LILY
The next morning, I was doing some breakfast-time nephew watching at my sister’s apartment so that she could enjoy her coffee, get rid of her grays, and generally have a baby-free morning to herself. While my nephew crawled around on the television room rug, I attempted to knit a hat for him—the fifteenth time had to be a charm—but no matter how many purls and knits I tried to string together, I found that I still couldn’t shake my thoughts of Gabe, the Possibly Broken-Nosed Hunk.
Even with the marked facial swelling, he’d been positively dreamy. I really and truly did feel awful for almost knocking him unconscious with the mic stand. That sort of thing wasn’t my style at all. When it came to men, I preferred to reject them by slowly failing to reply to their text messages. I preferred to go out with a fizzle rather than a bang. But he was so sexy, I found myself thinking less about fizzling and a whole lot more about . . . banging. Because that face. That jawline. Those shoulders. My goodness.
He was tall, dark, handsome, and also strangely familiar. But I couldn’t place the face. Maybe he had one of those faces, I thought, as I tried to remember if I was supposed to be purling or knitting. Rugged stubble, cheekbones. One of those faces that really belonged on television. I refocused on my needles. Was that a purl? Did I even really know how to purl? Or . . . “Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered at my yarn as I ripped out a row.
My nephew planted his hands on the pink shag carpeting and dragged his knees along, occasionally off-gassing with the effort of this newfound mode of transportation. He made my heart ache with love. I was more than his auntie, really; after his dad left my sister, I’d stepped in as sort of auntie/father/all-purpose-coparent. His birth father was named Boris—a suspiciously dashing Russian photographer who’d done a midnight flit back to Mother Russia on an airline that nobody had ever heard of, never to be heard from again. But to his credit, he’d left behind the most fabulous little boy on the planet. He was named Ivan. After the czar.
Obviously.
Though I hated my sister’s ex, I loved the stuffing out of Ivan. Sometimes I even raised my sweet tea and said a secret nazdarovia to Boris as a thank-you.
Ivan toppled onto his side by the sofa and found a dusty Cheerio by the sofa leg. My standards about floor foods were not up to snuff, as per my sister. She adhered almost militantly to the five-second rule and insisted everything get rinsed off. I wasn’t so particular. As long as it was identifiable and hadn’t been left unrefrigerated for a dangerous amount of time, it seemed safe enough. And anyway, what was I going to do, pry the Cheerio out of his chubby, sticky, wet little hands?
That wasn’t how I earned my #1 Auntie hoodie. No, it was not.
He looked up at me and slowly moved his drooly hand toward his drooly mouth. For a second, he paused and watched me for my verdict. I too paused with the tip of my needle about to drop a stitch. Or move a stitch, or . . . Maybe I should take up origami. “Go for it, little bean,” I whispered and then ripped out another row of too-tight stitches.
It was then that my phone rang, making a grating grr-grr-grr on the kitchen table. I set down my knitting and bolted for it. Maybe it was Gabe, or maybe it was someone calling to hire me for a job. Either way, I wasn’t about to let it go to voice mail. On the screen was a number I didn’t recognize with an unfamiliar out-of-town area code. I hit the answer button and put my phone to my ear. “Sounds Good. This is Lily.”
“I’m looking for Lily!” hollered a nasally voice on the other end of the line. It sounded a bit like my dentist, except for the heavy breathing.
“Speaking. Yes. Hello. This is Lily Jameson.”
“My name is Mark Markowitz. I’m the producer for a show called The Powers of Suggestion. Ever heard of it?”
I almost didn’t think I’d heard him right. A producer. A show. As in . . . a television show? Holy moly. Move over, hourly bingo gigs! “I . . . I don’t think so?” Actually, I knew so. In the last few months, my watching diet consisted almost entirely of cartoons for Ivan and YouTube tutorials from women who knew how to knit and who talked reassuringly like I could learn too. Bless their sweet angel lying hearts. “How can I help you, Mr. Markowitz?”
“Investigating weird shit in far-flung places,” Mr. Markowitz said, like he hadn’t even heard my question. “Half survivalist, half legend hunter. Ring any bells?”
I was still a no on that. But even though it didn’t ring my bell, it would definitely ring my sister’s. Daisy was the queen of Unsolved Mysteries and whatever that ghost show was that was comprised entirely of badly lit and low-budget reenactments, all filmed on the same set, regardless of the episode. As if we wouldn’t notice that every scene had an identical sofa! “Not my cup of tea, exactly. Though it sounds very exciting!”
A rrrrrrrr sound caught my attention, and I turned to Ivan. He’d gotten a hold of his hat and was now gleefully pulling it apart—yarn flew in every direction. He made small kaa-kaa-kaaaaa noises and banged my knitting needles against the coffee table.
“I’ve got a problem, Ms. Jameson. I need your help. Filming starts on the show this evening, down in your city of Savannah. Normally, we shoestring it. My guy is hell-bent on being a one-man deal. But this time, we’re going to need legit audio. We’re doing ghosts, and we can’t be doing it half-assed, you feel me?”
“I’m with you so far,” I told him as I pried one of my needles out of Ivan’s hand.
“You believe in ghosts, Ms. Jameson?”
The question was hardly unexpected. Being from Savannah meant that everybody believed you automatically checked two boxes. One: a deep and undying passion for sweet tea.
A check so hard and enthusiastic it would’ve ripped right through the survey.
And two: believing in ghosts.
I still had my pencil hovering over that box.
I wasn’t sure if I believed or if I didn’t. It was one of those mysterious things. Like Jesus. Or Buddha. Or a totally mistake-free home manicure. Just because I hadn’t seen them didn’t mean they didn’t exist. And even if I had had a reason to be skeptical, I had the very serious disadvantage of eight generations of Jamesons from Savannah, gathering around the dining table, looking at old photos and wondering if that flash on the mirror was Great-Aunt Velma or if those strange sounds from the radiator were actually Grandpa Frank trying to communicate with Morse code.
In Savannah, everything was said to be haunted. And I mean everything. Churches built in the 1800s. The Outback Steakhouse built in 1999. Some old lady’s root cellar. The boys’ locker room at my high school. The bank teller’s station wagon. Everything. All I could say for certain was that the closest I’d ever gotten to a ghost was when I’d cut eye holes in a dish towel and put it over Ivan’s head. “That’s a bit complicated. I don’t really believe, but that doesn’t mean that—”
“Probably for the best! Can’t have our audio technician getting the yips, can we?”
If I’d known what the yips were, that would have helped. But I got the gist. “I’d be delighted to do whatever I can.”
“Tremendous. I’d like to hire you to record some sound in a house over on, lemme find the street . . .” Some papers rustled around on the other end of the line. “Abercrombie. Abraham. Corncob . . .”
“Abercorn?”
“That’s the spot! Three o’clock today!”
I spun around to check the clock on my sister’s oven. It was almost nine in the morning. But business wasn’t exactly booming these days. The next gig I had was next Saturday evening at the Universalist church, and they paid me in pasta salad. And yet, I didn’t want to seem too eager. If there was one thing I’d learned as a small business owner, it was that gasping Oh thank God! didn’t exactly bring the clients flocking. “Let me see, hang on one second . . .” I meandered around the kitchen, twirling on the tiles on my tiptoes and then straightening my sister’s shopping list on the fridge. I put some bottles on the drying rack and wiped something sticky off the counter and then tried to get it off my finger. “Umm, let’s . . . oh, you know, you’re in luck! I just had this afternoon open up!”
Ivan tossed my yarn aside and pulled himself up alongside the coffee table. He smacked the tabletop with his hand, making na-na-na noises as he drummed on the magazines. I hustled over to help him before he made a mess of my sister’s People magazine. Hell hath no fury like Daisy when she found a photo of Jamie Dornan ripped in half. “I’ll be there. Thank you!”
“Fab. Bring your equipment. I’ll pay you double your rate to help my guy film his pilot. Just the one episode. One and done. How’s that suit you?”
What I said, in my head, was, Double. My. Rate? But I played it cool and calm and small-businessy. “That’ll be fine, Mr. Markowitz. I really appreciate your generosity. I can promise that the audio will be—”
Ivan smacked the remote, and the television turned on with a staticky click. And there, staring back at me from my sister’s television screen, was a man who looked an awful lot like Gabe.
He was shirtless. His skin was dewy with sweat, tanned and delicious. He was in a jungle, gesturing at something behind him. The camera bobbled as he turned to look over his shoulder, revealing a dark and sexy tattoo on his back. He held the camera out farther from his body, and I saw a row of muscular, rock-solid abs and a broad and rippling chest. Then he smiled.
And I gasped.
It was him. Even in the half-light last night, I’d seen that smile. I’d never forget that smile.
Though the volume was down low, it was just loud enough for me to hear him say, “I start our search for the mysterious Zambian swamp creature, known as the ‘boat breaker’ or the kongamato, right now on . . .”
An opening montage filled the screen, accompanied by a theme song that was manly and heavy on the electric guitar riffs. On the screen flashed Gabe, talking to the camera, in his swim trunks. There was Gabe, running through the snow, the snowflakes accentuating the salt and pepper in his sideburns. Gabe, eating something that looked like a roasted quail next to a campfire. There was Gabe bailing out a canoe in the dark. The image faded to black; the music kicked up a notch. Then there it was. Confirmation. He didn’t just look like he belonged on television. He was actually on television.
THE POWERS OF SUGGESTION
WITH GABE POWERS
“Mr. Markowitz.” I stared at the screen. How was I going to work with that man? I could barely keep the drool inside my mouth. Gabe leaped off a dock into a pristine African lake, and I bit my knuckle. He resurfaced, sparkling with water and beaming. “I think we might have a problem . . .” I gaped at the rather spectacular bulge in his swim trunks. “A big problem.”
“Three p.m., Ms. Jameson! Corner of Abercorn and Hull!”