“You can’t fire me,” he said calmly. “We’re partners.”
“I won’t do it!” I snapped. “Get us out of this, Gilley, or so help me, I’ll . . .” I was so angry I couldn’t think of what I’d do, but I knew it was something big.
“M.J.,” Steven said, coming into the room to take a chair next to Gilley, “I think you should do it.”
“Easy for you to say,” I groused. “You’re not the one doing some goofy show on television that’s going to make you look like a loony tune!”
“I don’t think it will be so bad,” Steven said, his voice calm and soothing. “And I can tell you from my own personal experience that when I watch you work I am memorized.”
I should also mention that Steven was born in Argentina and raised in Germany. He’s new to both the States and English. “Mesmerized,” Gilley whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
“Yes, that too,” Steven said. “The point here is that the show is a good opportunity for your business, and to prove to people that you are a gifted medium able to communicate with the dead.”
“Think of it,” Gilley added. “I mean, how many people have some object in their home that they think might have bad energy associated with it? M.J., this could be a whole new business for us! It’s not just about busting someone’s home anymore; now we’re talking busting that old hairbrush or picture frame or whatever.”
I sank back down in my seat. I was outmanned, outmaneuvered, and outsmarted. “What happens if I don’t show up?”
“They’ll sue you,” Gil said. “Breach of contract and all.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “How long is this going to take?”
“Including tonight, it’ll take three days. We land this evening, and they start shooting tomorrow at eight a.m. sharp.”
“So we’re back here by Monday?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“And there’s no new business on the calendar?” It had been a slow couple of weeks.
“Nothing. Not even a nibble.”
“And you’ve already made arrangements for Doc?” Doc was my African Gray parrot. I’d had him since I was twelve.
“Mama Dell and the Captain are going to look after him.” Mama Dell and her husband, known only as “the Captain,” owned the coffee shop across the street and were good friends of ours.
I looked from Steven to Gilley and back again, hoping one of them would come to his senses and back me for a change. Finally I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Fine. But I swear to God, Gil, if this in any way makes me look like an ass, you’re going to pay for it.”
“Don’t I always?” Gilley muttered, but quickly flashed me a big, toothy smile and clapped his hands. “It’ll be fun!”
I gave him a dark look, and he wisely hurried out of my office, muttering something about heading to my condo to pack a bag for me.
“He’s right, you know,” Steven said after we heard the front door close.
“About this being fun? Don’t count on it.”
“No, about it being good for the business.”
“Or it will be really bad for business,” I countered, still irritated at having been hoodwinked.
“What is your worry over this?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“I’m worried that this program is exploitive, that the intent isn’t to educate as much as it is to disprove, and that the producer will use every opportunity to showcase any miss I get and call me out on national television as a fraud.”
“But you’re not a fraud,” Steven said gently. “You are the real McCain.”
One corner of my mouth lifted. “McCoy,” I corrected. “And I know that, but you should see what goes on in the editing room, Steven. I mean, they can take so much out of context that they could make Einstein look stupid.”
“Maybe you are taking this too seriously,” Steven reasoned. “It seems to me the show is about entertainment, not about making some sort of ideological point.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “May I say that your English is really improving?”
“Thank you,” he said modestly. “I’ve been practicing.” He got up then and came around my desk, lifting me up out of my chair and pulling me into his wonderfully developed chest. “I have a feeling you will look very good on camera,” he said, and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You have a face for the television.”
I smiled a little wider. “So if this thing turns ugly, you promise to get me out of there?”
“Mmmm,” Steven said, and kissed me again. “Yes, I will rescue you,” he added, caressing my back.
We did some heavy petting and smooching until we heard an “Ahem” from someone in the lobby. Neither of us had heard anyone come in. I stepped quickly away from Steven and spotted Mama Dell, looking very uncomfortable in the doorway. “Hey, there.” I coughed, straightening my clothes and patting my hair, which I knew was likely tousled.
“I’m so sorry,” Mama Dell said, color rising to her cheeks. “I didn’t know you were . . . uh . . . busy.”
“Mama,” Steven cooed, waving her into my office, where he pulled out a chair for her. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”
Mama smiled, blushed some more, and took a seat, looking at me expectantly.
“Is there something you need, Mama?” I asked.
“Gilley said to be here by nine thirty to pick up Doc,” she explained.
Just then the door opened and Gilley reappeared, struggling through the entrance with a large covered birdcage. From inside the cage we could all hear a scratchy, high nasal voice singing the lyrics to “In the Navy.”
“Ah, the Village People,” I said. “Gilley loves to play their greatest hits for Doc.”
Mama Dell looked over her shoulder. “Does he sing all the time?”
As if on cue, Gilley pulled up the cover on Doc’s birdcage and Doc stopped singing abruptly. He regarded all of us for a minute and then said, “Doc’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”
Gilley smiled tightly and dropped the cover. “I’ve got some of that cereal packed for you, Mama. He likes Cocoa Puffs with fruit.”
Mama Dell got up and stepped toward Gilley. “You’re sure he’ll be all right with me?”
“Of course,” Gilley said, reassuring her. “He’s met you before, and he seems to love you, so I’m sure he’ll be fine. Plus, he’s pretty good about entertaining himself. Just set his cage up in front of a window and let him out for a little while at dusk, and he’ll be just ducky for the few days we’ll be gone.”
“Well, all right then,” said Mama, adding, “I’ve got a lovely spot in my house next to the window where he can look out while the Captain and I tend to the coffee shop. Speaking of which,” she said, glancing at her watch, “I’ll need to hurry back. My husband can handle the morning crowd by himself for only so long before he gets cranky.”
Gilley helped Mama Dell out to her car with Doc’s cage and loaded it in for her. He was back a few moments later and said with a knowing grin, “By the way, M.J., your lipstick’s smeared.”
We headed to the airport after tidying up the office and packing our luggage for the trip. Steven left his Aston Martin—aka the Batmobile—in our parking lot, and we all piled into the company van.
We found a spot in short-term parking and made our way to the e-ticket kiosk for JetBlue. Once we had our boarding passes we got through security and found our gate without much hassle. “Not many travelers this late in the morning,” I said as we took our seats.
“Most people travel early on Fridays,” Gilley noted. “Here,” he said, sitting next to me and handing me a file. “In there is all the correspondence between Gopher and me.”
“Who?”
“The producer of the show,” Gilley explained.
I groaned loudly. “A guy calls you up and pitches you a show about haunted possessions, tells you his name is Gopher, and you take him seriously?”
“No,” Gilley said, pulling out a book from his backpack. “I took h
is money seriously. He wants to fly all three of us out to the West Coast, put us up at the Duke Hotel for three days, pay all our travel expenses, food, lodging, et cetera, and pay you five hundred a day for your troubles? Where do I sign?”
Something dawned on me then. “Wait a minute. What are you and Steven going to do while I’m shooting the show?”
Gilley opened his book, pulled it up to his nose, and pretended to read. He muttered something into the pages that I didn’t quite catch.
“What was that?” I asked, pulling the book down.
“The hotel is smack in the middle of downtown, and you do know how I loves me some San Francisco.”
My mouth fell open. “You mean to tell me that you signed me up for this stunt for the free vacation it could offer you?”
“No,” Gil said meekly. “I mean, I’ll be there for moral support, M.J. It’s not like I’m going to abandon you or anything.”
I gave Gilley an even look. He and I both knew that San Francisco was like Disneyland for the gay man. “Oh, you’ll be there for moral support, all right,” I said. “In fact, I want you in my line of sight at all times, Gilley. Since you tricked me into this, I am holding you personally responsible for making sure that my lighting is right and the camera angle plays to my good side.”
Gilley pouted. “You really need me there at all times?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, opening the manila folder. “At allllllll times, my friend.”
While we waited for the plane I read through the e-mails and downloaded Web pages that Gilley had printed out. Apparently this guy Gopher wasn’t as goofy as his name. The show was the brainchild of the coproducer, Roger Evenstein, whom the e-mails suggested would not be at the actual shoot. While doing a documentary on the infamous Russian prison camp where Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent his internment and from his experiences wrote The Gulag Archipelago, Roger came across one man who had survived six years alongside Solzhenitsyn in the freezing temperatures of the Siberian wasteland. The man was especially interesting to the producer because he claimed that a family heirloom—a small silver cross—smuggled in to him by a relative had saved him. He claimed that the cross had kept him warm during the bitter temperatures of the Siberian nights, and that whenever he took the cross off, he became cold—chilled to the very bone—but as long as he wore it, the cold did not penetrate his skin, and he was saved from freezing to death through six agonizing subzero winters.
Roger was ready to consider it a simple case of mind over matter: His body worked harder to maintain its temperature because the man’s belief in the talisman was so strong. But to show the producer that he was not imagining it, the old man offered him the cross to try out. Roger wrote:
From the moment I placed the cross around my neck I felt a sense of physical warmth that permeated to the very marrow of my bones. This happened as a gradual warming of my extremities and ended with me sweating as I sat across from the old man while he shivered in the thin coat he’d worn to meet with me.
A few years later Roger had teamed up with Gopher on a project about another documentary involving a scientist at the University of Arizona who was doing electronic brain scans of mediums and psychics during reading sessions for strangers. While working on that project, Roger had shared his story of the cross with Gopher, and the idea for the show was born.
The two men wondered what other everyday objects could contain such power, and whether that power was limited to only good or positive energy. In their research they came across all manner of items that were claimed to possess special, amazing, or even evil energy.
And it was the folks who claimed to own an evil talisman that concerned the producers the most; these people, Gopher described in his notes to Gilley, were completely imprisoned by the object in question. They believed strongly that it haunted them and that there was no way to get rid of it without bringing on a catastrophe for either themselves or some other poor soul who happened upon the possessed thing they had thrown away.
The show had arranged for an assortment of guests to showcase their “haunted” items to the team of “experts” or mediums invited to the show. Gopher emphasized that his hope was to help those people anchored to this so-called “evil” object to let go of its hold over them or dispose of it in a safe manner, while tracing the root of power for those objects that had “good” energy.
As I read the production notes, I had to admit I was intrigued. But I was also highly skeptical. I know more about things that go bump in the night than just about anyone, but the idea that a ghost or spirit could inhabit something as small as a hairbrush was a bit far-fetched for me. Most ghosts need territory to walk around in: a room, or a house, or a field, or a barn. Every once in a while you’ll see them cling to an instrument—usually one of destruction, like a sword or a pistol—but even then they’ll still stomp around in the area where the instrument is kept. They don’t contain themselves to the item; they contain themselves to the area around the item.
But the story of the old Russian man and his cross wouldn’t leave me, and as our plane began to load and people lined up to board I decided this might not be so bad after all. At least it would provide me with a little more education and experience, because, trust me, in the ghostbusting business, just when you think you’ve seen it all—you become acutely aware that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
We landed at four thirty Pacific time. While we waited for the cab that would take us to the Duke Hotel I stretched my legs and arms. It had been a long flight.
Steven and Gilley had slept through most of it, while I’d continued to read through the folder, becoming more and more curious about this little adventure. We were next in line for a cab when Gilley gave me a sideways glance and said, “You still mad at me?”
I smiled. “Nah. But I am a bit surprised that you agreed to come along and sleep in the lodgings provided.”
Gilley’s look turned puzzled. “Why?”
I opened my eyes wide at him. “The most haunted hotel in America?”
“What’s the most haunted hotel in America?” he said, his face going a teensy bit pale.
“The Duke Hotel,” I said. Oh, this was too good to be true! Gilley obviously hadn’t read the literature on our accommodations.
There was a look of panic in Gil’s eyes as the rest of the color drained from his face. “You’re lying,” he said breathlessly.
“Am not,” I sang, and swung the pamphlet over to him. Despite being in the ghostbusting business, Gilley is actually terrified of ghosties. Oh, he’s great about observing things from the remote safety of the van when I need him, but ask him to actually enter someplace haunted and that POW! you hear is the sonic boom created by Gilley breaking the sound barrier on his way out the door.
Gilley tore the pamphlet from my hands and scanned the contents as we hustled into the cab that had just pulled up to the curb. “Oh, no,” Gil moaned as we got settled into the backseat. “All I heard was that we were staying in some luxurious accommodations! No one told me this place is haunted!”
Steven and I laughed, as he’d been listening in and was thoroughly enjoying Gilley’s reaction. “What’d you expect?” I said. “That they’d shoot something about haunted possessions at the local Starbucks?”
Gilley didn’t reply. He was too busy hyperventilating. Steven pulled out a small plastic bag from his messenger bag and handed it to Gil. “Breathe into this; it will help.”
Our cabdriver looked in his rearview mirror. “Is he okay back there?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “Just being a drama queen. How long will it take to get to the Duke Hotel?”
“About twenty minutes,” he said, still looking skeptically at Gilley, then at me, as though I should do something.
Under the cabdriver’s disapproving glare I was motivated to rub Gil’s back. “It’ll be okay,” I said to him. “I’ll protect you.”
Gilley wheezed into the bag and glared at me. I . . . left . . . my sweatshirt . . . at . . . home!??
? he said, gasping.
On one of the busts that we’d done in the early summer Gilley had been attacked by a vicious brute of a ghost. To protect him, I’d rigged a sweatshirt with dozens of refrigerator magnets (ghosties hate magnets). Looking at him now, all red and hyperventilating, I gave in. “Driver? Can you please take us first to a sporting goods store and a hardware store before you drop us at the hotel?”
An hour later, and with a huge cab fare tab, we finally arrived in front of the Duke Hotel. I had been hurrying to glue on enough magnets to the inside of the sweatshirt we’d purchased for Gilley to hold him through the front lobby. I would finish it once we were checked in to our room.
As we were pulling up to the grand structure, Gilley squeaked in that way that said he was both excited and nervous.
“What?” I said, concentrating on gluing down a magnet.
“We’re here,” he said. “And there’s trouble.”
I glanced up just as Steven said, “There are a lot of police and an ambulance up there.”
I squinted through the windshield. The curved driveway leading to the front door was lined with police and rescue vehicles, and the area was blocked off. An even longer line of cars had slowed in front of the commotion. Some were being directed by a traffic cop to move on, while others were waved into the hotel’s underground garage.
I could also see several uniformed bellhops in red jackets with gold piping who looked distinctly out of place among all the police and medical crew.
“Wonder what happened,” our driver said.
“Something bad,” I whispered, feeling a shiver.
“What would you like me to do?” the driver asked, turning his head to look at us over his shoulder. “It’s gonna take a while to move up this line. Or I can let you out here and you can make your way to the lobby if you’d like.”
“We’ll get out here,” Steven said, reaching for his wallet.
Meanwhile, I was transfixed by the scene up ahead. Handing Gilley the sweatshirt along with the extra magnets and glue, I reached for the door handle.