Dagger Key and Other Stories

Shellane flirted with the notion that this might all be a hustle involving a fake grave and a pretend ghost, a variation on the Hooker with an Outraged Husband. “Seems I’m the only one who can see her,” he said.

“Oh, sure…yeah.” Confidence soaring on chemical wings, Broillard made as though to push inside, but Shellane elbowed him back.

“You’re more than a little thick, Avery. Where else do you think I learned the sordid facts of your life?”

“She mighta called you…or written you a letter. Like maybe you’re a relative or something.”

“Of course she did. ‘Dear Uncle, the other night Avery sent me to the outlet store to buy him a pair of cashmere socks. He prefers to masturbate in cashmere. We haven’t made love in four months—he says I’m too fat. But he’s gone through dozens of socks.’ Exactly the sort of thing she’d disclose to a relative.”

Broillard gaped at him.

“We’re all sad animals.” Shellane gave him a gentler shove, moving him back from the door. “Some of us manage to rise above the state.”

“You think she’s such a saint? Maybe it was me fucked her up, but she wasn’t never a saint, man. She wanted something, she’d do whatever she needed to get it.” Broillard bunched his fists. “This is my fucking property, and I got a right to inspect it. I’m coming in.”

Shellane was about to repeat his original response, but then, thinking that Broillard might become a problem, he said, “All right. But you won’t be able to see her.”

Once inside, Broillard stood in the center of the room, turning his head this way and that. “Is she here?” He fixed Shellane with a terrified look. “Where is she?”

Shellane pointed to the refrigerator, and Broillard stared at it. “Grace?” he said; then, to Shellane: “What’s she doing?”

“Watching. She doesn’t appear to be overjoyed at your presence.”

Doubt and fear contended for control of Broillard’s expression. He sat heavily in a straight-backed chair beside the table. “Can she hear me?”

Shellane sat opposite him, facing away from the refrigerator. “Give it a try.”

Broillard made an effort to compose his face. “Grace,” he said. “I’m so sorry, baby. I was…”

“She doesn’t like you calling her ‘baby,’” Shellane said. “She never liked it.”

Broillard nodded, swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to hurt you, ba…Grace. It’s like I was watching someone else do the things I did. I don’t know what the fuck was going on.” His voice cracked and he covered his eyes with his right hand. “I’m so sorry!”

Shellane glanced at the refrigerator. Grace was standing next to it, wearing only panties. Tears cut down her cheeks. A cold pressure pushed upward from the base of Shellane’s spine and he had the feeling that something very bad was about to happen.

Broillard’s tone was urgent. “What’s she doing?”

“Crying,” Shellane said.

“Aw, Christ…Grace! I know I can’t make things right. But I’m…” Broillard fumbled in his trouser pocket, pulled forth several folded sheets of notebook paper. “I wrote something. About you…about everything. You want to hear it?”

He looked to Shellane for guidance, and Shellane shrugged, as if communicating Grace’s indifference.

“I don’t know how to talk to you, Grace,” Broillard said in a plaintive voice. “This is the only way I got.”

Her face empty, Grace had come halfway across the room and was standing to his left as he addressed himself to the refrigerator, reading from the sheets of paper, singing the words in a muted but obviously practiced delivery intended to convey anguish:  

“Never thought it could happen,
never saw the storm comin’,
never once had a clue about
how much you were sufferin’…
It all was so damn easy,
I took love for nothin’,
What I thought was us livin’
was the heart of your dyin’,
and now all I remember is
Grace Under Pressure…”

As he reached the chorus, Broillard built his reading to the level of a performance, half-shouting the words. Shellane could not decide whether his loathing was colored by pity, or if what he felt was embarrassment at seeing another man act with such unabashed stupidity and arrogance.  

“…forever and ever,
Grace Under Pressure…
It’s all I can think of,
the way you just sat there,
with everything broken…
Grace Under Pressure…
Grace Under Pressure…
Grace Under Pressure…”

He began a second verse, and Grace stepped behind him, gazing at the back of his head with dispassion.  

“Aw, I wish I could breathe you
straight through until mornin’,
where a white dream arises
from the bright flash of being…”