‘I think it was time for you to move out of Eddie’s.’ A wily grin from Jackson, who never answered a question directly.
They cracked open the bottle of bourbon. Moses apologised for the absence of glasses. They drank out of jamjars instead.
‘We’re lucky,’ he told Jackson. ‘Bird has to drink out of a cake-tin.’
He sat down on the sofa and lit one of the joints. Jackson leaned against the windowsill. He was still wearing his galoshes. Things like that made him endearing.
Later, drunker, Jackson kept staring at Moses as if he suddenly found him quite fascinating. Moses shifted on the sofa. He tried passing the joint to Jackson. Perhaps that was what he wanted. Jackson accepted the joint, but the staring continued.
Eventually he had to ask, ‘What is it, Jackson?’
Jackson’s eyes slid sideways towards the door, then back to Moses again. ‘Who was that?’
Moses looked confused. ‘What?’
‘Who was that woman?’
‘Woman? What woman?’
‘The woman you were talking to.’
‘What are you talking about, Jackson? I wasn’t talking to a woman.’
‘Yes, you were. I saw you.’
Moses placed his right cheek in the palm of his hand and went back over the past few minutes with some thoroughness. ‘I don’t remember a woman,’ he said finally.
‘Didn’t you see her?’
Moses shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘How can you talk to somebody you can’t see?’ Jackson asked him.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know I was talking to anybody.’
‘She was sitting right next to you.’
‘Was she?’
‘Yes. There.’ And Jackson pointed at the sofa.
‘Where?’
‘There. On the sofa. Next to you.’
Moses turned and studied the place where the woman he was supposed to have been talking to was supposed to have been sitting.
‘What did she look like?’ he asked.
‘She was wearing a raincoat. A black raincoat. With a belt.’
Moses narrowed his eyes at Jackson. Whisky. A few joints. A devious intelligence. He wasn’t convinced.
‘It’s true.’ Jackson held his hands out in front of him as if he had an orange in each one. ‘It’s absolutely true.’
Moses examined his friend closely. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘what were we talking about?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t hear. I was going to ask you when she left.’
‘We must,’ Moses said, ‘have been talking very softly.’
‘You were. You were sort of — whispering to each other.’ Jackson gave the word a salacious twist.
‘And she’s left now, you say?’ Moses asked, glancing again at the empty space beside him.
Jackson nodded. ‘A couple of minutes ago.’
‘Hmm.’
Moses sat quietly on the sofa absorbing this strange information.
Then he thought of something.
He reached down with his right hand and touched the cushion next to him. And the funny thing was, it felt warm.
*
The following morning Moses went to see Elliot. Elliot was on the phone, so Moses waited in the doorway. He noticed how brooding, how oppressive, the office looked in the daytime. All those sombre reds and greys. They soaked up light, gave nothing back. At night Elliot’s desk withdrew into the shadows, but now it showed — a drab industrial plastic construction, its sterility broken only by a pair of soiled telephones and an overflowing Senior Service ashtray. Only the pool-table exploited the natural light, turning a green that was almost fluorescent as the sun played on its surface. The office had been designed with the small hours in mind: drawn curtains, low lighting, smoke.
Five minutes had gone by. Moses crossed the room and sat down on the radiator. He could see Elliot in profile now. It was a very one-sided phone-call. Elliot was staring out of the window almost as if he was just staring out of the window. The telephone seemed incidental. He had hardly said a word.
Finally he said OK twice and slammed down the receiver. His sigh carried his chest forward a few inches and back again. A well-built man, Elliot, under all those playboy suits and ties.
‘Christ,’ Elliot muttered. He pushed the phone to the far edge of the desk. As far away as possible.
‘Hello,’ Moses said.
‘As if I haven’t got enough trouble already. Now you. What’s up, Moses?’
Moses hesitated. ‘I’ve got a ghost.’
‘A ghost?’
‘Yeah, a ghost. It’s upstairs. In my living-room. Do you know anything about it?’
Elliot looked at Moses to see if he was being serious. Sometimes it was difficult to tell. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about a ghost. You going to tell me about it?’ He lit a cigarette, then tossed the packet across the room to Moses. He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. Christ, the entertainment business.
Moses took a cigarette, lit it, and threw the packet back. ‘It’s a she, actually,’ he began carefully. ‘Apparently she wears a black raincoat.’
‘Apparently? What do you mean, apparently?’
‘Well, I didn’t actually see her. This friend of mine, he — ’
‘You didn’t actually see her?’
‘No, you see I was — ’
‘Hold on. Let me get this straight, right? You’re worried about a ghost you can’t see?’
‘Yes, but you — ’
‘What, you mean if you could see it, it wouldn’t worry you?’
‘It’s not that, Elliot. It’s just — ’
But Elliot wasn’t listening any more. He was bent double in his executive chair, clutching his stomach. He was killing himself.
‘Well,’ Moses said, easing off the radiator and starting for the door, ‘I just thought I’d tell you — ’
‘Hey, Moses.’
Moses turned.
Elliot was prancing up and down the office with his jacket draped over his head. ‘Woooooo,’ he was going. ‘Woooooooooooooo.’
Oh well, Moses thought. At least I cheer the bastard up.
*
One further development regarding the invisible ghost.
The next weekend, at around four in the afternoon, the bell rang on the fourth floor of The Bunker. Moses peered out of the window. It was Jackson. Moses was surprised to see him again so soon. Visits from Jackson were usually few and far between.
He leaned out of the window. ‘Keys,’ he shouted.
This time he aimed at least twenty feet to the left of Jackson’s anxious upturned face. The sock bounced off a car roof and into the road. Jackson scuttled after it. Moses went out to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He returned in time to see Jackson walk in, close the door behind him, and produce a bradawl from his raincoat pocket (the weather was still fine). He watched as Jackson began to bore a hole in the door about two-thirds of the way up. Jackson made small grunting sounds as his elbow gouged the air. It was a hard wood.
Once he had bored the hole according to his own internal specifications, he plunged a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out a hook shaped like a gold question-mark. He screwed it into the hole with a series of deft energetic twists of his wrist, the tip of his tongue appearing from time to time in the corner of his mouth — a sign of intense concentration. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Moses handed Jackson a cup of tea, as you would any workman.
‘That’s very nice,’ he said. ‘But what’s it for?’
‘That,’ Jackson explained, ‘is for her to hang her coat on.’
Another time, perhaps a month later, Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs with an antique upholstered chair. He placed it carefully just inside the door.
‘In case she’s tired after all those stairs,’ he said.
A very thoughtful person, Jackson.