Kylee began to cry, her leathery lips quivering into the shape of an hourglass tipped on its side. The waiter Federico brought a box of tissues. Kylee dabbed one beneath her glasses, pulling away gobs of teary mascara. Abby touched the woman’s hand. Kylee grabbed her wrist and dug acrylic fingernails into the soft flesh. She leaned closer and hissed, “He was murdered. I’m convinced of it. They said it was a heart attack brought on by too much Red Bull and Mountain Dew but I know it was murder! My poor sweet Isaac!”
“I had no idea,” Abby said. “Who did it?”
“We don’t know!” Kylee cried. “A hundred and fifty-five years I’ve stuck around and still we don’t know who did it! Why do you think I’ve kept this body alive? Why do you think I’ve cloned Federico hundreds of times? I need protection. I need someone to take care of me while I find out who killed my husband!”
The waiter Federico leaned over the table, clearing their plates. “Did you guys save any room for dessert?”
“I’ll have the triple chocolate decadence,” Kylee said. “Give our guest the rhubarb pie à la mode.”
Abby said, “So the police were never able to—”
“Police? You think there were freaking police involved? During the Age of Fucked Up Shit? You are young, young thing. The authorities fried bigger fish. Oh, I don’t know. Solve a homicide or deal with widespread rioting and looting. No, it was entirely up to us. We read up on forensic science, watched a lot of police procedurals. But we kept coming up cold. We combed the archives as best we could for clues as to who might have a motive for killing my husband. We barely made a dent in all those files. Then a burst pipe, oh hell. Now you, young thing, supposedly you are the one who is supposed to help us get to the bottom of this abomination. Why Mr. Kirkpatrick thinks you’ll be of any help is beyond me. You might as well hop on that boat and head back to wherever you came from. Everything worth knowing about this rotten place disappeared a long time ago.”
An almost-full moon hung close to the water and a feathery breeze skittered across the waves. Abby’s dreams were chopped-up pieces of grade school, trees, beaches, pink fur. She woke around three in the morning convinced she was being watched. Keeping her eyes closed, she reached across the bed for Rocco then remembered she wasn’t in Vancouver. She opened her eyes. The ghost hovered just beyond the window, bobbing a bit, as one would imagine ghosts to do. His form consisted of roiling wisps of translucence in the shape of a man. He appeared balding, with a bad comb-over, and he wore a T-shirt with the barely legible logo for a Comi-Con convention from over a century ago. He rubbed his eyes beneath spectral bifocals.
“Say something,” Abby said.
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, so, I guess you’re here to solve my ‘murder.’”
“Isaac Pope?”
“So they say.”
“Who killed you?”
“I actually buy the Red Bull and Mountain Dew theory, myself. You’re kind of hot, you know that? What do you say about flashing me a boob?”
“No thanks. What do you know about the archives?”
“You waste no time,” the ghost of Isaac Pope said. “What is it about the archives you want to know?”
“Can they be salvaged?”
“Come on, just one booby.”
“I’m looking for a transcript of an interview with someone named Luke Piper.”
“Oh, that,” Isaac said. “All I’m saying is just a tit. What harm can come of it? I’m a dead dude.”
“Will you tell me about the transcript?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know about the transcript.”
Abby considered this a moment, then pulled aside her nightgown to reveal her left breast.
“Oooooh…” Isaac moaned, sounding like a real ghost for the first time. “That’s what I’m talking about. Touch the nipple, make it hard.”
Outside the window the ghost rose and fell as if mounted on a spring, slowly, then faster, his right hand pumping what Abby assumed was his small, ghostly prick. Isaac grabbed the sill with his other hand, moaned, grunted, and ejaculated some phosphorescent ghost semen onto the foot of the bed. Revolted, Abby tucked her breast back in and crawled away from the ectoplasmic splooge.
“Gross! Why’d you have to do that?”
“Don’t tell me you weren’t at least a little bit turned on, baby,” Isaac said. “Seriously—how many times did you come?”
“Jesus! Now you can at least tell me about the transcript.”
“As promised, here’s everything I know about the transcript. I know absolutely nothing about the transcript. You’ll need to talk to the archivist. Besides, rubbing one off isn’t the real reason for this supernatural visit or whatever you want to call it. I’m supposed to get all Hamlet’s dad on you. You’ve got to get out of here, Abby, before you get trapped in the play. You’re getting sucked into a loop. Your selfhood, it’s in superposition.”
“But the archives.”
Isaac sighed. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And thanks for the flash.”
“Get out of here,” Abby said.
“Suit yourself, baby,” Isaac said, “You know you liked it.”
The spirit dispersed in the wind.
The next morning Abby passed through halls decorated with eye-violating phantasy art. In each one a muscled warrior defended a barely dressed maiden from some sort of dragon or monster or many-tentacled space-being. On closer look Abby recognized the maidens as Kylee, and the buff heroes as Isaac, whose bespectacled and combed-over head topped each rippling, sweaty torso.
A Federico stopped alongside her. “They were commissioned,” he said. “Isaac hired some of the most acclaimed science-fiction-and-fantasy cover artists of his day and presented these great works of art as gifts to Kylee.”
“I think the period-appropriate word to describe these paintings is ‘rad,’” Abby said.
“You’d be one to know. I know very little about those times.” The Federico stiffened and gazed into the middle distance as if he’d heard something alarming. “Oh dear. In the billiard room? Oh dear, oh dear.” He scurried up a spiral staircase with Abby trailing behind. “You don’t need to see this,” Federico called over his shoulder. “Really. You’d best be enjoying complimentary refreshments in the dining room.”
Abby kept on his heels, coming to a room where a crowd of Federicos had gathered. Kneeling on the floor, Kylee jaggedly wailed and lamented. Abby pushed her way to the front of the scrum. On a billiard table with balls frozen midgame lay the prone body of a Federico, his head ringed with sleeping pills.
“He’s dead,” a Federico whispered beside her, and several other Federicos, mostly the younger ones, began softly to weep. Kylee clawed the floor, blubbering and writhing. An older Federico came to the lady’s side and carefully lifted her, directing her to an overstuffed chair.
Kylee blubbered, “Did he leave a note? Did he at least say why he did it?”
The suicide note was conveniently located in the body’s left hand. One of the Federicos retrieved it and read it aloud. “My dear Kylee and brothers Federico. It is time for me to pass from this world to the next. I found it too hard to be myself in a place where so many other people were me. Is it too much to ask that I be treated as an individual for once? Is it? I mean, come on. Well, anyway, I leave all my personal effects to Federico #270, whose kindness I will cherish into the grave. See you on the other side, bitches!”
Shoulders heaved, palms rubbed backs in consolation, and a nearby box of tissues was quickly depleted. To be polite, Abby pretended to sniffle. It all felt disingenuously theatrical. Kylee fainted and was borne away by six sobbing Federicos. When they were gone the remaining Federicos cleared their throats and started discussing various household tasks and funeral arrangements. Abby tapped an older Federico on the shoulder.