Okay, it was mid-November, a drab, gray day — the kind of weather Seattle is famous for. After work I went downtown to go shopping. I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, I just felt like getting lost in a crowd of people.

     It was close enough to the holidays that parking on the street was impossible, so I put my car in a parking garage off Sixth Avenue, across from Frederick & Nelson. As I walked from the covered parking shelter, it started to snow.

     In front of the department store a Salvation Army volunteer was ringing a big brass bell, soliciting contributions. I pulled up my coat collar and scuffled past, gazing up at the snow, to prevent paying.

     The store was crowded, just the way I liked it. The inside of the department store was plastered with Christmas parenfenalia. I rolled up the sleeve of my overcoat, and pushed a button on my wristwatch. Although only mid-November, dazzling displays of Yuletide decorations dominated the decorum.

      Up and down the escalators I glided, gawking at the goods. To tell the truth, I felt a little empty — the way you do when you keep seeing presents that would be perfect for the person you just broke up with.

     I began composing a mental list of people I did need to purchase Christmas presents for. On one floor I found a salesperson so particularly appealing that I purchased six pair of gloves at her counter. "I hate for anyone to have cold fingers," I insisted, earnestly.

     But I started getting tired the way only shopping can make you tired, so I decided to go down to the basement for a cup of coffee. Riding down the escalator, I looked over at the people ascending in the opposite direction — middle class ladies laden with parcels, chattering teenagers, bustling businessmen, mothers holding hands of wide-eyed youngsters — when up the steps rode Butterfly Murphy!

     My heart skipped a beat. Almost twenty years had passed since I saw her last.

     "Murf!" I called. "Is that you?"

     My old college companion looked up, smiling shyly. For a moment her wide eyes acknowledged mine — then a plaster partition slid between us, blocking the view.

     Adrenaline surged through my system. I rushed forward, pushing past people to get another look. But she vanished from view like a mirage.

     For the next hour I searched the store, floor by floor, but could not locate my friend anywhere. Was it merely a case of mistaken identity, I wondered? Have you ever been in a big crowd, and for a split second you think you see someone you know, but when you look again it turns out to be a total stranger? Well, I wanted to think that was all that had happened to me. But it was sort of spooky. I was pretty sure that I had seen her. Hadn't her big blue eyes recognized mine?

     Oh, and this was also weird: I looked all over the place and finally I stopped in front of an appliance store window displaying several long rows of tv sets, with two dozen Tweetie Birds staring out from the glowing screens. Twenty four Tweeties blinked, simultaneously, and said, "I thought I saw a poody cat!"

     Finally, feeling a little depressed, I left the department store. The snow had stopped falling, and had already turned to slush on the sidewalk. I dropped the money I had planned on spending for coffee in the Salvation Army bucket and walked back to my car.

     I sat inside the cold cab a while, moving my memory back to our first meeting. I saw Butterfly Murphy sitting in a tree, barefooted, playing a piccolo. Her amber hair was long and fair.

     To an impressionable college freshman, she was easily the most interesting person I had ever encountered. She was every bit as flamboyant as the nom de plume she had chosen. I called her 'Murf'.

     The first thing you noticed about Murf was how skinny she was! She barely ate at all, in fact. Murf would stretch a salad all evening, taking tiny tentative tastes like a fickle rabbit. A package of M&M's would last her a whole week. She played with her food, mostly — she would toss an apple up and down for about an hour, then spend another hour shining it, before taking a tiny nibble. When you went to her house, there were always half eaten bananas or buttered biscuits on the sofa arms, like she intended to get back to them.

     Murf brought an animated essence to everything she attempted. I loved to watch her conduct ordinary activities, such as riding a bicycle or tying her shoes; she could make as common a task as folding her laundry seem positively enthralling.

     One summer Butterfly Murphy and I hitchhiked halfway across the country together. We stayed in fancy hotels until we ran out of money, then we slept in some haylofts. That trip was one of the best times I ever had.

     Sitting forward, I looked at myself in the rear view mirror. In no way did I resemble the hitch-hiking flower child Butterfly befriended in the Summer Of Love. I was wearing a double-breasted suit. I was sitting in an automobile I actually owned. My hair was cropped as short as a terriers.

     I stared more closely at my own reflection. Did I detect creases around my eyes?

     Slowly, another image materialized behind mine in the mirror. With utter astonishment, I beheld Butterfly Murphy sitting in the back seat of my car.

     When I stopped screaming, I quietly moaned, "Tell me I am dreaming."

     "It's me, Roger!" Butterfly exclaimed. "I have come to haunt you." She regarded me with a fond expression. "Sorry I couldn't make Halloween."

     When I tried hugging my long lost friend, she passed right through me. I fell forward across the seat.

     "That won't work," she explained. "I'm a ghost. Like Casper."

     I stared at her blankly. She was wearing faded blue jeans, a white peasant blouse, and love beads. "This is weird," I said, soberly.

     "No, this is weird," the ghost of Butterfly Murphy replied, making her body so pale that the seat shown through her.

     It was kind of creepy. I was really relieved when she made herself solid again.

     "What should we do now?" I asked, finally.

     "Start the car," she suggested, looking out her window. "There’s a guy out here in a truck with big tires. He’s wearing a baseball cap. I think he wants your parking space!"

     One last test was required to convince me of the apparition's authenticity. When I drove up to the pay booth, I asked the attendant, "Excuse me, but am I alone in this vehicle?"

     The parking lot attendant eyed me fishily.

     "Do you see more than one person in my car?" I prompted him.

     From the way he handed me my change, I knew that if I wasn't alone, I was the only one who knew it.

     As we drove down Sixth Avenue, Butterfly stared at the city scenery with wide eyes, like a child in a toy shop. She seemed so excited by the skyscrapers that it made me laugh out loud.

     "For gosh sakes!" I teased, indelicately. "Where have you been hiding?"

     "Purgatory," replied she.

     We toured around town, looking at various examples of modern architecture and landmarks which, for the most part, I had taken for granted the hundreds of times I had passed them previously. Being with Butterfly was eye opening. Her pleasant personality put me in a really good mood, too.

     Still, I needed some time to decide how best to handle the haunting, and cruised purposefully past a multiplex.

     "I remember how much you love the movies," I replied, parallel parking. "I thought we might take in a matinee."

     "Oh, boy!" Butterfly enthused, bouncing up and down. "The last picture we saw together was Woodstock."

     Of course, we got in on one ticket. When we walked past the concession stand I paused, and whispered awkwardly, "Do you eat food?"

     "Not in public," she replied.

     Murf flew forward and held the door open for me. I'm sure she was trying to be polite, but I felt funny, anyway, the door seeming to open all by itself and all. I didn't want to draw any more attention, so I choose some seats in back.

     "Is this too distant?" I asked.

     "I have perfect eyesight," she stated. "No one wears glasses in the afterlife."

     To tell the truth, I had difficulty paying attention to the movie; I concentrated, instead, on my predicament. It was the third time I’d seen Edward Scissorhands, anyway.

     Under similar circumstances, another person might have felt much more alarmed than I, but somehow Butterfly's appearance made me happy. I had no idea the kinds of problems playing host to a ghost could create.

     At the time, it didn't seem so illogical. It’s true, I hoped I hadn't lost my mind, or anything, but compared to the people who actually haunted my life, I was lucky to be haunted by the likes of Butterfly Murphy.

     "How did you like the movie, Murf?" I asked eagerly, as we walked back to the automobile.

     The ghost said, "Oh, the movie was great - what scared me was the popcorn prices!"

     Driving home, our car joined all of the other suburban commuters caught in a terrible traffic jam on the freeway. The cold weather had made the rush hour traffic more impossible than usual. Cars were backed up for miles.

     "Does this happen often?" Butterfly asked, as we crawled along.

     "I don't mind traffic jams," I confided. "They make me feel part of something big and important." As soon as I said it, I thought, "I need help."

     Butterfly made herself invisible, and I watched the station dial slide up and down as if by magic as she tuned the radio.

     "What is this noise?" she asked, after trying several stations. "I want to hear the Beatles!"

     "The Beatles aren’t as big as they used to be..." I informed her.

     "Really?" she said, shocked.

     She really had been gone a long time.

     "Are you cold?" I asked a little later, adjusting the defroster.

     "Are you kidding?" she chuckled.

     The car chugged forward, at fifteen miles an hour. We watched the scenery. I glanced down at my clothes, self consciously — sitting inside a sedan in a traffic jam wearing a three-piece business suit next to the ghost of the Nineteen-sixties was sort of unsettling.

     When I looked up the traffic in front of me had stopped. My foot flew to the brake, but I knew it was too late. A fender bender was eminent.

     An instant before impact Butterfly's hand touched mine and everything stopped.

     I mean that very literally.

     All action around us suddenly ceased. All of the surrounding automobiles stood absolutely still. The people inside the cars wore frozen expressions. The landscape in every direction, as far as I could see, was in a state of suspended animation. Even the birds in the sky stood still, suspended in flight.

     I had time to back the car up a bit, averting the accident, before Murf removed her hand, breaking the spell. As action resumed, she expelled a deep breath. Apparently she could suspend motion only for the length of time she could hold one breath.

     I couldn't say anything for a while. My eyes were bulging out of my head. The world sounded very loud, now that it was moving again.

     I decided to pay attention to driving the car. The traffic jam showed no sign of subsiding. Snails inch along at a faster pace than we were progressing.

     "I hope we don't run out of gas," I said, a few miles later, indicating the fuel gauge. The needle pointed to 'E'. I always put off service station stops.

     "Don't worry," Butterfly laughed, winking one eye.

     The next thing I knew, we were rolling down my own driveway! I was so startled that I slammed on the brakes sharply, stalling the motor.

     "How did we get here?" I cried.

     "I did it," Murf admitted.

     My hands shook slightly as I ignited the engine, and parked the vehicle in a numbered parking space before my unit.

     As I stepped from the automobile, I noticed the gas gauge again. In addition to chauffeuring me home, Butterfly had topped the tank.

Chapter Two.

     As I started up the steps to my apartment, with the ghost of Butterfly Murphy in tow, I wished I had her ability to stop time because, frankly, I needed a moment to tidy up the place. I wasn't expecting guests. I was also a little concerned where she would sleep. Or if she slept.

     "What are you worried about? It has to be an improvement over your place in college," she commented, as we climbed upstairs.

     Actually, I did all the climbing — the ghost of Butterfly Murphy floated upstairs. She was so curious to see how I lived that she went through the door ahead of me. I had to open the door to enter, myself.

     Murf flew around the apartment, inspecting the furnishings and snooping into closets. She also demonstrated the ability to disappear inside drawers.

     How beautifully Butterfly floated through the air, her chin held out, like she were the masthead of a swift ship; she sort of shrugged her shoulders as she sailed through the air, as if big, invisible wings were attached to her back.

     I was renting a condo in a bedroom community south of Seattle. I had lived here a year and a half, but I still used a stack of unpacked cardboard boxes for a coffee table.

     "Oh, Roger!" Butterfly Murphy exclaimed, stretching her arms out nearly twice their normal length in mock worship. "Divorced bachelorhood truly suites you!"

     We went in the kitchen, and she looked through all the cupboards — without opening any. "X-ray vision!" she said, as if it were nothing.

     I found some of her habits a little unnerving, to say the least, so I busied myself drawing up water for tea. "Do you want a cup, Murf?" I asked, uncertainly.

     "I'll take a glass of milk," she said. She drank about half of it and burst into laughter. "Roger! Hey, watch this!"

     She made it so I could see the milk going through her system! It was gross.

     "You were lucky it was only milk," she assured me, as we toured the bathroom, right after that.

     She was definitely a low maintenance house guest. You didn’t have to tell her where the guest towels were kept because she could look through walls. You didn’t have to worry about seeing her stuff all over the bathroom because the ghost of Butterfly Murphy’s toothbrush was invisible, too. You didn’t even have to do her laundry because Butterfly changed her whole wardrobe by just thinking it.

     I showed her the guest bedroom, but Murf preferred the attic as her quarters, instead. There was an old stereo phonograph up there, my album collection, and a comfy old overstuffed sofa.

     "Mind if I put up a few posters?" she asked.

     "Make yourself at home..." I volunteered. Don’t you think I was accepting the situation gracefully?

     Butterfly blinked, and the attic became her bedroom. She revived the tired, castoff furniture by draping tie-dyed material over everything, put up flush crushed velvet curtains, and covered much of the floor with perfect little Persian rugs. She put up a poster advertising a Jimi Hendrix concert at the Filmore; a group called Country Joe and the Fish were sharing the bill.

     I picked myself off the floor and said, "I wish you’d warn me before you blink, like that."

     "All right, Roger," she relied. "Stand back!"

     Waving her arm, he changed the color of the walls from a grungy green to a soothing salmon. It even had the nice, clean, smell of fresh paint. I had to admit, she had an excellent sense of interior decoration.

     Sitting on one stereo speaker was a photograph of Janis Joplin in an antique gold frame. It was inscribed: "Butterfly, dear, Get it while you can!"

     "You’re on first name basis with Janis Joplin?!?" I asked, incredulously.

     "Sure," she said. "We were roommates for a while. In the Hotel Afterlife."

     I didn’t quite know how to approach the subject of Murf’s demise, but there were a few ‘technical questions’ I was curious about. I danced around the issue all evening, while showing her how to operate all the gadgets in my living room.

     Murf missed a lot while held prisoner in Purgatory. She was charmed by the clarity and simplicity of my CD player, intrigued with the answering machine, but uninterested in my personal computer.

     Her powers could be a exasperating at times. I spent a half hour explaining how to operate the television remote control; it turned out she didn’t even need one. Murf could change the channels just by waving her hand!

     We did put on a Beatles album finally (Rubber Soul) and then we sat down on the living room couch (the ghost of Butterfly Murphy floated around the room, actually) to talk.

     "Well, errr..." I hemmed and hawed. Then I got flustered again and said, "Hey, if you’re so clairvoyant and all, why don’t you just read my thoughts?"

     "I can read your thoughts, Roger," she said, quietly.

     "Oh, yeah? Then what am I thinking?"

     "You’re wondering how long I’m going to stay," Murf replied.

     "I am not!" I insisted, a trifle guiltily.

     "I was kidding," the ghost of Butterfly Murphy laughed. "What you really want are all the gory details of my... spirituality," she suggested, smiling wryly.

     "Well," I deferred, defensively "I suppose I am curious. But purely on a scientific level," I hastened to add.

     "Okay," she began, "I died."

     Suddenly the room got real cold. A clap of thunder, followed by a lightning bolt, rattled the room. I had to admit, she was good.

     She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "I died of a drug overdose. Some would call it suicide, others an accident. Regardless, you don’t get into Heaven if you commit suicide, everyone knows that. But I was given a second chance, due to a technicality. I didn’t mean to die — I was just stupid! Well, They send me to Purgatory to think about it a while, and then They made me a deal: I come back to Earth, do a good deed, and They revue my case. I might get into Heaven after all!"

     I tried to grasp all she was saying. Finally I asked, "Well, what’s your good deed?"

     "I’m going to help you grow up, Roger."

Chapter Three.

     I didn’t sleep well that night. Part of the problem was worrying about Murf, but the other was she had me up half the night, playing records in the attic. The sounds of Van Morrison drifted down from the attic until almost 2 a.m. — then she discovered punk rock!

     The next morning I got up early, bathed, shaved, and drove off to work by myself. I figured either the ghost of Butterfly Murphy was sleeping in, or I had dreamt the whole thing.

     I couldn’t take Murphy to work, anyway. I didn’t really like my job that much, but having the ghost of Butterfly Murphy getting in the way all day wouldn’t help.

     Just as I was thinking how grateful I was to be alone, the ghost of Butterfly Murphy materialized in the passenger seat.

     "Good morning!" she sang, cheerily.

     I was so startled, I swerved into the next lane. Horns honked, and I swerved back barely in time to prevent being bashed.

     "Gaaaaa, Murphy!" I screamed.

     "Boo!" she said, playfully.

     After I caught my breath, I moaned, "What are you doing here?"

     "I’m haunting you, remember?"

     "Well, you’re lucky I didn’t join you in the afterlife, with that little stunt!" I insisted. "Can’t you give me a little warning before you show up, or something?"

     "Like this?" she suggested, and made a loud gong sound. "Or how about this?" she suggested, and mooed like a dairy cow.

     I wished she would take my wishes a bit more seriously.

     "What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked, instead. "I can’t take you to work with me."

     "Why not?" she said. "I won’t get in the way. I’ll make myself invisible. See?"

     I couldn’t see anything, of course. She was invisible. Her voice came from the empty seat where she had been sitting only a moment before.

     "Or, if you’d prefer, I can make myself as small as a church mouse, and hide in your shirt pocket."

     I suddenly felt a small tug in my pen pocket. I looked away from the road long enough to verify that there was indeed a tiny person in my shirt pocket!

     "Would you please stop fooling around," I suggested, as calmly as possible, considering I had a Tom Thumb sized girl in my shirt pocket. "I’m trying to drive!"

     Another loud gong reverberated through the cab, and Murf materialized beside me in the next seat. Her sound effects were already getting on my nerves.

     "Come on, Roger!" she pleaded, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind one ear. "Let me see where you work."

     Now, there were a couple things in my life I didn’t like to talk about, and where I worked was one of those. But I couldn’t exactly hide anything from my clairvoyant friend, could I?

     That’s what I thought at the time, anyway. In hindsight, it was a big mistake.

     I worked for the Allied Mutual Insurance Company in a seedy six-story building in a nondescript neighborhood in north Seattle. My job involved trailing disability claimants around in hopes of photographing them playing tennis or lifting heavy furniture.

     Pretty contemptible, huh?

     It wasn’t easy making a living as a full-time photographer!

     I lugged the canvas bag with all my camera gear from the trunk of the car, across the asphalt parking lot, and into the building. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy skipped at my side, humming, "Fly Me To The Moon."

     "Murf," I warned, as the elevator doors slid shut, "I really wish you would disappear."

     She took me quite literally. When the elevator doors opened on the third floor, it looked like I was alone.

     When I walked into the suite of Allied Mutual offices, Lynn, the receptionist, looked up from her typewriter and smiled.

     "Good morning, Roger!" she exclaimed.

     "Hi, Lynn!" I hailed, trying to appear normal.

     Behind me, the door, which had shut behind me, opened and closed again. Lynn stared behind me, and blinked.

     "Windy out," I suggested, and hurried down the hall to my office.

     I shared an office with Morty Issowiz, a rookie life insurance agent. Mort was short, with long curly sideburns and a small, black skullcap. He was hired for his connections in the "Jewish community"; I know how horrible that sounds, but we are talking about the insurance industry here!

     Anyway, Morty was poring over a copy of "Contacts Influential" with bright, beady eyes. Still staring down, he said, "Hey, who was that woman I saw you walking across the parking lot with?"

     I started stowing my camera gear while I thought up an answer. Murf, meanwhile, picked up a framed picture from my desk and said, "Who’s this, Roger?!?"

     It was a photograph of a woman with eyes black as coal and long, dark curls. My ex-girlfriend, Anna. Another aspect of my life I didn’t care to discuss.

     "None of your business!" I snapped, snatching the picture frame from the air.

     "I know aaaaallllllllllll about it," Murf taunted.

     Mort looked up at me, standing in the middle of the room, grappling with Anna’s picture, and shook his head sadly. "Oy, Roger! When are you going to get over that girl?"

     The Assistant Sales Manager seemed squeezed. He seemed squeezed into his three-piece gray suit, he seemed squeezed into his leather executive highback seat, he seemed squeezed behind his desk. The two of us were squeezed in his office.

     His huge hands turned over the black and white glossy photographs I had taken the day before. I held my breath, hoping that his greasy fingers, or the perspiration beading his brow, wouldn’t tarnish the emulsion.

     Finally, the Assistant Sales Manager leaned back in his seat, folded his fat fingers, and frowned. He slid the folder of photographs back in front of me and I wondered if he could conceivably look more unattractive.

     "Roger, we are paying you to take pictures."

     "Carl, these are pictures."

     "You call these pictures?" he ranted.

     "Well, sure I call them pictures," I said. "I wouldn’t call them zebras," I added.

     His tiny eyes grew smaller in the folds of his face.

     The telephoto photographs I had taken showed an invalid sleeping in a wheelchair, where she had remained the whole day I was staking out her driveway. I had failed to catch her lifting barbells or pushing a plow or driving in the Indianapolis 500 or any such strenuous activity which would release the insurance company from their obligation to pay disability payments.

     "Why don’t you bring me some pictures of kittens while you’re at it? Or a fluffy bunny rabbit? How about an eight by ten of a mother hen and her chickies?!?"

     His hollering carried into the hallway. It was sort of embarrassing.

     "I’m doing my job," I insisted.

     Carl stood up and crashed a fist the size of a ham down on the desk. His chair rolled slowly back by the window.

     I said, "Sit down, Carl. I’ll do better. I promise."

     After that, I ducked in the bathroom. I had to go to the toilet, anyway. Have you ever noticed that people in books never seem to go to the bathroom?

     I was washing my face when the ghost of Butterfly Murphy materialized beside me. I splashed a handful of cold water on my face and dried myself with some paper towels, before speaking to her.

     "I thought you were here to help me!" I demanded.

     "I am helping you," she said, quietly.

     "By pulling peoples seats out from under them?" I asked.

     Murf didn’t say anything. I wasn’t positive she had propelled Carl’s seat back. I wasn’t certain she even existed, for that matter. She was standing right next to me, but mine was the only reflection in the mirror.

     I had several assignments, but Carl had insisted I attend the nine-thirty staff meeting. The conference room had walnut paneling, and a long, polished table, around which were assembled the underwriters of Allied Mutual.

     At either end of the table sat Carl and Don. Don was the Senior Sales Manager. He had a fatherly image. Between the Senior Sales Manager and the Assistant Sales Manager, the other agents sat as obediently as a troop of Boy Scouts. I had never noticed before, but everyone had receding hairlines (although Morty’s, of course, was covered with a black skullcap, and Oscar wore a toupee), as if hair retention loss were a prerequisite for selling life insurance.

     Don stood up and smiled around the room. He always talked with an unlit cigar in his hand.

     "Guys," he said, warmly, "I’m proud of you! We have almost met our quarterly quota." His beaming smile was as wide as a crocodiles.

     "Bradley here," he continued, pointing his cigar at a slender, freckled man in his twenties wearing a pale blue suit and white shoes, "just signed a half-million whole life policy out on the golf course!"

     He turned his cigar to a somber, hawk-featured agent in a dark, pinstriped suit. "John just put together a group Keogh plan for a dental cooperative..."

     Don went around the table, tipping his Tiparillo in turn to the agents targeting the family sector, the elderly, the Afro-American, and other assorted constituencies.

     I lost interest around then, and started thinking about my ex-girlfriend again. I replayed a trip we took to British Columbia. We stayed in our hotel room almost the whole time. I couldn’t figure out how we went from being so happy and in love to practically hating each other. When I finally came to, Don was handing out beneficiary checks.

     Carl took the floor. "Now, men," he practically purred, pulling his vest tightly over his tummy, "if you merely mail the beneficiary payments to the bereaved, instead of paying a personal visit, you are not doing your full job. Can anyone tell me why?"

     A couple hands were raised hesitantly.

     "Why is that, Anders?" Carl asked a pale skinned underwriter who looked like he would rather have a cigarette than answer the question. He hadn’t even had his hand up.

     "Well, I suppose it’s so you can say something comforting to the survivor," answered Anders, without much conviction.

     Everyone around the table nodded their heads in solemn agreement. Carl and Don nodded theirs, too. I even nodded mine a little.

     Carl rubbed his huge hands together. "Of course, you also have an excellent opportunity to sell some more life insurance. When you present the beneficiary check in person, it’s your duty, as a friend of the family, to suggest that the surviving members increase their coverage."

     Everyone looked at him like they would rather stick their hands up a horses behind.

     "Carl’s right, guys!" Don was quick to add. "Don’t let a golden opportunity like this pass you by. You’ll be doing the grieving family a favor! After all, what will become of the children if the widow kicks off next? Why, they won’t have enough insurance to pay the burial costs! And, with that beneficiary payment hot in their hands, they have the means of making the first yearly premium on the spot!"

     After a second of stunned silence, something propelled me from my seat. It was the ghost of Butterfly Murphy, of course. She had her hands under my arms, so I literally lurched to my feet. Everyone stared at me, suspiciously.

     "Doesn’t that seem a little, I don’t know... ghoulish?" I suggested.

     Don’s smile grew quite cold. Carl looked as peevish as a truant officer. I wished I hadn’t said anything, and all of a sudden I noticed the strangest thing. The conference room, the whole building, in fact, had grown absolutely silent. Don’s cold smile and Carl’s peevish expression were frozen on their faces. Everyone else in the room were as still as statues.

     "Murf?" I said.

     "You rang!" she replied, cheerily, appearing out of nowhere.

     "Murf, what are you doing?!?" I exclaimed, hysterically.

     "I’m keeping you from making a mistake, Roger," the ghost of Butterfly Murphy calmly explained. "You have got to think before you speak. It’s a sign of maturity," she added.

     "You started it!" I protested, weakly. I leaned across the table to examine Carl more closely. I had never seen anyone is such a perfect state of suspended animation.

     "Roger, I am trying to show you something. You can’t just blurt out your objections like you’re attending a protest rally. You need to learn to choose your words more carefully."

     "Look, you’re the one who goosed me!" I objected.

     "Must you bicker? I could always set things back in motion again. But I’ll tell you where this was heading; it would have ended up with Carl bawling you out in front of everybody. You didn’t give him much choice!"

     I realized she was right. There were times when the choices I made did reflect poor judgment. I wouldn’t have been stuck with that rotten job in the first place if it weren’t for my own inimitable charms.

     "He is a jerk, though," I grumbled, looking at the frozen Carl. He was so bald, he didn’t even have any eyebrows.

     "He is that," Murf conceded. "But if you want to air your personal differences, you need to find some place a little more private."

     The next thing I knew, the staff meeting was once again in progress. Don was concluding the pep talk, for a second time. "And, with that beneficiary payment hot in their hands, they have the means of making the first yearly premium on the spot!"

     There was, as before, a second of stunned silence — only this time everyone was gaping at the bushy black eyebrows someone had scribbled on Carl’s forehead with a ball point pen!

     I had the opportunity to air my personal differences in private, just like Murphy suggested, an hour later. The Famous Final Scene actually occurred in an elevator.

     As usual, I was trying to carry too much. I wobbled up to the elevator, my bulging camera bag weighing down one shoulder, my arms hugging my tripod, battery pack, and a slippery stack of file folders. I had to balance everything on one lifted knee so I could free a finger to summon the lift.

     I pushed the call button just as the steel doors were sliding shut. The elevator doors opened hesitantly to admit me. Carl was standing impatiently inside. His forehead was inflamed pink from scrubbing the ink off. I would have waited for the next car, but Murphy pushed me in from behind. To the Assistant Sales manager, it looked like I stumbled inside.

     We rode downstairs, an uneasy silence enveloping the elevator. I could feel Carl’s glare boring a hole in the back of my head.

     "Here, Rogie!" Murf chirped. "Let me help you with that!"

     She tried to take my tripod. I snatched it back. Carl, evidently, did not see or hear her. All he saw was me juggling my heavy load — and spilling everything all over the floor of the elevator.

     "Davenport," he growled.

     "Watch it!" I shouted. Murphy was pulling the Emergency Stop button out. I leaped to stop her. Carl’s jaw dropped a good two inches, as the elevator lurched to a stop between the third and second floors.

     My file folders slid across the floor. Carl and I both slipped on them while trying to get our footing and fell down on top of each other.

     "Davenport!!!" he bellowed.

     We both struggled to our feet.

     "Why did you do that?" Carl cried crossly, turning to me.

     "Why did I do that?" I echoed, turning to the ghost of Butterfly Murphy.

     Murf put her arm around my shoulder and put her mouth close to my ear. "Stand tall, Roger! Now that there’s no one around, you two can have that little man-to-man talk I was talking about."

     I put my shoulders back and turned to Carl. "Well, Carl, now that we’re alone, there are a couple things..."

     "You start this elevator right now!" Carl insisted. "I’ll have you canned for this!"

     "Not until I’ve had my say," I replied, trying to keep my voice down. "I don’t appreciate your bullying me around, especially in front of our boss, or the guys I work with. You’re always pitting people against each other, and for what? To sell some insurance? I don’t think that’s very nice, and I don’t think you are very nice. If people have a real need for insurance, they’ll buy it anyway, without your manipulating them. So, what do you think of that? What have you got to say for yourself when it’s just you and me? Eh?"

     Carl’s face turned crimson. "Davenport, you’re fired!" he hollered. "Now, get this thing moving!"

     "Gee," I said, reaching over to push the Emergency Stop button, "I was expecting something along the lines of an apology."

     Nothing happened. The elevator remained moored between floors.

     I pushed the button again. And again. Still nothing. Carl’s breath was burning the back of my neck.

     "Murf!" I whispered under my breath. "Can you fix it?"

     "Sorry, Roger. Elevator repair is a little out of my realm," she said. "But let me be the first to congratulate you — on your new career!!!"

     I drove glumly down Lake City Way, past the burger franchises and used car lots, past a topless dance club right next door to a day care center. Murf sat in the passenger seat, her bare feet propped on the dashboard.

     "I’m confused," I confessed. "One minute you tell me to use more restraint, then the next thing I know you’re promoting a wresting match in an elevator. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Geez! We were stuck in there with Carl for two hours!"

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy pulled a strand of her hair to within an inch of her eyes, and examined its blondness carefully. "That’ll teach him to take the stairs more often!" she laughed. "Besides, you need a more stimulating job."

     "Oh, great," I said, morosely. "I need a job — period."

     Driving soothed the sting some. We drove almost all the way home when suddenly I remembered.

     "Hey, Murf! It’s Election Day! I almost forgot to vote!"

     It sort of cheered me up. We stopped at a Presbyterian Church that is the polling place in my neighborhood. I felt lucky to be exercising my democratic duty. I even felt lucky to have the ghost of Butterfly Murphy helping me. I’d worry about finding a new job another day.

     People waiting outside our voting booth probably wondered what was going on inside. I kept having to wrestle the voting pen away from her.

     "No! Don’t do THAT!!!" I cried.

     Murf gave my endorsement for President of the United States to Ross Perot!

Chapter Four.

     I was standing in my kitchen, flipping through my address book. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was upstairs, playing an obnoxious Frank Zappa record on the stereo. I needed to talk to someone.

     The song she was playing was called, "You Didn’t Try To Call Me." It was a really dumb doo-wop song:

      You didn’t try to call me

      Why didn’t you try?

      I’m so lonely!

No matter who I take home I keep calling your name

     My finger pointed to one name in the address book after another. But I rejected every entry. My address book contained the names of lots of women I had dated, but I didn’t really know any of them well enough to confess to being haunted by the ghost of a flower child from the 60’s.

     Gad, I couldn’t believe how irritating the song emanating from the attic was! A really whiny falsetto crooned:

      Tell me, tell me who’s loving you now

      Cause it worries my mind and I can’t sleep at all

I stayed home on Friday just to wait for your call

      And you didn’t try, you didn’t try, you didn’t try

      You didn’t try to call me

     I turned to the first page of my address book. Anna’s address had changed by now, of course. I still found it hard to curb the compulsion to call her every time anything interesting happened.

     I called my old friend, Jerry, instead. He was a former flower child himself. Even if he didn’t believe me, at least he wouldn’t turn me in!

     "Hi, Jerry!" I greeted him. "What do you know?"

     Jerry didn’t say anything right away. One of the best things about my friend Jerry is he always thinks out his sentences very carefully before he speaks them.

     "The Egyptians invented scarecrows," he said dryly, finally.

     "Why?" asked I.

     "What?" Jerry said. Frank Zappa was launching into a loud guitar solo. "Do you have someone there?"

     "Yeh, sort of," I said. "In fact, it’s getting a little crowded around here. Are you doing anything right now?"

     He met me a half hour later at Dick’s Drive-In. We liked it there because of all the scenery on Broadway.

     Jerry ordered three hamburgers. I only ordered one. "I’m ten years older than you," he explained.

     My hamburger was a cheeseburger. "I asked for a hamburger, didn’t I? This is a cheeseburger."

     "You could scrape the cheese off of it," Jerry mumbled, his mouth full of food.

     "You peasant! No way!"

     Jerry held his hand out. "I’ll take it!"

     I tossed it to him. Then I reached for one of his French fries.

     "Hey!" he shouted. "Keep your hands off my food!"

     We walked over to the gravel jogging track that circles the water supply, between Howell and Pine. A big fountain bubbled in the background. Our feet crunched on the gravel as we walked. We crunched a good long ways before Jerry said, "Well, work or woman?"

     I laughed at that. It was one of those embarrassing little laughs that starts out a laugh and ends up a snort.

     At Starbucks, over a couple cups of coffee, I told him how I lost my job.

     "Wow!" Jerry said.

     "I didn’t expect you to be impressed."

     "Whatever possessed you to stop the elevator in the first place?" he asked.

     I hadn’t mentioned anything about the ghost of Butterfly Murphy.

     "Anyway, I guess I need a new job now," I finally said.

     "Hmm," Jerry said.

     Parking was so impossible on Broadway that I had parked several blocks away. Jerry drove me back to my car. Through the windshield you could see the Space Needle.

     "So, are you seeing someone, finally?" Jerry asked.

     "You could say that," I replied.

     We turned a corner by a car wash that had a big revolving neon elephant in front. It was silhouetted by a beautiful sunset.

     I turned in the car seat to face my friend. The majestic white arches of the Science Center were behind him.

     "Let me ask you something, Jerry. Suppose you saw things, you know, things most people don’t see. Like sunsets behind car washes, for instance. In fact, you saw things so differently from other people that you made it your job.

     "Then, suppose you saw something, or someone, that no one else could see, only you could. Now, are you really seeing it? Or are you just so good at looking you just think you see it?"

     Jerry pulled beside my car. "Why don’t you apply at the Seattle P.I.?" he said.

     "Thanks for the talk, Jerry," I said, as I climbed out of his car.

     I trudged up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, looking at the mail. "Bill, bill, bill," I mumbled.

     The balloons on the balcony should have tipped me off. When I walked through the door into my apartment, my shoes were replaced with quite comfortable slippers. I was wearing a crushed velvet smoking jacket. Understand something: I did not change my clothes, they were changed on me, in the wink of an eye.

     Not only that, but I had company. Seated around an elegantly laid table were a half dozen dinner guests, wearing funny hats. Although I had never met any of them before, they seemed kind of familiar.

     Before I could blink, Murf materialized at my side.

     "Surprise!" she exclaimed.

     "Ahhhhhh!" I exclaimed.

     "Relax, Roger," she whispered, motioning toward the guests, who had all turned in their seats to gaze curiously at us.

     "Who ARE these people?!?" I demanded. "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE, MURPHY?!?"

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was wearing a long, white evening gown and long, white gloves. Her hair was braided and arranged in an unfathomable design.

     "Isn’t that a tiger?" I insisted, pointing past her.

     "Let’s talk in the kitchen," she suggested, pulling me aside, out of earshot, supposedly, of the patiently waiting diners. One woman wore a crown on her head. Beside her sat a cowboy, lazily smoking a Marlborough.

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy whisked me into the kitchen. We flew in there. Literally!

     "Murf!" I exploded. "I don’t like surprise parties!"

     "Would you keep your voice down," she urged me. "They can hear you."

     "Of course they can hear me!" I hollered, waving my arm. The only thing separating the kitchen from the dining room in my small apartment was an open bar.

     "Mellow out," the ghost warned me. "I was trying to do something nice for you. I thought you could use some good company. A dinner party will perk you right up!"

     I felt too embarrassed of losing my temper to drop it that easily. "Listen, Murf. I’m tired! I’ve had a long, hard day. I lost my job. I voted for Ross Perot..."

     "SO DID WE!!!" the dinner party guests shouted, in unison.

     I started to laugh. "I’m sorry I spoiled the party, Murf!" I apologized, and gave her a hug. Of course, she sank right through me.

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy leaned against the drainboard. I wondered how come she could lean against a counter, yet my own embrace passed through her like liquid.

     "That’s okay, Rog. You’re not the only one with a problem, you know. Being a ghost is not always the barrel of laughs everyone thinks it is. I mean, granted, I can read minds, walk through doors, stop time, and so on. But I can’t get a job, or join the Navy! It is a little boring, sometimes. I do want into Heaven. Purgatory is a drag!

     "I’m supposed to do something nice for you. That’s all I’ve got to go on. So if some of my attempts seem a little desperate..."

     "Come on, then," I interrupted. I hated to see a ghost grovel. "Let’s eat!"

     It truly was an enjoyable meal. The guests were ghosts, of course, but there was a theme. Seated around the table were the Maytag Repairman, Mrs. Olsen, the Marlborough Man, and believe it or not, Tony the Tiger! They were the ghosts of old television commercials! I sat between the lady who got a crown on her head every time she ate Imperial Margarine, and the ghost of a past commercial I must have missed.

     "Who are you?" I inquired.

     "I’m the Don’t-Squeeze-The-Charmin Man," he said, smugly.

     "Have some of these hot cross buns!" Tony the Tiger roared. "They’re GREAT!"

Chapter Five.

     The next morning, I retrieved the morning newspaper from the steps and carried it to the couch. I am not a lounge-around-the-house-in-a-bathrobe kind of guy. I was dressed and shaved and savoring the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was up, also. At least, the sound of her stereo drifted downstairs.

     When you are out of a job, you approach the newspaper differently. The headlines don’t seem as important as when you are a working member of society. The funnies aren’t as funny, either. The only part of the paper that does matter are the classifieds.

     I dumped all but the classified ads section on the floor, and scoured the want ads. The only job listing for a photographer was at Sear’s portrait studio in a mall in south Tacoma, which not only guaranteed to be boring, but constituted an incredibly crummy commute, as well. I decided to trade in my car, instead.

     Just then a phonograph album floated across the room and stopped a foot from my face. The album cover showed a bare black and white portrait of Patti Smith, looking as ragged as a concentration camp victim. Some considered her the Priestess of Punk, because she defined a style in the Seventies that was still being adopted by bands in the Nineteen Nineties.

     "Roger, can I talk to you about something?" her voice said. She remained invisible. The Horses album hovered in front of my face.

     "Murf," I said quietly, "I can’t see you."

     "Oh, sorry," Murf apologized, materializing. "What do you think of Patti Smith, Roger?" she asked. "This album is far out!"

     "So I heard," I moaned; she had "discovered" the album at four a.m. "Tell me," I continued, "if you are so all-seeing, why haven’t you heard of Patti Smith? She made that album fifteen years ago."

     "Well, Rog, in the Afterlife the only rock and roll records allowed are by Buddy Holly, the Beatles, or Fleetwood Mac. Which reminds me, have you got any Elvis Presley records?"

     "Not now, Murf," I said, shaking my head. In my mind, I was wrestling with the fate of my BMW. "I have to trade in my car."

     The ghost brightened. "Great!" she exclaimed. "A Beemer doesn’t fit you, anyway."

     "Let’s go, then," I said. I was getting used to being haunted quite readily.

     "You go ahead, Roger," the ghost of Butterfly Murphy said, turning invisible. The album cover floated back up the stairs. "I’ll catch up with you. I want to play this record a couple more times."

     Soon I was driving down Aurora Avenue. Every conceivable fast food franchise was represented along the roadside. Drizzle dotted the windshield.

     Suddenly, I spotted Anna’s automobile. Well, I thought I did, anyway. It turned out to be someone else. I still started every time I saw a white ‘89 Miata convertible with a black top, such as Anna had driven. Every time it turned out not to be hers, I felt hurt.

     Murf’s materializing at that moment startled me very badly. I would have been less embarrassed to be observed plucking my nose hairs. "Yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I screamed.

     "Aha!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Aha!" she repeated, emphatically. "Indulging in the old Tan Car Syndrome, are we?"

     It upset me so much I pulled the car to the curb and parked it.

     The Tan Car Syndrome was the name we invented in college for a condition we found ourselves suffering a time or two. It’s when you break up with somebody, and every time you see their same model of automobile for a while afterwards, you think it is carrying the same person who broke your heart back into your life again. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the condition lasts less than a year.

     Back in the car, I felt very irritated with the ghost of Butterfly Murphy. I wanted her to take a flying leap at a donut, very much.

     She leaned across the seat and put her face right next to mine, so I was staring straight in the face of a spirit. It was a very uncomfortable sensation, let me assure you.

     Murf had an unsettling way of settling arguments. She would just disappear. So I started the car and drove further down Aurora Avenue.

     Before us were half a dozen used car lots. We chose Friendly Fred’s Foreign Auto, because it had most flapping flags and the brightest neon sign.

     No sooner had I pulled into the parking lot, than a man ran up to welcome me. The used car salesman was wearing plaid pants, and an orange blazer.

     "Hello, Pilgrim," he said, extending his hand. "My name’s Abe." He seemed sincere.

     Murf was still invisible. That left it up to me to deal with the used car salesman.

     First he showed me a Cadilac.

     "I don’t think so," I said. "Too big."

     Next Abe showed me an MG.

     "Nope. Too small."

     Then he showed me a tall four-wheel-drive truck. It had the wheels raised so high you had to pull yourself up a couple yards to the cab.

     "These are very popular ," Abe insisted.

     "Uhn uh..." I said. "A truck like this would sure be handy if you had a glacier running through your neighborhood, though."

     Abe grinned tightly. "Say, you’re a bit of a kidder, aren’t you?," he asked, condescendingly. "Isn’t that a hoot, though!"

     Just then, a shiny red Volkswagen bug drove up to where we were standing. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was driving it. Of course, only I could see that.

     Murf swung open the passenger door. "Get in, Roger!" she called.

     Abe, the used car salesman, did not understand exactly what was happening. As quick as I could, I slammed the car door shut.

     "I’ll take it!" I said, stunning him a little, I hoped.

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy really helped with negotiating the trade in. Abe and I were standing on the asphalt used car lot under the Friendly Fred’s marquee, stalled on the price, when Murf walked up to the Volkswagen.

     She let the air out of one tire, made both headlights fall off, and short circuited the electrical system so that the brake lights started blinking, the radio began to play, and the horn went beep, beep, beep.

     I offered eleven hundred dollars, which Abe accepted without argument. In fact, he had stopped talking entirely.

     "Are you all right, Abe?" I asked. "You are as pale as a ghost."

     We still had the trade in to work out. Murf moseyed up to Abe, and whispered in his ear.

     "What will you take for this beauty?" Abe asked, his face twitching.

     "Oh, eight or nine thousand," I suggested, which is what the Beemer was honestly worth. Murf whispered in the used car salesman’s ear again. A worried expression played across Abe’s face. Sweat beaded his pale brow.

     "I don’t see any problem with that," he stammered.

     It didn’t take long to sign the papers. Soon we were driving home in a nice shiny 1972 Super Beetle. It’s engine made a pleasant putt-putt sound. The cab was so compact, it seemed like our faces filled the windshield.

     "Are you sure we didn’t break a law or something?" I asked. An abandoned gas station that had a concrete roof shaped like a Stetson hat passed by my window.

     "Oh, I’m sure," she said. "That’s the only way to get a fair deal from those guys."

     We drove another block in silence.

     "Can I drive?" she asked.

     "No way!"

Chapter Six.

     "Hey, Murf!" I hollered. I was standing in the foyer, facing the telephone table.

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy materialized in a shower of sparkling light. "Ta-da!" she chorused, doing a few soft shoe steps.

     "Well, I’m glad I got you in a good mood," I said in a haughty tone. "Murf, my answering machine has zero messages. I haven’t had a single message in a week."

     Murf put her fingertips to her temples, and squeezed her eyes shut. "Wait!" she insisted, "I divine a thought. You are anxious, perhaps, whether a certain ex-sweetheart left an urgent plea via telephone?"

     She was dead right, of course. I did still check the answering machine several times a day in case Anna called. I had to admit, Murf was a mean mind reader. But I wasn’t going to admit it to her.

     "I don’t appreciate your playing with my answering machine," I insisted, stubbornly.

     "But, Roger, I adore the answering machine," pooh-poohed Murf.

     "I would rather answer my own messages, if you don’t mind. I didn’t hire you to be my secretary. Doesn’t this constitute an invasion of privacy, or something?"

     "Invasion of privacy?" the ghost repeated. "Are you serious? Roger, you are being haunted. You have no privacy!"

     "Well, when you put it like that..." I conceded. You could argue with Murphy until you were blue in the face, and not get anywhere. If she started losing an argument, she’d fade out on you. Maybe I was learning something, after all.

     "Have there been any messages?" I asked, as politely as possible.

     "Yes, as a matter of fact. Your mother called. Twice. She wants to know if you are coming home for Thanksgiving. Are we? You have an overdue library book, naughty boy! And, you didn’t forget, did you? You have a date tonight. Jennifer."

     "Oh, no." I had forgotten.

     "Her voice sounds nice," Murf said.

     "Right," I replied.

     "You need to get out more, Roger."

     "Sure," I said.

     "Roger, your reticence is really exasperating!" exclaimed the ghost.

     "I’ve got to dress," I said, reminding myself to look up reticence in the dictionary when I got to my bedroom.

     I sighed as I pulled on my socks. With a few simple sentences I could have explained a lot of things. Although I had passed the stage where I didn’t want to go out in case, in my absence, Anna called, I was finding it hard to accept the cold realization that Anna wouldn’t call tonight, or any night. The prospect of dating depressed me, because I didn’t believe I could ever have as much fun as I had in Anna’s company. To tell the truth, I didn’t want anyone to get close enough to my heart to hurt me ever, ever again.

     A dent appeared on the edge of the bed next to where I was sitting. I smelled the scent of Murphy’s hair. A small, gift-wrapped package floated into my hands.

     As I unwrapped the present, Murf’s voice came out of nowhere. She said, "Don’t worry, Roger. Everything will be all right. If you need me tonight, you can call me with this."

     I stared at the object in my fingers. I wasn’t sure what she meant. In my hand I held a plastic Pez candy dispenser. If I wasn’t mistaken, it had the head of our current First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

     I love Broadway after dark. Sure, it has gotten sort of seedy, but Capital Hill’s main drag is still pretty glitzy. It was funny — the street people were either faded flower people (you couldn’t call them children any more), or young people dressed in flower child castoffs, which was for some reason the latest fashion trend in Seattle. I wished Murf were there, which was worrisome, because I was walking down the sidewalk with a real live person.

     I was walking with Jennifer, who was wearing a variation of the street peoples’ wardrobe, which had come from Nordy’s Rack.

     We had met a few weeks previously at a revival of Lawrence of Arabia. She smiled at me as I passed her seat, and I knew somehow, as the lights dimmed and the life of D.H. Lawrence rolled by, that I would see her again after the show.

     Since then, we had been to two more movies. This time she’d insisted we see Ghost.

     "Why do they always have to have the bad guy impaled at the end of so many movies lately?" she commented.

     We had walked past three storefronts in a row which all had NOW SERVING EXPRESSO signs in their windows.

     "That was an interesting movie, all right. I kept wondering why he didn’t leave his poor grieving widow alone!"

     "Ha! Ha!" she said. I had noticed that Jennifer said "Ha! Ha!" to practically everything I said. "It was so romantic!" She also spoke as if there were at least one underlined word in every sentence.

     "Oh!" she bubbled, "I adore Patrick Swa-zee! I wouldn’t know how to say no if he asked me to bed!"

     I laughed. Then she laughed. I wasn’t sure if she was hinting at something, or not.

     "I think were getting pretty familiar, pretty fast, for our third date!" I joked. I even underlined some words in my sentence for her.

     "Ha! Ha!" she said again. I wasn’t sure if she got it or not. I looked down at the sidewalk; there were brass footsteps imbedded in the cement that taught the tango.

     "Do you want to go someplace really great for coffee?" Jenny suggested.

     The next thing I knew, she was digging in her purse for the keys to her apartment building.

     "Say," I said over her shoulder. "Is this where you meant the great coffee was? Well, you sure have nice marble steps. This building is a brownstone, isn’t it?"

     I kept the commentary up as we went up the stairs to her apartment. "Boy, they don’t build them like this any more." That kind of thing. I felt like I’d been out of the dating scene a little too long.

     Jennifer’s apartment was impeccably kept. She was an even neater housekeeper than Murf, who merely blinked her messes away.

     "Would you like a drink?" she asked. "Or soda? Tea?" She thought about the contents of her cupboards a second. "Coffee?"

     "I like coffee a lot," I volunteered.

     "Really?" she marveled. "I like coffee, too!

     "Well, I don’t like to drink it," she added, hastily, "but I adore the aroma!"

     Then she gave me another one of those long looks she had been giving me all evening, those kind of inviting looks people give you, like you are in on a little secret with them.

     I had seen that look enough times with other women to know I could have crossed the room and kissed her and had somebody to sleep with that night. I had a notion I could have spent the night there on a regular basis, if I wanted to. Which is what stopped me. I didn’t like her that much. Maybe I liked her too much. Anyway, I wasn’t really ready for romance, just then.

     At that moment, I was tempted to use Murf’s signaling device. Even a medical excuse would have probably been better than the truth.

     "Nice couch!" I said, nervously, flopping myself down. I sunk deep in the soft cushions. "Sit down beside me, Jennifer. There’s something I want to talk to you about."

     Jenny sat down and leaned toward me. Her eyes looked deep in my soul. She let her perfume work on me a moment, then she took my hand and said, "Roger, you can tell me anything."

     Playing for time, I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out the Pez dispenser Murf had given me as a signaling device.

     "What is that?" she sang, totally charmed.

     "It’s a Pez dispenser," I answered nervously.

     "Jeepers," she said. "I didn’t know they had one with Hillary Clinton yet."

     I put the Pez dispenser back in my pocket. It freed my hands, at least. So I could wring them. I didn’t want to tell her what I had to tell her.

     "Anyway, there is something I should probably (pause) tell you before we go any (slightly longer pause) further."

     "Roger," she said sensibly, "why don’t you let me put some water on?"

     I had to give her credit. She was being very nice to me. I was acting like an oaf. I could have taken some comfort at Jenny’s place, but there was something too comfy about the situation. Maybe it was the way, I noticed as I stood and crossed the living room to the kitchen, she had her teddy bears arranged on the other end of the couch, like they were her best friends, or something.

     "You know, Jenny," I said, leaning my head through the kitchen portal, "I’m a haunted man."

     Jennifer was lifting the steaming tea kettle off the front burner of the stove. Two matching mugs prepared to share a tea bag. "You’re a haunted man?" she repeated.

     "This is going to sound a little silly," I began, and stopped.

     Jennifer smiled encouragingly. It is never nice to tell another person that you like them a little less than they like you.

     "Let me begin again. You see, I have a ghost in my house. I am being haunted by the ghost of a girl I knew twenty years ago. I am not completely unhappy with the arrangement..."

     Jenny was dipping a dripping tea bag up and down in the space between the two teacups. She was suddenly wearing a wary expression I had not seen on her before.

     "A ghost?" Jennifer repeated. "You are haunted by a ghost?"

     "To put it in kinder terms, a fallen angel," I amended.

     "Roger," she finally said, "this is a little weird."

     She flung open the front door and motioned me unceremoniously outside. This was, of course, after calling me a lamo, a sicko, and a latent homo.

     "No, wait!" I jabbered. "I’m not a serial killer! I’m serious! You want proof? Boy, I’ve got proof, all right," I explained, fumbling frantically in my pants pocket. "This is no ordinary Pez machine!" I proclaimed, brandishing the plastic candy dispenser like a sword.

     Jennifer slammed the door shut in my face. I realized what I was saying probably did sound a little weird.

     A lot later, I was walking home alone through Pioneer Square, a scenic section of town with big brick buildings about a hundred years old. There was dew covering the cobblestones in a courtyard I crossed, which in the darkness made it look like a field of marshmallows.

     Just then I remembered the Pez dispenser and pulled it out of my pocket. I stopped under an ornate iron street lamp and tilted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s head back to take a piece of candy. It tasted a little like orange, a little like dishwater.

     The fog in front of me seemed to rearrange itself, and Murf materialized. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy flew toward me in the mist, the bottom of her body trailing behind like a flag blowing in the breeze, before becoming feet, as she landed.

     "Hi, Roger!" she said, simply, and walked with me the rest of the way home.

Chapter Seven.

     "It’s good to get out of the city, isn’t it?" I asked, as we bombarded down the highway in our VW Beetle.

     Murf had been right. The VW was a better car than the BMW. Mine had a brand new engine in it, a loud stereo, and a shiny coat of paint. It used less fuel, was easier to park, and seemed peppier than the Beemer.

     Murf was playing one of Neil Young’s CD’s, so we had to holler everything above the scream of electric guitar sounds. I always liked it when she waxed philosophical about her favorite rock stars. She rhapsodized over Neil Young almost the whole drive home. She called him a national treasure, the greatest American since Walt Whitman. At my age, I didn’t know that many Neil Young enthusiasts.

     When Murf was alive she attended rock and roll concerts constantly. She had seen everybody, from the Beatles on down to Bowie. Once she even rode on Jethro Tull’s tour bus!

     I exited the freeway with a feeling of exuberance. It felt good to be going back to my hometown. I always enjoyed the windy highway through the thick evergreen forests that led to the coast. Although the ghost of Butterfly Murphy volunteered to blink us there, I opted for the four hour drive, instead. I enjoyed the scenery.

     I hadn’t been home in a while. Although it was still a small town, Long Beach was a lot different from the small seaside resort I’d grown up in. Everyone I went to school with were a lot older, had kids of their own, or moved away to towns with brighter lights. My own parents were in their seventies. The whole world had changed, I reflected.

     "You know, Murf," I shouted, above the clang of "Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown" and the four cylinder engine, "when I was a kid, I promised myself I would never get so old, that I would talk about when I was kid."

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy floated six inches above her bucket seat, her legs locked in the lotus position. "Far out!" she said, her eyes sparkling in the soft sunlight.

     The road was lined with dense groves of alder trees, which sun shone through in a way that reminded me of the strobe lights they used at psychedelic concerts in the Sixties. It went well with the jangling music that was playing. As the miles rolled past, bringing me back to my hometown, memories of growing up flashed through my mind. By the time I pulled into my parents driveway, I was humming "Home Sweet Home", happily.

     My parents lived in the same rambling weathered beach house I grew up in. Mom and Dad ran right out the front door onto the lawn to greet me. Their dog, Dimples, a Dalmatian, ran around the driveway, barking. I could see my older sister, Olive, waving her hand out the window on the second floor.

     I ran up the stone steps that lead from the driveway to the yard and hugged my Mom. Then she pushed me back with her strong, boney arms, and looked me over. Under Murf’s influence, I was growing my hair longer, and my clothing was quite casual.

     "Love beads, Roger?" my mother admonished me, seeing the string of brightly colored beads around my neck. "Isn’t that a little blasé?"

     My dad, meanwhile, was walking around the Volkswagen, inspecting it with a serious, suspicious expression. I had a feeling I would get a lecture about American made automobiles before the holiday was through. Dad’s hair was white, almost silver.

     For a moment there, I was afraid the dog would give us away. Murf, invisible to everyone except me, leaned on the Beetle’s front fender, tearing up over our tender family reunion. Maybe dogs see souls, or something, because the Dalmatian took to the ghost of Butterfly Murphy right off.

     Dimples jumped up and down in front of Murf, and ran around and around and even through her legs, whimpering gleefully. Murf bent down to pet Dimples, and the dumb dog vaulted into the ghost’s arms. I swept Dimples from Murf’s embrace, nearly losing my balance trying to hold up the wriggling, near delirious dog.

     Both my parents were looking at me when this happened. They continued to stare at me. I put the dazed Dalmatian down and rumpled the hair on her head a little.

     "Aw," I murmured, "I’m glad to see you too, Dimples!"

     Then my dad and I bickered over who could carry more of the suitcases stacked in the back seat upstairs, and he kidded me as he always does about the amount of baggage I’d brought for such a short stay. As Dad and I struggled up the steps with my luggage, my Mom followed, worrying already about my joblessness. No one noticed my tennis racquet and a lumpy laundry bag float up the steps behind us, followed by the adoring, tail-wagging Dalmatian.

     So there we were, my mom, my dad, my sister, and me, sitting around the old kitchen table, drinking wretchedly weak coffee. Dimples slumbered on the floor. Murphy hovered above us in a horizontal position, parallel to the chandelier, like she was laying on a lounge.

     "This is great!" I exclaimed. "It’s good to be home!"

     "Welcome home, Timmy!" my sister Olive said, in the same voice June Lockhart used at the end of Lassie when the collie brought the little boy back. My Pollyannaism was a popular target in our family.

     My mom patted my shoulder and put down a piece of poundcake. "Now, stop that!" she admonished us siblings.

     My dad, meanwhile, was lecturing about the problem with the Common Market, or something, his deep voice droning in the background while everyone else carried on their own conversations, at the same time. We were once again that entity known as the Davenport clan.

     Suddenly Olive said, "Wait! Did you hear that? I thought I heard somebody laughing..."

     Dad and I were doing the dishes.

     "I have a new system," he said.

     "That’s a good one," I started to say, but Dad shushed me.

     "Segregate your silverware," he insisted. "That way, you can grab a whole handful of forks for the fork compartment, or spoons for the spoo..."

     "I get it, Dad. I sure wish you’d streamlined the dishwashing procedure before now. I spend eighteen years indentured to the Old System."

     Mom and I were seated on the sofa. Mom was on one end of the couch, reading The New Yorker. A pile of ravaged candy bar wrappers separated us. I was reading an Ann Tyler novel, which I held in my right hand. But every once in a while I would glance at the book open in my left hand, and turn a page. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy, of course, occupied the other end of the couch. She was slogging through Pilgrim’s Progress.

     Mom looked at me over her bifocals. "Are you really reading both books at once?"

     "Yeh," I said, "they sort of balance each other out."

     "Makes sense," she nodded, returning to her magazine.

     Olive was making a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. Dimples, the Dalmatian, was watching her.

     Just around the corner from the kitchen was a hall closet, where coats were kept. Olive was about to pour milk over her Rice Krispies when the door of the hall closet squeaked open, and then quietly clicked closed.

     Dimples padded out in the hall and sniffed outside the coat closet inquisitively.

     Olive put the milk carton back down and tiptoed into the hallway. The dog was dancing eagerly in front of the coat closet door, her toenails tapping on the linoleum floor, as if it were walkies time. Muted thumps emanated from inside.

     Olive jerked the door open. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was dressing for a walk on the beach. For a split second, a yellow raincoat, a pair of hip boots, and an Admiral’s hat hung suspended in the air, as if clothing an invisible mannequin. Then the clothes dropped to the floor in a heap.

     Dimples did a double take.

     "Dad?" Olive called, cautiously. "Mommy?!?"

     Thanksgiving morning dawned sunny. The soothing sound of the surf droned tranquilly through the open window of my bedroom on the third floor of our old beach house. I had passed a sumptuously peaceful night of sleep in my boyhood bed. A delicious odor drifted up the stairs from the kitchen, where my mom was already busy preparing the turkey for tonight’s feast. Could I have been more cozy?

     I looked at the bedside table. A model stage coach that I made in the Cub Scouts still stood beside the lamp. Gee, it looked cute.

     I sighed happily and glanced over at the guest bed. There was an indent on the pillow and bedspread, about the size of a slumbering Butterfly Murphy. Dimples was sawing logs at the foot of the bed.

     "Okay, you guys!" I called, merrily. "Rise and shine!"

     Dimples, the ghost of Butterfly Murphy, and I raced down three flights of stairs and burst into the kitchen. My mom stood at the chopping block, her hands sunk deep in a bowl of gooey turkey stuffing. Dad sat at the breakfast table, eating a piece of toast, The Oregonian opened to the editorials.

     "My goodness!" Mom exclaimed, wringing her fingers free of the sticky mixture. "You made enough noise coming downstairs for several people!"

     I loved the luxury of my parent’s kitchen. It had a red tiled floor that was cool to walk barefoot on. Copper pots and pans of all shapes and sizes hung from hooks in the bare brown brick walls. The wooden cabinets, the dinner dishes, the toaster — I knew them well. We had, after all, grown up together.

     I opened the refrigerator and leaned inside. "Wow! Look at all the loot!" I marveled.

     I took a pitcher of orange juice off one of the stuffed shelves and carried it to the counter. Then I got a cup out of the china cabinet. While my back was turned a bowl of Jell-O floated out of the fridge, and I think the ghost of Butterfly Murphy might have floated it right out of the room if I hadn’t caught it!

     "About the only thing you see when you open the refrigerator in my apartment is the light bulb," I quipped, recovering.

     "Oh, you bachelors!" my mom laughed.

     "Shut the ice box, for crying out loud!" my dad yelled, rattling his newspaper. "You’ll let all the electricity out!"

     "Oh, George!" Mom laughed harder, sticking huge handfuls of turkey dressing in the body cavity of the big bare bird.

     "I’ll be right back, Rog," the ghost of Butterfly Murphy said in a voice only I heard. Then she walked right through the front door, without opening it first, which I could never get used to.

     "So tell me, Mr. Bachelor," my mom addressed me, "are you seeing someone special?"

     "Well, sort of seeing someone," I said, haltingly. "Nobody in particular, though," I amended. "You know."

     My mother walked to the sink and rinsed off her hands. I knew the question was coming a split second before she inquired, "Have you heard anything from Anna?"

     Murf burst back through the front door. "Come on, Roger!" she cried. "It’s a beautiful day outside!"

     "Say," I said, rounding up my coat and sneakers, "I think I’ll take a little tour around town. Gotta work up an appetite for that turkey tonight! Come on, Dimples — walkies!"

     Unable to face up to my parents, ashamed of my inability to maintain a rewarding relationship for more than five or six months at a time, and not particularly hungry, I fled home. Olive watched me walking to the car from her bedroom window, which was on the second floor, overlooking the driveway. I appeared to be talking to myself.

     "When am I ever going to grow up?" I was asking Butterfly Murphy’s ghost. "How come every time our family choose to celebrate a national holiday in this house, everyone reverts to some strange, perverted, prescribed pecking order within eight hours of our convening?!?"

     Olive’s eyebrows arched up over her downcast eyes, first in puzzlement, then alarm. As I assumed my position in the drivers seat, the car door on the passenger side opened all by itself. Dimples scrambled into the back seat. Then the car doors slammed shut. Even though the sound was muffled from the distance, Olive distinctly heard two car doors. She smiled smugly and shook her head.

     "Yep," she said. "Dos."

     Long Beach looked different. The small, sleepy seaside town I remembered from childhood had changed.

     I drove down the Ridge Road, so named because it ran parallel to the Pacific Ocean. More and more houses and motels clotted the coastline than ever before. Stop signs had been installed in places where none were needed in the past. Everything was all asphalt.

     The city council had evidently voted in favor of placing stop signs every two blocks. We lurched toward town, never getting out of second gear. This stop/go approach to transportation was not improving my disposition, either.

     "It’s a conspiracy!" I cried. "We didn’t need street numbers on houses when I was growing up. Heck, you could ask anybody for directions anywhere because everybody knew everyone else!"

     "Roger, I hate to say this, but you are starting to sound an awful lot like your dad," Murf suggested, regardless.

     That hurt.

     We screeched to a halt at a traffic light.

     "This is ridiculous!" I shouted, pounding the steering wheel. "It’s nine o’clock in the morning! There isn’t any other traffic! The only thing we’re likely to collide with is a seagull!"

     Our car puttered at the stop light. We were where the Ridge Road bisects the gravel beach approach. If you looked around in a circle you would see sand dunes, a few pine trees, the ocean, and what little there was of the town. The beach was beautiful, but before I could get a good look the traffic light changed and I had to drive forward again.

     We drove past a lot of tourist stuff — a go-cart track, tee-shirt shops, burger stands, bumper cars, a carousel with antique wooden horses. A tall white water tower rose above the rooftops.

     "When we were in high school, Ricky Eaton, Mike Slagle, and I climbed all the way to the top of that tower and painted a big Batman symbol on the side. It took two gallons of black paint! The police put a fifty dollar reward on our heads."

     We passed a patio golf course, and a hardware store, that was now a video store. "Hey, Murf," I said, "want to see the Eighth Wonder of the World?"

     "What’s that?" asked the spirit.

     "The World’s Largest Frying Pan," I explained. "It’s fifty feet tall. Stands in the Town Square. The pioneers used it for festive clam fries."

     But it wasn’t in the Town Square, and we had to drive up and down Main Street a couple times before we did find the historical monument. The World’s Largest Frying Pan had been demoted to a corner of the elementary school baseball field. It didn’t seem to tower as tall as I remembered, either.

     On the edge of town we saw a large lot that had been bulldozed flat. A big billboard said: ANOTHER MCDONALD’S GOING IN HERE!

     "This is terrible!" I whined. "Do you know what used to be here?"

     "Yes, as a ghost I can see both the past and the future..." Murf began.

     "This used to be a llama farm!" I interrupted. "A grassy green pasture where a llama herd grazed. I used to ride my bike here to hear them humming!"

     "Humming?" Murf repeated.

     "Llamas hum when they are happy and content. They hum when they are agitated, also. They seem to take comfort in the sound. It’s a nice noise, a herd of humming llamas."

     We both listened a second, as if we expected to hear the humming herd.

     "I’ve got an idea," I said, shifting gears. "Let’s go to the lighthouse. That’s got to be unchanged!"

     A seagull cannonballed through the clouds and soared out over the bright blue water toward the coastline.

     Towering, jagged cliffs met the Pacific Ocean with a powerful pounding of crashing, surging breakers. At the top of the tallest bluff stood North Head Lighthouse, a welcome beacon to travelers of the deep.

     The seagull flew straight up the sheer side of the tall cement tower, then looped lazily around and red roof, and spiraled slowly down the straight, white walls over our heads. We stood, the ghost of Butterfly Murphy, Dimples, and me, at the base of the building. I had to keep a hold of Butterfly’s hand, because the sudden gusts of wind whooshed her away a couple of times.

     We hiked down to a little ledge that let us stick out further over the ocean. It was probably about a mile in the sky, which was sort of scary, and kind of a kick, all at the same time.

     "This is my favorite place in the whole world!" I enthused. The wind whipped my words away. The ocean roared on and on and on in our ears.

     I looked at the ghost of Butterfly Murphy. Her body fluttered in the wind, like a flag. I wondered, for the ten thousandth time, whether she actually existed, or was merely a manifestation of the chronic Peter Pan Syndrome I refused to outgrow.

     "You know what’s weird, Murf?" I asked. "I don’t sing any more. I used to sing all the time. I’ve always loved singing, even if my voice is pretty bad."

     Murf kept floating off as I was explaining this. I had to keep pulling her back. The wind currents were tricky, way up there.

     "Anyway, when I first started seeing Anna I would burst into song, like I always do, but I didn’t realize until I had known her a lot longer that she hated my singing. Well, we discussed it like adults, and finally we agreed that it would be better if I ceased singing."

     "You agreed to this?" Murf asked, disbelievingly.

     "I could still sing if I was alone in my automobile, or walking by myself in the middle of a national forest..." I realized I sounded pretty lame.

     "The thing is, I stopped singing altogether. And I miss singing! I still hear bursts of music in my mind, only I don’t join in any more!"

     We looked out over the waves. There was more space in front of us than almost any other place we could have chosen to sit, anywhere in the world. The air smelled good.

     "Roger," spoke the spook, "that is so heavy."

     We walked down a soggy foot path back to our car. Dimples pranced along with the dashing demeanor of a well-exercised Dalmatian.

     When we got back to the parking lot I noticed something sort of strange. All the cars were about the same vintage as my Volkswagen.

     "It looks like a classic auto show," I observed. Parked on the gravel lot were a ‘68 Mustang, a rusty ‘64 Impala, a dirty, dented Willy’s jeep, and a round-bodied ‘59 Chevy coupe. Murf sunk through the car door and sunk in her seat in a ghostly manner which made me feel kind of clumsy, standing there, fiddling with my car keys.

     Dimples jumped in the cab and left muddy foot prints on all the seats before settling down in a corner of the back seat.

     "Don’t sweat it," said the spirit. With a wave of her hand, the interior of the Volkswagen was sparkling clean. There were certain advantages to being haunted, sometimes.

     Driving back into town, the car radio began blaring "Hurdy Gurdy Man." I hadn’t heard the song since the Sixties. It reminded me of the summer I turned sixteen, when Donovan’s song was on the radio constantly.

     We took a road that winds around the bay, which was so scenic it took my breath away. I began to get a strange prickling at the back of my neck. I could not fathom what it meant, though.

     There is a long, loud electric guitar solo in the middle of "Hurdy Gurdy Man," a heavy, choppy burst of psychedelic feedback that is insidiously transporting. It triggered memories of the past so much, that I thought that the sign next to the road on the outskirts of town read:

     The population of my home town had not been five hundred and seventy since I was in high school, more than twenty years ago. Then I looked around and realized that something very unusual had happened.

     The entire town of Long Beach looked exactly as it had in 1968.

     I parked the car in a real hurry. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy had vanished. I didn’t know where Dimples went, either, but at a time like that, who cared?

     I stared through the windshield, my eyes bulging out of their sockets, like a goldfish. The entire town had reverted back to the way it was when I was a teenager. All the modern mini-malls and smooth asphalt streets were replaced with rickety wooden buildings whose boards and window pains had been loosened by years of relentless rain and buffeting west winds, and some of the side streets were paved with crushed oyster shells. I looked up, and a big black Batman insignia was painted on the side of the town water tower. There was a loud, clanging noise outside, drawing closer. It was very disorienting, indeed.

     Then I figured: why fight it? If I just kept my cool, I could revisit a bakery that made the best old fashioned donuts in the state of Washington.

     I stepped out of the Volkswagen and nearly got clobbered by the county truck, even though it was making enough noise to raise the dead. The dump truck had iron tubes with jingle bells inside welded on its wheels, to warn people that Randal Dandy was driving. His brother, Jim, hung halfway out the passenger door, a string of Christmas tree lights dangling from his free arm.

     A lot of people in our town had funny names. The owner of the lumber yard was named Ed Gee. He ran for mayor, and part of his platform was a promise to install the first stop light in Long Beach. He also promised to find a job for the two Dandy brothers, who were sort of the town simpletons, because in those days folks helped out one another. After the elections, the new mayor of Long Beach had a stop light installed on the busiest corner in town, across from Sid’s Supermarket. But it only operated during business hours, when Jim and Randal Dandy could stand there and manually switch it from stop to go. The problem was, sometimes the Dandy brothers would wander off to look at wanted posters in the post office, letting traffic back up for blocks, or worse yet, they’d play favorites. So Ed Gee asked the city council to authorize an automatic stop light. He still had his campaign promise to keep, though.

     That’s how the Dandy Brothers came in control of the eight ton dump truck that nearly squashed me flatter than a pancake. I had approximately a split second to remember all this, before I jumped back out of the way. I could tell that living in the past was going to be a little tricky.

     The sidewalk in front of Marshmallow’s Maritime Museum was a veritable obstacle course of sandwich boards. "Home of the World’s Largest Frying Pan!" "See the SHRUNKEN HEAD!!!" "Clam shovels for rent." The dilapidated building that housed Marshmallow’s museum had statues wired to the shingled roof. There was a statue of a lady pushing a baby carriage, a statue of a blacksmith, and a statue of a bearded old man in a bright blue admiral’s uniform. They all had big white wings on their backs. Inside, there was a stuffed, three headed calf, an actual shrunken head from the Congo, and Jake, the Alligator Man. The museum was actually a subterfuge; the Marshmallow’s made most their profits selling overpriced seashells to all the tourists who were too lazy to go out and find them for themselves.

     Across the street, half the block was clustered with run-down cottages, brightened up a bit with a saggy string of unlit Christmas tree lights. A sign said: Aurora Court.

     Next to that was a vacant lot. Gypsies were selling donkey rides. They had stuck balloons to some bales of hay and called it an archery range. They also had an orangutan named Magilla in a big wire cage on the tailgate of their station wagon.

     "Hey, Dennis!" I called, to a boy feeding hay to the donkeys.

     "Hi," he mumbled.

     Now I remembered. Dennis DeMilo mumbled everything.

     I thought about telling him all the secrets of the future, and changing his destiny from circus boy to Microsoft CEO. But then I decided not to. I decided to go get a donut instead.

     On my way to the bakery, I passed Mary Lou’s Tavern, where "Ode To Billy Joe" was playing on the radio behind the bar. Two doors down, in the pinball arcade, "Pictures Of The Matchstick Men" blared from the jukebox.

     Straight across the street from the police station was a long whitewashed park bench facing the Main Street. A bunch of guys from my school were sitting in various attitudes on the back of the bench.

     "Davenport!" they chortled, in unison. "Na na na, na na na, na, na — BATMAN!!!" they sang, imitating the TV theme song.

     Luckily, I still remembered a little lingo.

     "Hey!" I bantered back. "Did someone leave the cake out in the rain?"

     We waved and pointed at each other, exchanging catcalls. But I stayed on the opposite side of the street. I knew if I went over there, I would likely end up engaged in illegal activities. I didn’t want to waste any more time in the past, since I wasn’t sure how long I was allowed to stay.

     The bakery was bustling with business. It looked like half the town had put in orders for pumpkin pies and dinner rolls.

     I loved the simplicity of the bakery. Everything made perfect sense there. The front windows were filled with tempting trays of glazed and sugar donuts, cinnamon twists, Danish pastries, coffee cakes, and apple pies. The front counter had an old fashioned cash register on it, that made merry mechanical noises when money was exchanged.

     I stood just inside the doorway, sniffing the warm, sweet air. It was humid enough to fog some peoples glasses when they walked in from the cold outdoors.

     The place was packed. There was so much going on at once it was hard to comprehend. All six swiveling seats at the coffee counter supported customers (in fact, the butcher’s twin daughters, Ginger and Pepper, were squeezed on one seat, sharing a Bismarck). The bakery clerks, who were distinguished from everyone else by their aprons, seemed to swim between the sea of customers, lined six deep at the cash register, awaiting their desserts.

     What was the weirdest thing, I knew all these people. Everybody knew everybody in our small town. In no way did I know my Seattle neighbors that intimately.

     Why, there was Scoop Johnson, the editor of the local newspaper, The Chinook Observer. Ed Gee stood next to him, arguing an issue. Wellington (or Junior, as everyone called him) Marshmallow waved a hand holding a half eaten donut, as if saluting. The milkman, Charlie Purdy, pushed through, wearing a bright white uniform. Our town was so small that the milkman would let himself in our back door in the morning, and leave dairy products in the refrigerator while everybody was still sound asleep in their beds!

     Just then, the lady who was standing in front of me in line turned around. It was Mrs. Strand, my sixth grade teacher!

     "Why, Roger!" she exclaimed. "How you have grown!"

     "Hi, Mrs. Strand!" I shouted. "Gosh! It’s great to see you!"

     I was so happy to see all these people from my past. I rushed around, shaking hands and wishing everyone well, perhaps appearing just a tad touched.

     Before I even had a chance to order a piping hot fresh from the oven French bread bun split open and slathered with butter, a loud crash occurred outside, a horn honked, and what sounded like a string of fire crackers went off. The bakery emptied out almost instantly; in fact, businesses on both sides of the street evacuated, as curious onlookers filled the sidewalks.

     Randal Dandy was dangling from a power line stretched between two utility poles traversing Main Street. Jim Dandy stared intensely at the ladder laying inert on the pavement, as if staring at it would make the toppled ladder leap back in support of his screaming, flailing sibling. Old lady Hennypenny, who drove a dilapidated Hudson and was blind as a bat, to boot, puttered down the road, impervious to the havoc she had caused. The sharp explosions had been the sound of a string of Christmas tree lightbulbs shattering as they hit the highway.

     It took Bob Beef, the levelheaded butcher at Sid’s Supermarket, and a volunteer fireman, to organize the panicked people and rescue Randal. The editor of Long Beach’s weekly newspaper, The Chinook Observer, jumped up and down gleefully. He knew he had an exclusive here.

     A finger tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, and there stood my sister, Olive. Only she was fifteen years old. She was wearing the uniform required of the high school girls who dipped chocolates at Curly’s Candy Store, two doors down — a pink dress, a white apron, and a hair net.

     "I want to talk to you!" Olive insisted, pulling me into a narrow alley between the movie theater and the candy shop.

     "Hi, Ol, Ol, Ol..." I stammered.

     She whipped off the hair net and it disappeared in her apron. Olive shook her hair out. It was very long and shaggy.

     "What are you, crazy — or just dumb?" my sister snapped. "What are you doing downtown?" she asked, aghast. It always killed me when people referred to downtown Long Beach.

     "Now, just relax, Olive," I comforted my sister. "Listen to me closely. This. Is. A. Historic. Moment."

     Olive seemed to miss the importance of what I was saying. She sneered at me, and said, "Oh great, you know! I get to go around and be everybody’s ‘Hey-Your-Brother-And-His-Buddies-Painted-A-Bat-Signal-On-The-Town-Water-Tower Girl’!"

     "Forget the Bat Signal for a sec, sis!" I took her wrist and led her further down the alley. "Now, look, I’ve got to tell you something very important. And you can’t tell anyone, ever! Are you with me?"

     Olive gave me a defiant look. "Get serious!" she smirked.

     "I am serious! Listen, this is about the coolest thing you will hear in your whole life! And I know all about your life, Olive. Believe me, your life will benefit from this!

     "Someday, maybe Thanksgiving twenty-two or twenty-three years from now, I don’t know..."

     "What are you talking about, Roger?" Olive asked. "You are beginning to alarm me."

     "No, it’s not anything bad!" I continued. "It’s good! See, I’ve seen the future and what I am talking about is going to be REALLY SPECIAL. There aren’t even words to describe it properly!"

     "Roger," she said, solemnly, "have we been watching too much Star Trek?"

     I decided to try a different approach. "What if I was to tell you, Olive, that you could have any wish, no matter how goofy, granted..."

     She just stared at me.

     "Say you had a spectacular whim," I resumed, thinking as fast as I could, "to eat a Thanksgiving turkey on top of Mt. Rainier?"

     "We would freeze to death," she replied, reasonably.

     "You wouldn’t have to worry about that. Everything would be climate controlled, or something. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, not a single thing! Then what would you say?"

     "Roger, I have got to get back to work," Olive sighed, slipping her hair net on.

     "Isn’t it a bummer? I have to work on a holiday. Then I have to face Thanksgiving dinner with my FAMILY!!!" she shrieked, melodramatically. "I wish I could have a quiet dinner on Mt. Rainier..."

     Olive might not have sounded like a very affectionate person, but before she went back to work my sister fished around in her apron pocket, and gave me a gift. I heard her slam the screen door, and the ocean roar, as I unwrapped the wad of warm tissue paper she pressed in my hand. It contained two freshly dipped chocolates.

     I stepped out of the alleyway. All of the hubbub over hanging the Christmas tree lights was over, and the big red, green, and yellow light bulbs stretched across the street at the end of each block all the way down Main Street. Actually, it resembled the Mardi Gras more than Yuletide.

     The town was emptying fast, as dusk approached. It was only a quarter to four, but the daylight hours are not very long in Washington in the winter.

     I ran across the street, indifferent to the traffic light. I mean, there was no traffic. The salty wind whistled through my teeth. I wanted to stop by the pharmacy before they closed. The woman who worked behind the cosmetics counter at the drug store when I was growing up always looked so beautiful that I wanted to see if she still had the same affect on me, now that I was so much more worldly. But by the time I got there, all I got was a glimpse of her slender hand, turning the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

     All up and down the street, businesses were locking their doors and shutting out the lights, closing early so they could get to their turkey dinners, to their families.

     "Eeeooowwwww!" I yelled, slapping myself in the forehead. "I’ve got to get HOME!"

     I raced down the sidewalk, more excited than I had been since, well, I don’t know when.

     "Yippee!" I yelled, jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air at the girls sweeping the sidewalk in front of the movie theater. Their skirts were sure short back then!

     The reason I was jumping for joy? Well, wouldn’t you be excited if you got to see your aging parents look youthful again? I believe I was the first of my species to have had such an opportunity.

     The ocean was roaring, my heart was thumping, my footsteps slapped the sidewalk unrelentlessly. Boy, was it noisy inside my noggin just then!

     When I reached the town square, I stopped a second to catch my breath. I put my hands on my knees and hung my head down so I could take some large lungfulls of the oceany air.

     The park was paved with alternating pink and gray granite blocks in a checkerboard design, and the cross sections of a log were strewn about, for playing pieces. I straightened up, turned around, and had my breath taken away again.

     If you traveled to the farthest corners of the earth you would not find a more monumental roadside attraction to rival The World’s Largest Frying Pan. Just how big is it? Thirty feet, they say, from rim to rim. The handle sticks higher in the air than any other building in town. Bleached whale bones were scattered by the base of the monolithic skillet, to emphasize its enormity.

     Seeing it, silhouetted by the spreading sunset, sent shivers up my spine. I couldn’t help it. I fell down on my knees, and salamied the big, black cast iron skillet several times.

     "Happy Thanksgiving, Long Beach!" I called, trotting down the sidewalk, making comparisons to an old Jimmy Stewart movie a little too obvious, perhaps.

     My car was right where I left it, in front of Marshmallow’s Maritime Museum. I looked up at the statues strung to the roof, with their big white wings, and wondered where the ghost of Butterfly Murphy had gotten to. I was a little worried about the dog, too.

     I drove home as fast as I could, following the same route I’d used to deliver The Oregonian every morning on my bicycle when I was a paperboy. I waved my arm out the window and called out to people I recognized as I passed their houses, "Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs. Peabody! Good evening, Mr. Crawly! Hello, Herman! Howdy, Jed..."

     It was twilight when I pulled into my parents driveway. The moon was out over the ocean, three quarters full. There was a candle burning in the window over the kitchen sink.

     I burst up the porch steps and barged into the parlor, yelling, "Mom? Dad? Hello! Anybody home?!?"

     I was so excited to see my parents again, as I recalled them from my childhood memories, that I was dancing back and forth from foot to foot. That, and I had to go to the bathroom.

     I heard footsteps coming toward me. I knew the footsteps of my Mom and Dad as well as I knew my own heartbeat.

     The clicking of dog toes on linoleum preceded my parents, and I thought for a second that Sindoo, the Davenport family’s venerable springer spaniel (who had, incidentally, run right alongside my bicycle every morning on the paper route I described earlier) was going to greet me first.

     But it was Dimples, the Dalmatian, who came around the corner, followed by my mom and dad. They looked just as they had looked when I left the house that morning — but that looked lovely to me.

     I ran and threw my arms around Mom and Dad. "Boy, am I glad to see you! I’m so glad to be home! I love you guys!" I cried.

     "We love you, too!" my mom mooned.

     "Welcome home, son!" dad boomed, clapping me on the back.

     I glanced past my dad’s shoulder a second, and the ghost of Butterfly Murphy materialized right before my eyes.

     "Murf!" I exclaimed, fondly. "You old rattlesnake!"

     "What?" my parents asked me, at the same time.

     "Where’s Olive?" I inquired eagerly, instead of answering.

     "Here I am!" my sister shouted, joining the family pow-wow. "Gee whiz!" Olive said, with what might have been a hint of sarcasm. "There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!! There’s no place like home!!!"

     Soon our heads were bowed in prayer. The dining room table was set with all our best china and sparkling sterling steel. The aromas of roast turkey, Mom’s special stuffing, and apple pie enticed our nostrils.

     I’d asked to say the prayer. "...and thank you for this food, and for this day, and all you have blessed us with. Please grant your Grace on our family, our home, our relatives, our friends, our pets..."

     "That’s enough, Roger," my mom murmured.

     "...and everyone and everything on Earth and in Heaven! Amen." I concluded, quickly.

     Mom stood up, and smoothed her dress. She folded her hands together, as if to deliver an address. It was a family tradition for her to introduce the bill of fare in this way every Thanksgiving.

     "As you know," she said, "I have been experimenting with alternatives to the traditional Thanksgiving turkey the past few seasons. Now, I know, I know," she said, brushing off our protests, "the swan last year was not well received..."

     More boos.

     "But this year," she proceeded, "I think I have stumbled on something which will please everyone. Ta-ta-ta ta!" she trumpeted, pulling a Kellogg’s Variety Pack out from under the tablecloth.

     You never could tell with my mother.

     Olive and I volunteered to do the dishes. We were standing at the kitchen sink. I was washing the dishes as my sister scraped the leftovers into Dimple’s dog dish. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy wandered around the room, picking up kitchen utensils behind my sister’s back, and playing with them. Which kept my hands pretty busy.

     "That was pretty good, wasn’t it?" she asked. "The breakfast cereal."

     "Yeah," I replied.

     She scraped some more plates. I swished the dishes in the sudsy water. We worked without talking a minute or two. Our movements matched.

     I needed to talk to Murf alone. I reached in my pants pocket, and pulled out the ghost’s signaling device.

     "Oh, cool," Olive observed. "Pass me a Pez, will you?"

     The question froze on Olive’s lips. She stood as still as a statue. All the movement in the kitchen, in the rest of the house, all around the world for all I knew, suddenly ceased.

     Murf adopted the classic ghost guise, floating like a bedsheet in mid-air, semi-translucent, off-white. It was a nice effect, although it gave me the willies, also.

     "What is it, Rogie?" she asked.

     "Well, I want to take my sister to the top of Mt. Rainier. For dessert."

     I imagined an aerial shot, like the opening scene in The Sound Of Music, over the snowy peaks of the Cascade Mountains, zooming in on a table for two atop Mt. Rainier. Candelabra. Waterford crystal. My sister, wearing a sleeveless sundress, high heels, and a Carmen Miranda headdress, lifts her wineglass in a toast. I’m in tails.

     "No good, Roger," the spirit said, bursting my balloon. "Too flashy. Why don’t you give a little more of yourself, instead?"

     Murf backed everything up, to the time I put my hand in my pants pocket for the Pez dispenser. This time, when I pulled my hand out, it was holding a wadded up tissue paper.

     "Here, Olive," I said, holding out the shiny chocolates she had given me in the alley that afternoon, twenty-two years ago.

     "Wow!" Where did you get these?" marveled my sister. "They look just like the old, hand-dipped candies from Curly’s!"

     The Curly Candy Store had been bought by a pineapple canning conglomerate, who now mass produced the chocolates in a fully automated factory in Kansas City.

     Olive’s cheeks flushed with pure pleasure as she savored the fine chocolate.

     "Mmmmmm!" she mmmmmmed.

Chapter Eight.

     Although I did not know it at the time, the answer to my financial problems was right in front of me.

     I was in the kitchen one morning, shortly after Thanksgiving, making tea and toast. I love toast. I love it so much I was even singing a little song. The song I was singing was to the tune of an old Bette Midler song, "Friends." Only I substituted the word "toast" for "friends", so the song went like this:

     Of course, I would have been better off paying attention to the toaster than dancing around the kitchen, singing off key, because black smoke began to billow out the slots. It was the kind of toaster where you put the bread in the slots and a little tin elevator slowly lowers the slices to cook. The only way to get them out again if they start burning is to stick a knife in the slots and practically electrocute yourself or turn the toaster upside down and shake crumbs all over the counter... all of which I did.

     I had ceased singing by now. I inserted two fresh slices of bread, but this time the little mechanical elevator wouldn’t go down. I stood there for several minutes, dropping the bread in the slots, again and again, my frustration mounting.

     "WHAT are you DOING?" Murf shouted in my ear. The mechanics of the toaster were creaking as loudly as rusty bedsprings.

     "What are YOU doing?" I replied.

     "I asked you first!" she said.

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was dressed in only an oversized flannel shirt. She had good legs, for a ghost. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and there was a sickly green cream smeared all over her face.

     "Euw! What is that stuff?" I asked.

     "Vanishing cream, of course!"

     "Why doesn’t someone invent a toaster that works?" I complained. "Hey, Murf! Can you make a toaster?"

     "You make a toaster," she suggested. My ghost was always thinking of me.

     So I did.

     In my spare time (ha! ha!) I invented a better toaster. I used the kitchen counter as a workbench and, over the next few weeks, tore apart my old toaster and figured out how it worked.

     The tin elevator was the only mechanics I kept, otherwise I completely redesigned everything, installing digital circuitry to control the thermostat and timer, and added clear, heat resistant sides so you could see your toast cooking. And I designed a crumb tray that actually collected and disposed of the crumbs efficiently.

     I realize this toaster stuff may seem a little out in left field. But it will play an important part in the plot later. How is that for heavy-handed foreshadowing?

Chapter Nine.

     KA-CHUNK!

     On the first day of December I was jolted awake by heavy metal power chords, played loud enough to drown out an airport.

     KA-CHUNK!

     My eyes snapped open on the KA, and the CHUNK hit my head like a mallet. Although I recognized the opening guitar riff of Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" instantly, someone else might have thought they were hearing the sound of two steel car fenders scraping together, or a pile driver, perhaps, or the roar of a dinosaur.

     I was literally blasted out of bed. I fumbled for my pants, and stumbled to the kitchen. Robert Plant belted:

     Good times, bad times

     You know I've had my share

     When my woman left home with a brown eyed man

     But I still don't seem to care

     The ghost of Butterfly Murphy was seated at the kitchen table, nonchalantly reading the newspaper while absently eating a bowl of breakfast cereal. Electric guitar notes ricocheted around the room like machine gun fire, as the singer agonized:

     I swore that she would be all mine

     And love me to the end

     But when I whispered in her ear

     I lost another friend

     I jumped up and down in front of the ghost, screaming, but the stereo was so loud it looked like I was lip synching.

     "COULD YOU TURN THAT DOWN?" I shouted.

     "WHAT?" Murf shouted back.

     "WOULD YOU TURN THE MUSIC DOWN, PLEASE?!?"

     Murf didn't move a finger, but the volume did go down a decibel or two.

     "Good morning!" the ghost of Butterfly Murphy chirped. "Would you like some orange juice?"

     "Sure," I said, looking at the cereal box more closely. It said GHOST TOASTIES. A glass of orange juice appeared in my hand. I sipped, slightly suspiciously. It was good.

     "I think I've found a job that would be just right for you, Rogie!" Murf exclaimed, pointing to an ad in the classifieds.

     I looked where the ghost's pale finger was pointing. It said:

     "Well, I don't know about that," I said one second, in my kitchen.

     The next second, I was standing in line for a job interview on the top floor of the Frederick & Nelson building.

     I turned to the man standing behind me in line. His clothes were rather raggedy, and he seemed too skinny to impersonate Kris Kringle.

     "What am I doing here?" I asked, aloud.

     "I know what you mean, Jack," he said. "Tis the season!"

     While I was waiting in line, I was reminded of the time, the previous year, Anna and I did our Christmas shopping at the Frederick & Nelson downtown department store together. We went from floor to floor, holding hands, picking out presents for the people on our gift lists. My favorite part was testing toys in Toyland, selecting something special for Emily, Anna's seven year old. I bought her a Minnie Mouse wristwatch; the plastic cartoon character's mouth moved when pressure was applied to her ears, making Minnie giggle like she was being tickled by the touch, and announce the time out loud! I remember thinking, as we swept through the throngs of shoppers, that there was no one as beautiful as Anna. The only drawback was, Anna did not appreciate me looking at or comparing her to anybody else to such a degree that I was forced to examine everyone covertly from the corners of my eyes, while staring steadily at my shoes.

     Anna asked if I would wait in the basement while she ran upstairs to try on something in the women’s' department. I ended up standing in line a half hour for a stupid box of raspberry Frangos for my sister Olive's Christmas stocking. Then I hung around another half hour amidst the thick, shifting sea of last-minute shoppers, which made me so uncomfortable I practically had an anxiety attack. When Anna finally found me, I'm embarrassed to admit I acted really put out over her prolonged absence. Anna got so upset over my being upset that she marched stoically out of the store, continuing up Fifth Avenue several steps ahead of me, fuming. The sidewalk practically sizzled where her stiletto heels struck.

     Suddenly, she spun around and started laughing out loud. "Oh, good grief! I'm not mad at you any more," Anna announced. "You are going to feel so guilty on Christmas morning, that you'll be groveling into the New Year!"

     She was right, too. As it turned out, she had stood in a long line at the ticket window on the seventh floor, between a leather clad biker buying Grateful Dead tickets, and a pair of twittering teenage girls getting Pearl Jam tickets, to treat me to a Susanne Vega concert.

     Shaking myself from my revere, I realized that for every nice memory I had of our relationship, there was an awkward one, as well.

     Meanwhile, a steady stream of scowling men marched out of the personnel department. What kind of person was conducting the interviews, I wondered.

     I was ultimately ushered into a conference room for an interview. The Director of Human Resources looked exactly like Mrs. Santa Claus dressed in a business suit! Her hair was braided in a beautiful bun on her head. She smiled as sweetly as if just having eaten an apple pie.

     "Hello!" she said, melodiously. "Can you name all the reindeer?"

     "Prancer, Dasher, Dancer, Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Vixen!" I recited, counting on my fingers.

     "Now, let's hear your yo-ho-ho," she said, sweetly, clasping her hands together.

     I aced the interview.

     There was quite an extensive training program. I attended Santa School two whole days. I learned how to do the Santa Lift (Santa extends leg; the child stands between Santa's knees and sits on the extended leg; Santa pulls the leg back to a sitting position). We were instructed never to act out of character, avoid short nervous gestures, and were discouraged from emitting loud, booming, "Ho! Ho! Ho's!" because they often frightened the small fries. Then I had to apprentice as an elf for the remainder of the week, before I actually suited up as old St. Nick.

     I saw about thirty kiddos an hour. Under my Santa suit I wore plastic pants, plenty of pillows to make me more plump, and knee pads (a necessity).

     There is a certain power you get when playing Santa Claus that is hard to explain. I mean, I hadn't experienced that kind of popularity since high school. When I walked down the aisle in my red crushed velvet suit, wearing all those soft, shiny white curls (flanked by pixies, for Pete's sake) to my sparkly throne in Toyland, people pointed and jumped up and down and carried on like crazy. Each and every human being who saw me smiled!

     I liked that.

     It was a pretty plush setup, actually. My throne was coated with red and silver glitter, bolted to a big sleigh piled with pillows, in the picture window on the corner of Sixth and Pike Street.

     I had two elves whose names were actually Betty and Veronica, if you can believe that. But I was supposed to refer to my helpers as Pixie and Dixie.

     "Well, now, Ms. Pixie!" I ho-ho-hoed. "Who's our next visitor?" I added in a stage whisper, winking.

     The elf on my left looked down the long line of people stretching two and a half blocks down Sixth Avenue. She knelt beside the next newcomer in line, who was about two feet tall, had ringlets of shiny, long red hair, and was holding a baby blue blanket.

     "Hello, honeybunch," Pixie purred pleasantly. "What is your name?"

     "Alva," the little girl said. Her parents beamed with pride behind her.

     "Would you like to see Santa Claus, Alva?" Pixie practically gushed. She placed the child on my knee as gently and as carefully as one would expect an aunt to act. Alva's blanket got in the way a little bit and Pixie had to untangle it before she got the child seated. She was sure a responsible elf.

     "Merry Christmas, Alva!" I said. I really meant it, too.

     We sized each other up a few seconds. Her hair was sure a pretty color. She fixated on my big black patent leather boots. I bounced her on my knee a bit. Some kids would blurt out what they wanted right off, others needed a little longer. Alva belonged to the latter group.

     "I want a new blanket," she finally said. "This one is all beat up. Look, the lining is falling off." She showed me.

     I couldn't help laughing. My belly shook like a bowl full of jelly. "Why didn't you just ask your Mommy and Daddy for a new blanket?"

     "They won't let me. They think I love this blanket. They call it my Binky. I hate that!"

     While we posed for a Polaroid, Dixie was dispatched to direct Mom and Dad to the dry goods department. In her photograph, Alva held her blanket against one cheek, and sucked the thumb of her other hand, staring straight at the lens.

     "I'm Zorro!" a boy boldly declared. He didn't look like Zorro. He wasn't wearing a mask. He looked like an ordinary kid, to me.

     "What's your real name?" I asked.

     "Zorro!" he repeated.

     "Do you mean you're playing Zorro?" Santa suggested.

     "No, I really am Zorro. That's really my name."

     I repressed an urge to stare sideways at the parents that named their offspring Zorro. "What do you want for Christmas?" I inquired, instead.

     "Deathalizer Deluxe, man!" Zorro squealed with zeal. "I want Deathalizer Deluxe!"

     "Dare I ask what the Deathalizer Deluxe does?" I ventured.

     "It's really neat! Deathalizer Deluxe is a bazooka, a flame-thrower, and a heat seeking missile launcher, all in one!"

     "Such a toy actually exists?" I said, startled.

     "Sure!" Zorro insisted. "I saw it on TV!"

     Sherman stared at me through thick tortoiseshell glasses. He was wearing the smallest three-piece suit I had ever seen. After consulting a spreadsheet on his lap top computer, Sherman said, "I would like forty shares of Microsoft."

     "Sure, Sherm," I said, playing the straight Santa. I looked over Sherman's broad bulging cranium at his parents. They appeared quite ordinary. They were wearing blue jeans and Reeboks. They looked at me and shrugged their shoulders, apologetically.

     To keep up our stamina, the elves and I snacked on the goodies children offered us. We were given pounds of home made fudge. It was the only time in my whole life I didn't have to worry about gaining weight! We had so many cookies, coffee cakes, even eclairs given us that we started handing them out to the kids who looked the least bit hungry.

     We had all the expresso we wanted. The department store assigned an administrative assistant, Debbie, to keep us supplied with a steady stream of Starbuck's coffee, but we sort of suspected her of spying on our operation and reporting back to upper management. I, in particular, frustrated Debbie by declining her constant offers of coffee, but it was such a hassle going to the bathroom when wearing a Santa suit!

     The elves and I detected toy trends that would have made a marketing executive salivate.

     I was having such a good time at work, I had to some extent forgot about Murf. One morning I came downstairs and found the ghost shaking her head sadly over a Rolling Stone magazine, commiserating about the effects the aging process was having on her favorite rock and roll heroes.

     "Look at this," she kabished. "Bob Dylan looks motley! Mick Jagger is emaciated! Even Paul McCartney is aging a bit!"

     I went over to the kitchen counter and fiddled with some of the parts of the toaster I was building, while the spirit rambled on.

     "I used to think of Jerry Garcia like he was my honorary brother. Now he looks like somebody's grandfather! The Grateful Dead should be," she grumbled.

     "You are sure gloomy this morning," I observed.

     "What do you expect? I am a ghost."

     I crossed to the cupboard for a cereal bowl. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy disappeared from the table and poofed in place beside me.

     "That's okay, Murf," I said, stopping her before she blinked my breakfast together. "I feel like pouring my own cereal today."

     The second I said that, I sensed we were about to have an argument, but not about which brand of breakfast cereal I chose.

     My Cheerios tinkled in the bowl as she said, "Roger, when are you going to finally take control of your life?"

     I went over to the refrigerator and poured some milk over my breakfast cereal before replying.

     "I am in control," I said simply.

     "No, you're not!" she insisted.

     "I am, too," I swore.

     "Not!" the spirit chided. "Not times infinity!"

     "I am not going to argue with you, Butterfly."

     "Of course not! You're totally incapable of confronting any real issues, Roger. You'd rather hide — hide behind a camera, hide behind a Santa suit! I should start calling you Roger Dodger, you are in such a constant state of denial!"

     "I am not!" I responded, weakly.

     The kitchen grew very quiet. The ghost of Butterfly Murphy has made herself invisible again.

     "All right, what am I denying?" I asked the empty room.

     When I didn't get an answer, I sat down and ate my Cheerios, but they didn't cheer me up much. I chewed the soggy O's of oats, contemplatively.

     That afternoon at the department store we saw a steady stream of some of the crabbiest children in King County. They fidgeted and they fussed, they moaned and they groaned, they cried on and on and made incessant selfish demands. Even the elves wearied of the whining after a while.

     Despite being depressed over the argument Murf and I had engaged in earlier, my job just then was to be jolly. After all, I was Santa Claus. I hummed, "When You Wish Upon A Star" to myself all afternoon, to keep my spirits up.

     One child after another sat upon my lap, with long lists of Christmas gifts. I had to keep smiling and a twinkle in my eye, although I could plainly see that the parents often could not afford to fulfill their offspring’s dreams.

     An hour before closing time, even Santa Claus was bushed. I had posed for so many Polaroid portraits, big blue dots danced in front of my eyes.

     Then Pixie placed such a charming child in front of me that I was as awed of her as she was of me.

     "Well, now, whom have we here?" I managed to ask.

     "Elizabeth," she said.

     "Elizabeth, you sure a pretty girl! You remind Santa of a young actress named Natalie Wood, whom I played opposite in Miracle On 34th Street. Have you seen that one?"

     "Yes, sir," she said. "They colorized it," she added, dutifully.

     "Did they?" I said, shocked. I jiggled my knee a little bit, to help her get started. "Now, why don't you tell Santa Claus what you want for Christmas?"

     Elizabeth gestured vaguely with one slender hand. "Oh, I don't know, Santa. I don't really need anything..."

     "Surely there is something," I coaxed. "Do you want a doll, or a toy, maybe? Didn't you see anything in this huge department store you liked?"

     "Well," she said, looking down at her hands. "I would like some woolen mittens. Please."

     I took her hands. They were freezing.

     "Cold hands, warm heart," I said.

     We made sure Elizabeth didn’t leave the Frederick & Nelson building without a pair of new wool mittens.

     When I barged into the apartment that night, the ghost of Butterfly Murphy was laying on the lounge, listening to Lou Reed. I was clutching three bulging shopping bags with one arm, and dragging a Douglas Fir with the other.

     "Ho! Ho! Ho!" I hollered. I spooked the spirit for once. She shot straight up in a horizontal position to the ceiling, then floated like a feather to the floor, when she realized what was happening.

     I dropped everything with a thud on the hardwood floor, and hurried across the room to the CD player. She was playing Magic and Loss, Lou Reed’s most depressing album. I dug around until I found what I was looking for: Bruce Springsteen singing, "Merry Christmas, Baby."

     While The Boss blared the carol, the spirit and I converged in the middle of the living room. We began pogoing like crazy.

     I was winded long before she was, of course. So I stopped and tore into the shopping bags. I pulled out boxes and boxes of brightly colored ornaments, tinsel, lights, gloriously giftwrapped gifts.

     "YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE BEST PART?" I shouted above a blaring saxophone. "I GOT IT ALL WITH MY EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT!"

     I was positively bubbling over with Christmas spirit, wasn’t I?

     We decked the halls all evening. As usual, Murf wanted to blink it all in place, but I convinced her it would be more fun to do it ourselves. My apartment needed decorating desperately. I hoped it would help boost the fallen angel’s spirits.

     I certainly didn’t object when Murf produced the champagne and out-of-season strawberries (with whipped cream!) out of nowhere.

     "Roger, thank you!" the ghost of Butterfly Murphy said, softly, clinking the rim of her champagne glass against mine. Then she amused me by making herself invisible, so I could watch the goblet move through the air to her mouth, and the champagne swish through her digestive system.

     "You know, Murf, I really owe you a debt of gratitude. Even though my job doesn’t provide any upward mobility, it sure holds it’s share of excitement. I figure if I can be such a successful Santa Claus, I can succeed at anything!"

     "Plus, it will look so far out on your resume!" she added.

     Murf put a slow Patti Smith song on the stereo. Then she dimmed all the lights, so the room was only illuminated by colored bulbs and sparkling tinsel, and did a strange but beautiful ghost dance. It was unearthly, a sort of supernatural ballet. She could do anything with herself — float like a jellyfish, pass through furniture, fade or intensify her form, move at the speed of light, and so on.

     The next morning I went to work in a jovial mood. I had a short shift, ten to two. It was a Tuesday, the day before the day before Christmas. I was not expecting a cataclysm to occur.

     I saw six kids in a row who all asked for the same toy. I wondered if they had all been watching the same television program at the same time or something.

     Suddenly I had a peculiar sensation. I was accustomed to people staring at me in my Santa suit, but I had the eerie feeling that somebody was really staring at me.

     When up the steps of the platform walked Emily. Followed by her mother, Anna, my ex-girlfriend. With her ex-husband. Only, he was her husband again. Get the picture?

     Luckily, I was disguised as Santa Claus. While the toddler on my lap rattled off his long wish list, I peered out from behind my fake beard, bushy eyebrows, and wire rimmed glasses at the Stashia family.

     Anna was filling out a form for photos. She stared down at the clipboard with rigid attention. Somehow she did not look as glamorous as I remembered. Emily’s eyes were as big as pies. The eight year old was standing on one long leg, holding the other foot bend backwards in one hand. She was wearing a pretty green party dress, with petticoats. And my nemesis, Doug, looked dutifully distracted, like he’d rather be someplace else, but didn’t dare.

     I tried to picture myself in his shoes, but I could not. They had their life and I had mine. And I realized, just like that, I was finally over it.

     "Hello, Emily!" I exclaimed, hugging her. She hugged Santa back twice as hard. She smelled exactly the same as when I used to tuck her in bed at night. "Have you been a good girl, Emily?"

     She stretched her arms out and arched her neck back, to see my face better. "Aren’t I always?" she asked, with false modesty.

     After she told me all the presents she wanted (her father looked worried, like he was adding the costs in his head), we posed for a photograph. I held Emily on my lap a moment longer than I needed to, then I peered around behind her at Anna, and winked.

     "Why don’t we have Mom come up, and pose with us?" suggested Kris Kringle. "What do you say? Ho! Ho! Ho!"

     Anna blushed, but submitted to the picture. I had to assure her husband the additional portrait was free. I always wondered if, when she picked up the prints, Anna (or, better yet, her hubby) would eventually see it was me. As they were walking away, I heard Emily exclaim, "Do you know who Santa reminded me of, Mom? Roger!"

     Emily’s father frowned at his feet. Anna turned her head, and stared a second. But then the Christmas crowd gobbled them up, and I turned to my next guest.

     "Merry Christmas!" I hailed. "Have you been a good boy?"

     I couldn’t wait to get home that night. I wanted to tell Murf the whole story. As I changed clothes in the locker room, I made myself a New Year’s resolution: never date a woman who has been divorced from her husband for less than a year. Two years. Four, maybe!

     But when I got home, the ghost was gone.

Chapter Ten.

     The apartment seemed really empty without her. I couldn’t quite believe it at first. The attic was reverted back to it’s original crummy state, before Butterfly Murphy redecorated. There wasn’t a single sign of her anywhere. I checked all her usual haunts.

     It was quite a quandary. I couldn’t exactly file a missing person report with the police, or check the pound. There was always the possibility that I might have imagined the whole thing, awaken from a dream, or gone temporarily insane.

     Why would she leave without saying something? Was she coming back? I spent the evening in a stupor. How I had looked forward to sharing the events of the day before the day before Christmas with the ghost of Butterfly Murphy. I didn’t even have the heart to turn on the Christmas tree lights that night.

     In the middle of the night I turned on the lamp beside my bed, and went over to the dresser. The top of the bureau was where I emptied my pockets at the end of each day. There was a pile of pennies, a string of beads, my favorite pen, a brown billfold — the usual guy stuff. I was relieved to also see the Pez dispenser, the one with the Hillary Clinton head.

     I held it aloft like a guiding light, and snapped back the First Lady’s head with a quivering thumb.

     The Pez dispenser was out of candy. Nothing happened.

     I tried once more. Nothing.

     I padded sadly back to bed.

     I dreamt I was riding the escalator in the Frederick & Nelson department store wearing my Santa suit, waving my huge gloved hands at a sea of smiling shoppers.

     Then up the opposite escalator glided the ghost of Butterfly Murphy. I turned around, and tried to pursue her upstairs. But both the bulky boots and the advancing steps worked against me, and I ended up just running in place.

     When the ghost reached the top of the moving stairway, she lifted up and floated toward the ceiling. The spirit ascended through the atrium skylight, and vanished into thin air.

     The next day I made lots of kids happy. The last shopping day before Christmas was wall-to-wall consumers. I got hoarse from ho-ho-hoeing!

     My mirth was a result of seeing so many packed, panicked people engaged in a frantic frenzy of last minute shopping. While the kiddos fidgeted in the long, winding line waiting to see St. Nick, their parents were pushing and shoving and practically punching each other over important last minute purchases. I paid particular attention to how tired, drained in fact, the poor parents appeared.

     Of course, upper management sent Debbie down there with a stop watch and a pocket calculator. She recorded turnaround rates and sales statistics in preparation of the next stockholder’s meeting.

     The crowd started thinning out around four, and by five-thirty Betty and Veronica and I stood in line to turn in our costumes. Veronica turned around and saw me standing there, holding Santa’s red uniform in my outstretched arms.

     "What are you going to do now, Roger?" she asked.

     "I guess I’ll go on a diet," I replied. But I knew wherever I went, I’d be sure to take a bit of my stint as Santa with me.

     Betty tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Roger, would you like to come over and have Christmas dinner with Barney and me?" Barney was her boyfriend.

     "No, thank you, Betty," I said. "I’ve made other Christmas plans."

     Christmas Day I went to a bargain matinee. I saw Edward Scissorhands again. It is really an excellent movie.

     After the movie I came home, picked up a screwdriver, and added another improvement to the toaster I was assembling. I carried it into the living room and worked on the coffee table, because I liked seeing the Christmas tree lights reflected in its shiny stainless steel parts. For some reason, I put on Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii soundtrack.

     Don’t worry. I was doing all right.

     Months passed.

     I decided I liked living alone. It was fun, in fact.

     I dated, but I didn’t get all gooky about it, like that other time.

     I still hadn’t found a good job. What I was looking for was... well, I didn’t exactly know. One night I lay in bed until two in the morning, worrying about it. Finally I decided to get up and have a piece of cinnamon toast.

     By that time I had my toaster completely finished. The glass sided toaster glowed effervescently as I approached it in the dark kitchen. That is because I equipped the appliance with heat seeking sensors, that triggered a welcoming glow when you walked up to it.

     I fed a piece of bread in the wide slot in front, that sucked in the slice as smoothly as a bank machine takes a card. It was so slick I slipped in a second slice, just to watch it again.

     That’s when the ghost of Westinghouse appeared.

     "Aaaeeeeiiiiiii!" I cried.

     He was a gray ghost. His hair was gray. His suit and overcoat were gray. His skin was even gray. In addition, he had bare feet.

     "Roger," the ghost cautioned me, "get a grip on yourself."

     I knew it was a real ghost. I could see right through him. And his voice echoed.

     "I am the ghost of Westinghouse," he announced.

     "Oh, great!" I replied, recovering slightly.

     Just then, the toaster signaled it was finished by blinking. It had a special panel for programming a variety of reminders, such as a simple ding, the ever popular buzz, spoken announcements (in twelve languages), or a rooster crowing. The toast popped out of the slots on top with enough momentum to plop onto a tin tray that swiveled silently in place. The tray turned sideways, so the toast would stay warm from the heat rising out of the slots. The same mechanism folded up like landing gear when not in use.

     Of course, I hardly noticed what the toaster was doing. The presence of a gray ghost in the middle of my kitchen was more interesting. I wondered what the ghost of Westinghouse wanted with me.

     "Would you like some coffee?" I suggested.

     Over our second cup of Java, the ghost asked, "Why don’t you patent your invention? You could call it the Davenport."

     "You know, up until this moment I hadn’t thought that," I replied, pleasantly surprised.

     "That’s why I’m here," George Westinghouse’s ghost explained. "I even have an advertising slogan you can use: ‘PUT A DAVENPORT IN YOUR KITCHEN!’"

     I laughed. Little did I realize how prophetic his proposal would prove.

     That’s right. I would one day soon be a toaster tycoon.

     Before he disappeared, I begged the ghost to tell me about Murf.

     "Have you seen her?" I asked.

     "Sure. She’s fine," spoke the spirit.

     "Did she get into Heaven? Is Butterfly Murphy an angel, with wings, and a halo?"

     "I’m afraid that is classified information," the ghost of Westinghouse informed me. "You know how it is," he apologized.

     "Sure," I said to the thin air.

     The next day I traveled to the top of the Space Needle so I could watch the spectacle of Seattle spinning past while I summed everything up.

     Life goes on, I guess. Sandwiches still taste good. I still get a kick out of playing old Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen albums real loud. I know it’s dumb, but I still get a lot of inspiration from rock and roll song lyrics.

     At least I got my singing voice back. As for the ghost of Butterfly Murphy, I never did see her again, or even ever figure out if I just imagined her in the first place.

     Up on the observation deck of the Space Needle, I started singing a song, an old chestnut, actually — the Fleetwood’s "Come Softly To Me." Maybe you know it.

     It’s kind of funny. Whenever I hear that song, I imagine myself singing the "Dom dom dom du dom’s", and Murf supplying the chorus. Every time I sing it, or hear it in my head, it’s like her sweet voice joins in. We do a little duet. I swear she is there.