“Rachel! Good to see you today! Love today’s sweater!”

“Dave, right? Thanks!” She wore a black sweater with orange jack-o-lanterns tangled in green vines around the top part of the sweater, then five big jack-o-lanterns right in the middle. Sleeves had uncut pumpkins, and the hem, collar, and cuffs were all Halloween orange.

“I have two questions, and neither are about what you’re ordering – Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte, right?”

“You know me well!”

“Well, you’ve been in here literally every day this year since the PSL came out, so, you know, lucky guess.”

“Creature of habit,” she laughed.

“So, today is my last day…”

“Oh no! Going on to something bigger and better, I hope?”

“Culinary school!”

“Shut up! That’s fantastic! Congrats!”

“Thanks! But I have to know two things.”

“Yes, orange is my real hair color. No hair dye company is this cruel.”

Dave laughed. “That wasn’t one of the things. First, why PSLs every day? And second, where do you get all the great sweaters.”

“Oh! Good questions. I don’t usually answer those, but since it’s your last day…”

“Grande PSL, Rachel,” a barista leaned across to hand Rachel her Grande cup. “Digging the pumpkins. Looking sharp, girl!”

“Thanks Tina!”

“Since it’s my last day…” Dave reminded.

“Well,” she said more seriously than Dave had remembered. “You see, I’m actually dead. I died of pneumonia a few years back. Lengthy hospital stay… I don’t recommend it. That actually goes both for dying as well as a lengthy hospital stay, now that I think about it…”

“You died? Okay,” Dave decided to go with it.

“Right. I died a week before PSLs came out that year. I love PSLs!”

“Obs,” Dave motioned to the cup in her hand.

“Right? So, yeah, every year I come back during Pumpkin Spice Latte season and I wake up every day in a new ugly sweater – I don’t know how I managed to pull of that perk, am I right?! But, yeah, wake up every day with a new ugly sweater and a craving for a PSL.”

“The new ugly sweaters is awesome. Kudos to whomever arranged that part of the afterlife.”

“I know!”

“So, wait, you only haunt this Starbucks?

“No, it seems like I can go to any Starbucks I want. Nothing against Starbucks on Labath Ave in Rohnert Park, but there is nothing like sipping a Pumpkin Spice Latte next to the Statue Equestre du Maréchal Foch staring across Seine at the Eiffel Tower…”

“You went to Paris,” he said incredulously, “And you had a Pumpkin Spice Latte at a Starbucks?”

“Oi!” she said, then took a sip from her cup. “Oh, don’t get all judgy! It’s not like I could go anywhere in Paris. Just, you know, any Paris Starbucks that had the PSL! ‘Craquez Pour Le Pumpkin Spice Latte!’” She grinned broadly. “I mean, that’s what the sign said there. I don’t really speak French. Well, I sort of do when I’m there ordering… And Spanish in Barcelona… It’s weird. Well, all this is weird, right?

“Oh yeah,” Dave said nodding. “Did your sweaters wow them in Barcelona?”

“Everywhere I go!” She said cheerfully, missing the sarcasm.

“So, you don’t visit your family or anything?”

“I can’t! This is the deal. Starbucks. PSL. Awesome sweaters. I have seen them come in here, though – we all lived a few blocks away in the apartments behind Target. I didn’t say anything, though – what can you say? ‘Hi Mom, missed you! Hi Timmy! Your big sister haunts Starbucks’? Ya know?”

“So, wait, is this hell? Because that would explain a lot…”

“Dave, you’re a sweetie,” she said leaning across the bar and getting serious. “I’m going level with you. This,” she moved her finger from herself to him, “This is some serious dead girl advice for you from the other side.”

Dave nodded seriously.

“There’s no hell. There’s no heaven. There’s only what we make of our circumstances and what we give to people around us. That defines heaven and hell.”

“OMG, I love that sweater,” a woman said coming through the door.

“Thanks!”

Rachel turned back to Dave, batted her eye lashes, “See?”

“You’re a crazy one, Rachel. I’ll miss you.”

“Eh, I’ll see you at the Silverado Plaza Starbucks,” she said walking towards the door.

“Wait, how’d you know I transferred there? I said today was my last day!”

“I’m like Santa Claus of Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Dave. I work in mysterious ways! Au revoir!”

Dave watched her walk out the door, step off the curb in front of the window and fade into nothing.