“Have you heard about this new ‘red’ they came out with t’other week?”
“‘Redd’? No, what’s that then?”
“Our Karen’s new man bought a car on Friday, and it’s ‘red’!”
“Oh, it’s a car, then? I don’t hold with cars me’self. I’m all walkin’, me.”
“No, no, it’s not a car.”
“I thought you said it was a car.”
“No, I… Oh, I know how you’ll get it! You know how Sharon down the way’s husband David ‘as a car an’ it’s black?”
“Aye.”
“And you know the doctor from over Bimsbury…”
“Simon?”
“Aye, Simon.”
“He’s a lovely young man, he is.”
“Aye, he is, he is. Anyway, he has that van he does housecalls in, and it’s white.”
“Aye, it is. I saw him just last week for me corns. It’s all that walkin’.”
“Right, so Our Karen’s new man’s new car isn’t black, and it isn’t white! It’s ‘red’!”
“Oh I see what you mean now. You mean grey.”

At first, there was the drought. The first animals were arrayed over the vast plain, silent and still clay moulded and baking in the relentless sun. One day, before there even were days, Gecko opened its eyes to find itself alone amongst the lifeless masses. Nothing else stirred.

Lonely as only the first or last could be, it went on a great trek beyond the horizon and came back leading the first winds, but still nothing stirred.

It crawled many many miles into a crevice into the earth and came back leading the first fire and in an instant all the clay animals were hard as stone, but still nothing stirred.

Finally, it crawled into the sky and came falling back with the first rains. The other animals began to stir.

The room was huge, floored in black and white tiles and roofed in vaulting plasterwork dangled with glittering crystal chandeliers. Some of the pillared walls led to alcoves and other rooms, some were faced with mirrors polished to a perfect sheen. In the air hung the sound of a bubbling stream, and the smell and shadows of a forest glade. As most of the guests had descended the sweeping staircase to the floor they had gasped at the grandeur or remarked that there may have been tens of thousands of masqued dancers parading around the room. He did neither. The very moment he had passed through the doors he had seen her, and his eyes never left her as he descended to the floor and took her hand.

“I wish these damn lights would change,” I muttered. Looking in either direction there was nothing on the road save the regular circles of light thrown from the street lamps. The red glow cast over the dash changed to green and I was on the accelerator like a shot.
“Traditionally, you get two more wishes,” smiled my passenger.
I laughed. “So where do you know Rebbecca from, anyway?”
“I work for her now in the antique store.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that like?”
“It is… different. Have you decided on your second wish?”
I laughed again. “Sure, why not. I wish I had a million dollars.”
There was a popping sound and a heavy duffel bag dropped into my lap. I jumped, swerving the car and nearly hitting a billboard proclaiming ‘Bargains! Bargains! Bargains!’.
“And your third wish?”
“Shit,” I said. “I wish I’d realised you were a genie.”

“So you hunt ghosts, then?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he replied.
“That is,” I admitted, “refreshingly frank for a person running a business called ‘GhostAway’.”
He laughed. “It’s not exactly my usual spiel, no, but I’m not going to lie to an old friend.”
“So it’s a hoax?” I looked around the lavishly appointed office, before adding “A well-paying hoax?”
“Well-paying, yes. Hoax, no. It’s a matter of semantics.”

“So you ‘hunt’ ‘ghosts’, then?” I repeated, this time making the quotes in the air with my hands.
“‘Yes’,” he smiled. “Mass curves spacetime, right? It creates spheres that decay with distance. The phenomena has a lot of parallels: magnetism, sound, you get the idea. The theory goes that any type of energy creates a corresponding spherical disturbance, and that these distortions are present in all dimensions.”
“Bubbles in the aether.”
“Bubbles in the aether, right. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that events of high emotional significance are in a sense emotionally ‘massive’. Emotion is a form of energy, or at least a manifestation of one. Emotions cause bubbles. Usually just small ones, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes not,” I supplied.
“Sometimes not. I’m sure you’ve felt it before. Memories tied to a certain place, or smell, or time of year. Memories that are hard to get away from; memories that have gravity.”
“Ghosts are memories with gravity?”
“Yes. So much gravity that they have an effect on other people.”
“Okay, so let’s say I buy that ghosts are a manifestation of curved spacetime, how exactly would you go about hunting something like that?”
“Panel-beating.”

He loved rain that he didn’t have to be out in. This is not to say he only enjoyed rain from behind windows or under rooftops. Getting wet because there was no other choice in getting from A to B was irksome; sitting cold and wet in an office all day because of a forgotten umbrella was downright unpleasant; being in the rain because that was where you wanted to be, however, was glorious.

For being out and about in, he liked rain at dusk the best. The dusk and the rain conspired to pull the world in close around him, and everyone else was busy rushing on their way. Sometimes it felt like a blanket wrapped around. Sometimes it felt like swimming in the air, in the world, drinking it in. For being inside in, he liked night rain the best. It was the second best thing he knew to fall asleep to.

They sat. Close, but not touching. Not speaking; not in words. They could each feel the other’s warmth, smell the scent of the other’s skin, and that was enough, for now. They breathed in time: one in, one out; one out, one in.

The din of the world was muted; its pace was slowed. It faded away at the edges, indistinct. Their touch felt more from the air in the small space between them than from the grass beneath them. Nothing outside their little sphere was as important as anything inside it.

For now, this was the one thing that couldn’t wait.

She sat on the shore, arms wrapped around her knees. As he saw her, he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He picked his way across the rocks to her.

“Hey,” she said as he sat behind her. She didn’t turn her head, but settled back into him as he wrapped his arms over hers.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” he said. “You don’t, always. Sometimes it’s monkeys, or work, or I’m late for something but I don’t know what it is. Sometimes it’s nothing at all.”

“But you still try?” she asked.

“Every night.”

“Good.”

Weeks later, after all the dust had settled, I still had one question. One question that I doubt I’ll get an answer to now. At the time it didn’t seem to matter. At the time my fourth whiskey was reduced to a glass of ice and the bartender was too busy chatting up some lawyer at the other end of the bar to care, so when the dame walked through the door, took one look around the room, and came straight to the seat next to mine, I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t even ask myself why. Maybe I was just thankful that she’d turned the bartender’s head long enough to get her a Long Island and me my fifth whiskey.

She lit a long, thin cigarette and proceeded to tell me her troubles. I didn’t want to hear her troubles. Not then. I wasn’t five whiskeys deep because I had no troubles of my own. When my wallet proved too bare to buy a sixth I had a change of heart and told her what I did for a living. She wasn’t surprised. I fished a slightly dog-eared business card from my wallet and slid it to her.
“Fisher Private Investigations, 9-5 Mon-Sat,” it read.
I eyed the row of glasses in front of me on the bar, then took a pencil from my pocket, leaned over, and changed the nine to a ten.
“The address is on the back,” I said, standing up and turning to leave. I took a few unsteady steps, then looked back over my shoulder. “Better make that ten-thirty.”

“How did you know?” he asked.
“You wrote it in a story once,” she smiled.
“I wrote about dragons in a story once,” he said. “You didn’t get me one of those, did you?”
She smiled again. “I could always tell which ones were stories and which were real. You know that.”
“I know,” he squeezed her hand tightly, before letting go and stepping into the room. “I guess I’d just forgotten that I’d ever written this down.”

She followed him through the doorway and sat, curling herself up in one of the leather chairs to watch. She didn’t have to ask if it was right, she could see the look on his face. “Go ahead. Open one.”
The wall in front of him was filled with drawers. They were all shapes and sizes, but the dozens of tiny ones excited him the most. He turned back to her, her meaning just now sinking in. “Wait… you mean there’s something in them?”
“Every one.”
“That must have taken you months!”
“Years.”
He bent down to kiss her. “I love you.”
“I know,” she said. “Now go on, open one.”