LITMIR.BIZ

      A light mist broke up the heat of the night, dampened my raincoat, and moistened my face like a spritz of lavender water at a fancy seaside resort. I walked upright, chin leading the way, maximizing surface area to catch the most water possible. The accumulated runoff dribbled down in waterfalls off my cheeks and ponded at my collar. A trickle ran over my lips, into my mouth.

      A car approached me from behind, slowed, then sped up. When it drew even, the car hit a puddle of water and its oily sheen splashed over me.

      The fact of the matter: I was not a ghost. How could I say that? Because I perceived the water and grit and oil stuck to me? Because I could feel the pinpricks of water in the air, splattering and adhering to my skin? A ghost has no need for such perceptions. A ghost is only the vaporous manifestation of spirit, of pure energy.

      I had no energy, too little to matter. And I was all too real, concretely heavy. My body was old and tired, my mind undisciplined and muddled. This condition likely contributed to my inaction regarding the wife of the missing husband. The realization that I didn’t have the courage to see her in a coma, her life slipping away, filled me with a great sadness. Of regret too, because I hadn’t tried to find her before. She was not yet a ghost, I felt sure, but she might become one soon.

      The son might already be a ghost. He was certainly ethereal—he had no substance I had seen. The more I investigated, the fainter grew his history and trace. I was running out of strategies. My chief should be notified so he could take me off the case. I didn’t want to waste the fortuneteller’s money.

      The thought made me hurry to the apartment building where the son was supposed to live. When I got to the apartment door I listened but heard nothing. I felt along the doorframe expecting the cold wisp of a ghost to slip out. It was chilly, yes, but the draft had the dry, artificial feel of air conditioning. Of course, a ghost wouldn’t need air conditioning.

      I rapped on the door with a wet knuckle. When no one answered, I knocked again. I grasped the door handle and pushed down. With a satisfying click the door opened.

      “Hello?” I called out when I entered the apartment. I closed the door and locked it behind me. The apartment was as cold and dry as an upscale department store, the whir of the air conditioning the only sound. There was a light coming from a room, the back bedroom I assumed. The light was a flickering, bluish glare of a television but no audio. I went further inside the apartment, calling out once again, louder.

      I turned the corner. A television placed on a nightstand was indeed turned on but no one was in the bedroom to watch it. I touched the volume control and the audio came on. Immediately I muted the sound and watched the images of the late night variety show until I managed to avert my attention. There was a single bed with a spray of wrinkles on the top cover, as if someone had been lying on it. When touched, the spot was not warm.

      A small desk was the only other piece of furniture in the bedroom. On top of the desk was a tall pile of books of varied subjects: anatomy texts, field guides, dictionaries, travel books. A small closet built into the wall held only a couple pairs of jeans, three or four shirts, and a sweatshirt. I walked out of the bedroom. The bathroom was clean, nothing on the sink countertop except a bottle of liquid soap and a small hand towel. In the main room of the apartment, two upholstered chairs were gathered around a small table as if huddled in a serious conversation. On the table were a couple of unfolded paper fans, the cheap kind you get as free gifts from a department store. In the kitchen the few dishes were clean and put away neatly on the shelves. There was no perishable food, just odds and ends—soy sauce, ketchup, a few cans of beer, a three-quarters full bottle of whiskey, some oil and mirin, a bag of rice, packages of dried noodles. Not an unexpected pantry for a bachelor who traveled extensively.

      The most space in the small apartment was taken up by a drafting table that extended across the entire length of one wall. Attached to the sides were two movable lamps, one on either end. I turned one of them on. On the table were three coffee mugs—one full of pencils, one of pens, and one of colored markers. A few sheets of paper were in two piles, one blank, one of sketches annotated with scrawled shorthand notes. Most of the insects in the sketches I recognized, at least generally, such as beetles, ants, butterflies, and moths. However, some were strange, alien creatures. There were also sketches of buildings, or rather parts of buildings, like a doorway, or an outside corner where two walls came together. I also noted a few sketches of people standing in a street. But the perspective was odd, as if drawn from above. Some of the sketches were details—an ear and shoulder, a hand and a leg. A quick search through all of the sketches revealed no dates or other information written on them.

      At least these were concrete signs of existence, proof that the son, the freelance illustrator, had existed at some point. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, but how long had it been this way? Could it have been for the three years he was supposed to have been dead? No, it was too clean for that—no layer of dust, no dead roaches or flies. Surely the television would have burned out by now, or not. Who knows how long a television lasts.

      All in all, the investigation could not have taken a more frustrating turn. The apartment yielded nothing in the end to help, and the fortuneteller’s look of horror when asked if her son was a ghost appeared fresh in my mind. As an investigator I was failing miserably. Simply by doing my job, I was digging a hole and finding nothing. My investigation was like looking at cellular life through a powerful microscope: tiny strings of protein making up cells flitting here and there, seemingly without mission, moving with total randomness. How can the chaos, milked of all meaning, create a life? My own life now seemed a pitched fall into a black hole. I was being torn into twos and threes, not parts but wholes, each looking askance, in disgust, at the others.

      Then the door opened. A young woman blithely entered the apartment and stopped when she saw me standing frozen like a witless old ram.

      “Did you get caught in the rain?” she asked me. “You’re soaked.”