I was sitting in the kitchen, then, after the date I mean. I sipped a little glass of gin in front of me, and she sipped at the one in front of her. The conversation had mostly fallen apart at this point, which in no way implies that it had been very good to start. Neither of us were very good at talking, but I swore that there was chemistry.
There had to be chemistry.
The silence had been comfortable all night, unawkward, relaxed. At this point, however, it had become strained, tense. There was a feeling that we just had spent too much time around each other, but I was unwilling to let the night go. She hadn’t tried to leave, and I assumed we were on the same page.
I stared into the little glass of gin, very much enjoying but desperately trying to stop the little movie reel that was playing in my head. In it, I rip off her clothing, her shirt first and then her pants. I am like a superhero, and her jeans are like tissue. She isn’t wearing a bra and we press our bodies together and I feel her breasts against my chest. She puts her tongue in my ear. She is begging me to fuck her.
I took a small sip of gin. There has got to be chemistry, I thought. No doubt.
“So, uh,” she began to say, but hesitated. She gathered her courage up, and then: “I think there is a ghost in your living room.” My back had been to the living room. I closed my eyes for a moment, sighed, and turned around.
The fucking ghost was in the living room, floating and bouncing around, a little globule of light that had taken up residence in our apartment after the attic had been cleaned out. It was a nuisance.
“Yes, it- our house does this thing. Occasionally.” I hated the way I sounded. Desperate, pathetic. Jesus.
She didn’t seem panicked, though, or scared. Instead, she was curious, her eyes a little brighter, like they had been earlier. “Is it a bad ghost?”
Oh God, I thought, yes, you can play this. “It’s usually pretty benign,” I said. “It always seems to be a good omen.” Buy it, I thought.
“Hm.” She looked over my shoulder, at the ghost, that terrific ghost, and then she looked at me, smiled a playful smile.
I couldn’t help it. I went for broke, the proverbial limb, whatever. “Do you want to…” She cut me off with a cute little twitch of the eyebrow; her smile grew lopsided, suggestive.
She shrugged, grinning. I gave the ghost a mental high-five, and made a promise to light the candles and put out the bucket of blood tomorrow night.
