It was kind of disturbing, to tell the truth. For a moment, my mind flashed on the possibility that he might be a spirit, but then I realized everyone else on the jobsite saw him, too. But I supposed that the life of the mind might make a person seem like he was living on a different plane.
“It’s nice to meet you again,” I said, holding out my hand to shake. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to talk on Saturday. I get so busy on jobsites, and it was a little overwhelming with all those volunteers. I didn’t get the opportunity to speak with everyone one-on-one.”
He nodded in acknowledgment but gazed down at my hand as if he wasn’t sure how to respond. Back when I was an anthropologist, I learned to be careful about approaching people from different cultures. It was easy to offend someone entirely by accident by pressing one’s customs upon them. But Hubert looked at me as though I were presenting him with a fistful of fermented fish heads.
Which actually happened to me once. But even then I wasn’t as rude as he.
After a moment, I let my hand fall. We were still standing awkwardly in the doorway.
“Could I come in and sit down?” I suggested. “You wanted to talk about redoing your house?”
“Yes, yes, I did.” He turned around and wandered into the apartment. “I couldn’t believe when Simone told me you, the house captain for the Neighbors Together project right next door to my house, were named ‘California’s most promising up-and-coming ghost buster.’ She read it in Haunted Home Quarterly.”
I closed the door and trailed him down a book-lined hall and around the corner, which opened onto a room that served as an office. The place reminded me of an upscale version of Monty’s front room, everything lined with bookshelves, though these were neatly arranged and only a single book deep. Nice to know there were still booklovers in the world.
In the center of what must have officially been the living room sat a utilitarian beige office desk paired with a standard-issue desk chair. And on the desk sat a pad of heavy stock paper—the expensive kind—and half a dozen new, sharpened number-two pencils. A black mesh wastepaper basket sat by the desk, and a series of framed photographs sat on the table in an arc. What looked like a vintage eight-millimeter camera sat on a tripod in one corner. A huge fresh floral arrangement sat in a crystal vase on a marble-topped display table.
That was it. No computer. No stacks of papers. No Post-it notes, crumpled papers, or pencil holder in which half the pens were dried up, like on my crammed desk in Turner Construction’s home office. And no dust. Anywhere. On the contrary, it smelled of lemon polish and scented candles and lilies.
It was a shrine to poetry.
Hubert took a seat behind the desk, placed his hands palm-down on the laminate wood top, and stared at me.
I haven’t known a lot of poets in my time. Nothing beyond the high school boys who thought their words were deep and mournful, rather than just simplistic rhymes. I still didn’t really get poetry. What made one set of sentences great, while others were just silly or self-indulgent?
But this guy was a poet laureate. That counted for something. That counted for a lot.
Also, he had lived through the events at the Murder House, so my heart went out to him.
And far too late, I wondered whether Ray had been right—was the woman we found in fact Linda, Hubert’s sister? And if so, had her brother been informed?
“Hubert, I—”
“Please, call me Hugh. Everyone does.”
“Great. Hugh. And call me Mel—I never use my full name, either.”
He continued to stare. So much for bonding over nicknames. It was a weak attempt, I knew, but I wasn’t sure we had much else in common.
“How are you?”
He looked at me for a long time, in what I was coming to know as his patented stare.
“How am I . . . ,” he repeated, not in question form. His affect remained as flat as the hands still on the desk in front of him. He turned his head to look out the window, which displayed a view of the building across the street. “How are any of us?”
I had no response to that. I was beginning to think that, poet laureate or no, this guy was a little bit off his rocker. Or perhaps a certain detachment from reality was what it took to be a great artist. If I were talking to Vincent van Gogh under similar circumstances, I imagined the conversation might be a bit stilted as well.
Suddenly, Hugh looked at me straight on, intensity in his eyes.
“I want to talk to you about renovating the house. You know the house?”
“Um, the place next to Monty’s, right? That’s the one you’re talking about?”
“You know what happened in that house?”