"Do I know you?" he asked, tossing the covers over his exposed toes.
The ghost's face - a rusted mask of some Romanesque warrior - was jammed onto a stick-figure body; a primitive drawing one would expect from a kindergarten class. Yet it had more in common with modern art than with Casper the friendly or Marley's Christmas Past and rather than float, it seemed to stumble as though the knees were in need of some fresh grease. It made its way over to the velvet settee under the window and sunk dejectedly into the seat. Its voice, an octave more piercing than his late wife's, was punctuated by the sound of metal grinding on metal. "Should you know me?"
Izzy shrugged. "I always thought that was standard."
"Who told you there are rules for this?"
"Well, it helps if you knew the ghost from before."
The ghost leaned forward in the seat, a movement though fluid, that sounded as though a gear hadn't meshed correctly. "Do you think there are people who would want to come back to haunt you for some reason?"
"Hmmm..." Izzy scratched behind his ear. "I never liked Mrs. Sanderson in 3B." He smiled. "Neither did Pookie."
"Pookie?"
Izzy nodded toward the empty side of the bed, the last pillow Bubbie had slept on, the one he could still catch a little whiff of her perfume from if the humidity in the room was just right. "Her dog."
The racket of ball bearings, hundreds of them, falling on a steel plate, came from the spirit ahead of its words; Izzy took it for laughter, as the ghost rocked back and forth in the seat. "You had a dog named Pookie?"
"It was hers," he grumbled.
"But you went along with the name, didn't you?"
"So?"

He'd never really liked the squeaky little dog and it, apparently from the scar on his right hand, had felt the same about Izzy. Bubbie had bought it from a breeder in New Jersey several weeks before they moved to Florida nineteen years ago. She fed it, bathed it, and took responsibility for its medical care, often shuttling the dog to the emergency veterinary clinic in the middle of the night when it took ill. Izzy, however, was responsible for walking the annoying pest and picking up its droppings per the edicts of their community board.

He and the dog did share a common distaste for the obnoxious widow at the end of the hallway, brought on by her chasing both of them with a raised newspaper when she caught Pookie relieving himself on her doormat one Sunday morning. Izzy cried alone in the bathroom rather than let Bubbie see his true feelings on the day she came home from the vet without him.

The ghost looked around the room and pointed with the rod that made up the end of its right arm. "You pick out the lavender curtains and the maroon chest of drawers?"
"What are you, a dead interior decorator?" Izzy strained, trying to focus on his sarcastic visitor's face. "You're not that Shepard fellow that sold her on the pink cabinets in the kitchen, are you?"
The ghost shook its head. "I haven't seen the kitchen yet."

The re-do of the kitchen had been the last battle they'd fought, just eighteen months before Bubbie's heart had clocked out after seventy-two years of service. He wanted wood and she insisted on formica. The stained wood fronts they finally agreed on were a color their decorator, some poof recommended by one of her friends, called "Spring Cherry." Izzy referred to it as "pussy pink" but only when she was not around. The job ran over budget and forced the cancellation of a Mediterranean cruise he'd plotted in celebration of their fifty-second anniversary. Bubbie heckled him endlessly about it when the news reported an illness that sickened two-thirds of the passengers on the ship they had been scheduled to sail on.

Izzy urged his legs out from under the covers and brought himself up to sit on the edge of the bed facing the ghost. "Maybe you'd like a cup of tea."
The ghost folded its arms across the stick that made up its body. "I was hoping for a filet mignon. Can you cook?"
"Not anymore," he lied to the ghost, "but we ate good when she was alive."

Bubbie had been the chef throughout their marriage, even manning the outdoor grill when they still lived up north. His job was to stock the cabinets and fill the refrigerator, although she often criticized his choice of fresh vegetables and fruits as she perused the supermarket receipt. He cared less about price than quality, she insisted on waiting until the produce went on sale. The few meals he was proficient at preparing involved bread, lunchmeat, and condiments, although he could whip up a decent batch of pancakes by following the recipe on the box and he was the undisputed master of the ice cream sundae.

Pushing itself up from the chair, the spirit rumbled across the bedroom and stood in front of Izzy. For a moment, the head seemed to detach from the stick body as it leaned in close to him. "From the bulge in your pajama top, it looks like you're still eating pretty good."
"And you were the poster child for anorexia?" Izzy reached out to touch the ghost, but it folded in the middle with the crumpling squeal of aluminum foil and moved just out of his grasp.
"I have an excuse."
Izzy cocked his head to one side. "Being dead makes you skinny?"

As the air conditioning clicked on, a gust of cold air blew a tissue that had been on the bedpost across the room and into the bathroom through the open door. The ghost came around the bed and followed the floating debris. A grinding of metal trailed it as though on a seven-second radio delay. Izzy watched the ghost shuttle towards the door and then snapped his head around again to follow the sound, thinking that perhaps a second ghost had materialized in the room.

"Are you expecting company?" the ghost called from the darkened bathroom.
"No." Coming out of the bed quickly, Izzy grabbed for his bathrobe, dangling from the bedpost where he always left it, despite Bubbie's chastising, and slipped it on. He shuffled over to the bathroom door and clicked on the light.
"Then why two toothbrushes?"
Izzy stopped in the doorway, staring at the ghost, who was now seated on the toilet with the lid down. "The green one is, I mean was... was..." He choked on the words and held onto the door frame as the breath left him for a moment and he began to feel dizzy. "I've been meaning to get rid of it but..." He paused and looked up at the ceiling as though the right answer was written there. "It was Bubbie's." Nodding toward the toilet, Izzy waved toward the door. "I need to use that."
The ghost sighed and hobbled over to the bathtub. "Go ahead."
"Not with you in here."
"Did you ever pee with her in here?"
Izzy thought about it for a second, gathering the breath to fight off the dizzy spell, a technique he'd become quite adept at recently. "No," he admitted, "we always left the bathroom if one of us had to go."
"Ever use the men's room at a restaurant or a movie theater when there were other people in there with you?"
"Of course." Izzy held his hand out, stopping the ghost from its rejoinder. "I know where you're going with this, but it's different when you're at home."
"Why's that?"
He looked at the ghost as though it were a small child asking the same question over and over in hope of a different answer. "It just is."
"I'll close my eyes."
Izzy shook his head. "No. Just go wait in the bedroom. I won't be long."
"Going to brush your teeth?"
"Not at three o'clock in the morning."
The ghost marched out the door, clanking once as it brushed against the frame. "Use the green one when you do, the red one is all worn out."

His late night visitor was lying on Bubbie's side of the bed when Izzy stepped out of the bathroom several minutes later. The sticks that served as the ghost's legs were just short of her pillow and its head was resting against the bedpost at the foot of the bed.
"Don't worry, I didn't touch her pillow."
"Get off the bed." Izzy's voice was tinged more with disgust than anger, yet the hint of a threat slipped out from his clenched teeth.
"Why?"
Izzy's balled fists blanched as hissed at the apparition, "Because you don't belong there, dammit!"
"You're killing me," the ghost rattled out a laugh," Oops, too late!" Rolling off the bed, it zigzagged toward the hallway, its gait resembling a man with crutches. "Come on. Let's see the rest of the place."
"Wait a minute!" Izzy shouted, but the ghost was already through the door. Tightening the cloth rope of his robe, he followed the inquisitive spirit, stopping to disarm the condo's alarm system from the touchpad just inside the bedroom. An odd gesture, he thought to himself, as it hadn't been much use in keeping this invader at bay.

From the bedroom, a short hallway - one closet with the water heater, two brooms, and a mop without a head, a second one opposite it still filled with boxes of her old clothes - opened onto the combination living room and dining room. Bubbie and he ate pizza on the glass table every Friday night and then watched a VHS tape of some movie taped off cable with a recorder that didn't even blink midnight these days.

Stuffed casually into the corner he and his wife always fought over, the ghost was punching numbers on the remote with no success. "It's dead?"
Izzy shook his head. "No, Bubbie said it was good exercise to get up and change channels by hand."
The ghost stretched its head toward the old Zenith. "Please tell me it's color and not black and white."
"Yes, it's color." Izzy rolled his eyes. "And the picture is just as good as those big ones in Walmart."
"I can just imagine."
Izzy switched glasses and walked over to turn on the set. There was a test pattern, in color, along with the standard squeal that accompanied it. He was going to change the channel but the ghost stopped him.
"Don't. That's my favorite program."
"Fine, I'll turn back to it in a minute." Izzy punched up the weather channel. "This one's mine."
"You could just open the curtains and look outside." The ghost clattered off the couch and walked over to the window. Sticking its head through the curtains without opening them, the ghost's body turned left and then right before the head popped back into the room. "It's nice outside this time of the night. Wanna go for a walk?"
"Dressed like this?" Izzy flipped the bathrobe's rope as though it were a small lasso.
The ghost looked down at his stick torso. "That's a good deal less revealing than this."
For a heartbeat, Izzy considered taking a walk with the undernourished Tin Man. He hadn't been for a walk with anyone but himself since Bubbie had died. He'd been meaning to talk to the widow who'd moved into the vacant apartment on the first floor, but his only opportunity had been the few times he'd been to Walmart where she was working as a greeter. "No." He shook his head. "I don't know who's awake at this hour of the morning, but I'd rather not be seen with a ghost."
"People would talk?"
"Wouldn't you?"
The ghost walked over the couch, picked up the remote, and handed it to him. "Get some batteries for this. I don't think you've got enough time to get back in shape with eight feet an hour." It turned toward the kitchen. "I want to see those cabinets."

The kitchen was immaculate, as it had always been when Bubbie was alive. The sink sparkled, having been scrubbed with Ajax after Izzy had washed his dinner plate earlier that evening. Even the trash can under the sink had a fresh bag, lest any rotting food disturb the smell of the pizza with extra garlic and anchovies, a previous treat that had now become one of the staples of Izzy's diet. In keeping with Bubbie's demands for order, he'd lined up the two cans of Parmesan cheese and put the mustard in front of them before closing the refrigerator; she was too short to see behind anything on the top shelf and so it stayed empty.

With his elbow to prevent fingerprints, one of her ten commandments, Izzy mashed the light switch, flooding the small galley kitchen with the glow of the recessed fluorescent bulbs. The ghost was circling the kitchen table, stuffed into the alcove between the living room and the pantry.
"You're keeping the table set for two?" It stopped and slumped into one of the vacant seats. "Please tell me you don't think she's coming back."
Izzy slid into his regular seat, aligning the woven placemat so that it was exactly parallel with the design in the table. "No," he yawned, "I know she's gone, but it just feels weird setting the table for one."
"How long has it been?"
Counting the months in his head, Izzy jammed his tongue into his cheek, as the sadness crept into his voice, "ten months, next Monday." He lowered his head and stared at the rough ridges of his knuckles, the tiny black hairs that she always said he should pluck and glue to replace the ones missing from his head.
"And you're still saving a place for her to eat dinner." The ghost sighed with the mournful drone a tin roof makes, just before a strong wind tears it loose. "Are you done living?"
Izzy's head snapped up and he almost shouted the word, "No!"
"Are you certain?" The ghost melted through the chair, clattering as it collapsed into a heap on the floor.
"Of course I'm certain." Izzy pushed back from the table, banging the chair against the wall behind him. "Don't you think she'd want me to go on?"
The ghost drew itself up and came face to face with Izzy. "I've never met her, how should I know?"
"She didn't send you here?"
"Not that I'm aware of." Falling back from him, the ghost tripped and came to rest in a reclining posture against the countertop.
"Then who did?"
"No one." It paused to watch a large drop of water finally pull itself free of the faucet and drop into the sink. "I'm just here and soon I'll be somewhere else."
Scratching an itch behind his left ear, Izzy narrowed his gaze and pointed at the ghost. "What are you, some traveling celestial shrink?"
Another screeching laugh burst from the metallic face, "Ha! A shrink. You know, I've never thought of it like that."
"So, you do this all the time?"
It nodded.
"And you know all about what's going to happen?"
"As much as I need to know."
Izzy stood and walked over to the ghost. "Then tell me, when will I be somewhere else?"
"Are you asking me when you'll die?"
"Do you know?"
The ghost shook its head. "No. But even if I did, I don't think I'd tell you."
"Is that fair?"
"It's not a question of fair. What would you do if you knew? Would you get reckless and try something stupid like skydiving if you knew you could do it without any fear of dying?" Leaning forward, the ghost pointed at him. "What if it was a long way off in the future and you didn't want to wait? Would you jump off a bridge and try to drown yourself? Sorry, but you can't tinker with your destiny like that."
Izzy's mouth fell open. "You know, don't you?"
"I already told you, no."
"Why should I believe you?" Izzy narrowed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. "She sent you here, didn't she?"
"Your wife?"
"No, stupid, the lady down the hall." He slapped the countertop. "Of course, I mean my wife. She sent you here to check up on me, right?"
The ghost became part of the countertop almost as though it were a cup of water poured onto the sand. It made a soft rasping sound that to Izzy sounded like the Formica was being cut in half. The ghost stopped before disappearing completely so that it was now just a head on stick with two arms stretched out to the sides. "Sorry, but I told you I never met the woman."
Izzy's voice began to crack. "Then w...w...why are you here?"

The head began a slow rotation, accompanied by the creaking an old car door makes from a lack of proper lubrication, nodding at various points in the kitchen. The ghost's voice took on the tone of a frustrated teacher, repeating a lesson to a student who just didn't seem to have the willpower to grasp the subject. "Look at this place. The table set for two, the dog's bowl, empty yet still stationed on the floor where it would expect to be found, faded yellow and pink curtains drawn tightly closed to keep out the sun and any hint of the world outside these walls." Snorting, the ghost's head came to a stop, facing Izzy. "How much of her is still in this house? How much of her are you still holding onto so tightly that you're no longer living your life and just remembering hers?"
"Now wait a minute," Izzy protested, but there was no life in his words.
"I'm done waiting," the ghost whispered, "I'm already dead."
Izzy felt the tears drip down his cheeks. "You don't understand."
"Yes I do, perhaps more than you'll ever realize." Sinking deeper in the countertop, the ghost's body vanished, leaving nothing but the head resting like a rusted hubcap. "You have to let her go."
"I don't... I can't..." Izzy searched for the words but found nothing, as his body shook from the effort and the pain of remembrance.
"She's not coming back."
"No," Izzy sobbed, "no, she's not."
In the instant before it disappeared into the counter, the ghost nodded toward the table. "Put one of those placemats away and get rid of her toothbrush."
Izzy looked at the table and nodded, wiping his eyes and taking a deep breath that he blew out before speaking. "But not her pillow."
There was a soft crumbling sound, a rusted gate turning to dust as it closed for the last time and with that, the ghost was gone.