Mary Ann Nurse sat alone at the dark wood table in the glass-walled conference room at Baldwin, Reed & Parker on the top floor of the Hellman building downtown, eyes closed in meditation. Her salt and pepper hair swept up into an elaborate updo with ribbons of scarlet and glittery blue woven throughout. Her green pantsuit looked, at first glance, fairly pedestrian until you looked closer and noticed an ivy and oak leaf pattern woven into the fabric. Her hands, fingers resplendent with silver rings, rested gently on the table.
The door opened with Amelia entering first and coming to a sudden halt when she saw the woman already seated at the table.
Susan continued what she was saying outside the conference room. “…I would be very surprised if Mary Ann showed up at all. From what I heard, she’s become quite—” she cut off as she followed Amelia in and saw Mary Ann sitting at the table already, her eyes open and face turned smiling towards Susan.
“What have I become, Susan?” she asked sweetly.
“Punctual! Very punctual,” Susan filled in. “And it looks like you’re even early – look at that!” Then, to herself, “I need to find out why Edgar didn’t tell me she’d arrived…”
“Oh, don’t blame Edgar. I threatened to curse him if he told you,” she said casually.
Amelia gasped.
“Oh, dear,” Mary Ann said, dismissing Amelia’s gasp with a wave “I wouldn’t have cursed him. Well, not anything particularly painful at least.”
Edgar opened the door to let David and Vivian in, took one look at Mary Ann and scurried away without waiting to be dismissed. David and Vivian watched him disappear down the corridor.
Susan sighed. “Come in, both of you. Have a seat. Amelia, you too.”
Everyone took the same seats they had a week prior.
“As we discussed, we have Mary Ann Nurse here on behalf of… the ghost.”
“His name is Sam,” Amelia corrected.
“His name is Sal!” David countered.
“Actually,” Mary Ann spoke up, “His name is August. But he says you can call him Augie.”
Both Amelia and David started arguing loudly. “His name is Sam!” “It’s Sal!” “It’s not Augie…”
The conference door opened slowly during the cacophony and then snapped closed with a slam that startled the room into silence. Mary Ann’s peaceful smile never left her face. “Augie says he never wanted to correct either of you because he was just happy to be addressed in the first place. But for the sake of settling this argument, he wanted me to make this point clear.”
Everyone stared at Mary Ann for a long moment.
“Well, glad we cleared that up,” Susan said. “So, Mary Ann, the last meeting came down to a question of who would take custody of Sa—err, Augie. Both David and Amelia claimed he would prefer to stay with them. Do you have any insight from Augie?”
“I do,” she said and then paused for a long moment. “Augie doesn’t want to go with either David nor Amelia.”
Confused looks were shared.
“Augie wants to live in the house with both Amelia and David.”
Susan gave her best patronizing smile. “That’s nice, but unfortunately that’s no longer an option. Amelia and David have unequivocally expressed their desires to split.”
One after another, the chairs at the table that weren’t occupied flipped backwards with a crash. After the third chair crashed backwards, Mary Ann held up a hand and the fourth chair, already in motion, teetered to a stop before it fell back. “I think it’s obvious that Augie feels it should be otherwise.”
Amelia turned to Mary Ann, “I’m not spending one more moment in the same house as that… cheater!”
“For the record,” David said, “You’re the one that actually cheated. But on this point, we agree – we are not going to live together ever again.”
Mary Ann listened to the couple, her beatific smile unchanged. Finally she said, “I hear what you’re saying, but Augie says if you don’t live with one another in the house, then – and I quote – ‘you will never again have a moment of peace in this life.’” Amelia and David paled.
“Are you threatening my client?” Susan demanded.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” Mary Ann responded. “I’m merely passing on the words of the ghost that I was brought in to represent. Besides, in the eyes of the law, ghosts don’t exist. So, as far as the law goes, there’s no threat and Amelia and David have nothing to fear!”
Susan and Vivian looked at their respective clients who sat ashen faced and silent.
“Oh,” Mary Ann said, “So it seems like you two might think these words hold weight, then?”
Silence.
“Augie said he will mediate the two while they cohabitate and reconcile…”
“Does he really talk like that?” David asked incredulously. “’cohabitate’ and ‘reconcile’?”
Mary Ann regarded David, her gaze slipping off to the side as if she was watching someone over his shoulder. David noticed this and began to squirm in his chair. “He does,” she said. “He was born and educated in London before striking out for America. He died in his house, which was on the site of the house you and Amelia currently live.”
“We don’t live there together anymore,” Amelia offered.
Mary Ann turned her enigmatic smile on Amelia, “Oh, you will…”
And they did.
It came down to fear of the unknown. Both David and Amelia had grown comfortable with Augie that they had their names for him and both wanted to take him with them when as they exited the relationship, but both had had moments where Sam/Sal scared the crap out of them. So, when he made his threat through Mary Ann, it only took long enough for them to excavate those long-buried terrifying moments and realize this was not a bluff either was willing to call.
David moved into the spare bedroom while Amelia naturally stayed in the master bedroom. And for the first week, they maintained a cordial relationship – two people, familiar with each other, living in the same house, but trying their hardest to not cross paths. They would pass in the kitchen in the mornings and casually discussed dinner schedules so one could cook without interacting with the other. During the transition between David finishing his dinner and starting to leave the kitchen and Amelia entering, the underlying tensions boiled over.
“Damnit, David, this is just like you!” Amelia surveyed a pot with the last remnants of a sauce sitting on the stove while two used pans and his plate sat in the sink. “Make a mess and just leave it.”
“What?” David said. “There’s like four items there. They can all go in the dishwasher…” he pointed to the dishwasher in front of Amelia.
“Then why don’t you put them there!” Amelia’s volume was rising.
“Because you haven’t unloaded the dishwasher,” David matched her volume.
“Nothing’s stopping you from unloading the dishwasher!”
“I didn’t run it!”
“But we both live here now!”
At that moment the sink sprayer turned on spraying Amelia, who shrieked at the streaming cold water. David had enough time to almost laugh when the door to the pantry opened violently, slamming into his face. “What the hell, Sal!” David called, hands cradling his face. The pantry door slammed into him again. “Ow! Sorry, Augie! Augie! Not Sal!” The door slowly swung closed. Amelia toweled herself off with a dish towel as she hurried over to David.
“Are you okay, David?” she said, eyes wide at the blood starting to come out of his nose.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. Just… startled. How about you?” he looked at her soaked shirt. “Was that hot or cold water?”
“Cold,” she said. “It was just unexpected.” She stared into his eyes for a moment longer than necessary, and he stared back.
“I…I’ll put my stuff in the dishwasher,” David said. “I’m… sorry.”
“Me too…” she said, arms clutched over her soaked shirt. “We probably could have talked that out without Augie getting involved…”
“Yeah,” he said, holding a paper towel under his nose.
Their mutual gazes were growing uncomfortably drawn out. “I… I need to finish a report for work,” she said and hurried out of the kitchen with David staring after her.
A few nights later, the door to David’s room burst open and Amelia flew in and dove for his bed.
“Wha? What the hell?” David said sleepily. “Amelia?”
“Ohmygawd!” Amelia burrowed under the blankets against David. “I saw him, David!”
“Saw who?” he asked, her unexpected closeness waking him up.
“Augie. I mean, I don’t know it was him, but he’s like our only ghost, right? There was a figure at the foot of my bed.”
“What did he do? Did he touch you?” David started to sit up.
“No, no,” Amelia pulled him back down, nuzzling in closer. “He was just there. I mean, how long have we known him but never seen him?!”
David nodded thoughtfully, feeling Amelia shaking with genuine fear. He stroked her hair like he used to do when she got scared of thunder and lightning storms. “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm…” he said, not sure he believed it himself.
Amelia took deep breaths, and in turn David felt her fear subsiding. But he kept stroking her hair, not sure whether the gesture was soothing for her or for him, and unsure what that thought implied…
“David?” Amelia asked in a small voice.
“Yes?”
“I’m really sorry.”
“For what?”
“For… cheating on you.” And then the quickly added, “But I was sure you slept with Trisha…”
“I didn’t,” David said, though his voice carried no malice. “But I’m sorry, too. The fact that you were convinced I slept with her shows that I clearly wasn’t here completely for you, and that’s not fair.”
“Really?” Amelia asked.
“Really.”
“I do love you, David.”
“I love you, Amelia. I never stopped.”
“Do… do you want to… you know… try us again?” Amelia asked.
“I think we did a lot of damage lashing out,” David said.
“I read an article that talked about how to fight without hurting the other person. Maybe we could try that?”
David leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I think it’s worth trying.”
Just then the door opened with a creak. Amelia pressed harder against David, who wrapped his arms around her protectively. From the darkness of the hallway, their Sonos speaker floated into the bedroom. They watched it move across the bedroom, coming to rest on the dresser opposite the bed. The power light illuminated, and the opening drum fill followed by the lilting notes of the Watson Twins’ cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” started to play.
Amelia relaxed into David’s arms. “It’s our song!”
David laughed, though he didn’t release her. “It sure is…”
“Thank you, Augie,” Amelia said aloud to the room.”
The lights in the room went off.
Neither David nor Amelia felt scared or, at that moment under the covers pressed together, minded the darkness.
