Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 8:28 A.M. EST} A Tourist among the Dead

Gentle Tweeter,

It was always my mother’s coping mechanism to acquire far-flung maisons. In Stockholm and Sydney and Shanghai, a backup plan to every backup plan; that way she’d always have a refuge. Such was her fail-safe strategy: redundant places to retreat. If tax laws changed in one nation, or not-favorable publicity exposed her to public ridicule, my mom fled to sanctuary in Malta, in Monaco, in Mauritius.

For my father, girlfriends served the same function. In the same way my mother never fully committed to living in one domicile, my dad never favored one Miss Warty MacWanton. The subtle, largely unacknowledged appeal of extra homes and lovers relies on not making actual use of them. That unfulfilled longing, the idea of a gorgeous vacant home or a pining concubine, sustains the object’s attraction. Picture Playboy centerfolds or the idle harem ladies painted by Delacroix or the vacant rooms depicted in the pages of Architectural Digest. All of them empty vessels waiting to be filled.

So upon shocked exposure to my dad’s extramarital hanky-panky, I retreat. I bleed backward along the copper wiring of the Rhinelander hotel. Confronted, I quickly retrace my route back to the penthouse foyer and emerge like a bubble of my ghost self from the outlet I first entered. The process involves expanding, inflating my balloon of ectoplasm to roughly my chunky thirteen-year-old size. My facial features solidify, then my horn-rimmed glasses, followed by my school cardigan sweater and tweedy skort. Last to take shape are my Bass Weejun loafers. At that, the remainder of my ghost self trickles from the outlet, intact but Ctrl+Alt+Disillusioned.

And it would seem I’m not alone. A man stands among the furniture, the chairs and tables humped beneath their white dustcovers. He stands below the chandelier in its cheesecloth shroud. Ghost me, my ghost eyes are locked with the eyes of this stranger. Perhaps here is the ghost hunter my nana tried to caution me about.

Gentle Tweeter, you may label me as a snotty elitist, but it still amazes me to see Americans in the United States. For most of my childhood I’ve trekked from Andorra to Antigua to Aruba, all of those glorious tax-haven states, in the constant migration of income tax exiles as they seek to shelter their gargantuan salaries in Belize and Bahrain and Barbados. My general impression was that the United States had shipped all of its citizens offshore and become largely operated and inhabited by illegal aliens.

Yes, you might occasionally see someone wearing a maid’s uniform or driving a Town Car, but the man I find in our penthouse foyer, he’s clearly no one’s servant. For starters, he’s glowing. Radiating a clear, blue light. It’s not as if he contains a lightbulb; it’s more as if he’s something faceted, a jewel, collecting the ambient light. His face is hazy and indistinct, I realize, because I’m seeing both the front and the back of his head, his eyes, and his hair simultaneously. It’s like holding the page of a book against sunshine so strong that the print on both sides is legible. It’s dazzling, the way every angle of a diamond is visible at one glance. Through him I can see the buildings outside the window, the gray view over Central Park. His hair hangs down his back in a braid as long and thick as a moldering baguette. Each strand looks as clear and iridescent as Asian glass noodles. His neck is stretched cellophane, the skin pleated with tendons and veins. His suit coat, his pant legs, even his soiled running shoes are translucent as spit.

Standing there, his arms hanging at his sides, he trembles like a column of smoke. When he opens his lips they’re as faint as the undulating form of a jellyfish swimming through some disgusting undersea documentary. His voice sounds muffled, as if I’m hearing a man whisper secrets in another room.

To CanuckAIDSemily, yes, before I died, this is how I’d imagined a ghost would appear.

Haggard and weary, he says, “You’re that dead kid.”

He sees me.

“Are you…?” I ask. I gag on my own question.

His form sways a little from side to side. Just as he starts to topple in one direction, he stiffens with a jerk as if jarred awake. He overcompensates and begins to collapse in the opposite direction. Not quite standing straight, his fragile stance is a sustained series of barely arrested falls.

Gentle Tweeter, I may not know the much-touted womanly pleasures of menstruation, but I can recognize a junkie when I meet one. Life with Camille and Antonio Spencer meant rubbing elbows with a wide variety of the chemically dependent.

Dumbfounded, I swallow. My throat dry, I ask, “Are you God?”

“Little dead girl…” he seems to whisper. He’s dissipating, and not in a metaphorical way. He’s evaporating. His hands, dissolving like milk mixed into water. His words less than an echo, soft as a thought, he says, “Look for me in room number sixty-three fourteen. Find me.” Only the trail of his voice remains as he says, “Come tell me a secret that only your mother would know….”