Joshua Malbin307 12

St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 112151

Ghost StoryThe ghost showed up the very first night. Levin had gotten a good deal on the house becauseof her, so he wasn’t surprised. He didn’t usually try to get deals on things; he was Jewish and hatedplaying into stereotypes. But a house was such a big deal, and this one had been such a good one,that he put that aside and made the offer, even though he was quite sure that the Gentile real estateagent with her plastic bracelets and wood-bead earrings was mentally classifying him.The ghost was young, or, rather, she was the ghost of a young woman. She sat on one of hiscardboard boxes and looked down at Levin, whose mattress lay on the floor. He owned a bedframe, but he’d been too tired to assemble it today.She didn’t look at all ghostly. She looked like an ordinary young woman of around 28 or 30,pretty but not beautiful. She wore jeans and a white t-shirt, and her hair was done in acontemporary cut. He knew she’d been around a long time, but apparently she’d kept up withfashion.“Do you know who Justin Timberlake is dating now?” she said.Levin pushed himself up and sat back against the wall. “No,” he said.She looked at him a long moment.“I could go online and find out, but I haven’t unpacked my computer yet,” he said. He wasn’tthinking clearly, his head was woolly. Why on earth would he say that?

Joshua Malbin307 12

St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 112152

She crossed her legs man-style, one ankle on the other knee.“I heard you drove other people out,” Levin said. “Are you going to do that to me?”“That depends,” she said.“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t,” Levin said.She shrugged. “No kidding.”Levin tucked his sheets around his hips. He slept naked, and hadn’t thought it would botherhim to have a ghost see him. But it did.She dropped her feet to the floor and leaned forward to get a better look at him. “Are youJewish? You look Jewish.”The problem with having a ghost, he learned, was not that she was scary. Even if she'd tried tobe, he’d already decided not to be scared of her anyway. It was that living with her meant havingto live with an incredibly annoying roommate, one who was always around, never had anything todo, and was more intrusive than anyone Levin had ever met. She went through everything heowned while he was away at work, and then peppered him with questions when he got home.“Why do you have half a bottle of antibiotics?”“How old were you when you underlined all these passages in Tropic of Cancer?”“Just how old is this box of condoms anyway?”“Why on earth would you subscribe to Maxim? There’s not a single article in this thing over300 words.”Conversely, she wouldn’t answer a single question about herself. She already knew all that

Joshua Malbin307 12

St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 112153

stuff, she said, and it was boring.“Maybe it’s interesting to me,” he said once. “I’m curious.”“I don’t have to entertain you,” she said.And when he asked her how she’d died or why she was still hanging around, she actually gotangry, and threatened to wake him up all night every night if he didn’t leave her alone.In spite of all that—and in spite of the fact that she left the peanut butter lid face down in thekitchen sink, germing it, and answered the phone rudely and took no messages, not even from hismother (who wanted to know who that girl was he was living with, and to whom he now had to lie,because naturally she didn’t believe in ghosts)—he found himself, after about a month, coming tolike her. Even more than that, even. He developed a crush on her. He looked at her over thebreakfast table and wanted to stroke her shoulder; he woke up in the middle of the night becauseshe was watching him and wanted to pull her down onto his bed.He didn’t, of course. For one thing he was intimidated, the way he usually was when he wasattracted to a woman, especially when she’d given no sign she was even a little attracted to him.For another he thought maybe liking her made him a bad person. She was nothing but annoying,how could he feel this way? Was it that he liked her endless fascination with him? That she waitedfor him to come home? That this way he didn’t have to risk himself with a living woman?He went for a walk one weekend in the streamside park near his house and saw couple aftercouple. He could have his share of love if he wanted it. It was just that it would take work.Handsome or funny or brilliant men had love given to them and could enjoy it the way only a gift