“Just a twitch. Sorry.”
“Man,” said Fremont, “you jumped a yard there.”
“It was nothing,” said Dalton, getting up and going back to the cabinet to pour himself another scotch. Naumann had been gone for so long that he had begun to believe that he was fully recovered. Now he was back, and Dalton began to believe instead that he was going to have this problem for the rest of his life, a recurring visible delusion that he’d have to work around each and every day, like a man with Parkinson’s or the effects of a crippling stroke.
“Pour me one too,” said Naumann. “I’m dying over here.”
“Go away,” snapped Dalton, without thinking, near panic.
“Say what?” said Fremont, in an injured tone.
“Not you.”
“Who, then?” said Fremont, staring around the room.
“Him,” he said, nodding in the direction of Naumann’s ghost. Fremont squinted at the empty couch and then looked back at Dalton with new eyes.
“Who’s… him?”
Dalton finished building his scotch in silence, poured a second one precisely the same, walked over to Naumann, and set it down in front of him with a hard glare. Fremont watched this entire exercise in silence, and sat back in his chair only when Dalton was sitting down across from him.
No one spoke for a while as the fire grew in strength, filling the low masculine room with dancing shadows and a warm flickering light. Fremont drained his Lone Star and set it down on the redwood slab.
“Micah, are you… seeing things?”
Dalton nodded once, staring at the untasted scotch in his hands.
“What kind of things?” asked Fremont, his voice unnaturally low and calming, as if soothing a flat-eared horse.
“Just drink your beer, Willard.”
“Good advice, Willard,” said Naumann.
“You’re not here,” said Micah, to Naumann. “I know that.”
Fremont sighed theatrically, got up and walked over to the cabinet, picked out another Lone Star, popped the cap, and came back to stand in front of Dalton.
“You know, I don’t mean to be a weak sister, but you’re sort of freaking me out here, man. I’m kind of depending on you to keep me alive, and right now you’re not looking all that reliable.”
“I’m fine, Willard. Really. I’ve been on another detail for over a week. I haven’t gotten much sleep. We’ll have something to eat, watch a DVD. In the morning, we’ll talk to Stallworth—”
“How’d he like the orchid?” said Naumann, cutting in.
“He loved it,” said Dalton, after a long taut silence.
“Told you he would.”
“Yes, Porter, you did.”
“Who’s Porter?” asked Fremont.
Dalton just shook his head and sipped at his scotch.
“Man. You do sound like you really are talking to another guy,” said Fremont. Dalton looked up at him, and then back at Naumann, who lifted his hands, shrugged, leaned back into the couch, and put his bare feet on the table.
“I guess that’s what it sounds like, Willard.”
Fremont sat down. He took a pull at his beer, considering Dalton. “Is this guy, like, dead?”
“Very dead.”
“He was a friend?”
“Yes. A good friend.”
“That’s rough,” said Fremont. “How’d he die?”
“He killed himself—”
“Like hell,” put in Naumann. “Don’t believe him, Willard.”
“Killed himself? How?”
“Stabbed himself with an Art Deco hat pin, actually.”
“Very funny,” said Naumann.
“How can a guy kill himself with a hat pin?”
“Wasn’t easy,” said Dalton, smiling at Naumann. “Took him several hours. Had to keep jabbing away. Squealed like a girl all the way through it too.”
“You really are an asshole,” said Naumann.
“Where did he do this?”
“In Cortona, Italy, about a week ago.”
“Yeah? Why’d he do that?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
“Suicide, huh? And this guy, this suicider, he’s here now?”
“Yes. Over there. On the couch.”
Fremont studied the couch for a time, narrowing his eyes.
“Can’t say I see him all that clear. What’s he look like?”
“Six two, one-ninety, big build. Pale-blue skin. Used to be tanned. Now kinda moldy. Good-looking in an advanced-state-of-decomposition-crawling-with-maggots sort of way.”
This wasn’t completely accurate. Naumann was looking reasonably good, for a corpse. As a matter of fact he seemed to have improved quite a bit — he looked almost “fresh” — but the chance to heat Naumann up was just too good to pass up.
“I am not crawling with maggots, you lying snake.”
“Got on a pair of emerald green pajamas.”
“Green pajamas. That what he was wearing when he died?”
“No. Matter of fact, I don’t know where he got them.”
“In Hell. Shop called Dante’s,” said Naumann. “Near Nel Mezzo del Cammin di Nostra Vita. Tell ’em Virgil sent you.”
“I knew a guy was haunted, once,” said Fremont, in a detached conversational tone. “His name was Milo Tillman, one of our guys, worked out of the Lordsburg division, over there by the Arizona border? Tillman was in the Marines, went to Vietnam, did what was required, Silver Star, Purple Heart twice. On the way home in the Braniff jet, he’s sitting beside this guy, Regular Army, name of Huey Longbourne, got a MAC SOG patch, fruit salad all over his chest, looks like he earned every stitch of it. Huey and Milo took a liking to each other, got themselves a little pissed, talked out some of the uglier bits of the war. They’re getting ready to land, Huey says he’s gotta go to the head. Huey never comes back. They land, go through customs — no sign of Huey. Milo gets the pilot to read him the manifest. The seat next to him was listed empty. No Huey Longbourne on the passenger manifest. But his name was there on another list. The cargo manifest. He’d been killed on a Lurp near Anh Khe the week before. His body was in the hold, along with ten other ex-grunts. After that, Milo saw Huey Longbourne off and on for years, mainly in the evening, or when he was tired. Got reconciled to him, I guess.”
“Does he still see him?” asked Dalton, deeply interested.
“Hard to say. Milo got himself disappeared years back, lost somewhere in the foothills of the Rockies, down in southeastern Colorado. Winter of ninety-seven, I think. A very bad winter. Lost in a storm, we think. Never come back from a field op.”
“You never found him?”
“We looked. Scoured the whole sector around Trinidad, all the way up the Purgatoire to Timpas, up along the Comanche grasslands. Got as far as the Kansas border, but that kind of looking sorta draws the cops and we were trying to keep a lower profile those days. It might even be that Milo’s not dead at all. I like to think he just decided it was time to walk away. He might be sitting in a cantina right now, down in Tularosa, talking about the Nam with the ghost of Huey Longbourne. I hope he is. Anyway, my point, Milo was haunted and it never got in the way of his job. So I figure, you got a ghost, you still look like a competent guy. I’m okay with it.”
“Sporting of you, Willard,” said Naumann. “I like this guy.”
“He likes you,” said Dalton. Fremont smiled, waved in the general direction of the empty couch, lifted his beer.
“Here’s to you too.” Turning to Dalton, “Porter?”
“Naumann. Porter Naumann. Porter, meet Willard Fremont.
“Nice to know you, Willard,” said Naumann.
“He says it’s nice to know you.”
Dalton topped up his glass and decided there was no room for ice, a situation he felt he could find it in himself to accept.
“Can I ask it a question?” asked Fremont, looking cagey.