Fiction: Ghost

By Devin Rogan

Ten days into quitting smoking Ted began to suspect he had been lied to by all the self-help literature and not just the ones about smoking. He felt they had all lied because there was no feasible way anybody could, given the stressors of modern life, make any changes. He had a newfound empathy for anyone who dealt with any problem in which others gently, then frustratedly,suggested lifestyle changes. He hypothesized quickly and reductively we should all give up and lie down in bed and never leave. 

He had begun this attempt to quit after moving to Los Angeles from Charleston. In Charleston people still smoked and accepted certain risks in their lives. As it turned out nobody in Los Angeles smoked anymore and everyone calculated how to optimize their bodies and brains to be perfectly functioning. It seemed to be the only way to have enough energy to do what an adult human is expected to do without deteriorating rapidly.

He unconsciously reached for a cigarette in the passenger seat of his car five times during his morning drive. Once more than yesterday. During his commute to work he was most tempted to smoke- followed by his commute from work. His job was as a personal assistant to a woman of about sixty who was a semi-retired Italian painter named Maria Bertolucci-Lyndon . Maria still started paintings but rarely finished them. She referenced having a creative block she developed since her illness began. Occasionally she would read a book about someone who worked through physical limitation, for example Matisse, but also Helen Keller, etc. She would have renewed vigor for a week but then slide back into depression. Ted liked the job most when she was feeling sick because she would be in a good mood. Paradoxically, wellness made her exacting and impatient. Sickness seemed to signal life could not be rushed. 

Ted had hoped to work in film and in Charleston had made many short films which screened at small festivals. He figured eventually one would lead to a big break- which it didn’t. He then learned you only get major film jobs by knowing the right people. There was no mechanism for true greatness to organically lead to success. You just had to be in L.A.

He parked the car in her driveway, careful this time to not scratch the bottom of his car on the massive yet semi-camouflaged marble art-piece that protruded from the ground in the middle of the driveway. He opened his trunk to retrieve the multiple bags of supplements he had purchased from a combination of general supplement stores, dubious holistic healers, and vague spiritual centers one day earlier.

He rang the doorbell and was let into the house by another assistant, Tamara, who had started working for Maria two years before him. She began as an assistant for the painting process but since then had become just a general assistant.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he replied, “how is she today?”

“She seems physically bad but not horrible. She’s in a good mood” she said.

The house was huge and Ted had no idea how to use adjectives specific enough to describe it’s qualities. It belonged to a different class of person as did any descriptors. He located her in the study, which had gradually become less centered around the artistic process and become an all-purpose area for dysfunction.

 “Hello love,” Maria said without looking up from her desk. She was inspecting a painting she had completed at some point before he began working there.

“Good morning,” Ted said.

“I know I look crazy, I am looking at this color. What color is this?” she asked.

 

Ted inspected the painting which, at his level of visual art expertise, appeared to be various random brush strokes.

“Green,” he said.

“Green,” she laughed at this. 

“What?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s green. But it looks somehow decayed from the last time I saw it.”

“Oh,” Ted said, “maybe.”

She got up and opened the cabinet and refrigerator she had installed in her study that contained both bottles of supplements kept at room temperature and bottles kept cold.

Ted began unloading the supplements into the proper sections.

“Did you get ashwagandha? The good one,” she asked.

“Yes,” Ted said.

“The good one. The one from Body-Mind, or Mind-Body I don’t remember.”

“Yes.”

“Good, okay, I am tired.”

It would be a good day when she said she was tired because Ted would have less work to do. She would most likely just talkand sleep.

“My energy goes like this,” she gestured up and down.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You know how I got sick?” she asked.

“You said from the divorce,” he said.

“Yes, but now I think, you know, before with parent stuff.”

“Oh,” Ted responded.

“Yes, I think that is what I read- the parents are to blame,” she continued ,“I’m going to sleep now. Unpack the rest and wait for me please.”

She laid down on a couch in a small room adjacent the study that was primarily for napping after being in the study. Ted finished putting everything away. At this point there were multiples of every supplement- far more than she could possibly need or use within a year or maybe two. Every time she sent him for a new supplement she also repurchased numerous others she already had. He wasn’t sure if it was because of her memory or if she just liked hoarding them. He noted this time, while putting away the supplements, that she had purchased a homeopathic remedy that he recognized vaguely from somewhere. 

He googled the name and found multiple articles about how it is toxic and was featured in a documentary about a cult. Hemade a note to tell her about this when she woke up.

Tamara was across the hall in another bedroom making another bed and he hesitated briefly before taking the bottle and showing it to her.

“Hey, very random, did you see the documentary mini-series the Cult Queen?” he asked.

“I think so- with the woman from Arizona?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Ted said, “isn’t this what she was taking? The dangerous stuff?” he showed her the bottle.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Should I warn her?” he asked.

“Yes but you know,” Tamara said.

“What?”

“She’ll still take it,” she said.

 

Ted pondered how he could convince her to not take it. She would likely be stubborn and fight him on it- and he could not show her any evidence that she would not label medical propaganda and discount.

“Ted,” Maria called, “Ted I’m awake.”

Ted went back to the room adjacent the study.

“We need to call Patricia about the retrospective, I can’t make it,” she said, “my energy is slipping. So quickly it goes.”

Later that evening Ted was at a night-class learning about financial analysis. He was writing a screenplay that involved a financial analyst and a model. One major piece of advise he had gotten about writing was that the script should involve people that could be cast with attractive actors. 

He was learning about “break-even points” when his phone rang. In this class it was a common occurrence for people’s phones to go off. People in Los Angeles were always waiting for phone calls. He stepped into the hall.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Hello?” a female voice said.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Hello?” the voice asked.

“Maria?” he asked.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?”

 

He hung up. 

The next day was his day off and he hung around the pool at his apartment complex. He had been living here for the entire duration of his stay and had assumed he would make friends but he never did. Being someone’s neighbor did not provide any basis for conversation it turned out. In other cities this may be the case- but not necessarily and decreasingly so. By the pool he worked on his screenplay very leisurely. The pace of his writing had slowed considerably the past few weeks. But it was important he worked to “make it.” 

A woman stepped out of the building into to the pool area with a displeased expression and walked up to him.

“Do you have a light?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” he said, he had kept lighters but not cigarettes.

“Thank God,” she said.

Someone in Los Angeles did smoke.

“Do you live in the building?” he asked, “I thought we weren’t allowed to smoke.”

“Yes,” she lit the cigarette, “thanks so much!”

She left.

At Maria’s the next day he was assisting her in a new art project- which was a collage that included a series of pictures of the male models from the 1970s next to articles about mysterious illnesses and Big Foot sightings. Maria said the project was about “the body” then, after a few minutes, changed it to “embodiment” and then back to “the body.” 

Now was as good a time as any.

“So I did look into one of the supplements you’re taking,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“I read it’s bad for you,” he said.

“Too much of anything is bad for you,” she said, “like sugar, and caffeine.”

“No but I think this one” he walked over to hold up the bottle, “is dangerous and has no proven health benefits.”

“Proven to who? Who proves?” she asked rhetorically.

“I just read its bad,” he said.

“I know what it says, I don’t believe everything that can be read,” she retorted.

Ted considered fighting back, but it would be pointless. They would go back and forth in circles about this. If he pushed too hard he would lose his job perhaps. He thought about if ethically he should fight harder- or if rationally he should let it go. He decided to let it go.

“How is writing?” she asked, she rarely did, but every so often she would ask- as if she just remembered.

“Good,” he said, “I’m almost done.

“The body,” she sighed, “is a stupid thing.”

Later that day he was back in the financial analysis class and he kept thinking about rent. He was running short on savings and Maria did not pay enough. He had signed the lease assuming things would turn out better- and they had not yet. 

The teacher was walking through how to calculate things using formulas- this was the portion that he probably didn’t need to know. He tried to remember if Moneyball the movie went in depth with statistics? Did it? Did they outsource the math? He didn’t remember. Moneyball had Brad Pitt who he recalled produced movies now. He imagined meeting Brad Pitt and he would play it cool so as to impress him.

 

The next day at Maria’s he asked Tamara if Maria had seemed worse in the past few days since taking the toxic supplement. He had read more on it and the short-term effects were bad and then just got worse.

“I don’t know,” Tamara said, “she’s crazy.”

“But does she seem more tired?” he asked.

“She’s always tired,” she said.

“But it may make her feel dizzy even,” he said.

“She likes being dizzy because she can do even less,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“You know what I mean” she said, “I’m sorry to be rude, but don’t be naïve.”

Maria was in her study, pondering an old painting again. The collage ostensibly was put away somewhere in a state of indeterminate incompletion. 

“All these works,” she smiled, “I don’t know if they are good.”

“If you bought this house with the profits they must be,” he countered.

“Yes usually I think that,” she said, “but then I think maybe not.”

“Did you take your supplements?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I must stay healthy, I forget many things but not that.”

At his apartment complex pool he tried to write more. He tried to add to the screenplay a character like Maria. She was the first person he encountered that was rich. His family was not rich. Although they were, comparatively, more well off than he was at the moment. He got distracted from writing to check his bank account on his phone which had a decreasing amount of money. He calculated he could perhaps make it a few more months. Maybe he could ask Maria for a raise. 

 

In the hallways of the apartment he heard noises that sounded like a wild party. He couldn’t write with that noise in the apartment so he turned on TV. He looked at a list of movies on his phone that he wanted to watch for inspiration. About 10% of the time he watched those but most of the time he watched whatever was new on streaming. While watching a TV show about someone who experiences the same day again and again with some variations, he began to think about his financial analysis class and if he should continue going. What if it would all be math from that point on?

Weeks went by, and Maria seemed to be in more or less the same health. At first this calmed him until he began thinking- what else was she taking? What if she was already so sick from it that this new one didn’t matter. The more he researched the ones he could remember the more he found supplements considered dubious or outright awful- either individually or in the combinations she was taking them. Could it be she was making herself sick with these? He began thinking he should call someone for professional help- perhaps psychiatric if this was the case.

He finally quit the financial analysis class but it was too late to get a refund. Instead he began writing down what Maria was taking and in what doses. She found this helpful and began paying him slightly more to keep track of this. She made decisions regarding medicine, he guessed, based upon some combination of self-published books and online sources. He knew because sometimes he had to purchase the books for her too. 

One time while shopping in the self-help section he noted books about finding one’s purpose in life and healing from toxicity. There were so many books and the number was increasing by the month. How could one sort through which ones were any good? He had read a few and assumed they were good. But how could anyone know for sure?

He still had not made any friends at the apartment complex he lived in and his work didn’t afford much interaction with others except for Maria and Tamara. He asked Tamara out for drinks once and she said she couldn’t, but then she did reschedule the next day.

“Do you also make art?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said, “I wanted to be her assistant because I was a great admirer. I still am actually,” she said.

“Is she considered a great artist?” he asked.

“I would say so,” she said, “she is known for paintings of herself and her ex-husband. It is a kind of commentary on domestic life- which was very cool 30 years ago.”

“What about the body?” he asked.

“What?” she asked.

“She said her new work is about the body,” he said.

“She’s just crazy,” she said, “but that’s okay. But it’s sad.But I guess sad things are okay.- you know- ultimately.”

A few more weeks elapsed. Maria stayed in poor health but then it got worse slowly but steadily. Eventually Ted had almost no days off even though she was mostly sleeping. She said she needed him more than ever. She would also forget to pay him sometimes. The script fell into the background of his mind. He also began to feel tired constantly.

One day Maria asked him if her son was coming over- and Ted had no idea what she was talking about. She cried the rest of the day.

 

He lasted in L.A. another eight months before returning to Charleston. Many people would consider it not a failure since rarely did anything happen without luck and luck was hard to come by. He received a phone call from Maria once to check inand during the call she seemed like she was drunk but she was very sweet. Then he heard nothing from her. A few years later while he was working in administration he received several calls from her in the span of 48 hours in which she left confused voicemail messages saying “hello? Hello? Hello?”

Devin Rogan is the author of a novel, Habit. He is from North Carolina. His poems have been published in various places online. In his spare time he researches the intersection of philosophy and psychology.