Bitter Spirits
Page 10

“Yes,” Mr. Hannity said.
The club waited with bated breath like children around a campfire listening to stories. Even the balconies above the sides of the stage were filled with spectators hanging over the railing. The medium placed her left hand over Mr. Hannity’s pocket watch and balled up the other against her thigh. Winter watched, curious. She closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she inhaled sharply and her right leg twitched as if someone had kicked her. Her eyes flew open.
She exhaled.
Her breath floated out in a cloud of mist . . . just as it had the night they’d met.
Goose bumps pricked the back of Winter’s neck.
“Go on, Mr. Hannity,” Hezekiah encouraged from the stage. “Ask your question.”
The lottery winner hesitated, wringing his hands. “Uh, Lenny? If it’s really you, can you tell me where we buried the dead cat we found in the street on my sixteenth birthday?”
Miss Palmer looked down at him. Her manner didn’t change. Ghostly breath continued to flow from her mouth as she spoke. “In Old Man Henry’s field.”
Mr. Hannity gasped.
“Hello, Michael,” she said. “Happy to see you’re finally going bald.”
Her voice was unaffected. And even though Winter had already witnessed what she could do to an existing ghost, it was startling to see her possessed—if that’s what this was called. A couple of weeks ago, he wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but now . . .
What was that thing she’d done with her hand when she was calling the spirit? Winter tuned out the conversation between her and Mr. Hannity and concentrated on figuring out her process. It was almost as though she were holding something, but what?
After a few exchanges between Miss Palmer and Mr. Hannity, Winter gave up cracking her method. His eyes roved over her sleek caramel bob and the freckled neck and shoulders below. He found himself desperately wishing he could set fire to her long gloves.
Then her gown.
His cock pulsed appreciatively at this thought. Christ, he needed air. Seeing her again had been a mistake. If he’d already had trouble tamping down fantasies of her in his bed, then watching her perform onstage, radiating poise and confidence . . . It wasn’t something he’d soon forget. After taking one last look at her, he slipped away and—quietly pocketing a program with her photograph printed on the inside—headed back through the lobby to his waiting car.
• • •
Aida rented a room in a five-story building in Chinatown over Golden Lotus Dim Sum, at the northern end of tourist-laden Grant Avenue. All the residents were single working women like her. Cable cars clanged down the street during the day, and local streetcars ran until midnight, so she usually didn’t have to pay for a taxi after work or worry about straining her calf muscles hiking up and down the hilly streets alone, which made the six-block walk from Gris-Gris seem twice as long. Weekly room and board included free dim sum—as the proprietors owned both the apartments and the restaurant—and her room contained a Murphy bed that folded up into a closet, an armchair, a desk, a telephone, and a private bath.
But the best part was the black iron fire escape that stretched outside her window. It doubled as a meager balcony, upon which she sometimes sat at night to stare out over pagoda roofs lined with swaying paper lanterns and the gold dragons entwined around Chinatown’s lampposts.
Four days after the incident with Winter Magnusson, when Aida rose at her usual late-morning hour, she rubbed goose bumps on her arms and pulled back curtains from her window to peek outside past the fire escape. Nothing but gray skies and drizzle. Mark Twain supposedly once joked that a summer in San Francisco was the coldest winter he’d ever spent, and from what Aida had experienced since she’d arrived, this wasn’t an exaggeration, especially at night when the fog rolled in.
“Better than the blistering heat out East,” she said to the small oval photo inside her gold locket. “And cold weather just means more customers stopping by the club tonight to warm up with a drink. See, Sam? I’m still thinking positive.” She snapped the locket closed and headed to her humble bathroom.
As she bathed, her mind wandered to Winter Magnusson. She’d dreamed about him twice—unsurprising, considering what she’d seen that night. But in her latest dream, instead of him being naked, it had been her, and he’d taken on the persona of some tabloid gangster, fighting rival bootleggers with machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.
She wondered if he’d ever been involved in anything like that in real life. Perhaps it was better if she never found out. He was likely wishing he never saw a ghost again. Maybe he’d already forgotten her. She certainly wished she’d forgotten the melodic rumble of his voice, the two dimples in the small of his back, and other notable parts of him . . .
Shaking that thought away, she dressed in bright clothing to fortify her mood: a lapis blue dress with long, sheer sleeves and knife pleats that fell just below her knees, and a pair of matching Bakelite drop earrings. After donning her gray coat and cloche, she grabbed her handbag and headed out the door. Four flights of stairs later, she stepped through a side door into the ground-level restaurant.
Golden Lotus was in the middle of a brisk lunchtime rush, and its ostentatious red and gold decor greeted her as she wound her way past dark wood tables and velvet-cushioned chairs, inhaling the enticing aromas of ginger and garlic. Customers who dined here were a mix of locals, tourists, businessmen entertaining out-of-town clients, and young working girls—typists and switchboard operators. Servers in smart red tangzhuang jackets with mandarin collars wheeled wooden pushcarts brimming with tiny plates of pungent bites: slender spring rolls, buns filled with Cantonese-style pork, and bamboo trays of steamed shrimp dumplings.