Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

an occasional fly- and paint-specked bare bulb, a railing worn smooth by decades of use. On her door there was a white plastic rose. His growing erection pressed painfully against his trousers.

“Safe and sound,” he said when she’d unlocked the door.

“You wanna come in?” She looked up at him, her eyes in shadow.

He hesitated. “If you’re not too busy,” he said.

She smiled. “This is my business. You mean you didn’t know?” She looked at him with innocently widened, maybe mocking eyes, then pushed the door open and reached for his hand. He followed her in. She flicked the lightswitch by the door and the room leaped forward—a purple-carpeted livingroom furnished in K Mart and Goodwill, plastic imitation-lace curtains bright as barnacles on the windows, faded and water-stained tannish wallpaper with an obscure pattern of glossy places like stretch-marks on a woman’s abdomen. The kitchen was to his left, separated from the livingroom by a rounded, dark oak arch. An old refrigerator clanked and hummed in tune with another sound, possibly an electric clock. There was no light in the kitchen except what fell from the livingroom, draping over part of an old sink and stove.

“Nice place,” he said.

She laughed.

He walked over to the window looking out at the street and drew back the curtain a little with the side of his hand. Her window looked down on the lighted iron bridge, the long dark curve of the Susquehanna River, and what remained of the huge, locked-stone depot. Directly below him lay the street. No one was out, though it was not all that late.

“Drink?” she asked.

“No thanks.” He was feeling distinctly uneasy now. It was obviously no place for a sober professor of philosophy, an ethicist at that. He could hardly believe it was happening. Looking out at the bridge, the asphalt-patched street, he thought about disease, stories of prostitutes and murder. His erection was increasingly painful, and a kind of trembling had come over him. The air was hot and muggy. He was beginning to sweat.

A light went on behind him; she’d opened the refrigerator door. She stood for a long time looking in, then closed the door and came to him, carrying a beer. “You mind opening this for me?”

He accepted the bottle from her—it had a twist-off cap—and opened it. “I have a feeling you cost a lot,” he said.

She shook her head. “Depressed area.” She winked, then raised the bottle to her lips.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“Anything you like.” She glanced at him, coy. “But no hitting, and nothing really really yuk.”

“I’m not into yuk,” he said. “Actually, I’m pretty puritanical.” He thought a moment, studying a bruise on her shoulder, then said, “Listen, I really have to ask this. How much?”

With one hand she unbuttoned the top of her dress and—almost shyly, he thought—exposed one blue-white breast. She studied it, thoughtful, and after a moment, without lifting her head, raised her eyes to him. “Not too expensive,” she said. Her smile was calculated, but not quite hard, despite the fake eyelashes—not quite professional (though Mickelsson was admittedly no judge). Her youth was increasingly disconcerting. In fact he was suddenly filled with dread, wondering what his solicitous friend Tim had gotten him into. When he put his arms around her, drawing her close, his trembling became violent. On her forehead there were droplets of sweat.

In the middle of the night Mickelsson awakened alone in a strange, musty bed, roused by a sound of angry shouts not far away, somewhere below and outside. He sat up, trying to minimize the creak of bedsprings and figure out where he was. Even the shouting outside was not enough to block from his mind the return, all in a rush, of images of her body—breasts, buttocks, mouth—and his own, shuddering and heaving, driving into her. He was once again semi-erect. “Asshole!” someone yelled not far away. There was a sound of breaking glass, then several shouts at once.

The livingroom door was part way open, letting in enough light that he could be certain the girl had gotten up and left him, and that his clothes were still on the chair at the foot of the bed, apparently untouched. As quietly as possible he got up out of bed and went to his trousers. The wallet was still in the right rear pocket, and his money, he found when he looked, was still inside. Now he wasn’t so sure his clothes hadn’t been touched—something was wrong—and he checked his valuables again. All there. He drew on his undershorts and trousers, put his arms through the sleeves of his shirt, and, disguising his erection as well as he could, started for the livingroom.

“You OK?” she called, an instant before he emerged.

She was sitting in the overstuffed armchair by the window, reading. As if self-consciously, she took off her glasses.

“What’s all the noise?” he asked. Flasher-lights jarred the darkness beyond the window. He moved closer to her to look out.

“Saturday night fights,” she said. She smiled. “I guess it’s hahrd to imagine that kind of thing where you come from.”

He bent toward the window. “What do you mean? Boxing?” He knew it wasn’t that.

Out on the lighted street there were thirty or forty young men, a few young women, and several policemen. They seemed to be doing nothing, just standing there shouting.

“They do that all the time,” she said. “Haht nights, they come down owt of the mowntains in their pickup trucks and drink beer till they’re all sweaty and mean, and then they stahrt hitting. It’s no hahrm, really. You could go owt there and walk right through them, they’d never touch you.”

“What a crazy place to live,” Mickelsson mused aloud.

One of the policemen was trying to persuade one of the young men to get into a police car. The young man stood with his arms folded, shaking his head. He was far too big to push.

“You know, you shouldn’t have come here,” the girl said. “You should go back wherever