“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.

I’m fairly intelligent. I don’t like Shakespeare and Walt Whitman scares me to death and no I’m not confusing him with some hacker, slasher, novelist of the 21st century. No, old Walt was a poet (definition wide open there) and epitomizes for me the entire east coast of the good old US of A. They all scare me to death.

It’s okay for fairly intelligent people not to like Shakespeare. Sure you’ve got to respect the body of work, but you don’t have to like it–sort of like taxes. Sort of.

At any rate, I’m just a regular guy who finished high school and then finished college in all of four years and started a job in the city and thought about getting married twice. I let those two ideas slip right by and now I have the odd and end girlfriend divorcee. I know it sounds like I’m a bit of a user and maybe I am.

I frequent this bar (remember, I’m fairly intelligent) after the job about three days a week. Definitely on a Monday, then on Wednesday and Thursday. The weekend is just shoulder-to-shoulder and I don’t go in. I usually have dinner with friends or take the occasional depressed middle-aged woman out for some dancing and conversation.  No, it doesn’t always end in bed.

So anyway, I frequent this bar three days a week, not because I couldn’t use a drink on the other four but because I’d like to retire someday. What bars charge for a simple beer these days takes the breath away.

She sat there on a Monday and I could tell she did not want to talk. I didn’t either, it had been a tough day. On Wednesday she was on the same bar stool and in the same clothes and she looked at me, I swear for a solid five minutes without blinking. I asked the bartender what’s up with her and he says ‘who?’

“The lady at the end of the bar,” I wanted to add “wise ass” but the guy looks at me all innocent like and whispers to me–“do you see someone at the end of the bar?”
“Yeah.”

I’m thinking this bartender is like high on something because it’s obvious this chic is sitting there. The bartender looks like he is about to cry and says that he sees her once in a while too but when he walks in her direction, something distracts him and when he looks back, she’s gone.

So I get up and walk around the bar to ask this lady who is doing a good job of ruining my Wednesday, what her problem might be and why the cold stare. There is a loud crash behind me and I turn to see someone had stood up and let their chair fall over behind them. I turn back to the bar and the lady is gone.

I turn around and walk back to my seat at the bar and take a nice long pull and look again. The lady is staring right at me.

“So how many customers do you lose because of this woman at the end of the bar?”

“I don’t know, I’m kinda new here.”

That was true, but I had been going to this bar for years and I had never seen this woman. I sit and study her for a while and wonder why she looks gray and mad and old-fashioned. Her hair is high on her head and looks teased and lacquered with hairspray. She isn’t looking at me anymore but looking straight ahead. I shrug and take another sip of my beer, then glance her way, like I can’t help it. There she sat looking straight ahead so I slide off my chair quiet like and move in her direction. I turn the corner of the bar and move forward just a little more and she doesn’t move. I think for a moment that I might just make it up to her when she turns full on me and smiles.

It was one of those smiles that turn your blood cold, like someone had taken a corpse and pulled their mouth up in a smile and left it stuck there. I swear I heard her say my name kinda low and gurgling in the back of her throat.

I felt this pain radiate down my left arm and a sharp pain in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. And before I passed out and woke up here with beeps and whistles and concerned faced people I swear I heard her tell me to change my ways.

If it was a joke it was a bad one. If it was a ghost, well then I guess I’m the bad one.

After my wife left me I felt a terrible loss because she took the dog and the cat with her.  She left angry.

Don’t blame me.  We both agreed we didn’t want children.  A friend of mine told me that would change.  He told me so, sitting slumped over on a barstool with a begging look at the bartender who kept telling us the place was closed.  He wasn’t drunk, well not stupid, pie-eyed drunk, he didn’t want to go home to the wife and kiddos–all four kiddos.  No, five total, if you counted the wife.  He has a sweet wife, really, just a little, well a little… she’s simple; I mean all those kids.  She’s a great mother, though, but they had agreed that they would not bring any children into this awful, dying world.  Like I said they had four, I’m sure his wife is up for more and maybe he is too, one more would shorten his life, two more may end the suffering.

I held my ground on the whole pregnancy thing.  Now my wife is someone else to someone named Jeffery, with a little girl that “means the world,” to her.  I know my wife, she’s sorry she allowed her biological clock get the best of her.  I know she misses the long weekends listening to Lake Michigan pound the coastline and reading by the fire.  Yeah, I kept the cabin because there was no way she could afford it, not with a kid, the cat and the dog and a husband named Jeffery.   Sure, we sold the two-story house but I’m fine with a small apartment downtown.  Little has changed for me–except for the damned doorknobs.

She showed up when I was moving in, my wife that is.  She showed up about three months pregnant to make sure I was “okay.”  I told her in no uncertain terms not to show her face at my apartment again and that this was not some “adult,” type of divorce where we would be friends and remain concerned about each other.

Actually, I said no such thing; I told her I was fine and got back to rearranging my apartment.  She had no business being there.  The friend who didn’t want to leave his bar stool spoke loud and fast at her for about fifteen minutes.  I didn’t see her leave.

That night while I was on the toilet reading Jaws, the doorknob rattled.  I shouted at Ralf, my big dumb golden lab to knock it off and go to bed.  Then I remembered that Ralf, the big dumb lab went with mommy.  I sat there, book in hand and stared at the doorknob.  Why had I shut the door to go to the toilet?  I was the only one living in the apartment.  I didn’t have to worry about offending anyone.

The door knob softly rattled.

“Who’s there?”

The door knob shook and turned as if someone would wrench it out of the door and then suddenly went silent.  I felt cold to the bone.  I sat there until I felt my feet go numb.  When I stood up my knees were wobbly.  I made lots of noise, flushed the toilet twice and open the door suddenly with a wide sweep.  The apartment was quiet and gray-dark.  I heard the noise of after hours downtown, a comforting sound and noticed the dim glow of streetlights.  I walked about turning on all the apartment lights and the TV.  I slept on the couch and was to work early.

Yeah, that’s nice.  I can walk to work and I do.  I’ve lost five pounds already and some envious people are looking at me and saying I need to take it easy.

So, when my wife had this guy’s daughter she plastered her ugly little face all over Facebook.  Friends who didn’t know what to do with either one of us put their little thumbs up under the kid’s picture so I closed my account and read The Count of Monte Cristo.  I even bought the audio book and have it playing while I cook.  It’s a little galley kitchen in the apartment.  I miss the big old kitchen in the two-story house we sold but I don’t cook like I used to; I can still cut a great salad.

One night I woke up to a door slamming and thought one of my neighbors was having a loud fight.  My bedroom was dark, I was groggy and just becoming aware that the room was too dark.  Where was the night light I kept in the hallway?  I didn’t become fully awake until I heard the rattle of a doorknob.  My bedroom door was closed.  Why was my bedroom door closed?  I had lived in the apartment almost 10 months and I made it a point not to shut any of the doors leading into rooms (the closet door knobs never protested up to that point).

I do not understand what made me brave; I got out of bed while the door knob jiggled in the door.  I grabbed the thing and felt an electric shock go through me.  The only thing I remember is my teeth chattering while trying not to urinate and feeling… I don’t know… terrified.  Absolutely terrified.

“Janet, I think something haunts my apartment.”

Silence.

“Janet, are you still there?”

“Yes.  What makes you think something haunts it?”

“The doorknobs rattle in the door and last night I tried to open the door while the doorknob was moving and something… something happened.”

“I know a good priest.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I.”

“You never went to church a day in your life.”

“I know I started after I left you.  Jeffery goes.”

“Yeah, well, never mind.  I wouldn’t want you to miscarry.”

“I’ve already had the baby.”

“Yeah, right never mind.”

I hung up before she could say another word, disgusted with myself that I had called her but I couldn’t shake that feeling of apprehension.  I spent the weekend up at the cabin.  I left instructions with the apartment’s handyman to change every damned doorknob in the place.  When I came back every new doorknob on every door, including the closets shone bright and ready for use.  I deliberately closed the bathroom door Monday night and continued reading The Count of Monte Cristo.  When I had finished, hands washed and reaching for the doorknob the damned thing rattled.  I stood in the bathroom for an hour.  When I opened the door–nothing.

At Wednesday’s board meeting I lost track of the conversation, thinking about what my apartment would look like with no doors.  I could use beads or heavy damask material for doors.  My boss pulled me aside later and asked if I was okay.  The job had been great, sales were up and my department was top of the line, so I was a little impatient that he pulled me aside.

“Listen, you’ve lost weight and you are here early and you leave late.  I know things have been tough but I want you to take a few days off.”  The boss walked away before I could protest.  I wanted to shout after him to come on over and use my toilet but I didn’t.

I can survive my wife leaving and becoming instantaneously pregnant with a younger guy named Jeffery instead of Jeff (who goes to church) but it’s the doorknobs that will unhinge me.  Is there a pun in that?

The week off at the cabin was a good idea, but I decided not to tell my boss.  The old place is on the Wisconsin coastline, due north of Chicago and a place of refuge.  I thought I’d miss my wife but oddly enough I missed the dog.  Ralf and I would walk the coast while my wife and the cat would read by the fire.  For the first few days I looked at any door knob before I turn it or pull it but by Wednesday morning I forgot all about doorknobs and thought about grilling steaks, putting together quiches with sweet potato crusts and mixing egg custards.  Salads didn’t cross my mind, and I finished The Count of Monte Cristo.

I returned mid-afternoon on Saturday thanking my boss mentally for the good advice.  The apartment seemed small and cramped so I opened a few windows and thought about maybe buying plants to help freshen the air.  I stood in the middle of the living room and said, “I like it here, it’s close to work and I don’t have to park on the street.  This will work.”

For the first time, the doorknob on the closet rattled.  It rattled violently.  I stood and looked at it for a moment.  It rattled again and then settled down into a tapping and then stopped.  I strode with determination toward the closet door and swung it open wide.

I stayed in a hotel that night and had movers take my stuff to a cool loft apartment in an old Victorian.  It’s a little further to work if I drive but I don’t mind the walk to the L even on cold days; it clears my mind.  I went to Mass and I talk to the priest every Saturday now, he’s a good guy.

The good news was that I could keep my deposit, and they reimbursed me for all the new doorknobs.  They put the old ones back.  The handyman figures she showed herself because of the new door handles.  He told me she was usually quiet with women tenants and she hadn’t shown herself in several decades.  No one knows why she hung herself in the closet.

“One lady told me she thinks she did if for love.”   Leela was a former neighbor.  “The manager and owner think everyone’s crazy but hey, they gave you your deposit back.”

The handyman was a nice guy but I wish he would have told me she had hanged herself in there, I’m sure I would have known we wouldn’t have been compatible, women just don’t get me.