“You’re late,” she said. She kicked a bucket towards him. “Start bailing.”
Peter took a minute to absorb his surroundings. He sat in the bow of a small rowboat of unpainted, untreated wood. From what he could see the hull wasn’t even caulked. The horizon was a straight, unbroken line on all sides: grey above, white below. There was light to see by, but no bright spot in the sky to indicate where the sun might be hidden. Indeed, at first at seemed there was nothing at all except the boat and its two passengers. The other passenger was rowing, though it was hard to tell whether it was having any effect. It was the girl again.

“Why am I dreaming about you again?” he asked.
“You’re not,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I’m dreaming about you.”
“Ah,” Peter nodded. “No, wait, what?”
“Never mind that. Start bailing.”
“In a minute,” he said, picking up the bucket as a conciliatory measure. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
She looked herself over in mock examination, lifting first one leg then the other, but keeping up her hands on the oars. “Yes, you’re right, it is me.”
“No, I mean it’s you. Ashlyn. From yesterday. I thought you said your name was Alice.”
“I thought you said your name was Peter?”
“It is, here.” He hadn’t meant to say it, but once he had he realised it felt true.
“There you go, then. Now start bailing, unless you want us to sink.”
He frowned, but hefted the bucket anyway and started ladling mounds of pure white snow into the boat.

“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.

Toby woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. His face and chest were covered in a cold sweat. He had to… had to… had to do something he was sure, Had he been dreaming? The memories were wispy, and when he tried to grasp them they fled. The alarm by his bed blared into life and he jumped, slapping it silent in irritation. He dragged himself to his feet and headed for the shower. Monday morning. He had a class to get to.

The lecturer was late. Again. Toby picked a seat at random, wishing he had stayed at home in bed like most of the class clearly had. His bag made a halfway decent pillow on the desk, and he was just getting comfortable when he heard someone sit down next to him.
“You can bet if he was here on time and we were late he’d kick up a fuss,” a female voice said.
He assumed it was talking to someone else, maybe even itself, and didn’t open his eyes.
“Second week and already people are giving up on Monday morning classes. It’s just us left,” it continued.
Toby opened his eyes and looked around. The voice was right, the few stragglers who had been here just a few minutes ago had clearly given up and gone off to seek greener pastures. Or at least softer ones.

He turned to his left to see a girl sitting on the desk of the row behind, her legs dangling over the edge. She looked familiar.
“Have we met?” he asked.
She smiled a private smile. “Doubt it,” she said. “I only just started here. I’m Ashlyn.”
“Toby,” he replied, and shook the hand she offered.
“I thought someone should tell you it doesn’t look like he’s coming before you fell asleep.”
“I think I could have used the sleep,” he laughed. “You too, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Rough night,” she said. “Anyway, if you go back to sleep who’s going to come and get a cup of coffee with me?”

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.”

Clara sat at the small table in one corner of the room, shivering slightly. She felt dirty every day in this place, but it rarely got to her anymore. This was different. She hurt all over and though he hadn’t actually hit her or spoken a cruel word, she knew he realised and enjoyed it. He hadn’t spoken any words, actually, not since he had closed the door behind them. Only grunts. He was still making tiny grunts now. She could see him from the corner of her eye in the small mirror standing on the table, see the sweat on his back, dripping down onto her sheets. She was glad, not for the first time, that she didn’t sleep in that bed.

The small, discreet clock by the mirror told her he had twenty minutes left. She wanted to toss him out, but knew it wasn’t wise. Dale hadn’t taken it well the last time she’d done that, and apparently this one had been sent by Marcus. It was even less wise to piss Marcus off. In the mirror she saw him stir and her skin crawled at the thought of him touching her again.
“Marcus was right about you two,” he sat up against the headboard. “Had her last week, she’s the spit of you. Younger, ‘course. Nastier, too.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, genuinely confused, looking at his reflection but not turning.
“Your sister.” The grin that came to his face was so vile she reached out instinctively and slammed the mirror flat on the table so she didn’t have to look at it. It shattered into large pieces, the size of her hands.
“My sister is dead.” There was a roar growing in her ears. “Has been six years, now.”
“She has a hot little body for a dead girl, then. Marcus must treat her real special.”
The roar in her ears seemed to take her away from herself. She saw her hand pick up a shard of mirror, saw the room spin as she stood, turned and leapt in one motion, saw his blood on her hands and her sheets, but she did not feel any of it.

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.”

“Let’s play a game,” she said.
He glanced out through the balcony doors. The cobbled street below wound away down the hill, lined on either side by tall houses, leant against each other for support. In the distance he could see the harbour, then the ocean, then the sun, sinking slowly. “Do we have time?”
“We have time. So the way it works is…”
“I’ve never played before, but I think I know how strip chess works,” he interrupted.
“The way it works is,” she continued, “every time you take off a piece of clothing, you get to take one of my pieces.”
“That’s not the way it works.”
“I thought you said you’d never played?” she raised an eyebrow.
“I haven’t, but…” he trailed off.
She sat back in her chair, stretching, one hand moving to the buttons on her shirt. “The carnaval starts in an hour. Do you want to play or not?”