Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story by Sarah M. Glover Page B

imagined herself as Ilsa in Casablanca , wearing a to-die-for hat, standing on that foggy runway. She would go to graduate school like her parents wanted, become a professor, and meet her own Victor Laszlow, a man she could admire. They would grow to love each other and one day live in a fine house like the ones on this block. She would teach, and if she were lucky, she would become a dean. It would be so very respectable. So very dependable. So very miserable.
    Shaking herself out of her future, she walked up the cracked walkway to her new home. It was a testament to her mental state that she had allowed Zoey to talk her into renting this house sight unseen. She could only imagine what the house looked like in the dark with its turrets and wrought iron. Yet there was a grand desolation to the place that she instantly loved—a great Miss Havisham of a house. All it needed was some “speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies” around a wedding cake.
    Knowing that their unit was the one on the top floor, Emily wearily hoisted her bag over her shoulder, entered the house, and made the first of what she guessed to be many slogs up the steep staircase. Zoey had explained the house in such painstaking detail that Emily felt she knew what lay on the other side of the door. Her fingers twitched while handling the keys, and she imagined the dining room’s original wainscoting, the large, sunny kitchen, the back garden, and the much raved about conservatory on the third floor.
    When she entered the apartment, she knew Zoey had been right. A large window seat would be perfect in the front room—because it would block the gutted holes in the wall. The sunlight was indeed lovely and swirled in through the trees, all the better to bathe the exposed joist planks on the floor in rainbows of light. And the ceilings were high, but she was sure she was probably looking at the underside of the floor above her.
    Zoey and Margot shouted to her from what turned out to be the kitchen that she eventually reached after running the gauntlet of ladders, toolboxes, PVC pipe, and several men in white overalls who sat on the floor drinking coffee. There she found her roommates unloading boxes that rested on the top of a newly-installed island in the middle of the room. Its presence was a blessing given that Emily could see no other visible horizontal surface to eat upon in the place.
    Zoey beamed, white dust covering her UC Banana Slug sweatshirt, her hair held back like an old Russian woman’s in a patchwork kerchief. “So you like it? Was I right about the light? And no more art in the bathroom, although there isn’t much of a bathroom yet. But Sid—he’s around here somewhere—said he’d have the toilet working by this afternoon, and the shower works if you force the hot water on all the way first.”
    “Or say a novena to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes,” added Margot, whose black leggings and sweater were approaching mottled from all the dust. “Speaking of which, in ten minutes I’ll be laying out my shrine over the fireplace. You presence is requested. New apartment, new shrine. I’m adding my Joan of Arc action figure to this one—she comes with her own matches.” She waggled her eyebrows in anticipatory delight.
    Emily smiled, left her friends behind, and wandered down the hall. Old gas sconces lined the walls; she let her fingers trail along the rough plaster as she passed several rooms which already housed her friends’ moving boxes. A door at the far end was closed. Her bedroom, she supposed. If not, she was going to claim it. The room was set off from the others, and the thought of such privacy made her lightheaded.
    The door opened softly. A blush of light fell over the hardwood floor from a large sun-spattered arched window. One wall was nothing but floor-to-ceiling bookcases while the other held an old desk with wrought iron legs and a flip top of some dark wood. She stepped toward it and ran her fingers along the