Walking With His Ghost

Prologue: Lagolepsy

The women in my family always had a way with words.

Not a small way or a quiet way, but a shattering and beautiful way with them. As a child I would always treat a word from my mother or grandmother like a gift. Sometimes it was like a game, a new word to store in my vocabulary, but often the word would be a part of something bigger and something they trusted in me to understand. I would savour the sound of them, feel them in my own mouth and watch them on their lips.

My grandmother was careful and discerning with words. When she spoke, I held onto her words and coveted them as if each one was treasure. My strongest memories always begin with a word. Her voice, to this day, is the most intimate thing she ever shared with me.

I remember sitting in front of her ivory coloured dresser, watching her braid my hair in the mirror. I noticed a picture I didn’t recognize of a young man with his arm casually slung over my grandmothers much younger shoulder. The picture was old, and yet the frame was shining. The top left and bottom right corners of the frame looked a little duller and worn, as if someone’s hands spent a great deal of time around it.

Even as a child I knew my grandmother was breathtakingly beautiful. A ballet instructor, she moved through rooms as though they were all her stage. Every movement she made was controlled and feminine. Her eyes, although surrounded by laugh lines, were alive and shining and always filled with a radiance that didn’t seem possible. I had seen very few photos of her when she was young, but I knew in an instant it was unmistakably her in the photo. Her tiny body was pressed up against his side, her open palm against his chest. Her head was thrown back, her mouth was open and her eyes were shining making it clear that she had been laughing when the photo had been taken. His eyes were sparkling too. He was looking down on her in a way I didn’t totally understand, as if she hung the moon for him.

I studied the picture and smiled at this unknown man and my grandmother and in my innocent reverie didn’t notice that she was studying me.

Saudade, she whispered in my ear while catching a wayward curl delicately up into the braid. I moved my lips, testing the word out silently and shivered.

I had never heard it before and I knew from how it was spoken that it was a word that ran deep for her. Saudade, she repeated now locking her gaze on me.

There isn’t a word like it in English. Not even close. It’s what I give to him, what he takes from me and what I feel every time I see that photo. Her eyes, usually icy blue looked even colder, now almost dove grey. Every time I think of him even now… Saudade. I didn’t understand but like any child sensing something big but not being able to comprehend it I nodded vigorously and stayed silent, memorizing the colour her eyes turned when she said that word. I made that connection strongly in that moment: Saudade. Dove grey. It’s more than missing, more than longing. It’s beautiful and loving, but if you know it, and can feel it, you know that it burns.

At that she looked at the photo once more and then got busy combing back the other side of my hair to start in on the other braid. I repeated saudade over and over again in my head. A word that meant something so beautiful it burns. Years later and thousands of words late, when I got the phone call that Dylan was gone, saudade rolled through my lips all on its own. My grandmother was right, it burned.

Chapter One: Eccedentesiast

When I first moved to Toronto, I figured it would be a hard city to find a quiet spot to read. I soon discovered it was littered with forgotten spots. Within the first few months I’m pretty sure I had found the best of them. I mapped out these spots in my misery and returned armed with a thermos of tea and a book in hand.

I was truly alone when I made it to Toronto and I would stay there in those hidden spots, lost deep in my memories and words for hours. One of the best of these spots was actually right in the center of the bustling and churning Yonge and Dundas square. It was in this particular spot that I first saw him.

I was jammed up against the low white radiator that was hissing and whirring beneath a large window that desperately needed cleaning. The paint on the window sill and the radiator were both chipping onto the wood floor and the rest of the room was empty. Technically the room was part of Ryerson University, but there were no desks, a considerable layer of dust on the floor and all of the light bulbs were burnt out in the room except for the one I was under and one directly in front of the door. All of this indicated that the room wasn’t frequently used. I loved the spot.

The dull floor groaned and creaked with every step. The radiator complained every time it was forced to come to life and through the grungy window, the square below was muted and obscured. The lights of the billboards on the surrounding buildings blinked through the window and onto the opposite wall of the room, gently reminding me of the hub of activity below. The dirty white walls and complainey radiator made the room seem warm even if it wasn’t particularly inviting. I went there often, particularly on gloomy days like today when even with the bright lights of the square, the whole city felt heavy and damp and grey.

Grief after losing Dylan pulled me under and consumed me. I turned into someone that I disgusted me.

Everyday became a struggle of shame and pain and anger and loss. I stopped living for anyone, least of all myself. I knew I had to get away. Maybe it didn’t make sense to my family or friends, but the second I graduated I packed up and drove day in and day out until I hit Toronto. I had never been to the city, didn’t know a soul among the millions of people, but something stopped me there. I took comfort in it, the anonymity. What I hadn’t counted on was his ghost reaching Toronto as soon as I did. The ache didn’t leave when I did.

I pulled my scratchy wine coloured cardigan that I draped over my chest higher up under my chin. My dark brown hair was twisted up into a messy riot of curls on top of my head. I stretched my legs out in front of me to combat the pins and needles in my right leg. I blindly grabbed for my tea, never taking my eyes from the words on the page and contentedly felt the warmth of the thermos seep into my fingers.

I was rereading a favourite novel for the third time because I couldn’t help myself. With some books, although they were infrequent, I fell so hard for the characters that I wasn’t ready to let them go even when the book ended. I would reread a book over and over again whenever I missed them and every time that story would change and get better. With this particular book I was rereading, I didn’t think I’d ever be ready to let them go.

As a connoisseur of words, books were always my constant companion. Even in pieces in my grief, I still read constantly. It wasn’t that I escaped my grief when I read any more than aloe stops a burn; it soothes, but the pain was still there right under the surface waiting to come flying back.

I was deep into a passage, absorbed in my characters when I heard the muted elevator chime distantly in the hall.

Heavy steps walked down the narrow hall towards the room I was in and I glared down at the page hoping they were going somewhere else, but knowing there wasn’t much of anything else on this entire floor.

I heard the steps stop in the doorway and I refused to look up trying to demonstrate how little I wanted to be disturbed while reading.

Hey, a rough voice called out to me.

Hi, I told his boots almost giving him a polite smile. They were good boots. Dull, black, leather, soft looking and worn almost to the point of worn out, but not quite. I looked back at my page, dismissing him without acknowledging the rest of the man attached to the good boots, figuring he would read my body language and leave me alone.

You found my spot, he said, clearly not understanding my body language. I looked up at him and couldn’t help but freeze for a second. God he was attractive. I knew it at first glance, even avoiding eye contact.

Sorry, I muttered. My cheeks warmed as I quickly creased down the corner of the page of the book I was reading silently promising the characters I would return to them shortly. My sorry sounded bitchy, I knew it did, but distance was good and being unfriendly would give me that.

No, I just meant that I didn’t know if anyone else even knew this room existed, he said in that coarse deep voice.

He moved deeper into the room, obviously appreciating its disrepair as much as I did. I heard a dull thud and looked up to see a guitar case he had placed on the dusty floor. In a liquid movement, he crouched down low over the case, facing towards me.

Jesus, he had a body. He was tall and even hunched over, his broad shoulders and strong arms were solid. He was wearing a gun metal Henley and his longish messy dark brown hair was falling across his forehead as he bent low to fiddle with the brass closures on the side of the case.

Everything about him screamed masculine and drew me to him, from his body, to his movements, to how in just moments he had completely occupied the space with his mood and presence. He didn’t strike me as someone who spent forty hours a week in a suit and threw on a flannel to tinker in the garage when he got a wild hair. He struck me immediately as a man who worked with his hands.

I scanned down to his long calloused fingers and I bugged my eyes out at where my thoughts were leading. I almost shook my head to clear my mind and control my reaction to him. I wasn’t sure what it was about him but he was having a near well immediate effect on me and I wasn’t prepared for it. I tried to ignore my response, particularly the craving to get closer to him. Closer was the last thing I needed.

He looked up at me and feeling his eyes burning on me, I immediately looked down at my tea. Do you mind? I don’t want to disturb you, he said and I could see just through my downturned lashes that he was holding a beaten down guitar by its neck.

Yes I mind. No, no I don’t mind- I’m actually just heading out anyways, I lied. I had no intention of leaving, but I couldn’t sit here with him, especially not if he played that guitar half as well as I guessed he would and especially not because the longer and longer I sat across the room from him, the more he pulled me in. I was in trouble.

I chanced a split second look at him and saw he was giving me an amused almost cocky smile, probably at how awkward I was acting (the amused bit) and because he knew full well why I was acting like that (the cocky bit). He shrugged, clearly not caring if I stayed or left so I stood up, straining against the pins and needles in my leg and looked out the window, my back to him for my own piece of mind. I stared out the window trying to regain my equilibrium as I shrugged on my cardigan and buttoned it back up.

I wondered what his story was. Why was he hiding out up here? Who was he? I scolded myself and furrowed my brow at my racing mind. I didn’t care. I didn’t need to know his story. A rough looking guitar player was nothing I needed to think about. Still, it wasn’t like me to be so drawn to someone, so pulled into him as if he already knew how to make every part of me respond. I chewed on the inside of my cheek trying to break myself of the thought. I didn’t need to start that shit all over again. I had barely got away from my past when I did. I certainly didn’t need to be racing back towards it.

Over the ministrations of the radiator, he started to play softly. The sound reverberated around the dull room and struck me. I recognized those first three notes immediately and my response was guttural. Stark, separated, simple the sound filled the room and my eyes snapped open. I reached down desperately and placed my hands on the top of the radiator to steady myself and I felt that familiar tightness start building between my ribs and race towards my lungs.

Fuck, those three notes ripped through me every time. I turned to face him and he kept playing, his fingers moving effortlessly across the neck of the guitar and his eyes flitted up to me.

At the onset of the song, my legs barely held me. When I finally met his eyes, with the song choking out the air all around me, I was robbed of the breath I was taking. Those eyes. I knew them immediately. He looked back down to the struts of his guitar quickly enough to miss my reaction and my throat burned as I tried to force myself to breathe.

I closed my eyes tight, but the song kept going. I desperately scrambled for my things. I had to bolt. I had to get out of there. I was raw, standing there bleeding from my jagged edges in front of him and he had no idea. I couldn’t move fast enough and the song just kept building relentlessly. Every note was white hot and burning me. I knew the lyrics that were coming and there was nothing I could do to stop them. The song was building, and building and the lyrics were going to crash down in the room and crush me. They were playing already in my head and when they should have hit the air in the room, he spoke instead.

Jesus, not the reaction this song usually gets, he said. He studied my face, his brows pushed together in surprise and probably confusion. His eyes. Those eyes, searching me. God, I knew those eyes. Deep and brown and able to pick up any light in the room. Somewhere between mahogany, chestnut and caramel depending on the light and his were shining in the deepest mahogany that I knew too well. Fuck they were nearly identical.

It’s not….it’s beautiful, I said in a croaky voice that I hated to hear from myself. It’s a great song.

Thankfully, he wasn’t watching me anymore, as he was approaching the complicated crescendo right before the chorus started in that I was already bracing for. The words about love and expectations and leaving. All of them, Dylan’s.

Words had dictated Dylan’s life and death for me. When he died the summer after high school, my previous love of words turned into compulsion and obsession. All of his letters, phone calls, messages and stories. Losing him buried me in words. In some eerie foresight, Dylan had picked out the playlist for his own funeral. For some people, this would be morbid, but for Dylan it was just so him. He was so complicated. He was an old soul and his mind never slowed down. He was a story teller a dreamer and a renegade. I loved him unconditionally.

He picked every song so carefully and they sent chills up my spine. Every last one of them. At the funeral I think everyone got the same chills because with every song he was right there. Every lyric to every song became a beautiful secret between him and those he had left behind. I swear some he picked only for me. I’m sure everyone he loved felt the same thing.

In the days and months after he died, I played the music he had picked over and over again, clinging to it for comfort, crying through every note, screaming at him to tell me what he was trying to tell me and still savoring every single word in every single song.

Every single song was perfect and devastating. I hate to think about him sitting alone and picking out the music for his own funeral at 19 and I wasn’t ever going to understand what possessed him to do it. He couldn’t have known that he would lose his footing and fall. He couldn’t have known he would die in what everyone called a freak accident but still, he had designed the whole funeral, song by song, word by word. I wasn’t glad he did it, but nothing anyone said or did would matter as much to me right after losing him as that playlist did.

Dylan collected lyrics with the same reverence I had for words. Everything he played himself or listened to was heavy with meaning and without fail, every memory I have of him was wrapped in a song. The song that filled that very room that I was standing in with this man who had pulled me in instantly wasn’t only a part of Dylan’s playlist; it was the very last song that Dylan had requested. The last song he had written down to have played as everyone he loved said goodbye.

It just reminds me of someone, I choked out finally on a near whisper. That song, I finished unnecessarily, hoping he would take the hint to stop playing as my eyes started to burn. I couldn’t stand to hear him play. This song was mine and it was Dylan’s. It was my favourite song in the world and I hated more than anything to hear it. I wanted to lock it away so I knew it was always there and close, but I never ever had to hear it again. Every note cut through me, right to the bone. I moved to get around him, but on my first step forward he spoke again.

He’s an asshole, he said playing through the rest of the song. He didn’t look up from his guitar.

What? I said, too stunned to move.

You heard me, he replied. I felt this like a blow, knocking the wind out of me.

You don’t know what you’re talking about! I almost yelled at him, shaking, he… I didn’t want to say was so whatever I was going to say died in my throat. I wanted to scream at him but all I did was stand there shaking.

Ruined a great song, he said. He played a little softer, but still kept playing. Hearing it makes you act like you’ve seen a ghost. For him to cut you that deep, he’s an asshole.

Fuck you, I bit out. Hot angry tears were waiting at the ready. I couldn’t’ explain it to him. How could I? Why would I? This complete stranger. He had no right. With that song he was already trespassing.

I meant nothing by it. He’s hurt you deep and it’s a shame it fucked up a great song for you in the process. That’s all I’m saying, he said slightly shaking his head like it was nothing that I was crumbling in front of him. His long legs were stretched out in front of him. He was sitting near the doorway so that the blinking fluorescent glow from the lights in the square were hitting the wall just above his head. I stared at him in that moment. He was so similar to Dylan, but so entirely different. He was right to say I had seen a ghost. When he played I heard one too.

He started into the final decrescendo and looked up at me for the first time since he had first started playing and instantly registered the pain on my face. I didn’t break the eye contact as my emotions tumbled over one another racing to the front of my mind. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay. Something kept me there, even in pieces, staring at this stranger and I couldn’t look away. My first instinct told me he was trouble, his words confirmed it, but still I was frozen right in front of him, memorizing his face. The fragile air between us was charged. For a fleeting moment, surprise and regret flashed across his handsome face. I knew those eyes. God, I knew those eyes.

Jesus, babe… He was starting to say something, probably recognizing he had said something more than he realized, but I was too far gone to give him another moment. When he spoke, I was freed from his spell. I needed to get as far away from his as possible.

Don’t, I said cutting him off. I couldn’t stand it. I shot around him and through the door as he put the guitar down and watched me flee, completely undone. I couldn’t wait for the elevator so I ran to the stairway clutching my bag as I ran. I raced down the stairs, my feet barely keeping up with me. I don’t think I breathed again until I made it outside of the building. I poured out into the busy corner of Dundas and placed my hands on my knees, bending over to catch my breath and slow my pounding heart.

Chapter 2: Rantipole

That night and the next day, I tried to push him from my mind- he was a stranger, one of millions that I didn’t know and didn’t know me. The control he had over me in just minutes was overwhelming and I tried to calm myself down but all I could think about was that song over and over again, the pain fresh and deep. I couldn’t stop thinking about him either, about his voice and most of all the way he looked at me. I went through the paces the next day, phoning it in as I worked on my thesis, but all the time I couldn’t shake him.

Even as my life came apart at the seams back home when I lost Dylan, I had managed to scrape through my classes and recover enough to get into university. I threw myself into my studies but let everything else fall apart. In the end, even though I was still a mess, four years after Dylan died I managed to graduate.

Once I uprooted and tumbled to Toronto, I got accepted into Ryerson to start grad studies in the literatures of modernity program. My life for years had been a wreck, but for whatever reason when it came to writing and reading, I had kept my head above water. I was grateful I did, but it was still a challenge on bad days to even pull myself together enough to work on my thesis. The added distraction of him and his guitar was not a welcome one. I thought of how my body and mind had reacted to the man in the room. It was immediate and rushed through me.

Everything about him made me nervous. The way he moved and talked was confident bordering on arrogant and there was just something about him that made me uneasy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was definitely something there, shallow beneath the surface.

I texted Ava and Vivian quickly to confirm our plans for that night to meet for a drink with the guys and when they texted back I started taming my hair and rifling through my closet, predictably settling on one of my black dresses, black tights and my motorcycle boots. After that strange run in I needed a night where I could just relax and even just for a couple hours pretend to not be sad and lonely. I met Ava and Vivian, who were twins, orientation weekend and we became friends thanks to their persistence and kindness.

I wasn’t easy or fun when they met me. I was so caught up with trying to start over fresh and keep my demons at bay that I’m not sure how they stood to be around me, but for whatever reason they did and I was grateful for it. Matt and Simon came along with Vivian and Ava. The boys were rough. They weren’t anyone you’d want to cross and I didn’t know their story beyond the scary as shit pieces that I heard recounted over beers on occasion. They had met the twins when Simon had come into pay speeding tickets and Vivian had been the counter agent. According to Vivian, his story was legendary. She had written off the ticket and they had been inseparable ever since. Along with Simon had come Matt and along with Vivian had come Ava. It seemed unlikely from the outside, a pair of social, fun and outgoing twin Italian girls hanging out with the guys, but it just worked.

I was the first to arrive at Einstein’s to meet Matt, Simon, Vivian and Ava. I scoped out our favourite table, a booth that was tucked right behind and to the left of the door so that people walking downstairs into the bar all but missed us. I loved this spot. The bar was worn and comfortable. You could wear jeans and no one would say anything but as per usual I was in a little black dress. The beer was cheap, the atmosphere was perfect and it was always a relaxed spot for us. I moseyed up to the bar, ordered a pitcher and grabbed the glasses for the group. I walked back to my table and I blinked hard when I saw someone sitting in my booth. I let out a little frustrated groan and stomped back to the table.

Is there anywhere in this city where you don’t gloom around? He said looking relaxed and amused. That I found beyond annoying. I could barely get a sentence out around him and he seemed like I didn’t affect him at all. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself in the middle of your drama yesterday, he said meeting me eyes. Jon Callaghan, he said, reaching his hand across the (my) table. My drama? What an asshole I thought. There they were again, those calloused fingers and strong arms. I sucked in a breath and watched his lips turn up into that damned cocky smile.

Charlotte, I told him, politeness kicking in like a gag reflex. It didn’t last though. It took one look into those eyes and everything he made me feel the last time I saw him came racing back. I didn’t know what he was playing at, but I could tell it wasn’t good. It takes one to see one and I knew, right away that he was trouble.

I wasn’t expecting you of all people at my table. You startled me, I told him trying to make it clear that I didn’t like the intrusion, even if a small flutter resonated somewhere that revealed part of me was fine with him being there.

Obviously if I knew you were lurking around, looking for round two of being an asshole to me, I wouldn’t have picked this place, I said. It was bitchy and immature. Beyond that it wasn’t true. I loved this bar and even Jon being there didn’t change my perception of it.

Bullshit, he muttered under his breath and I pretended I didn’t hear it.

Mind? He sort of asked. He was already sitting at the booth reaching for a beer glass and was chin jerking at the bar tender who he obviously friendly with. The bar tender looked from him to me, grinned and then shook his head. The bartender raised a shot glass to him and then threw it back. Jon chuckled and shook his head, raising his beer he had helped himself to from my pitcher back at the bar tender.

His laugh was fantastic, throaty and gravelly but real and not forced. None of this exchange made sense to me but I chose to ignore it, particularly the laugh I liked just a little too much and focused on the problem at hand. Apparently, with Jon the enormous city of Toronto was reduced to a small town where not only was I doomed to bump into him, of all people, but he appeared to know everybody else as well.

Not at all, I responded imitating politeness. I’m just surprised to see you, I said innocently enough. I blinked a couple of times for good measure and continued saccharine sweet I had you pegged as more of a brown paper bag on a park bench drinker than a clean clothes and actual beer glasses kind of guy. I leaned in and staged whispered, You know you have to tip here right? I saw a surprised look on his face and basked in my small victory.