Second twenty-seven: his reflection’s eyes half-closed, pink lips pursed as he leaned toward the mirror.
Second thirty-four: Micah’s hand on Cosmo’s exposed shoulder.
Second thirty-six: Cosmo turned at three quarters, wearing a wry smile.
Micah had already touched him at that point, so why was he still smiling? It wasn’t until second thirty-eight, when he locked eyes with Micah, that his expression shifted.
He hadn’t expected Micah to be able to see him. That was it, wasn’t it?
After rewinding to second twenty-seven and lingering on Cosmo’s pucker face, he hit play. “Desperate” thumped through the phone’s speakers. Desperate for love and attention.
I like keeping you up.
Cosmo was still accomplishing that whether music was playing or not. Micah opened the internet and typed “Lemon Disco death Cosmo”; he was met with articles about a cartoon show and the popularity of Cosmopolitans being on the decline.
Maybe Cosmo wasn’t his real name. It would help if Micah knew how he died. But those articles sometimes didn’t mention the person by name at all.
He typed “Lemon Disco artist death.”The first hit was about a seventy-eight-year-old quilt-maker. Nope. The next result was an investigation into the death of an avant garde ceramics artist–
The phone sagged in Micah’s hand. He knew her.Had. Hadknown her.He’d attended an art show with her, where they’d discussed their exhibits and how hard it was to get featured. She’d mentioned with disgust that the director of a now-defunct gallery had not so subtly suggested that if she could perform a certain talent other than clay throwing, he’d consider her submitted portfolio. Micah had never been asked to suck someone’s dick to get into a gallery, thank god.
He skimmed the news article about the woman’s death.
–found asphyxiated in her bathtub, the tie from a decorative shower curtain knotted around her throat.
“Christ.” The police were questioning suspects at the time the article was written, but another internet search suggested they’d never arrested anyone, and the case had gone cold. How awful.
Sitting up, he flung off the covers, then picked up the shower curtain ring on the drafting table. Before it appeared, there’d been a loud jangling, like the rings clanging together as the curtain was ripped down, then a hard thud. Had the same person who killed the ceramics artist killed Cosmo? Strangled him in the bathroom?
No, no. That couldn’t be the case. Ximena would have known about that. Even so, Micah couldn’t help checking the deadbolt and window locks.
He sat on the bed, his traitorous imagination conjuring up an image of Cosmo in the bath, candles melting down the sides of the tub and wet spirals of hair clinging to his cheeks as he leaned back and shut his eyes. Then a dark shadow in the doorway. Cosmo wouldn’t notice; he was listening to Soft Cell and thinking about his current work-in-progress or ice cream or a lover. Fishing wire dangled from the intruder’s hand.
Micah bunched the sheets, his heart hammering. Just an ordinary day, then your entire life destroyed in an instant. Micah hadn’t died, but he knew too well how that felt.
The intruder would stride into the bathroom and snatch Cosmo by the hair. Cosmo would shriek, he’d splash, fight back. He’d grab the shower curtain for leverage, but it would rip off the rod, and he’d fall, cracking his head on the edge of the tub. Blood would run into the bath water. The intruder would loop the fishing wire around Cosmo’s neck and pull tight–
Tears fell onto Micah’s leg, and he realized he’d balled the sheets so tightly in his fists that his hands were cramping. Shallow breath whistled through his nose. He pulled the rainbow obsidian out from under his pillow and squeezed it.
Maybe Cosmo had started visiting Micah because he realized their trauma was similar. And his fright upon Micah seeing him had been some kind of post-traumatic reaction. He didn’t want to come back because he was afraid. But what if Micah was the only one who could help Cosmo move on to some better afterlife? Talking with a therapist about the shit Micah had been through had been awful, but the idea of doing it with the ghost – with someone who’d experienced something kindred – didn’t seem so bad, especially if it was helpful.
Crossing into the bathroom, Micah erased his messages from the mirror, uncapped his marker, and wrote:
Here if you want to talk
6
TAINTED LOVE
Cosmo - Three Years Ago
Tapping the straw of his matcha milkshake, Cosmo stared at Déjà from across the diner booth. “I think my studio is haunted.”
“Hmm?” Déjà flipped open one of the funeral home brochures spread out on the table. She pursed her lips, her lipstick as dark and glossy as her Guiness-and-cocoa milkshake.
As incredible as it would be for Cosmo to bid goodbye to his old life from inside a silk-lined, mahogany casket, it was simply too expensive, and he’d already dropped a hundred dollars on the obituary.
Déjà pointed to a brochure. “I just had a thought. What about cremation instead? We can get an urn, and then instead of ashes inside, people can write down the things they most love about you and put them inside. Then whenever you’re feeling down, you can pull them out and read them.”
