Songs of Love and Death

from everywhere.

“So, what? You want to hurt me? Come on, then,” she said, her voice taking on a little strength. “If you’re gonna do it, do it!”

He stepped into the room, filling the doorway. The death-blood, slick on his belly, glittered. He bared his teeth, growling like a dog.

“You want to hurt me? Then hurt me,” she yelled. “Hurt me!”

The ghost screamed and rushed across the room toward her. She felt its rage and hatred surrounding her, swallowing her. She saw its hand rising to slap her down, and she flinched back, her eyes closed, and braced for the blow. Every scar on her skin tingled like someone had touched them with ice. Filthy water poured into her mouth, her nose, corrupted and sour with decay. She felt the spirit pressing against her, pushing into her skin. Its rage lifted her like a wave.

And then it was gone.

She stood in the kitchen, her body shaking and her ragged breath coming in sobs. She was terribly cold. The wine on her toes—only wine—was half-dried and sticky. Storm wind battered at the windows, the walls. The furnace rumbled, fighting against the frigid air. She sank slowly, her back against the cabinet, and hugged her knees. A stray tear fell down her cheek and she shuddered uncontrollably twice.

Then, between one breath and the next, her mouth relaxed. Her body released. The breaking tension was more than sexual.

She started laughing: a deep, satisfied sound, like the aftermath of orgasm.

SUNDAY MORNING BROUGHT the first snow of the season. The thick, wet flakes appeared just before dawn, dark against the bright city backsplash of the clouds, and transformed to a perfect white once they had fallen. After the morning’s toast and tea and sermon, Mr. Kleinfeld, wrapped in his good wool overcoat, lumbered out after breakfast, snow shovel over his shoulder. He cleared his walkway and his drive, then the stretch of sidewalk in front of his house. The trees all around were black-barked and frosted with snow, and very few cars passed, the tracks of their tires leaving white furrows and never digging so deep as the asphalt.

Finished with his own house, he made his way through the ankle-high snow to his neighbor’s. No lights glowed in the house, no tracks marked her walk. Her driveway hadn’t been used. He hesitated, not wanting to wake her, but it was almost midday. He rang the bell, and when no answer came, mittened manfully on the door. No one came. He shook his head and put himself to work. The clouds above were bright as the snow when he finished, the air not yet above the freezing point, but warmer all the same.

His wife met him at the door with a cup of hot cocoa, just as he’d known she would. He leaned the snow shovel by the door, took the warm mug, and kissed his wife’s dry cheek.

“I don’t think our new neighbor made it home last night,” he said. He sat in his chair. “I figure she’s seen it. Won’t be long now before she moves on.”

It was a conversation they’d had before, and he waited now for his wife’s agreement, her prediction: two more months, another month, a week. The missus was better at judging these things than he was. So he was surprised when she stood silent for a long moment, shaking her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do not know…”

DAVID’S APARTMENT STILL showed the gaps where she had been. His clothes still hung in only half of the bedroom closet, the hangers moving into the emptiness she had left only slowly, as if hoping that her blouses and slacks and dresses might come back. The corner where her desk had once been was still vacant, the four hard circles that the legs had pressed into the carpet relaxed out a little, but not gone. The kid upstairs was practicing his guitar again, working on power chords that had driven her half-crazy when she’d lived there. They seemed sort of cute now.

“He’s getting better,” David said.

She rolled over, stuffing the pillow under her head and neck as she did. A thin line of snow ran along the windowsill—the first of the season. David, beside her, nodded toward the ceiling.

“He made it all the way through ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ last week,” he said.

“All five parts?”

“Yep.”

“Kid’s going places,” she said.

“Please God that it’s places out of earshot.”

She brushed her fingertips across his chest. His skin was several tones darker than hers, and the contrast made her hand seem paler than she was, and her scars as white as the snow. He had his first gray hair in among the black, just over his ear. His dark eyes shifted over to her, his smile riding the line between postcoital exhaustion and melancholy. Quick as the impulse, she rolled the few more inches toward him and kissed his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows the way he always did when he knew that she was nervous.

“What’s your plan for the day?” he asked.

“Housework,” she said. “You?”

“Get up early and hit the Laundromat,” he said.

She nodded.

“And since that didn’t work?”

“Do an emergency load in the sink to get through work tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to meet up with Gemma at three to get back my scanner.”

“You’ll need to get hopping. It’s past noon now.”

“Another few minutes won’t make a difference,” he said, putting his hand over hers. He wasn’t pretty—his face too wide, his nose bent where it had broken as a child and never been put right, his jaw touched by the presentiment of jowls. Handsome, maybe, in an off-putting way. “Is there something to talk about?”

“Is,” she said.

He took a long, slow breath and let it out slowly. Not a sigh so much as the preparatory breath of a high diver. Or a man steeling himself for bad news.

“I think you should come over tonight,” she said. “Take a look at the place. Bring your laundry, too.”

He sat up. The blankets dropped to his lap. She looked at him, unable to read his expression.

“You’re changing the rules?” he said. Each word was as gentle as picking up eggs.

“No, I’m not. I always said that the not coming over part was temporary. It’s just… time. That’s all.”

“So. You really aren’t breaking up with me?”

“Jesus,” she said. She took the pillow from under her head and hit him with it lightly. Then she did it again.

“It is traditional,” he said. “Girl gets a house without consulting her boyfriend, moves all her stuff out, tells him he can’t come over. Says she’s ‘working through something’ but won’t say what exactly it is? It’s hard not to connect those dots.”

“And the part where I tell you in simple declarative sentences that I’m not breaking up with you?”

“Goes under mixed signals,” he said.

She took a deep breath. On the street, a siren rose and fell.

“Sorry,” she said. She got up from the bed, pulling one of the sheets with her and wrapping it around her hips. “Look, I understand that this has been hard. I’ve asked for a lot of faith.”

“You really have.”

“And given that I don’t have an entirely uncheckered past, and all,” she said. “I see why you would freak. You and my mother both.”

“Your mother?”

“She’s been reading me the riot act ever since she heard about it. She really likes you.”

He leaned back, surprise and pleasure in his expression.

“Your mother likes me?”

“Focus, sweetheart. I’m apologizing here.”

“And I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said.

Relief had left him giddy. Between his brave face and her attention being elsewhere, she’d managed to ignore the sadness and dread that had been seeping into him. Now that it was lifting a little, she saw how deep it