Girl Fears Ghost Girl

Once So Wonderful and So Alive

    about 1700 words

Girl Fears Ghost Girl

by James Foley

Night on the beach. Awakening suddenly, David felt Jamie's dark hair tickling his cheek.

He stirred on the towel. "How long was I asleep?"

"Only for a few minutes," Jamie said. "You must be beat."

Easy night: peace—the sky clear above a sea dark as itself.

And the eastern stars were ushering up the aging half-moon, still clinging to the ocean's edge: this old ocean that could take one across the world, maybe with this girl Jamie, as once he'd wanted to go with another sweetheart:

Dazzling Cynthia, once his living wife—Jamie's wild friend.

"Jerry's up at La Cantina," Jamie said now. "I think he's giving us some privacy. David, I want to go up to the beach house and bury something there where you and Cynthia lived. It's a present she gave me. I can never wear them again."

"You're going to come back, Jamie?"

"Yes, for a little while."

"Swear you'll come back."

"I'll be back. Go back to sleep, David."

Right. But as soon as he did, she came back—the ghost girl, maintaining the old obsession in the void of its fulfillment: his olden-days golden-haired wife, wriggling her toes in the sand, just as she used to.

"Right in front of the beach house," she said. "That's sweet, David. I love it when you come here—even if it's without me. What about the farm, baby? Will you ever go back there—now that I never will?"

"We'll talk about it—at dinner."

"David, you know I'm dead."

"No, I don't know that."

"Yeah, I'm dead all right. And you're with Jamie now. I saw you together. I waited till she left."

"How can you see, if you're dead?"

"The dead see better, David. They see it all. And they weep—because they didn't see it before."

#

The moon seemed brighter now, but still low above the breakers that crashed and frothed, moon-brightened beneath it. But was this only a moon of dreams—mimicking the moon above his closed eyes?

"Sweetheart," he said, "this can't be dreaming. Dreamers don't know they're dreaming."

"I think sometimes they do," Cynthia said: "In between dreaming and day-dreaming. You're dreaming in the moonlight now, David."

But somehow—in this dream or out of it—she was embracing him tightly, hard.

"No. No, Cynthia. This is no dream."

"It's our last dream, David: to hold each other one last time—to kiss once more."

"If you're dead, how can you kiss so hard?"

"You're imagining me, David. Your lips that are pressing so hard against mine: you, my earth lover. And me, your old wild girl: it's all just imagination. It's not me you're feeling. It's your old love for me. But give that love to Jamie now. She's nobler than I was . I was too crazy. I wasn't meant to grow old."

And now what he felt—or what he dreamed he felt—was this girl crying in the darkness: crying in his arms, in his dream.

"Just remember what we had, David. Nothing can erase that. No time to come will ever keep that from having existed once—in those days when we were younger. The universe may end, but the emptiness which follows won't wipe those days away.