The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit Read Online Free Page A

fucking table and no one sits at my fucking table unless I fucking ask them to fucking sit at my fucking table.’ Not for the first time, either.”
    “They don’t fire him?”
    “Easier to let sleeping dogs lie.”
    There was a huge splash as someone belly-flopped into the deep end. She told me that the man’s name was Colin and that his wife was called Terri. Nikki said Colin wouldn’t allow Terri to talk with anyone. I made some remark about her being very pretty.
    “Well don’t let Colin catch you even so much as glancing in her direction.”
    “I won’t,” I said. “I never look at women I fancy.”
    “So how would they know you fancy them?”
    “I just don’t let them see me looking.”
    “What?” Nikki took off her sunglasses and stared at me hard. “You’re a strange boy.”
    “Well, yes.”
    THAT NIGHT THROUGH the thin plasterboard walls I heard someone snoring heartily on one side and someone grinding their teeth on the other side. From across the corridorcame the sound of athletic coital grunting, even though I’d been told that we were not allowed to “entertain” people in our rooms. Whoever was in there was getting a good entertainment. In the fitful snatches of sleep I did get, I dreamed unpleasant dreams. I woke in the night feeling that I should wash the sand off my hands.
    So I was awake on my second full day at six in the morning. I got dressed in my whites and went for a walk along the beach. The sun was already up and throbbing as I crunched the pebbles underfoot. I got breakfast in the staff canteen as soon as it opened, and since it was still way too early, I went into the theater with a paperback book in my pocket, planning to relax on one of the plush velvet seats while waiting for the others to roll in for work.
    I went round the back of the theater, through the stage door. It was a place where smokers went outside for a tab between stage calls, and it led into the wings. You could squeeze between the scenery boards—theater people call them “flats”—on the stage and from there get down into the auditorium. But before I went into the wings I stopped dead.
    I stopped because I heard a songbird.
    It was a woman singing from the stage. Her voice was soaring in the empty auditorium above an audience of empty seats. I recognized the piece. It was an old Dusty Springfield number and it seemed to me this voice could even outshine ol’ Dusters. No, it wasn’t my cup of tea—I was listening to the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix boldly going where no music had gone before—but I knew a good voice when I heard one. It filled the theater, swooped and fell androse again, a thrilling ghost; it nestled in every crevice and put a light between the shadows. I crept nearer, expecting to see one of the variety acts, someone I was yet to meet.
    The singer was moving across the stage with a mop and bucket. She wore white overalls. It was Terri.
    I stayed hidden between the painted flats, not wanting to announce myself because I thought if I did she might stop. Then again, so absorbed was she in her singing that I was sure even if I’d wandered onto the stage she wouldn’t have even noticed me.
    I heard the swinging doors open from the front of house. A voice that could only belong to Colin shouted, “You finished that yet?”
    The song stopped. “Nearly done, darlin’.”
    “Get a move on. I wanna be out of here before those fuckers come.”
    Her bucket clanked and I heard a few more swishes of the mop before she crossed the stage and took the steps down to the auditorium. Only when I let go a big sigh did I realize I’d been holding my breath. From the shadows I watched her sway up the aisle carrying the heavy bucket. She disappeared through the swinging doors. I moved onto the stage and peered out at the rows of dark seats, thinking about the voice I’d just heard.
    When my co-workers came in I could hardly wait to mention it. Pinky arrived first. He always had that cigar