“This is an intervention.” Your girlfriend smiles, but it’s tight and nervous and you finally realize why she said ‘must like ghosts’ in her dating profile all those years ago. You moved in together for the first time the week before the Pandemic really hit and it has been going pretty well, or as well as expected. Until now.
Now you get it.
“And she…?” You look at the floating mug hanging ominously over your girlfriend’s left shoulder.
“She wants us to get vaccinated.” Your girlfriend grimaces, “and yes, I explained how the tiered system works and that we can’t until it’s our turn.”
“So…?” You glance at the wall that has “COWARDS” scrawled across it in your girlfriend’s favorite lipstick. This is probably the first time her lipstick has been out of the drawer since last year.
“She wants us to break into CVS. Steal some vaccines.” Your girlfriend is truly apologetic. Like your new pushy roommate is her fault.
The mug behind her lifts and tilts, like a sip was taken.
You look over at the kitchen, where every knife is embedded in a different wall or ceiling. There’s one stuck point down in the linoleum. There’re two in the door to the pantry. If you hadn’t seen your girlfriend do it herself like some kind of zombie you wouldn’t believe she had the arm strength.
“It’s not cowardly to not want to break into a CVS and demand vaccines.” You are talking to a floating mug, but that’s actually not the weirdest thing you’ve ever done. So. There’s that. “Also,” you play it cool, ”there’s two rounds of vaccine. So we’d have to do that twice and they’d be more ready for us the second time.”
The pipes rattle and the bedroom door shrieks as it slams. You raise your arms to gesticulate your disapproval.
“She says try a different CVS for the second dose.” Your girlfriend’s smile has gone gooey and soft, warm like her adorable cheeks and her bright eyes. She looks at you like you raised the moon just for her.
The lights flicker.
“Do some cocaine?” Finally your girlfriend turns to look skeptically over her shoulder at the mug-ghost. “How will cocaine help us?”
The lights flicker again, harder. A door across the house slams. Your cat bursts awake, puffy and startled, then glares in your girlfriend’s direction and curls up again.
“Cocaine does not exorcize viruses,” your girlfriend almost laughs. “Here, we can watch Guns, Germs and Steel. You’ll get it.”
The air is full of ozone and your socks snap with static against the carpet.
“She died of Spanish Flu,” your girlfriend explains, as patient as she always is. You finally understand how she can be so patient with you when your own family can’t. “So she’s very pro-vaccine.”
“Well we don’t have to exorcize her then,” you grant graciously.
In the bathroom your toiletries rattle, but nothing falls in the toilet.
You take it as a compliment.
The mug sets itself on the coffee table and your girlfriend’s lipstick lifts itself off the carpet and caps itself before drifting back to the bathroom.
“She says we can revisit this later,” your girlfriend gets off the couch and comes over to you on the loveseat, throwing a leg over your lap to get comfortable. “Thanks for not being weird about this.”
“Hey, you said I had to like ghosts, and this ghost isn’t a grody anti-vaxxer, so we’re good.”
“At least she’s not physically in my body anymore,” your girlfriend kisses your forehead, smooths your frown away. “If we get an anti-vaxxer ghost we can send it straight to hell.”
“That’s my girl,” you give her butt an affectionate pat.
Across the room, your grandmother’s Virgin Mary on the wall rattles ominously at you. You don’t need your girlfriend to translate that one, and you give her butt another pat just to make a point.
The Virgin Mary turns itself around so she won’t watch you fornicating.
Your girlfriend starts laughing.