Drain © TQE 03.14.02 “You’ll cut yourself,” said the ghost. Jean continued peeling her potato. “You worry too much,” she said. Potato peelings filled the sink. Mitchell used to be impressed by Jean’s potato skills. Were she of a mind to do so, Jean could peel a potato in one long and singular strip. She wasn’t of a mind anymore. Instead she hacked away at the potato with a vague sort of savagery. Jean decided she’d like to be a savage, a disinterested savage armed with a potato knife. The kitchen clock chimed ten and the ghost issued a loud sigh. Jean’s potted fern stirred on the windowsill. “It is ten,” the ghost insisted, “and too late to be eating potatoes.” His rasping voice suddenly twisted into an uncanny imitation of hers. “Think of your health. Think of your carbohydrates. Think of your waistline.” Jean carved an eye from her potato. A savage would have eaten her potato raw, unpeeled, straight from the ground. “It’s too late for everything.” Jean tossed the eye into the sink. She’d be a savage next week. “It’s too late for cutting yourself.” “Maybe so,” the ghost nodded glumly, his voice returning to its regularly affable rasp. “Then again, I never did cut myself and now it’s too late.” He hovered over the sink to watch the shower of potato skin below. “It can’t be helped. One must think of the circulation.” “You haven’t got any circulation,” Jean said, slashing away. “You’re dead.” The ghost gave her a reproachful look. “Well.” But he left it at that. It WAS Wednesday. The last thing Jean needed was a ghost in her apartment. She hadn’t known there WAS a ghost in the apartment at first, of course, because she hadn’t asked. One year ago Jean was unfamiliar with single-occupant apartments and the initial questions required about them. She just needed an apartment, alone, without Mitchell, without Mitchell’s sideways smile and Mitchell’s shoulders and Mitchell’s cologne everywhere, anywhere, nowhere. So right in the middle of her first week in her first single-occupant apartment, Jean found herself naked in the bathroom, trying to unhinge a pipe below the sink with an ineffective wrench. It was then that the ghost emerged from the shower fixture, took up a towel from the rack, and tossed it at Jean’s unknowing figure. “Holy fuck!” yelped Jean, semi-consciously seizing the towel and winding it around her body like aluminum siding. “Holy fuck!” she yelped again, more reflectively this time, staring up at the ghost. “Madam,” said the ghost, balanced atop the medicine cabinet, “there is hardly anything holy about the physical act of love.” Of course then Jean called her new landlady about the ghost, leaving out the parts about being naked and saying holy fuck two times over. “What kind of operation are you running here, with ghosts popping out of the shower and sink pipes that won’t unhinge?” Jean bellowed into the phone. “You’ll pay for any and all damage done to those pipes,” said the landlady, and she rang off. Jean didn’t blame her. She didn’t refrain from insulting her parentage, though. “I don’t care how nice-looking you are. If you’re going to live here, you’ll simply have to wear clothing.” The ghost floated in from the bathroom and circled the ceiling. “The Garden of Eden died out ages ago. No one is allowed back. Clothes are the order of today.” Jean laughed. Jean stopped laughing. Jean sat down on the empty floor in her empty towel and sobbed. Emptily. The ghost looked uncomfortable. “Madam,” he began, and stopped circling. “Madam,” he began again, “I am sorry. I am only a ghost, and this is my home. I’ve been inquiring after another, but all the bungalows in England seem to be taken.” “They don’t have bungalows in England,” said Jean, and wiped her eyes with a corner of the towel. She was still holding the wrench. She thought she should explain the wrench. “I’m thirty years old, I’ll never have another fiancé, and I just washed my engagement ring down the bathroom sink.” “Then you probably don’t want it back,” said the ghost. Wednesday and Las Vegas were to blame. “Nobody goes to Las Vegas on a Wednesday,” Jean told the ghost whenever she painted her toenails, which was usually on a Wednesday night. That Wednesday, at ten, after picking at her baked potato, Jean painted her toes red. Mitchell didn’t like red. Mitchell thought red was a drastic kind of color. “Gambling is a sin,” remarked the ghost. He perched idly on Jean’s empty bookshelf. He heard this story more often than the others. Jean removed her tidy feet from the plastic footbath. “It’s only a sin if you lose. Or if it leads to bigger sins. Or if it makes you reckless.” The phone rang. It was Warren. Yes, they were still on for dinner tomorrow night. No, Jean wouldn’t be late. Fair enough, Warren. Good night, Warren. Jean hung up the phone and rolled the bottle of nail polish back and forth between her palms. “Sometimes I want Mitchell so much that I loathe my own hands for not running down his back.” Jean uncapped the bottle and spread crimson along her pinky toenail. “And sometimes I want to punch Mitchell right through the brain.” The ghost stirred the pages of a magazine with a few vaporous breaths. “Mind, now. No sense muddling your toes over an old wound.” “Why did it have to be her?” The question was quiet. Jean was never quiet. “Why did her bartending break have to come the moment he cashed out? Why did he have to be reckless and forget about lipstick and how it stays on laundry that he never did anyway and how the smell of expensive perfume lingers in car upholstery for months and how could he forget I saw his credit card bill every month? Why didn’t he try harder? Don’t I deserve somebody who tries harder?” All ten toes were red. Jean recapped the bottle. “Don’t I deserve a better lie?” The ghost blew the magazine across the room. It fluttered to the floor. “Madam, ghosts are only questions. We haven’t substance for answers.” “Well, fuck you too,” said Jean. Warren cleared his throat. “You always order salad.” He took a bite of his roast chicken. He took his time chewing. He chewed like a chimpanzee. Jean pushed her salad around with her fork and forced herself not to think about chimpanzees. “I always order salad when I’m with you,” she said. Mitchell could have cared less about her eating habits. Mitchell ate as he liked and left Jean to do the same. Warren took a sip of water and leaned back in his seat. “Ah, Jean. Jean. Jean, do you like me?” Jean stared into her water glass. An unidentifiable white fleck had found its way to the bottom and she blinked at it, willing it to disappear. Warren wasn’t going to disappear whether she blinked at him or not. Jean felt she would have better luck with a fleck. "I like you, Warren. I like you." Jean cleared her throat and resumed salad-pushing. She wondered about Warren, comfortable friendly coworker Warren. They went to dinner twice a month. A part of Jean did like this kind of being out, out with no kissing involved. Kisses past plagued Jean’s existence. Kissing was overrated. “Do you think we should start kissing?” asked Warren. Jean choked on a tomato and Warren helpfully pounded her on the back. He laughed. He laughed a little too freely. “I’m glad you’re able to like again. You should like again. I like you, Jean. I’m glad that’s settled." He returned to his roast chicken. Jean stabbed an insolent cucumber to death. It met its demise with little complaint. Warren’s favorite color was red. Or at least so he kept saying on the way back to Jean’s apartment. “My favorite color is red. I love red. Red is the color of love.” Jean began to suspect a foot fetish. She shifted from one foot to the other. She couldn’t see Warren’s face; the light above her door was too low. Jean began to despise ambiance. Warren leaned against the open door of Jean’s apartment. “Jean, what are we doing? Where are we going? How are we getting there?” Jean clenched and unclenched a hand at her side. “We’re out. We’re just out.” “Ah!” Warren’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to go in!” “Ah,” began Jean, but that was as far as she had to go. Warren’s eyes stopped being lit up and instead became round and shocked and began to pop out from his head. “Ghost!” Warren shrieked, pointing at the ghost, who peered around the doorframe at that very moment. “Ghost!” “Yes,” the ghost affirmed. He turned toward Jean. “Madam, if you’re coming in, would you mind closing the door? It causes an unpleasant draft.” “Ghost!” shrieked Warren. “Boo?” offered the ghost. “That was unfair of you,” Jean said to the ghost, watching Warren disappear into the night. “I know how you feel about drafts.” Dental hygiene could save the world. Jean saved the world in this manner once every morning and once every night. She did not floss. Floss was defeatist. “I didn’t grow up with toothpaste.” The ghost loitered in the empty bathtub and watched Jean brush her teeth. “I think it’s highly commercial.” “It whitens my smile,” said Jean. She washed off her toothbrush and tapped it against the side of the sink. “When I decide to smile more often, the world will thank me for brightening its day.” Jean went into the kitchen for a glass of water. The ghost followed. The phone rang. It was Warren. No, Warren shouldn’t be upset. No, Jean was not upset. No, Warren. It’s perfectly all right, Warren. Don’t press the issue, Warren. Warren, you’re being ridiculous. Jean doesn’t care, Warren. Good night, Warren. “You can’t have ghosts in an apartment!” Warren howled into Jean’s ear. Jean tapped a finger against the phone. She did not care to have her good nights ignored. “Why not?” “They make everything inhospitable!” Jean slammed down the phone and leaned against the refrigerator. She paused. She thought a moment. “I once read that diamonds never disintegrate, even though they start out as ordinary rocks. They live forever, drains or no drains.” She paused. She looked at the ghost. “How did you die?” The ghost blinked. “Pardon?” Jean folded her arms and stared up at him. “You’re a ghost. You must be dead. How did you die?” The ghost paused. He sighed. He settled himself on the windowsill. “I was once young and ambivalent. And while others grew out of being young and ambivalent, somehow I never could. I suppose that was the beginning of the end, as they say. I grew tired of ambivalent youth. I gave up on ambivalent youth. And seeing as I was ambivalent, and I was a youth . . . why, that was that.” The ghost flourished a translucent hand. “Or else it was the rather nasty summer I spent with scarlet fever.” “You make no sense,” said Jean. “Ghosts never do,” reminded the ghost. At precisely five the next morning, Warren pounded on Jean’s front door. Jean opened it and peered at him in a tousled sort of way. “You’ll wake the dead.” “Just so!” Warren waved a heavy-looking pillowcase around in the air. “We’ll soon set this matter right,” he exclaimed, nearly walloping Jean in the head with the pillowcase. “Warren,” said Jean, “there is no matter. Please leave the matter alone.” Warren gave a little jump. “Ah, if there is a matter to be left alone, then there is a matter after all!” He bounced inside. Jean did not like the look of Warren when he bounced. He reminded her of hungry chimpanzees at the zoo. Mitchell never bounced. Within, Warren emptied the contents of his pillowcase onto the living room floor. “Now!” he said, shuffling them about. “Which one will work? Which one will do the working?” “God, Warren,” said Jean. She picked up a small vial from the pile of items on her floor. “Is this holy water? Where did you get holy water?” Warren’s pile also included a wooden crucifix, a Star of David, a string of rosary beads, a garish souvenir statuette of the Buddha, and so on, and so on some more. “Warren,” said Jean, “are you loopy? Are you high? Have you robbed a cult?” Warren didn’t hear her; he was too busy brandishing the holy water at thin air. “Begone,” he shouted, “begone from this place!” He started to chant the same thing. It was probably more effective that way. The ghost sailed groggily into the living room. “Madam, what’s all this noise?” he demanded. No further explanation was necessary, however, for Warren was a rather obvious explanation in and of himself as he flourished various icons like mad. “Warren, stop,” Jean said. Warren did not stop. He shook the crucifix at the ghost. The ghost gave him a baleful stare. “Warren,” said Jean, “it’s only a ghost. He came with the apartment. He’s a very fine ghost. He doesn’t like people to be naked. He likes to listen. He tells me to be careful when I peel potatoes and he’s here every Wednesday. He knows about the drain. He knows. He knows, Warren.” Jean was screaming. Jean hardly ever screamed. “I’m only a ghost, Warren! Let me be! Let me go! Let me be a ghost!” Warren stopped waving the crucifix. He put down the holy water. He looked at Jean and he looked at the ghost. “I’ll leave you the crucifix, Jean,” said Warren, and he gathered up his remaining statuary and his pillowcase and lifted his head and went away. “What an eccentric display,” said the ghost. “Shut,” said Jean, “up.”