Joplin's Ghost

  Still, Phoenix saw too much smugness in Carlos’s eyes, and her temper flared. “My sister and brothers grew up in the projects, and my dad was in prison when they were kids. It’s not like I can’t relate, OK? It’s hype, and lots of performers do it. So don’t sit over there judging me. You’re in no damn position to judge anybody.”

  Carlos sighed, not speaking for a while. When he did, his voice was careful, measured. “I’m not judging. I just wondered why somebody as talented as you is afraid to say she grew up in the suburbs with an involved dad and went to a high school for the arts. Sorry if I hit a nerve.”

  Phoenix realized Carlos must be close to forty now, at least thirty-eight, and their age gap did not seem nearly as alluring as it had when she was sixteen. The potency of his apology had worn off, and she was mad at him again. She wished Sarge had broken his jaw that day.

  There was a whir from the vending machine as the dancer’s water bottle fell. She’d forgotten anyone else was in the room. The dancer sidled back outside with a story to tell.

  “Like I said, I want to make sure you’re OK,” Carlos said.

  “What are you now, my shrink?”

  “Someone who’d like to be a friend, that’s all.”

  “You’re not a friend. I don’t even know you.”

  “I said I’d like to be.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you about my life, but not the publicity bullshit. This isn’t for print.”

  Carlos nodded, his hand over his heart. “If that’s what you want. Off-the-record.”

  Phoenix began counting off on her fingers. “I just got dumped by my boyfriend. A tabloid is talking shit about me. I had a huge fight with my cousin Gloria, my best friend.”

  “I remember Gloria,” he said.

  Phoenix counted her fourth finger, her pinky. “There was a stalker in my hotel room in St. Louis, and we had to call the cops. I’m hearing voices of people who aren’t there, and I think I saw a ghost. My world is messed up right now, so excuse me if I don’t have a sense of humor when you try to get up in my business.”

  Carlos nodded, not blinking. His concerned expression looked almost paternal, which made her wonder why she’d never noticed how much Carlos reminded her of her father. Sarge had probably pulled that same music mack on Mom, whipping out his Al Green, Otis Redding and Charlie Parker while he tried to get into her pants.

  “Tell me about this ghost,” Carlos said.

  “Why are you humoring me?”

  “I’m not. I’ll believe you.”

  Phoenix raised her eyebrow, chuckling. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

  “My grandmother’s ghost visited me the day she died. I was ten,” he said, and he wasn’t joking. She could see it in his face, in his unblinking eyes. “She’d had a stroke, and we flew to San Juan so my mother could be at her bedside. I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Toa Alta while my parents were at the hospital. I fell asleep on the sofa, and when I woke up, Abuela was standing over me in her favorite Easter dress, a pink one. The smell of her perfume was what woke me up. I said, ‘I thought you were sick at the hospital,’ and she smiled and patted me on the head. She was swaying her hips to meréngue coming through the open windows, from a neighbor’s house. She was dancing, you see. In Puerto Rico, you don’t stop dancing when you’re old. Then, she walked into the kitchen. When I tried to follow her, there was no one there. That was when the phone rang. It was my mother calling to tell us Abuela had died.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?” Phoenix said, her voice hushed. She was chilled, not charmed, by the image of the dead old woman’s shaking hips.

  “Even my aunt said she could smell Abuela’s perfume.”

  “You felt her touch you?” Phoenix broke out in gooseflesh.

  Carlos nodded. “I was happy she touched me. She was Abuela. Tell me your story.”

  Phoenix glanced at her watch. Their hour was almost up. A reporter from New York would be calling her soon.

  “I was at the Scott Joplin House…” she began, and she told Carlos about the black man standing at the window, and Milton’s ghost story. Then, she told him about the man in her closet at the hotel, and the voice she thought she’d heard in her ear yesterday. As an afterthought, she told him about the strange piano incident when she was ten. She’d never woven the stories together as one, but they suddenly seemed as linked as her past with Carlos.

  “Do you want to hear what I think?” Carlos said.

  She very much did not want to hear what he thought, in fact.

  He didn’t wait for her answer. “That spirit feels a connection to you.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, but her heartbeat accelerated.

  “And the man in your room vanished into thin air? What about the voice in your ear?”

  “The hotel thing, I don’t know. But the voice was a dream.”

  “I don’t think so,” Carlos said. “I think you know better, too.”

  Phoenix’s palms felt clammy, so she wiped them on her jeans. “Ghosts don’t follow you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Stop trying to scare me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just wondering if Scott Joplin knew someone named Freddy.”

  Phoenix didn’t have a clue. At that instant, the door opened again, but it wasn’t a thirsty dancer this time. It was Sarge. Phoenix might as well have not been in the room, the way Sarge’s eyes flamed past her to Carlos, torches.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Sarge said. His voice was quiet, not the way he shouted when he was angry for show. Sarge was seething to his core. So much for wondering if Sarge would recognize Carlos after eight years.

  “We’re just finishing an interview,” Phoenix said.

  “I asked him.”

  Carlos curled his lips, an expression that wasn’t anything like a smile. He stared at the floor, sighing, then he reached into his shirt pocket for a business card he laid beside Phoenix’s thigh. “I was on my way out, Mr. Smalls,” he said. “Congratulations on your daughter’s success. I’ve been following her career.”

  Sarge didn’t answer. His eyes stared, combusting coals.

  “Is he going to jump me on the way out?” Carlos muttered to her under his breath as he stood, gathering his things.

  “Probably not,” Phoenix said softly. “I can’t say for sure, though.”

  Carlos shrugged, resigned. He tapped his business card. “Llamame,” he told her.

  “I understand Spanish, motherfucker,” Sarge said. “Move your punk ass on.”

  It was amazing, Phoenix thought, how history never quite died.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Phoenix didn’t ask Sarge to come into her apartment to give it an inspection before he drove off for the night, but her fidgeting must have told him she didn’t want to be dropped off at the curb. It was long after dark, almost ten o’clock, and after Carlos’s ghost story Phoenix wasn’t ready to be alone. Sarge peeked into her bathroom while Phoenix waited in the kitchen, anxious. If I tell him he’s looking for a ghost instead of a stalker, he’ll think I’ve been partying with Whitney and Bobby.

  It didn’t take Sarge long to finish his inspection. There wasn’t much to the eight-hundred-square-foot apartment except Nia’s bedroom, Phoenix’s futon in the living room, and her silver Korg Trinity Pro keyboard hooked up to her Mac in the corner she’d turned into her home studio. Gloria bugged her about getting a nicer apartment, or a house, but Phoenix only cared about her image as far as her front door. Where she lived was nobody’s business. Most new artists wanted to bling out right away, maxing out credit cards and leasing whatever they couldn’t afford to buy, but bankruptcy wasn’t in Phoenix’s plan. Besides, why spend the money on a fancy crib when she was hardly home?

  And there weren’t any walk-in closets here. Poverty has its perks, she thought.

  “Peanut, if you don’t feel safe, you can come with me,” Sarge said, searching for food in her refrigerator. The shelves were bare except for an old take-out
container, a carton of milk that had been there a month, and the box of baking soda. “Shoot. Don’t ya’ll eat?” He opened the take-out carton and frowned, throwing it into the kitchen garbage can. “Ya’ll are nasty.”

  “Where are you crashing, Dad?”

  “I’m staying with my friend in Baldwin Hills. Her daughter’s at Spelman, and she’d be happy to lend you the room.”

  Her father almost never talked about his girlfriend, and Phoenix liked it better that way. She would never understand how Sarge could have a girlfriend and be married, and she had to let it go. She didn’t even want to know the woman’s name. “Uh…no thanks.”

  “You know what’s what. Don’t make that face.”

  “Whatever,” Phoenix sighed. “At least I know why Mom won’t come out here.”

  He raised a finger. “Don’t start.” He’d stolen her favorite phrase.

  “You two should just get a divorce, dang.”

  “Are you staying here or not?”

  Phoenix’s answering machine was blinking. Three messages, the red display said. If she heard a strange man’s voice asking for Freddy, she might have to stay with Sarge tonight, or else at a hotel. “Hold on,” she said, and pushed the button.

  “Hiya, Buttercup, sorry I missed you. I’ll be stuck at the county commission meeting tonight, and you know how those crooks like to kibbitz, so feel free to call late—” Mom. “Heyyyy, girrrrrrl…I couldn’t find nobody to keep Trey, but I’m still comin’ out Friday. Hope you don’t mind a lil’ shorty hangin’ with us. Now I KNOW you’re gonna take me to some of those parties with G-Ronn, right?—” Serena.

  The third message was a hang-up. Probably Gloria, she thought. Maybe Gloria.

  “I’ll be fine,” Phoenix said, not sure she believed it. She watched her blinds, expecting them to flutter the way the bathrobe in her hotel closet had. A moving shadow in the living room caught her eye, but it was only Sarge closing the refrigerator door, dimming the light from the kitchen in a floating shaft across the wall.

  “You don’t seem fine. You’re real jumpy.”

  “I just need sleep,” Phoenix said. “There’s a whole lot going on.”

  “Not with that SOB who disrespected our family, I hope.”

  “Daddy…I told you he’s a writer. That was just an interview.”

  Now it was Sarge’s turn to raise his hands. “I’m trying to keep my pressure down, so let’s not get into it.” He gave her a tight hug. “Love you, sweetheart.”

  “Love you, too, Daddy. Thanks for putting up with my silliness.”

  “Nothing silly about it. These niggers are so paranoid, I feel like I’m back running with the Panthers. Music sure has changed, Phee.” His shoulders drooped as he exhaled, and suddenly Sarge looked much closer to his age. Her father was almost old enough for social security, she realized, an impossible thought. “I’ll pick you up at eight for callbacks at the dance studio. Ronn said he might drop in. Tell your mom and Reenie I say hey.”

  Sarge’s absence loomed in her empty apartment. How could she be surrounded by throngs of people all day and still feel quarantined? It was after 1:00 A.M. on the East Coast, way too late to call her mother no matter how long the commission meeting had gone, and she didn’t want to wake up her twelve-year-old nephew at Serena’s house. She also couldn’t handle trying to fumble through apologies with Gloria. She’d talk to Gloria tomorrow, she promised herself the second night in a row. Tomorrow.

  Tonight, she decided, the only companion she needed was music.

  Phoenix heated up a package of frozen microwave spaghetti and sat at her Korg, powering it up. She hadn’t touched the keyboard in ages, but Carlos had inspired her with his nosy-ass questions. It had been too long since she’d done any composing, or even playing for fun. Back when she was with the band, she used to practice an hour a day on her technique and programming, not counting rehearsals. She used to write two songs a week. She used to warm up with Mozart and Ellington. She used to. Now, her muse had curled up and gone to sleep. Did she need the band that much? Or had she run out of things to say?

  Songs always came to Phoenix in chords first, the way she imagined Prince birthed his first droplets of “Purple Rain.” Melody came next, and lyrics last, her weakness. Her hands struck a sultry C-major seventh chord, like a mellow Jobin bossa nova. She flowed with that awhile to see where that would take her, improvising an aching melody while her left hand lazed up and down from one major seventh chord to the next. She played a few stanzas in a bouncy South African township style, morphed that into reggae, then went back to the Jobin. In her mind, she saw Carlos’s smile and the gorgeous mustard-colored shirt he’d been wearing the first time she saw him, so beautiful against his brown-red skin. Her toes twitched. Damn.

  “Do not, do not, do not, let that man get under your skin again,” she said to herself, saying it aloud to make sure she heard. “He’s bad news, Phee. Always has been, always will be. Even if his ghost story was true, he just told you to try to get past your defenses. He’s smooth even when he isn’t trying. Move on.”

  That sounded similar to her mantra when she was sixteen, in the awful eight months it took her to stop mourning the loss of him. If Carlos could be that careless with a schoolgirl’s heart, there was no telling what else he was capable of. Never again.

  The music sounded good, like there might be something lurking in her subconscious, so Phoenix clicked on her Finale music notation program. Who knows? Maybe some of this will be on my next CD, she thought. An empty page appeared on the twenty-one-inch computer monitor. When she played the keys now, the screen captured the notes on rows of staffs as if she’d committed them with her own pen, a record she could save as a file, burn to a CD, or print if she chose. She might make corrections with her mouse later, but she was glad she didn’t have to write the shit out by hand like they did back in the day. That must have taken forever.

  A loud knock resounded. Phoenix stopped playing and listened in the silence, just to make sure it wasn’t a neighbor’s door. The knock at her door came again, three clear bangs.

  Sarge never rested, she thought. There was always one last thing to tell her to do.

  “Daddy, you better start taking care of yourself,” she said, opening her door.

  But no one was there. Not Sarge, not anybody. She peeked out of her doorway to look left, then right along the ground floor, which faced the open courtyard and pool area, but no one was in sight. Her neighbors’ doors on either side of her were closed. No one was sitting in any of the poolside chairs. The pool’s water reflected against the apartment wall, shimmering in the light from the solar lamp that made everything the color of fire.

  Phoenix’s breath felt thin in her throat. Some kid playing a prank. Very effing funny.

  She closed her door, locking both the push-pin and dead bolt. She wrapped her arms around herself inside her doorway, not sure if she was nervous or cold. Maybe both. Before Phoenix could check the thermostat, she heard knocking again—this time, the thumps were against the wall, and they were coming from inside. They sprang from two or three places at once. From two inches in front of her face. The sound made her jump.

  Phoenix noticed a dim light in the kitchen, which was otherwise dark. Breathing faster, she took a step closer, rounding the corner to see better.

  The refrigerator door was now wide-open against the kitchen cabinets, its near-empty shelves exposed, as if it the door had been propped. The take-out carton Sarge had thrown away a few minutes ago sat on the kitchen counter next to her answering machine, in plain view. Phoenix felt her face crack, brittle ice. Her lower jaw lost its strength, and her mouth sagged open.

  Something was here in her apartment. Something was here.

  “Please leave me alone,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. She had never been more terrified, not even when that piano began barreling down those stairs. A falling piano obeyed the laws of gravity, and she understood gravity. This was something else. This was a rupture to her ro
ots. Fear erased the memory of how to control her shaky limbs.

  “Please? Will you please leave me alone?”

  Her answer came when the refrigerator door slammed itself shut.

  By the time Carlos arrived, Phoenix had been sitting at the edge of a plastic lounging chair next to the swimming pool for nearly forty minutes, waiting. She wasn’t wearing a jacket—she’d run out of her apartment with nothing but the cell phone in her pocket—so her teeth were clacking softly in the sixty-five-degree nighttime air. She had wet herself a little. She could feel a slight dampness between her legs, not enough to soak through her jeans, but enough to notice. She didn’t remember when that had happened, but it had.

  Carlos knelt in front of her, taking her hands. When he felt how cold they were, he rubbed her skin to warm her. His features were more severe in the lamplight, making him look like the stranger he was. But she hadn’t known who else to call. Carlos was the only person she knew who believed in ghosts, and she didn’t want to waste time trying to convince anyone else she wasn’t crazy. She’d slipped Carlos’s card into her back pocket that morning, and she was so relieved he’d written his home telephone number on back, she’d almost cried with joy.

  “Are you OK?” Carlos said.

  Phoenix shook her head. “My heart was beating so fast, I thought it would pop.”

  “Whatever’s going on, it probably doesn’t want to hurt you. That’s a movie stereotype.”

  “Man, fuck that. I just want it to leave me alone.”

  She glanced toward her closed apartment door, which she’d been watching steadily, hoping it wouldn’t come flying open. So far, it hadn’t.

  “I Googled Scott Joplin after we talked today,” Carlos said quietly. “Do you want to hear what I found out?”

  “What?” Phoenix said. “Did he know somebody named Freddy?”

  “Yes. His wife.”

  Phoenix’s heart jumped, but she shook her head. “That’s not true. That guy at the museum told me his wife had another name. Belle, I think.”