At first, I worried something had happened to him, that this was a sign from the Beyond, and so in the break room at the Stop & Shop I sat down at the computer and entered his name into all the search engines. I looked for accidents and news articles and obituaries and I found nothing to suggest he was anything other than alive.
The haunting started around Halloween, when the masks we stocked at the Stop & Shop made me think only of him. When there were no customers to check out, I walked the Halloween aisle and looked at all the monsters staring back. One night I stuffed a vampire mask into my coat pocket and took it home.
On the bus, I kept a hand on the rubber face twisted up in my pocket. I watched the people sitting low in their seats and leaning their heads against the windows, sick with exhaustion, giving in to it. Others passengers played their music so loud, lyrics spilled from headphones, into the open air, like they were trying to shock themselves awake with sound. I listened and sometimes I liked what I heard.
My favorites: Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Bowie, Ghostface Killah.
In my bathroom, I took a few capfuls of Robitussin and put the mask on. The skin was green, the eyebrows tiny black pyramids, the tips of the teeth red with blood. I tied a black sheet around my shoulders and in the mirror I watched the movement of the thing that was no longer a sheet but a cape. I bared my fangs at my own reflection. I stuck out a hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.”
When I was out on my own, I could have gone looking for Marcus, but I didn’t. I let the purple grow out of my hair, like a snake shedding its skin, and tried to forget. I told myself that I was used to impermanence, that attachments would get me exactly nowhere, but then some people stay with you in ways you don’t expect and you try to shake them out, shake them away, but your memory won’t let you.
In my apartment, I wore the mask and drank Robitussin all through winter.
In March, there was road construction. I had to take a different route, multiple buses. We passed an abandoned warehouse, the walls charred with weather and age, and I remembered the new construction I used to see through the bus window, the silver skeleton rising from the ground.
A string of teenagers on bikes, standing up on the pedals and leaning over the handlebars, calling to each other. How I admired the looseness in their posture, the freedom. In Chinatown, neon yellow signs with indecipherable red lettering and a restaurant with a fish tank in the window. Steam rose from the manholes. The bus growled behind a sluggish line of cars, in a gray swirl of exhaust.
Downtown I had to change buses. I was sitting up in my seat, my Stop & Shop apron folded in my lap, my nametag pinned to the neck string, when through the window I saw a man in a lion mask on a street corner. He was standing tall, his hands behind his back. The mask had a plastic wave of golden mane, a black nose, a pink tongue. I turned in my seat. I pressed my palms against the window. When the bus stopped, I rushed outside. I did not go to my next stop, but back to that corner in Chinatown, which was empty except for the rising steam and the silver fish darting around in the window across the street.
*
The last time it happened we were on the edge of spring. I remember the slush, the tentative green, the break in the bitter cold. At work, it was two in the morning and my manager was on a smoke break. A cashier had called in sick. I was the only one on the floor and I hadn’t checked out a customer since midnight. For hours the same half-dozen pop songs had been playing on a loop. I didn’t want to know the words, but was remembering them anyway.
I walked around Produce and petted the rough fur of coconuts and squeezed kiwis and examined items I had never eaten before, like kumquats and kohlrabi. The kohlrabi was a green bulb. I thought about stealing one and eating it like an apple in my apartment. I was pinching a kumquat when I saw a person swoop around a corner and down Canned Goods. There was something strange about their face. I followed them.
We went down Canned Goods and up Dry Packaged Goods and down Condiments & Sauces. I kept some distance between us, squeezing the kumquat. This person didn’t stop and examine the shelves. They weren’t pushing a cart or carrying a basket. They didn’t appear to be shopping for anything. They were just walking.
Each time they rounded a corner, I caught a glimpse of their face. The skin was unnaturally smooth and white, the expression vacant, like the mask of a horror movie villain I was having trouble placing. I should have been scared, should have taken this masked person as a sign of an impending robbery or worse, but instead I followed them through Baking Supplies and Cereals and Health & Beauty. There was familiarity in their posture, their gait.
I lost the person in the cold labyrinth of Frozens. “Marcus,” I said at last, testing the possibility. I let go of the kumquat and it rolled across the white floor. My palm smelled of citrus. I ran around the store, checking all the aisles and the bathrooms. I went outside and stood under the lights that attracted fluttering clouds of moths. The parking lot was empty. The person was gone.
At home I drank enough Robitussin for me to pass out in my bathroom. I woke in a puddle of vomit that had hardened into a sour glue on the floor, my brain thumping inside my skull.