Between Them

by Trent Walters

“Most ghosts, when all is said and done, do not do much harm.”–E.F. Benson, “Caterpillars”

She liked NASCAR via surround-sound speakers:  the rev and whine of engines rattling the china cupboards in their little Italian villa, echoing across the hillside village.  He liked gaudily colored knick-knacks–doilies, ceramic dolls, figurines of farmers and barnyard animals.  These held them together because these kept away the ghosts.

It hadn’t always been this way.  Ambitious young sculptors, they attended University of Texas during the “DotCom” bubble.  They squirreled enough to sculpt the rest of their lives in Italy, eying villas outside Rome where they’d haunt great works of art on a whim–especially the Italian Renaissance, which they felt they had a foolproof plan to reinvigorate.  All they need do was invest aggressively for ten years, and they’d live happily ever after.

In ten years, the housing bubble banqueted upon their savings.  Enough remained to redeem for a remote Italian villa, far from Rome.  “Villa” was too kind:  gargoyles falling off the rooftop at the hint of wind, a battered if tasteless cupid water fountain, moth-eaten draperies, decrepit furnishings–a haven for wandering ghosts.

Into these quarters, ghosts slipped in and tipped over alabaster sculptures or knocked the half-formed granite gulls from a windowsill–how had it gotten there?–or whatever the couple had been working on.  Critics, no doubt.   The car noises and atrocious crafts warded away most ghosts, but not altogether.

The villa’s decay and their art’s attrition infected waning late-night caresses.  They cohabited together alone, in separate bedrooms among the rubble of their sculptures.

One night leaning out on the veranda, smoking a cigarette and sipping smokey whiskey, he spotted something below, glowing in the water-fountain’s basin.  He fetched and cradled the foot-long grub into the light of his wife’s bedroom.  A ghost banging a shutter caught sight of the creature and fled.

He laid the grub upon the sheets between them.  Water slicked its satiny carapaced belly.  His wife cooed, stroked its abdomen which squished and sloshed as though it held a chunky, viscous liquid.  Its pincers squeezed his finger hard enough to tickle out a trickle of blood.  He babbled in a prehistoric tongue.

She laid a hand on his cheek, brushed his forehead with the backs of her knuckles.  She thought of days soaking up the sun on Padre Island, of blueberry sno-cones and beignés, of ridiculously floppy straw hats, of his warmth next to hers.   He spirited her hand to his lips and kissed the open palm.