Ian and his wife Sara live in a condo, which is just pleasant and normal enough to make me feel out of place.  I have nothing against Ian and Sara, of course, but it's just so...ordinary.  I close my eyes and smell the potpourri/pasta smell, and instantly picture the place:  pale walls, high ceiling, skylight, track lights, nobbly carpet, big screen TV, leather section couch, glass-on-wood coffee table, tasteful silk flowers.  I open my eyes and see that I only got one thing wrong; the coffee table is glass-on-metal.  It's better than being outside at least.  The air has a less vibratory quality, and it doesn't matter that the colors are gone from everything.

Sara greets me with walking-on-eggshells gentleness, as if she's afraid that saying the wrong thing will make me fly apart.  She doesn't quite understand me, never has.  Maybe that's as it should be.  Ian and Sara are pretty ordinary too.  Big-hearted, to be sure, but they've always tended to play straightman to the vaudeville act that Ren and I are.  Or were.  Swish-click, swish-click.  I shake my head to make the thoughts go away, and I sit on the couch in front of Ian's giant TV.  I don't remember him having it before but it's a good addition to the living room.  TV is a good thing.  I should connect mine, now that I'm thinking about it.  TV sounds like an acceptable alternative to sleeping, and not much does these days.

Did we go somewhere today?  We did, didn't we?  There were numbers, and pitchers of water…a meeting.   Wonder what it was about?  I can't remember at all.  I do remember that I had catfish.  And Ian yelled at me, like he often does lately.

Oh, but it's mean-spirited to be thinking such thoughts about Ian and his wife after they've been so nice to me.  I settle down in front of the television and peel off my coat and boots.  Being yelled at doesn't bother me all that much. In the past it has, I've never been a big fan of being yelled at, but now I don't feel anything, not for real. I can feel my hands and feet doing the things I ask them to, and I can see the world moving around me but it doesn't touch me for real, and I don't touch it either.

Ian brings me a plate of homemade pasta primavera, a glass of juice, and my evening pill.  Pink cloud time.

I take the juice and medication and say to Ian, "Crimson Permanent Assurance, hi-ho."  He doesn't get it, which isn't a surprise.  I doubt he's seen Monty Python's the Meaning of Life.

I pick at the pasta, and eat most of the noodles and none of the vegetables.  Meanwhile, my thoughts melt into a comfortable hum.  After a few minutes I've got Monty Python running through my head and I feel about as sentient as the pasta, and that's just fine.  Just fine indeed.  I don't have to think about Ren when I'm a great big spaghetto.

Ian and Sara eat in the dining room and talk.  They sound cheerful, which is a good thing.  Ian spends so much time taking care of me; not to mention working full time, and Sara has to be annoyed about that but never complains.  Never never ever.  Some time, somehow, I've got to repay that kindness.

I channel-surf until I stumble across some Disney animation featuring their ubiquitous talking animals.  I recognize it immediately as The Aristocats, and settle in happily to watch.  A cheerful tomcat named J. Thomas O'Malley is in the process of cozying up to a recently kidnapped mother cat named Duchess, who isn't in the mood for flirtation.  "Oh, no more please," Duchess says.  "I am really in a great deal of trouble."

O'Malley puffs himself up.  "Trouble?  Helping beautiful damsels in distress is my specialty!  Now, what's the hangup, your ladyship?"

"Well, it is most important that I get back to Paris.  So, if you would just be so kind and show me the way..."

I know O'Malley's lines so I say them with him.  "Show you the way?  Perish the thought!  We shall fly to Paris on a magic carpet!  Side by side, with the stars as our guide...just we two..."  It's easy to remember the movie stuff.  It seems to float on top of the pink goo that tries to trap everything else.

The shape of the room has changed.  The twelve-foot ceiling is lower, and my pink cloud seems to have obscured the wall behind the television and the arty landscape photo that hangs on it.  Duchess and O'Malley are actually in the room with me, no longer encumbered by the walls of a fifty-two inch Mitsubishi television.  How cool!  I'm sitting in the middle of the scene.

I start to notice that whatever Ian has given me has gotten me incredibly stoned, but then I see that my sister Alison is sitting on the couch with me.

Alison has showed up once or twice since Ren died.  I hate to be uncharitable, because it's nice to see Alison and all, but if dead people are going to visit it would be nice to see Ren, too.

Alison is wearing a white angora sweater, which has been the source of much Crane household controversy twice:  first when Alison insisted on having the thing even though we couldn't even afford an exterminator to clean up our roach-infested house, and then again when I ruined it by spilling redpop all over myself and Alison at a scary movie.

"Nightwing," Alison says.  "The movie was called Nightwing."

"That's right.  With the bats."  Okay, it wasn't a scary movie, it was a stupid movie, but sufficiently scary to terrify...

"An eight-year old," Alison reminds me when I stumble.  Normally I can remember things like that.  Luckily, the pink fog is there to take away the very desire to care to know why I can't remember anything.  I look at Alison's sweater instead.  It's no longer stained, but that makes sense anyhow, because she's sitting here full-grown when both of us know full well that she was fifteen when she killed herself and the angora sweater got ruined three years before that.  She looks good, taller than me and prettier too.

"So, you got out of the house for a while, at least," Alison says, looking around the condo.

"For a while."  My mouth feels like it's connected with a loose cable but I do my best to tell Alison about the day's activities.

"Boy, you sound enthusiastic.  Didn't you want to get out?"

I shrug.  I did, but...or did I?  Can't remember.  "Most days I'd rather just sleep."

"Perchance to dream?" Alison says, grinning.  She's much happier than when she was alive.  Around us, the Disney cats introduce themselves to a pair of giggling, sunbonnet-wearing geese with English accents.

"Lexi," Ian calls, "could you turn the TV down a little?  It's awfully loud."

I look at Alison, who nods in agreement.  "Uncle Waldo!  I do believe you've been drinking," I call back with a hint of an English accent.  Doing the movie voices is easier than talking with my own words.  I pick up the remote and spend some time looking for the volume button.  It takes so long that I almost forget what I'm looking for, but Alison reminds me.  The raucous laughter of inebriated talking geese diminishes somewhat.

"So what do you think Curve wanted?" Alison asks.

I have to think for a moment before I can pull up a mental picture of the man I met this afternoon.  "Dunno.  Didn't think about it."

"Maybe you ought to."

"It's hard to think about things.  Everything's all mediciney, and I like it that way."  I'd much rather concentrate on the antics of the animals on-screen, but if I ignore Alison she'll leave, and I don't want that either.  "Maybe."

She's speculating anwyay.  "I'd say it was money, but it's awfully weird to try to ingratiate yourself to a rich widow by tricking her into stealing someone else's car.  So what did he give you?"

"Huh?"

"The present, dingbat.  What is it?"

Oh!  I've forgotten it entirely.  I lean over Alison to retrieve my coat, knock two pillows off the couch getting it, and fish out the package Curve gave me.  It's a gift-wrapped box inside a plain paper bag.  Alison motions me eagerly to open it.  I wonder why she's so excited.

It 's a model racing car, silver, and about four inches long.  Alison isn't particularly impressed.  "Oh, boy, a toy car."

"No, Alison, it's a replica, not a toy."

"There's a difference?  You're still going to play with it.  So he knows you like toy cars as much as real ones, I see."

"But it's a BTCC car!  It's Frank Biela's Audi, don't you see?" I show Alison the name on the one-forty-third scale window.  "I didn't have this one--we were looking for it..."  Ren would've been happy.  The thought rips through the clouds around my emotions like a bolt of lightning, and is gone just as fast.  Alison squeezes my shoulder as best she can, which isn't very well since she isn't corporeal.  It helps anyway.  "We...we have almost all of the 1/43 scale touring cars," I say.  "The whole set.  This is one of three we were missing.  No, four.  No, three.  I don't remember."

Alison is still unimpressed, but she attempts a look of interest anyway, like she always did when I was five and doing exactly the same stuff at school that her teacher made her do.  Then she changes the subject.  "Do we know this guy whose car you took?  Dobie?"

"Well, you don't," I say.  She sticks her tongue out.  Alison's pretty good-natured about being dead, as if all the nastiness in her bled out into the tub on that horrid day when she was fifteen and I was eleven.  "His family's all cozy with the Packards," I add.

"No, no, we know him from somewhere else.  A car thing."

"He owns a racing team, but he's not a good enough driver to race himself."  The Aristocats' adventures capture my attention for a few minutes, swirling around the room as they are.

Alison tugs yet again at the edges of the television's spell.  "Well, that explains why he was so nice to you once he figured out who you were.  That, plus that rich-widow thing."

She keeps referring to me as a rich widow.  Ren and I were only engaged, though.  I know it didn't matter, we might as well have been married from the day we met, but it kind of bothers me to hear it all the time.  "Quit calling me that, please."  I think about the way Dobie acted though.  I don't want to, but I can do it for Alison.  "I guess you're right.  He was nice."

"He married?"

"No.  He's older than me, too, so people...um..."  What was I going to say?  Oh, yes, "people say things."  No, maybe that wasn't it.  Damn.

"How old is he?"  Alison shifts, turning so she's almost facing me.

"Look it up.  He was in GQ last spring.  Or was it Esquire?  It was GQ.  I know he's pushing 40, but he hasn't knocked it over yet."

Alison raises a coquettish eyebrow.  "Hmmm.  I always did like older men..."

"He lives in Ile du Soleil.  You'd have to visit him there."

"The tropics!  Even better!"  That makes me laugh.  "Oh, good," Alison says.  "I miss your laugh.  You should do it more often."

I know I'm being childish but I slouch in the seat anyway.  "Not much reason to laugh, these days."

"Well, the longer you let that sadness eat you up, the less you'll have to be happy about," Alison says.

It's too much; Alison is making me think too much.  It hurts.  IT HURTS.  "All right, pesky pets!" I scream along with the movie.  "You're going to travel first class!"  A big fat bubble of scratching, heaving emotion wells violently in my throat, seeking release as a glass-shattering shriek of anguish.  I bite down on it, squeeze my tearing eyes shut.  It doesn't help.  I see Ren, smiling and waving as he slips into Darkside in front of the hotel...and then next...and then next...and then next limousine sliding out of control and into the side of Darks, pushing both of them tumbling into the woods...

I have to say something or I'll explode.  It has to come out.  I shout, "In your own private compartment!  All the way to Timbuktu!  And this time you'll never come back!"  Somewhere behind me a chair crashes to the floor as Ian jumps to his feet, followed by a gasp from Sara.  "You're going to Timbuktu if it's the LAST THING I DO!"  My voice cracks, and I can hear it as if I'm outside myself.  It's a harsh and drilling contralto, and I like the sound of it. 

I pound on the remote with my hand until the television snaps into darkness.  Then I throw it at the TV, followed by a pillow.  The Aristocats continues in my head, playing from some vault in my memory.  It's almost over, actually.  The evil butler is shortly vanquished by talking animals.

Ian's out there somewhere, in the fog that surrounded everything, somewhere beyond my eyes, which I haven't opened.  I hear his voice going around my head in spirals.  Sometimes it echoes around my head two or three times before the words make it into my ear. 

"We need a man around the house," I say.  On some level I'm aware that I've buried my head in the pillows on the couch, and that Sara and Ian are digging me out, leading me to bed.  So terribly nice to me, they are.  I make a note find a nice present for them, the next time I go out.

Swish-click.  For once I'm dimly aware that time has passed, but I'm still not sure how I got back and home and in bed again and things still don't touch me.  My bed.  I like my bed.  I kick the covers off and lie awake for several hours.  I know it's several hours because the light walks slowly across the ceiling.  It gets dark, but I still don't fall asleep.  My bed isn't right any more.  It's too big.  After a while I crawl into the closet, among the clothes, and I sleep there.

Swish-click. One of the ghosts gets me out of bed again.  She's standing in the doorway, and she turns and glides away as if I'm supposed to follow her.  I don't follow her, but I can't sleep any more, either.  I spend another night in the closet, and in the morning I discover that there's a false wall at the back of it.  There's a hidden ladder that leads into the attic.  Pretty cool.  Ren and I never explored this house much when we bought it.  Maybe that's what the ghost wants me to do.  It must have been her house, after all.  I spend the whole afternoon squirreling boxes of our things into the attic, and consider drawing a treasure map.  I don't open any of them; too many memories inside.