The effects of her relatively sleepless night were alleviated by the coffee and her construction worker-style breakfast, or so Elizabeth thought until Miss Price took her chin between her thumb and forefinger and critically scrutinized her face.
Miss Price said, "I want you to run up to the coffee shop and pick up two more pounds of Ethiopian. And while you're there, eat a sandwich, something with a lot of protein. I don't want you fading out over the computer. We need to get the first lot of that mailing out by the end of the week."
Outside Elizabeth found a stiff breeze whipping the fallen leaves into dervishes that wrapped around her feet and blew up under her coat. The wind stood at her back as she walked up the block to the coffee shop and pulled her hair out in front of her face so that she saw the street from behind a waving curtain. By the time she reached the shop, her cheeks were flushed red from the cold and she felt wide awake for the first time that day.
Inside, the counter was hidden behind a mass of wool coats in cheerful reds and greens. The weather was unusually cold for late October, and the crowd of waiting customers stamped their feet and shifted from side to side for warmth, then parted to make way for a barista with a tray of sandwiches and coffee. The heavenly smells of coffee, chocolate, and toasting bagels overwhelmed Elizabeth and she stared numbly at the chalkboard menu with her mouth watering.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Elizabeth?"
She tore her eyes away from the menu and looked up to see Trip smiling down at her. She smiled back. "Hi."
They made small talk while they waited in line and placed their orders. While Elizabeth fumbled in her purse for her wallet and the cash Miss Price had given her to pay for the coffee, Trip paid for both their orders and countered her protests with an invitation to join him for lunch. With Miss Price's coffee in a shopping bag, Elizabeth followed him upstairs to a snug dining room where they hung their coats over the backs of their chairs and sat down.
Elizabeth was delighted at the prospect of a normal conversation, concerning neither pranks with footwear, nor hairsplitting about the differences between spirits and ghosts. Trip turned out to be quite a talker and she didn't even have to hold up her end of the conversation, which was good because she was not quite up for serious coherence. She sipped at her latte and nodded, silently admiring the way his body dropped from broad shoulders to narrow hips, while making encouraging noises as he told her a few details of his latest case, with the names changed to protect the innocent, he said with a laugh.
She was charmed and seemed to charm him in return by accidentally asking a few intelligent questions about copyright law. By the time her turkey sandwich was reduced to a scattering of crumbs in a napkin-lined basket and her latte had brought her caffeine levels back up, she had an invitation for dinner and the ballet on Friday night.
"They're doing Carmina Burana," he told her. "You know, that spooky music they play in every horror movie? Because of Halloween. I don't know what the ballet is going to be like. For all I know it's an adaptation of The Omen."
"I'm looking forward to finding out," she said dreamily.
Carrying the coffee for her, he walked back to the bookstore with her and wished her a pleasant afternoon. As he walked back up the street to his car, a red SUV pulled up in front of the shoe store and Marla climbed out of the passenger-side door. Her arms were filled with grocery bags and one of them split, spilling her purchases onto the sidewalk.
Trip stopped to help her and they exchanged a few words over a frozen chicken. When Marla saw Elizabeth watching, her lip curled and she said something that made Trip laugh. Elizabeth flounced into the bookstore.
Tired from too little sleep, a full day of work, and more unpacking, Elizabeth sprawled on her back in the middle of her rug. Someone was playing the piano downstairs, a gentle Beethoven sonata which slowly unknotted the muscles in her back. She supposed it was Penrose, although the unearthly episode of the previous night seemed very distant, remembered more as a dream than as an actual occurrence. Maybe the music was from one of the housemates' stereos.
Her books were finally stowed away except for two boxes of her high school favorites that she couldn't bring herself to put out where anyone could see them. Those boxes were out in the hall awaiting transport to a storage location, the attic or a dry room in the basement. Her clothes were arranged in the dresser and wardrobe (the house did not have any closets in the bedrooms), and her CD collection was stacked on the windowsill beside her miniscule stereo. By this point she was as settled in as she was going to get and she decided to reward herself with checking her e-mail and then going to bed.
She rolled over and scanned the baseboards for a phone jack. She didn't have a phone in her room and now she knew why. She got up on all fours and crawled under the bed. No phone jack there either, only dust. She would have to take her laptop downstairs or to Alice's room. She knew Alice would not consider living without a telephone within arm's reach at all times.
Slinging the strap of her laptop case over her shoulder, she wandered down the hall to her sister's room and knocked lightly on the open door as she walked in. "Can I use your phone jack? I want to get my e-mail."
Alice was nestled in a mountain of pillows on a four poster bed with her own laptop on her lap. "Dial-up? That is so last millennium. We have wireless in this house, babe." She waved a hand at the vanity where two plastic boxes, one with a pair of antennas and both with glowing LEDs, sat amid a forest of cosmetics bottles. "You do have a wi-fi card, don't you?"
Elizabeth stared at the router and DSL modem. "When did you get so high tech?"
"I went to Tech, remember? I may not have been an engineering student, but I could hardly escape dating them. Anyway, I had to get broadband for home after I quit my last job where we had a T1 line. Dial-up was just too slow for surfing. I can waste time much more efficiently with DSL. Check this out." She turned her laptop towards our sister and Elizabeth walked over to look.
Alice explained, "I've been redoing the entire look of my blog, I got bored of how I had it. I can't decide between these two new layouts. Tell me what you think." She toggled between two different windows. One page was feminine, with a pink title bar and a frilly border down one side. Menu buttons were tucked into the eyelets of the digital lace. Alice had included a photograph of herself in a Victorian costume. The other design had a sleek, leafy border and a photograph of the house. Both were entitled "Tales of the River City".
Elizabeth saw her name in one of the entries and leaned closer to read.
Alice helpfully read aloud. "Dear Diary, my twin sister moved to back to town three days ago, and already she's dating the creep next door. She doesn't look like a retard, but looks can be deceiving. She's been living in New Jersey, so you would think that she might have developed a taste for Guidos with IROCs and gold chains, but instead she picked a boring lawyer with a Beemer."
"Shut up, Alice. I'm not dating him, he asked me on a date. Besides, what's wrong with him?"
"First of all, he was actually engaged to a Japanese chick named Sumi. A lawyer's wife named 'sue me'? Get it? He didn't. And Mom likes him. That's reason enough for me to run screaming in the other direction. You should've seen her. On the one time she and Dad actually came over, Trip happened to be hanging around outside waxing his car. I thought I was going to have to run and get a drool bucket to stick under her chin."
"Are you really planning to associate with Trip Martin? Voluntarily?" Looking very not like a figment of her imagination, Penrose lounged nonchalantly against the doorjamb. "He is an unpleasant person. I have seen his rooms and they are no place for a young lady. I suggest you keep to well lit, public places while you are in his company."
"So which do you think? The girly one or the house one?"
Elizabeth turned her head back to her sister, who was looking at her strangely. "Not the girly one. It's too frilly. I like the other design better," she said.
Penrose wandered into the room. With his toe he prodded a tumbled pile of magazines, mostly Vogue and Allure with a few copies of Wired mixed in, and surveyed the shoes and empty shopping bags littering the floor. Discarded clothing, including the Victorian-era dress Alice had worn for her blog photo, was draped over every piece of furniture and a wreath of satin bras decorated a chair, beneath which rested a heavily boned corset. Alice was not in the habit of putting her things away.
He asked, "Are you two identical or fraternal twins? Your sister is such a slob that, if you are equally so, every room in the house shall soon be buried in piles of shoes and underthings."
"Identical," she answered before she could stop herself.
Alice didn't notice the apparent non-sequitur. She was tapping with frustration on her keyboard. "The system has totally locked up. This happen sometimes, it's so weird."
Over on the vanity, the router beeped and the LEDs on both devices blinked rapidly.
"Computers," Penrose said as if it were a swearword. "They can't handle the slightest perturbation in the ether." He walked back to the doorway.
The LEDs stopped blinking and Alice breathed a sigh of relief. "It's okay now," she said, raking her hair back from her face and re-forming her ponytail. "These intermittent errors are so weird, I can't figure out what causes them. I should've gotten an iBook."
"Who drank my cranberry juice?" Brandishing an empty glass jar, Dirk walked into the room. Penrose vanished from his spot in the doorway as Dirk walked through him. "This thing was full yesterday and I haven't had any. And whoever drank it all put the jar in the trash instead of the recycling," he complained.
Alice and Elizabeth both denied consuming any cranberry juice, but this only annoyed Dirk more. "Who did, then? Bob doesn't drink cranberry juice."
"Maybe you drank it yourself and forgot," said Alice.
"I think if I drank an entire gallon of cranberry juice in one day, I would remember." Dirk waxed sarcastic. "And what about my jacket?"
"I took it to the cleaners this morning. They said they could get it done by tomorrow, so I'll pick it up tomorrow evening and you'll have it back, good as new," said Alice.
Dirk demanded, "Why didn't you go to the place with same day service?"
"What has gotten into you? It's not like you don't have twenty other jackets to wear."
Elizabeth sidled out past Dirk and went to hide in her bedroom. She booted up her computer and started downloading her e-mail, which she hadn't checked in over two weeks because she had been so busy with moving.
The progress bar stretched slowly across its field and then seemed to stop. Assuming the software was choking on a graphics-heavy piece of spam, she tried to cancel the operation and check the mail on the web interface, but the machine did not respond.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," said a voice from over her shoulder. Penrose walked away to the far end of the room.
The progress bar resumed and when the operation was finished, he returned. He was carrying several sheets of paper and a ball-point pen. "May I trouble you for a stamp?" he asked.
"Who are you writing to? Spirits Anonymous?"
"You are quite the wit, aren't you?" He flopped down on the chaise lounge and looked at her with mocking disfavor. "Since I know you are short of sleep, I'll overlook that remark. But to answer your first nosy question, as it may have some import for you, I am writing to the trust that manages the house."
"Not about raising the rent or anything?" In her frantic mind's eye, she scrolled through her meager checkbook. It would be two weeks before she could do any addition, and her new salary wouldn't stretch to cover much more in the way of living expenses.
"Oh, no. It seems that someone is trying to mount a title challenge to the property and some papers need to be signed. Have no fear about the rent, I prefer that it be kept low so that I can have the widest possible choice of tenants."
"If this is your house, then why do you have to rent out rooms at all?"
"An unoccupied house would get broken into and vandalized, and living alone for years on end gets dull."
"Even if you can't talk with the tenants?"
"Even so. Watching the human drama unfold is sometimes better than complete solitude."
"Only sometimes?" She smiled.
"Well, yes. I've seen people make the same foolish mistakes, century after century, and I can't do anything to stop them. I have learned to let nature take its course. Every so often, however, someone surprises me by making intelligent decisions."
"Are you going to warn me off Trip again?" Now she was suspicious.
He laughed. "Oh no, I wouldn't dream of it. You wouldn't listen anyway, so I won't waste your time by warning you further. You might want to remember what I said about well lit, public places, however."
"He's taking me to the ballet. Is that public enough?"
"Certainly, but I'll wager that he parks in a dark alley."
"If I give you that stamp, you'll go away, right?"
"Of course." As she fetched a book of stamps from the vanity drawer, he signed the papers with a flourish and folded them into an envelope which he handed to her. "Would you mind sealing this? And I would be most appreciative if you could put it in the mail tomorrow."
Too tired even to muster the slightest curiosity about the papers, Elizabeth sealed and stamped the envelope, then tucked it into her handbag. Penrose bid her sweet dreams and walked out through the wall.