Page 7 of The Invisible Roommate

“Maybe you sleepwalk?” she said.

“I never have before.” He paced the front path with his hands on his hips. “Could there be…? No.”

“Could there be what?”

“Ghosts? Or, a ghost?” He heard distinctly how foolish he sounded. A ghost would have to be mighty powerful to perform telekinesis across dimensions. Regardless, he didn’t even believe in ghosts aside from the Holy Ghost he’d learned about in his Catholic upbringing, and even that belief was growing fuzzier by the day.

“Funny you should say that. We’ve been having a lot of unexplained phenomena here on the island lately.” She sipped from her mug.

“Such as?” he asked.

From her pocket, she wrestled out her phone and squinted at the screen. “Somebody posted in our community forum that they saw a golf cart driving itself the other morning and a half-eaten apple floating midair. Half the town said it was a ghost, and the other half said the guy hit the bottle too hard the night before despite this being a dry island. I don’t know which half I fall into, given the other reports on here, but this house has been standing in one form or another almost as long as the US has been independent. I would be shocked if there wasn’t at least one ghost puttering around,” she said, setting her newspaper on the seat beside her. “When’s the last time you ate?”

Involuntarily, he clutched his empty stomach. “Lunch yesterday.”

She waved him quickly inside, and before he could say anything else, she was frying bacon in a pan and cracking eggs into the cut-out centers of pieces of white bread. She poured him a cup of the worst coffee he’d ever tasted, and she only had whole milk to sweeten it, but the care she displayed for him—a virtual stranger—settled his body into stasis.

Thoughts of ghosts and intruders and sleepwalking abated.

“Where’d you travel from, James?” Regina asked once she’d fixed them both plates and turned off the rattling stovetop fan.

“New York City,” he said with his mouth full. He’d never had a cowboy egg before. That first bite awoke the ravenous hunger inside him. Sticky yolk rivered down his chin.

“Fellow New Yorker?” she asked. He’d forgotten she’d said she was from there originally.

“No. Jersey. Close.” It was hard to get words out while he shoveled the delicious food into his face. She made bad coffee but really good breakfast.

“Saw you with a guitar case yesterday. You a musician?” she asked, still working on the same super-crispy piece of bacon.

“Yes,” he said automatically without realizing what he was disclosing. It was just that nobody ever referred to him as a musician anymore, given all the other titles he’d picked up along the years. Immediately, he pivoted the conversation. “Was that you I heard playing the piano yesterday?”

“Yes. I tickle the ivories. Did I bother you?” she asked.

“Not at all. It was lovely. What was it you were playing?”

“It’s something original I’ve been toying with,” she said, voice taking on an almost singsong quality.

“You’re a songwriter?” he asked, taking a tiny fortifying sip of the sludge coffee for the caffeine boost he needed. He swallowed quickly so as not to have to taste it.

“I was. Ages ago. Now I’m a landlady and a former innkeeper and a church volunteer and a sometimes cook. How was it? Guess you liked it because your plate is clean,” she said with a tinkling laugh. He wondered how she afforded to live on the island without operating her business. His rent alone couldn’t sustain her. “Seconds?” she asked.

“No, I couldn’t pos—”

“Nonsense. Let me refill your plate, and you should take the leftovers. Lord knows I won’t eat them myself.”

4

The next morning when Gerard went to reheat Regina’s leftovers, the containers were empty.

“What in the living hell is going on?” he said to no one.

In the night, before he’d fallen asleep on the sheets Regina had so kindly let him borrow, he swore he heard the soft patter of bare feet on the wooden floor. As if someone were tiptoeing through the darkness. Stirred, he turned on every light and inspected every crevice. There were no signs of a person—or a ghost, for that matter—anywhere. Though what had he been looking for? Tracks? A trail of ectoplasm?

Something strange was afoot.

That day, he tried to forget about the stress-induced terror that was happening inside his new apartment because he had an unheard-of completely unscheduled day. With his hat and sunglasses on, he explored town, ate full-fat ice cream for the first time in years, and in the notebook his therapist had encouraged him to use for documenting his emotions, he jotted down interesting names he found etched onto gravestones in the vast cemeteries.

In the afternoon, he practiced his guitar playing on the beach before picking up his pen and writing: