Read Rock N Soul for Free Online Page B

time?”
    “No, more like . . .” He paused and tilted his head. “More like I won’t like where I go if I leave now.”
    “Oh.” There was a little bit of awkward silence while every hellfire and brimstone sermon I’d ever heard ran through my head. None of that seemed helpful, though, so I just sat there and let my head fall back to stare at the ceiling.
    After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. “So . . . if it’s not the ring . . . why you? Why you and not that girl?”
    “I have no idea, man. None.” I considered making up a story about séances or another arcane ritual, but I’m not really that good a bullshitter. “Maybe because I was the first one to touch the ring? Or because I was the one to find your body so there’s some sort of connection to your soul?”
    “I wonder if it really is just you,” he said, sounding a little lost in thought. “Maybe I could show myself to other people if I tried harder.”
    I shrugged. “You can try. But I’ve got to finish my shift. Richard will fire my ass for sure if I don’t. And even if he doesn’t, Malika will probably have me committed for my own safety unless I get out there and start acting normal again.”
    He gave me an extremely dubious look. “You’re going to go back to work after all this?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Bills don’t pay themselves, man. And also, you owe me a tip.”
    “I owe you a tip? For what?”
    “For bringing you room service and stiffing me on the gratuity,” I clarified.
    “. . . when did I stiff you on a gratuity? I’d never met you before tonight.” He blinked at me, his forehead wrinkled up. It was almost endearing, his confused face. Made him seem more like a real human being instead of an untouchable rock star.
    “About two months ago,” I said. “You ordered a steak, medium rare with a bleu-cheese crust, and a side of grapes. Grapes . And not just any grapes, but red seedless grapes. We had to run out and find some grocery store that was open in the middle of the night and sold red seedless grapes because we didn’t have any in stock. It was so weird, dude. I didn’t know heroin gave people weird pregnancy cravings, but whatever.”
    He stared at me, and I decided that it must not be possible to hear the gears turning in someone’s mind because if it was , I’d be hearing them now. But I saw the exact moment when he figured out what I meant.
    “I didn’t stiff you,” he said, his voice rising in volume with each word. “I was dead .”
    “Yeah, well, tell that to my cable bill.” I raised an eyebrow. “That was a hundred-dollar steak, man. Twenty percent of a hundred dollars is twenty bucks that I was counting on taking home.”
    “You’re so bad off that twenty bucks is the difference between paying your bills and not paying them?”
    “Zoe Saldana, man,” I said.
    “What? Oh.” He looked a little sheepish, to his credit. “Skewed sample again, I guess.”
    “Yeah. Welcome to the world of the working class.” I pushed myself up and off the bed. “Speaking of the working class, I have to get back to it.”
    He looked around. “What am I supposed to do?”
    “I don’t know.” I smoothed out the wrinkles in my bellboy jacket. “Didn’t you say you wanted to go haunt some people? Maybe you could do that. That would be fun for you.”
    “I guess I could,” he said. “All right, then. I suppose this is good-bye.”
    “Yeah.” I picked up the ring and put it in my pocket. “I’ll mail this to your manager and he can get it to whoever.”
    “Probably my sister,” Chris said. “Thanks again.”
    “Yeah, no problem.” I gave him a weird little salute and headed out of the room and down the hallway. Before I got to the elevator, though, I heard Chris speak from right behind me.
    “So . . . this is kind of unsettling.”
    I stopped and turned around to glare at him. “Why are you following me? Don’t you have people to haunt?”
    “Yeah, about that . . .” He shifted.