“You’re not answering my question.”
“I just want to talk to her,” I told him. “To see how she feels.”
“You just said she was dead. I don’t think she’s feeling much of anything anymore.”
“Okay. How her ghost feels.”
He studied me for a long moment, then that thing happened that’s always happening around Zia and me: he just took me at my word.
“I don’t remember anybody dying around here,” he said. “At least not recently.”
“It was thirty years ago.”
“Thirty years ago…”
I could see his mind turning inward, rolling back the years. He gave me a slow nod.
“I do remember now,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it in a long time.” He turned from me and looked out at the street. “This was a good neighbourhood, and it still is, but it was different back then. We didn’t know about things so much. People drank and drove because they didn’t know any better. A policeman might pull you over, but then if it looked like you could drive, he’d give you a warning and tell you to be careful getting home.”
He nodded and his gaze came back to me. “I remember seeing the guy that killed that poor girl. He didn’t seem that drunk, but he was sure shook up bad.”
“But you didn’t see the accident itself?”
He shook his head. “
We heard it—my Emily and me. She’s gone now.”
“Where did she go?”
“I mean she’s dead. The cancer took her. Lung cancer. See, that’s another of those things. Emily never smoked, but she worked for thirty years in a diner. It was all that secondhand smoke that killed her. But we didn’t know about secondhand smoke back then.”
I didn’t know quite what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I don’t think he even noticed.
“Now they’re putting hormones in our food,” he said, “and putting God knows what kind of animal genes into our corn and tomatoes and all. Who knows what that’ll mean for us, ten, twenty years down the road?”
“Something bad?” I tried.
“Well, it won’t be good,” he said. “It never is.” He looked down the alley behind me. “Are you going to keep yelling for this ghost to come talk to you?”
“I guess not. I don’t think she’s here anymore.”
“Good,” he said. “I may not work anymore, but I still like to get my sleep.”
He started to turn, then added, “Good luck with whatever it is you’re trying to do.”
And then he did leave and walked down the street.
I watched him step into the doorway of his apartment, listened to the door hiss shut behind him. A car went by on the street. I went back into the alley and looked around, but I didn’t call out because I knew now that nobody was going to hear me. Nobody dead, anyway.
I felt useless as I started back to the mouth of the alley. This had been a stupid idea and I still had to help the dead boy, but I didn’t know how, or where to begin. I felt like I didn’t know anything.
“What are you doing?” someone asked.
I looked up to see Zia sitting on the metal fire escape above me.
“I’m investigating.”
“Whatever for?”