“Rick Murphy, you must be Cecelia.”
“I am but…” her blue eyes widened in fear. “I thought I was meeting or rather I thought…” Her hands shook as she groped through her purse; A rather tattered black leather rectangle which had a secondhand shop air about it. I watched her hands, balled up little fists, knock about the contents of her bag, looking for perhaps an address or slip of paper that would confirm she had not blundered in her own mind although I had called her by name. Nerves, no doubt.
“Roger Caprice. Yeah, that’s a pen name – caprice, thought it would be fun.” Her blank stare made me worry; The resume was concise and well written, perhaps the references were a little vague but time didn’t allow several hours in conversation about a temporary editor.
“A pen name, sure. Caprice, that’s good.” Her eyes blinked rapidly, and I suspected she fought biting her bottom lip. “I’ll be frank, I don’t read your books and I’m nervous. I never thought I’d land an editor’s job.”
My hopes lifted; Sure a little stardust in her eyes but nothing she couldn’t work through, if she wanted the job. I stepped aside and motioned her in. Cecelia peered past the door as if she were looking down a dark alley. Edging her way in to my apartment she halted, giving me just enough room to shut the door behind her. The young woman didn’t wince, but I suspected she steeled herself against the desire to do so. “This is an interesting apartment…” she said. She remained silent which said volumes. Her opinion of my taste in decor flickered across her features; She had the good manners to not babble on. I smiled at her but she determinedly looked out my large dinning room window trying to admire the view.
“An early 20th century tycoon built it. The place warehoused commodities shipped in through the Great Lakes and later there was some light manufacturing; furniture makers even some papermakers. Now is houses hip writers and artists who don’t mind freezing in the winter.” I tried to give her my best, I’m-a-good-guy-smile. I needed her help. She didn’t read my books, that was essential, she looked half starved which told me she was a poet and needed the money, she had passed the strenuous testing that I put her through in English grammar. Everything I needed and wanted; thank God for the online jungle.
Taking a deep breath, muttering something under her breath she turned to me like the condemned facing her judge. A deep pink blushed spread across her gaunt cheek bones but none the less a pretty girl faced me. Yes, she was nervous; Her first day on the job jitters. “Mr. Murphy, I’m so sorry. I must have looked like a complete idiot. I had my speech all thought out, and it started out as ‘Mr. Caprice thank you so much for this opportunity’…”
A genuine laugh welled up in me; She would work out just fine. “Well, you seem to be quick on your feet. Let me show you around.”
I was rather vain about the place. Living on sixth floor of eight, I picked the apartment because it was the most spacious out of all and the original brick with all its industrial scars still decorated the walls. It was on the northeast corner of the building so had a decent view of Lake Michigan despite the taller, steel and glass buildings blocking much of that incredible freshwater sea. In the winter months those tall buildings came in handy when the famous winds of Chicago became entrapped in wild and lost gusts of vengeance. Though the windows rattled, I believed that it was the taller buildings which took most of the beatings. I didn’t mind the seasons the city offered including winter. In Chicago no matter what time of the year, one feels the big lake in its one mood – grating intolerance of human habitation.
My apartment also allowed a panorama of those clueless human habitants. I spent many an enjoyable hour watching the passers-by either sweating or freezing their life away in Chicago; It gives a writer pause and fodder for pen and ink. The view also gave me time to ponder the arrogance of late 20th and early 21st century architecture; The lake’s brutal history of drowned sailors and with names like Al Capone and Eliot Ness echoing down the timeline there should have been more stone work and gargoyles in Chicago, but hey, it’s Chicago. The citizens bustle about too busy to remember last week, let alone recall the significance of a gargoyle. Chicago’s ignorance is its best defense, besides stone crosses and quiet chapels are for chumps.
The tour of the apartment was brief because though it was spacious it was empty; I had little time to stuff it full of memorabilia. Guest toilet, galley kitchen, the drawer in the fridge I reserved for my temporary staff-all the amenities; All natural all legitimate, all meant to give her a sense of ease. The ability to make someone comfortable whom you pay for showing up is difficult. The workplace is old, the floorboards creak, doors have a tendency to slam for no reason and though the ceiling is high, it’s still no reason for the frigidity of the cold spots that persist about the place. I blamed the anomaly on the Lake, if it was a bad day I took a walk.
It takes a courageous mind or a desperate employee to put up with the physical aspects of a haunted apartment. I think of myself as courageous but I cannot count on the temporary help to be brave so I try to find the desperate. The place is my home and I’m used to it though the dimming of the lights bothers me. A flicker is explainable but the draining away of light especially late at night, saps the energy out of inspiration. I won’t call myself frightened, but it is a new phenomenon in the place and I disliked it. How in the hell do the supernatural in an old factory cum bohemian apartment building in Chicago dim the damn lights? Why bother? I always understood ghosts as having some agenda which didn’t coincide with electricity. So I fiddled with the light switch and called maintenance every once in a while. The cold spots, slamming door etc., only meant I couldn’t have a dog, I told myself. I tried it once, but Bullseye didn’t understand me.
I wanted to tell her these things as she walked behind me during the tour. Hey don’t worry if you get cold it will pass and the lights, I just don’t know, it happens, but I kept my mouth shut on the matter. I told her she was welcome to the coffee in the pot (just brewed), and I showed her the hall closet for coats, umbrellas and galoshes. She had none of that apparatus however because it was a summer day in Chicago. I doubted she would have anything more than a rather seedy overcoat if it was a howling January day in Chicago. The economic differences between a storyteller and an editor isn’t fair, I’m the first to admit it. One loves the thrill of a turning page the other loves the language in a sick over the top way. I left her to become acclimated to working with me and working within my ‘haunted’ rooms. When she shivered, I looked up from my manuscript.
“You okay?”
“Yes, felt like someone just walked over my grave.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, that’s something my grandmother used to say.” Her big blue eyes widened and her shocking long blonde hair sort of bounced around her narrow face. She seemed to be relaxing. “When Grandma felt a cold shiver run down her back or over her shoulders, she always said that, ‘someone just walked across my grave’.”
I stared at her a moment, nodded and went back to work; I in no way wanted to encourage past conversations with Grandma. It was rude but these Indiana (one can always spot a Hoosier) girls had to keep their back-water statements to themselves. Typical of those coming from the sinkhole side of Lake Michigan she got right back to work with no sniffs or huffs; I admired her pluck. The girls from outside the city were usually very conscientious, and she was no exception. When we broke for lunch, I asked her how long she had been living in Chicago.
“About 12 weeks. I was ready to give it up, I felt so overwhelmed.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” I was sincere as I passed her the salt. I needed her help and, well, I needed someone around for a while. The cold spots were getting worse. One night I thought I had heard the sounds of footsteps; The quick tap and click of a woman’s step. I turned expecting a stranger, but I saw nothing but a blank apartment. I went out to dinner that night and got half sloshed. God help me I thought I had heard a few sighs so stopped by Saint Something or Other Catholic church and pilfered some Holy Water. I’m a professed atheist. Oddly enough things quieted down for a while. The experience put me behind and my agent, a steely no nonsense older woman let me know that books like mine, though they sell are forgettable. I needed to pick up the pace. I needed someone who would come every morning, work hard and make human noises, human movement, human scents, and human residue; I had been alone too long.
“So this used to be an old warehouse, huh? It makes a beautiful apartment.”
“It is nice,” I said “I like the view all around. I think the realtor thought I should be here because she found out I was a writer.”
She nodded as if she understood everyone classified writers as Bohemian by nature; I wasn’t I was just a writer. The apartment suited me for other reasons; One the city isolated it and two, the noise of the city didn’t crowd in upon my work. The screams of the outside world didn’t penetrate nor did the screams of my inner beast escape the solid brick building. I knew from the start that the space was perfect for me.
We worked together for 13 glorious weeks and the manuscript began to take shape. I know how cliché my words must sound but she wasn’t like other editors who focused on the rules; She allowed for creativity. She didn’t let me get away with anything in grammar but came up with clever ways around rules; She pushed my abilities, made me think through my use of words. I began to understand that this work would be something beyond what I had done before. I felt triumphant that she had not read my books or she may hint at adding her own nom de plume to my own. She may have comprehended my excitement in suspecting that the book was a damn good piece of work for I often caught her give me a worried look.
One night we made a timeline of the plot and pounded out the conclusion. We became so consumed with the work she lost track of the time. I looked up, pinched the bridge of my nose and realized what I was seeing was true, it was 11 P.M. After 10 PM Chicago sounded different; the city took on a low rumble and sinister rattle. I looked over at her, framed against the windows of the night-time city. Her hair began to fall out of its pins and curl down around her neck. Her freckles began to glow through her smudged makeup. Purplish smudges of weariness deepened her large aqua blue eyes and her wide but well sculptured mouth frowned in a pout. My heart started to pound, but I understood we were both tired. Time for attraction later, this was business, all business and I couldn’t mix it with pleasure. I asked her to text my cell when she arrived at her hovel across town; Public transportation was dangerous late at night. I remember feeling nervous as the clock started to tick closer to midnight, and I had not heard from her. I had forgotten about the sighs of those forgotten souls within the bricked walls of my apartment. At last the soft bell of my phone sounded – she was home safe. I went to bed exhausted, relieved and not bothered at all by cold spots and dimming lights. It was as if the apartment was holding its breath too.
One Wednesday evening she was standing in front of the large window that some brilliant soul had installed in the dining room. I used the dinning room as my work space when writing. It may sound pagan but when I finished a book, I prepared my victory dinner and ate it alone on the long dark table with the city spread out before me.
Looking out toward Lake Michigan, framed against that window she reminded me of a young girl I once knew, we were together for a short time; A short intense time. Standing up myself, moving next to her a spiritual sense of communion enveloped me. The deep summer heat had passed and the early heat of fall turned into gentle puffs of wind which buffeted the old building prophesying of the brutal winter to come. We were nearing completion of the book and I was glad she would not have to face crossing the city in the cold icy extremes. The city was clear and gleamed before her, like some promising utopia. The setting sun reflected on the building and left the lake, to the east, darkened and moving in blackened waves. Chicago looked alive but in an ancient, sinister way that drew me up taller beside her.
Standing beside me I admired her body by vicinity; She was so close. She studied the scene as some young virgin just before the sacrifice – perhaps as some young Aztec, pampered for a year of bliss but then feeling the effects of an ancient drug dulling her sense which would make her death easier, she began to tremble. I blinked hard and shook my head we were so close to finishing the book I wanted to focus. I stepped back and noticed her straight, sky-blue skirt, too large by at least one size. Her rather bony hips looked enticing through the folds of her skirt and her soft, buff colored sweater cascaded around her narrow shoulders and folded softly around her thin waist. Her clothes always seemed a size too large, but she wore it well, oddly enough.
“You know,” she said a vacant tone resonated from her voice, “I know someone haunts this apartment. I heard her crying in the bathroom.”
I stopped imaging her as anybody else but my editor. She turned at my silence looking a little perplexed. “What do you think happened? Do you think she died in an accident while this place was still a factory?”
“No,” I said, relieved she was forming conclusions that didn’t include me.
She looked pouty and my heart beat hard. “Are you sure?” she asked. “How do you know? When did you realize someone haunted the place?”
The sky darkened into a deep blue and for a moment the surrounding space expanded. “Soon after I moved in, it didn’t take me long.” I took a deep breath and heaved out a sigh of my own; “Have you ever been kissed?” It was an awful question, and I didn’t want to ask but being tired I could not stop myself. Her bright blue eyes widened and then she smiled.
“Yes,” she whispered, now shy. “I know you think me a bumpkin and maybe I am but I’ve kissed before.” Her breath was soft on my face and even with her thin body standing apart from me I felt her shiver. I grasped her tiny hips and pulled her toward me, wanting that one kiss not tainted by fear or hatred. The kiss was moist and lingering, I felt a soft peace and heavy sagging along my shoulders. I would regret this one, I remembered thinking as I lead her to the sofa. She seemed so desperate for touch and I wanted so much for her to trust me, to remain for just a little while within our first kiss, it made the drama to follow so much more enticing. Then I heard her whisper in my ear as she arched her thin body under mine, her clothes twisting and pulling around her body.
“I know you killed her,” she whispered softly in my ear. “I know you did, I knew her well.”
I felt her pull the trigger, felt the bullet rip through my shirt, my skin, my heart my back. My weight muffled the rapport of the gun. I remember standing next to her, both of us watching my bleeding body. She wept and shook and through her sobs she told me she loved someone; I don’t know who. I suppose I am to blame for I would have added her sighs to all the rest that echoed through the building.
I tried to follow her out but stopped at the door inhibited by nothing. I watched her pale face disappear as she quietly shut the door to my apartment. She left me here to sigh, chill the air, press down upon the old floorboards and drain the electric lights when anger overcomes me.
No one stays for long. I think of her often; Clever girl, a very clever girl.