Ghosts and Other Lovers Read Free Page A

aren't really scary because they can't do anything to you, and I know now that anyone who says that ghosts aren't scary has never met a ghost. I knew she couldn't hurt me, I knew Jane wasn't even dead, and still the prospect of ever encountering her ghost again was just about more than I could bear. I was so grateful that I wasn't the one she haunted, that I could get away.
    David wouldn't listen when I tried to tell him the truth, so I made various excuses. We argued, I was accused of selfishness and of not caring for him, but there was no way I was going to give in. Whether he believed it or not, I was afraid to spend the night in his flat. As a result of my stubbornness and his, we spent fewer and fewer nights together at all.
    We were drifting apart. In my concentration on Jane I failed to see that she posed no threat. I had imagined that when he found fault with me David was comparing me unfavorably with her, and that when he was forgetful or melancholy he must be missing her. It came as a very great shock to discover that he had betrayed me with another woman, and that woman was not Jane.
    Her name was Vanessa. He was guilty but defensive: he'd felt unloved, I seemed so uninterested, I must be seeing someone else, the way I always made excuses not to spend the night with him.
    At that point, Jane was so far out of the picture for him that I knew he would believe in neither my ghost nor my jealousy. The existence of a new woman aroused what his talk of Jane had originally stirred back in China. I can't say that I fell in love with him again, because I no longer think I'd ever fallen in love with him, but something in my heart or my imagination moved again, and I wanted him fiercely.
    He wanted me, too, although not quite enough to drop Vanessa flat. For the next few weeks London became like China, a foreign backdrop to our internal drama. We sat for long hours in cafés and restaurants I'd not seen before nor been in since, drinking endless cups of tea and rolling cigarettes for each other while we bared our souls. We were closer than we'd ever been, desperate not to lose each other.
    No longer frightened of Jane, no longer in danger of seeing her ghost, I spent every night in his flat, even staying there by myself that endless evening when he went out to meet Vanessa for the last time. I was there, waiting for him, when he came back and cried in my arms. We drank Vodka and orange until we fell over.
    The next two weeks were curiously flat. It was supposed to be a time of healing, and we were especially kind to each other, devising little treats. Yet we couldn't go on spending quite so much time together as we had been; we both had our work, which we had let slide recently. Love could not be our whole existence, which was a relief.
    Things went on feeling flat, and I began to feel sour and impatient and angry with David. I knew it wasn't fair. I'd got what I wanted. Vanessa and Jane had been vanquished. He loved me the best. I had no more reason to be jealous. I also had no more reason for wanting him.
    We dragged on together for a few more months. It was a hard thing to realize, harder still to confess. It was easier just to let things go on, and to think up excuses to avoid seeing him when I could. Finally I realized how absurd it was, and how unfair to both of us, and I broke things off.
    It was more difficult, more painful, and much more protracted than that sounds. David took it much harder than I expected. I don't know whether that was egotism on my part, expecting his feelings to mirror mine, or whether it was a fatal lack of ego, that self-denigrating certainty that no one could really love me all that much. At any rate, his response, his hurt astonishment, his pain, his tears, took me completely by surprise. I had hoped I could just stop seeing him, but he let me know how cruel that was, and I had to agree to the occasional evening together, the meeting in some neutral London pub or café for "a quick drink,"