car. Too many times they had started heated discussions in restaurants, and people had gotten upset with her for shouting at air.
“Let’s go to the house,” he said.
“Goofus! The little old lady still lives there. What’s she going to think if she sees a car lurking out in front of the house? She’ll call the police.”
“Park down the block. I want to investigate.”
“Suddenly you’re a detective?”
“Why not?”
She shrugged, drove to the neighborhood where she might or might not live, depending, where Malcolm might or might not reside, depending, and parked half a block away from the house they had picked. The house was small and khaki green and had a “Sale Pending” sign in the kitchen window.
“I do,” Malcolm said, apropos of nothing. “I like this neighborhood. I know it seems like a suburban nightmare, just the kind of thing we sneered at in the sixties, but.…”
“Yeah, we’re older now,” said Wendy. “At least, some of us are.” She slathered hot sauce on her soft flour taco and took a bite that dribbled taco juice down her chin.
“My perspective has changed, or mellowed, or something. Hold the fort.” He slid out through the door and strolled up the sidewalk toward the house.
Wendy wiped her chin with a napkin and watched him. He paused in front of the house and glanced back at her, then walked up the path to the front door and vanished.
She hoped this wasn’t one of those times when he got visible. Every once in a while there was some sort of slip-up—or maybe it was supposed to happen; she and Malcolm weren’t sure of the rules yet—where other people could see him. Sometimes, everybody else; sometimes only one other person. Wendy didn’t know whether the house’s owner would be susceptible. When she and Malcolm had gone through the house with the realtor, whom they had already established as Malcolm-oblivious, the little old lady had been out somewhere. This afternoon during the whole house inspection Wendy had finally met the owner, but Malcolm had been at the hotel.