“Okay.” How many ghosts does she consider not that many? I’m of the strong opinion that any number of ghosts is too many.
“They’re trapped down there, so, you know . . . best for you not to go.”
“Not a problem.”
“Great,” she says. She opens the door to the pantry, then leans down to open the cellar. There’s an outburst of moans. Eerie, ghastly bellows.
“Oh, shush,” I hear Sophie say. Then she lowers her voice and begins to speak a language I don’t understand. Maybe Latin? Whatever it is, it shuts them up. There’s no more moaning.
She emerges moments later, holding a jar of artichoke hearts.
“My second favorite type of heart to have on pizza,” she says.
This is a joke. I can tell because of the look she gives me after she says it.
“What am I going to do with you?” I ask.
“What kind of cheese do we want? Goat?”
We cook the pizza on a stone over crackling red flames in the fireplace. We eat it at the dining table. Sophie lights some candles, but the room is so huge that a few small candles don’t make much of a difference. It’s dark, and where it isn’t dark, shadows dart in and out of the space afforded to them by the candlelight.
“Is it cold in here?” she asks me.
“It’s a little cold.”
She stands up. As she walks over to the fireplaces, I hear her snap her fingers. There’s a loud pop, and suddenly a fire roars in the first fireplace. In the new light, I watch Sophie throw a yellowish powder into the second fireplace, and a fire appears there instantaneously. She snaps her fingers again as she comes toward me. She sits down next to me and takes another slice of pizza.
“Fancy,” I tell her, staring at the two big healthy fires.
Shapes emerge in the flames. On the left, a lion. On the right, a regal bird. They change. A wolf, a mouse.
“Ooh!”
The shapes swirl and disappear.
“Do you think you’ll stay over tonight, pet?” she asks, pouring me some wine.
“Sure,” I say.
“Really?”
I hesitate. On one hand, I know for a fact that this house is haunted and that one of the ghosts attempted to kill me. On the other, I don’t want to go home. I’m having a great time. It’d be a bummer to trek back through the woods to spend the night alone in my apartment, thinking about Sam and potentially being too sad to masturbate.
If Sophie says she trapped the ghosts in the basement, she trapped the ghosts in the basement. I heard them down there.
“We can stay up late,” she says. “We could play more shuffleboard, or watch a film, or read. I can make hot chocolate. I’ve got some cream I can whip.”
“All that sounds great,” I say. But we’re too full after dinner for hot chocolate. Instead, we split another bottle of wine and Sophie puts on Jaws, which surprises me.
“I heard everyone talking about it when it first came out, so I had to watch. Have you ever seen it?”
“Yeah, a few times. It’s one of my dad’s favorite movies.”
“I quite enjoy it,” she says. “But of course, I always root for the shark.”
I think she’s kidding, but at the end of the movie, when Brody blows up the shark, she sighs, shaking her head like she hoped for a different outcome despite knowing there wouldn’t be one.
We walk upstairs arm in arm, and she kisses me good night. A quick kiss on each cheek. One of the few things I remember about my mother is that she used to kiss my cheeks like that. Kiss, kiss. Then she’d say, Good night, mini muffin. I don’t know why she called me that, but she always did.
“What is it?” Sophie asks. “Are you afraid?”
“No,” I say. “Just had a random memory come up.”
“Mm,” Sophie says. “A good one, I hope.”
She winks and heads toward her room.
“Good night,” she says.
“Night.”
In my room, there are two new lamps and a giant box of chocolates on the nightstand. The extra light contributes to increased coziness. The fear I previously experienced in this space is gone.
I change into the pink silk pajamas that Sophie laid out for me. I eat the chocolates in bed while reading a book of collected poems. When I fall asleep, it’s deep and dreamless.
* * *
—
The next morning, over pancakes at the diner, I decide to come clean with Sophie about my most recent stupid decision. My upcoming blind date.
I’ve been nervous about her response, but she doesn’t have much of a reaction.