Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt Page B

too, but it’s really you, Harry, she is now eager to speak with,”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know,”
    “I met a ghost this morning,”
    “A ghost?”
    “My neighbor’s dead husband, an older gentleman, he has been dead for years,”
    “But now he’s not,”
    “Well, I suppose technically, of course, he still is,”
    “I see, yes, not so terribly odd in and of itself, but I’ll let my employer know, it might be related,”
    “To what?”
    “I don’t know, in fact, I have no idea,” having said this, Ireneo swept a long finger across his forehead, simultaneously removing a fat bead of sweat that had been threatening to fall at any moment and adjusting the placement of an errant lock of damp black hair,
    “Look, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Harry, “Why are you running in place?”
    “That’s a long story too, but I can stop any time I want, in case you are wondering,”
    “No, I wasn’t wondering that,”
    “Well, I can, but that’s not important, what is important is that you accompany me tonight,”
    “I’d be delighted to,”
    “Excellent, I’ll come and collect you here,”
    “What if we meet at the café again, that will give me a chance to get the submarine back where it belongs,”
    “I’ll look for you there, just after sunset,”
    “Fine,” Harry said, then watched as Ireneo not only jogged off at a brisk pace, but looked down at his feet as he did so and said, “Shut up,” only to come to a dead halt a few paces later, pull off his shoes, throw them against the side of a flower kiosk, start off down the boulevard, barefoot this time, then reappear a moment later, somewhat sheepishly grab up the shoes, and wave at Harry—who felt a little bad for having played witness to such a perplexing sequence of events, and pretended to be looking elsewhere—then put them on and ran off again, clearly muttering to himself, giving, in other words, every indication that he was undergoing some sort of psychotic episode, and while it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Harry’s attitude at watching Ireneo charge noisily off was identical to the one that had struck him earlier in the presence of the Rubinskis, the overlap was enough to make him wince a little at the thought of returning to the state he had been in before Ireneo had appeared and, a moment later, actually clap his hands and give a little jump when he realized that Solange was standing on the other side of the boulevard smiling at him.

I t took Solange a moment to register that the inter twining of pleasure and concern that she felt dancing across her face as she watched Harry was
actually
dancing across her face, in a kind of variable speed tango, rather than remaining just below its painted surface, and then a moment longer to remember that as she had sat in her apartment applying her silver makeup earlier she had been overcome with an urge to twist and contort her face, to make it do, as she had said to herself, things it hadn’t done in a long time, which hadn’t meant very much to her then as she had made faces at herself in the mirror, but seemed to have more than a little resonance now, as Harry came quickly across the boulevard toward her and the tango stopped as concern bowed and stepped aside, abandoning the floor to pleasure, which did a pirouette and splits, and she felt her face breaking into an outrageous grin, the kind she had once been capable of achieving at a moment’s notice but that had vanished with her young man and gold face paint, and Harry, looking at the grin that had come out to greet him thought, if I ran fast enough and dove I could end up inside that smile and wouldn’t we both be surprised, but Harry didn’t speed up and dive, in fact he slowed down a little as he approached and the smile that lit his face grew softer as he approached, and for a fraction of a second Solange thought, without quite knowing why,
We’re both climbing, but in opposite directions,
and then Harry was standing