My roommate wasn’t very smart. He had gaps in his education from attending a poor Yeshiva, which I felt particular about given my own position as a teacher. Once I asked Gershon if the book he was reading was a novel and he said, What’s a novel?

Like fiction?

Fiction? His brows puckered before returning to the book he was reading off an app on his phone.

He didn’t know what gnocchi was and while he could tell left from right he didn’t know about north, west, south, or east. He unironically was reading Jordan Peterson and didn’t believe in identity politics but did believe DEI was racist, points he likely only mimicked after hearing them on a podcast. Regardless, he was a little right-wing.

He told me he could see ghosts. He said this so earnestly one night I believed him. Do they look like Casper? I asked.

I don’t really see them in that sense, he said. I can feel their energy. Sometimes they communicate things to me. Most times I pick up on their pain.

Is there a ghost in this room right now? I said, giving the living room a once over.

I don’t think you want to know, he said with a pained expression on his face. Also, I prefer the term spirit.

Could you always see spirits?

More or less. When I was young, I didn’t fully understand at first. Not until I found others online with the same gift. They were the ones who explained all the hooks and cranes to me.
Nooks and crannies.

What?

Never mind.

During library duty at school, Manny told me about the credit card he’d stolen to fund an upcoming trip to Madagascar. He dropped to his knees and shoved a stack of books into the bottom shelf.

Because he’d lost the book he checked out, he had to complete a shift of community service at the library, and because Manny was always losing his book, he was always at the library.

What are you going to do in Madagascar?

Get a tan, he said. How many inches is that monitor? 

I don’t know how many inches my monitor is, I said. 

When the bell rang, I relieved him of his duties, and he bolted into the smattering of students moving past the hall. I was packing my things when Shelly knocked on the door. She asked if I had time for some notes. 

Shelly had clear, alabaster skin and a perfectly oval face, something I thought belonged stuffed behind a habit and not at a school. She wore tights beneath her skirts, even when her skirts reached past her knees. Like a child, she sat with her legs tucked underneath.

I sank back into my seat and listened to her feedback from when she’d observed me teach the week before. She said I needed to deepen my voice so students would respect me more. Can you do that? she asked.

Sure, I said.

There, she said, shaking her head. You did it again.

I can do it, I said, trying to cut my voice’s upswing.

She narrowed her eyes. I’m doing this to make you a better teacher, she said.

I know that, I said. And I appreciate it so much.

Good, she said, beaming, and she jumped from her seat and loped out the door.

A young girl turned on her Chromebook’s camera, then flipped it to the side to take selfies. I appeared in most of them, shoveling food into my mouth with a guilty, embarrassed look. She pulled the student beside her into the camera. Rocco. He’d started the year carrying a bible around. Now, he was dating this young girl. They were inseparable. Often I had to pull them apart in the staircase, the hallway, the bus stop. The camera clicked. The same look on my face. Offensive and uncomfortable.

DogLovr was his screen name. Over Grindr he’d shared a photo of a handsome young man and told me the handsome young man was his guest. He would watch us from a corner. That was all. The man in the picture was good looking, I thought, and I’d had two beers listening to Gershon talk about the recent acquittal of a former Marine who’d killed a homeless man on the train. We need more men like him to keep the subways safe, he was saying, so I agreed to go over to the stranger’s apartment.

When I knocked on a door a few blocks away, a large man invited me in. His forehead shone of sweat and he took heavy breaths as he hobbled aside to let me pass through. A tiny yelping dog ran towards me as I scanned the room. Not only was there junk everywhere, but an overpowering scent hung in the air too. Piss and sweat and mildew and pure hot garbage. I shuffled deeper into his home, bumping into shaky pillars of junk. In the bedroom, the man from the picture peeled off his shirt. He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t attractive either. The barking dog bit into my pants. Tugging left and right before I shook it off. I said, This isn't what I expected.

Don’t kick my dog, the man said.

I didn’t kick your dog. I’m just shaking it off.

You're kicking it.

Make it stop then.

He’s harmless.

This is not what I expected, I said.

When I returned home and told Gershon what had happened, he said the people who lived in our apartment before us were also hoarders. A couple that died slow, brutal deaths. Diseased and unable to walk, they were practically fused to their couches by the end of their sad, ordinary lives. 

It’s a doggy dog world, Gershon said.

Dog eat dog, I said. Are they evil?

Most spirits aren’t, Gershon said. He drove his finger into his mouth, clearing his teeth of leftover detritus, and when he was done, he sucked his finger. Gershon was no taller than five-five, a shortfall he made up for by going to Crossfit four days a week. While he had a wide chest, his legs, I thought, remained tiny and thin.

Will they hurt me? I asked.

I can’t be absolutely sure. Sometimes there’s a disturbance, some kind of blockage. But probably not.

Then: You really should fix your relationship with your dad, he said.

Did a spirit tell you that? I asked—I was a little taken aback. I hadn’t told Gershon much, if anything, about my father.

No, he said. It’s me. I’m talking. I’m saying that.

Manny had a small welt near his eye. Manny had lost another book and was back to completing another hour of community service. Sweat dappled his forehead and he avoided meeting my gaze while returning a stack of books. What happened? I asked. And don’t tell me you fell.

A simple misunderstanding, he said, flipping a hardcover in his hands.

With whom? 

My pastor.

Manny, please, no jokes.

He bent over and shoved the book away before emptying out his lungs. It was Rocco, he said. His girlfriend took a selfie with me, and I guess he got jealous. But she was taking selfies with everyone.

Even I’m in a selfie with her, I said.

I’d watch my back if I were you, Manny said, finally leveling his gaze in my direction.

When the bell rang, Manny bolted. I rammed myself in a corner of the library and phoned my sister. Curled in bed, Rhea was doing what she always did: watching an episode of reality TV. How’s your crazy dean? she asked, pushing her face up close to the camera until her nose’s blackheads filled the screen. With the exception of her blindingly white buck teeth, she was pretty in the face, and people often remarked that we looked alike, which made me feel I wasn’t so ugly after all. 

I never used those words, I said.
I’m saying that, she said. How else should I describe her?

Eccentric? Honest?

Homophobic? My sister got up from bed and moved to the kitchen. She was the only social worker I knew who never seemed to have much to do. I’d asked her about this once and she said the kids never showed up to their appointments, which she had to schedule in the afternoons anyway due to the school day. It wasn’t lost on me that my sister and I both worked with kids, a coincidence I often joked meant we had terrible childhoods ourselves. As she scanned the fridge I heard the TV blasting from the family living room and I pictured my father: on the recliner, asleep.

Do you want to talk to him? Rhea asked. I can wake him.

I have to get to class.

You can’t avoid him forever, Rhea said before I thumbed the call away. 

Gershon had his solitary streaks. A part of me imagined this was due to the spirits, how they were so draining he needed days of recovery, and so I gave him the space I thought he needed.

One night, a loud banging over the front door roused me from bed. It was a woman. Someone I’d never met. I haven’t heard from Gershon in days, she said, bursting in.

Who are you? I asked the disheveled woman—a halo of frizzy hair mounted her face, which blinked with oil, and she wore jeans she covered with a bathrobe she clutched closed.

My name is Talia. I am his second cousin but also his analyst.

Is that allowed?

Does it sound criminal to you? Send me to prison for helping my second cousin! She padded to his door and swung it open without a knock. Then she cried out.

Gershon was there, on the floor, beside his desk.

He was dead.

I sank into the sofa in the living room, thinking about how the paramedics had said it was bread. He’d choked to death and I hadn’t noticed.

Talia’s sobs still rang in my ears. Though his body was gone, it was difficult to shake the feeling that Gershon himself wasn’t.

My sister phoned. I’d texted her it was an emergency, though I no longer wanted to talk about it. My phone kept buzzing. The strangest thing just happened, I said when I finally answered.

What?

I stared into my screen. Examining the space behind my head. I turned, my camera taking in the rest of the living room. Did you redecorate or something? my sister asked.

Did you see that?

I didn’t see anything.

Like a shadow behind me, I said. My attention continued to drift across the room.

There’s nothing there. Nothing more than your shadow.

How can you be so sure?

Of what?

That it’s my shadow and not somebody else’s.

Is it Gershon’s? Is he there?

Could it really be his shadow?

My sister got frustrated and hung up. Alone, I raised my phone and took pictures. Of the living room. Of the kitchen. Of the door. When I reviewed them, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. No spectral shapes. No Gershon.

Shelly told me I needed to fix my posture. She said I needed to stand absolutely still when I gave students directions before I began pacing around the room. She said I needed to narrate what students were doing. Manny is opening his book. Rocco is opening his book. Estrella is opening her book. She said I needed to be forceful when giving commands, and warm and tender every other time.

In only a few months, teaching had become something mechanical and foreign. Something I no longer even liked. You’re doing a great job, Shelly said. Warm and tender now that she'd finished being forceful in her feedback.

After she left, a student named Johan strolled in. During my first few days, I’d heard him say unpleasant things in Spanish about me to another student. When the other student stared at me with an uneasy look, then told Johan I spoke Spanish, Johan blanched. I wasn’t upset. And in the days and weeks that followed, I had softened to him. 

Are you okay, Mister? You look so pale. Like you’ve seen a ghost!

I’m okay, Johan. Thanks.

You look sick.

Thanks. Are you out of uniform?

Your eyesight is also sick. These are good pants. 

They look like denim. 

Sometimes denim looks nicer than other pants.

I stared at Johan—an unbothered manner to his face, the playful attitude he always seemed to have, his broad, kind eyes—and told him the truth. I said, Something so unexpected has happened, I don’t know what to do.

What are you talking about? Johan asked, focused on a swirling spinner that had materialized over his finger.

I can’t go home, I said.

Johan flicked the spinner. Mister, he said, I’m confused. 

I know you are, I said. And when the bell rang, I led my cluster of students to the gates for dismissal. Johan waved good-bye, a cheerful cast to his face, our conversation completely wiped from his memory, the way it always was with these kids. Tomorrow would be a new day for them. Nothing brought over from the previous one. 

Once the kids were all gone, I stood alone at the school’s exit. The playground was vacant; the cold snap had yet to let up. But what I’d told Johan was true. I couldn’t go home.

I walked the block, surfing the apps until I found GoonKing. With the exception of a light pattering of hair to the sides, his head was phenomenally smooth. Something to tug at, he joked when we met at his apartment. The shape of his body was different than I’d imagined, more like a pear.

I spent days like that, avoiding the apartment at night by sleeping with strangers off the internet. DL discreet. Suck&Swallow. AssNow. TrueLove Sean. BlowNGo. KendraTrans. Sometimes they’d shake me awake and tell me to go home. I ignored them, feigning deep sleep. If they kept shaking me, I reluctantly gathered my things and went to the gym for a shower. Then, I’d spend the morning hours walking to school. Always the longest, most scenic route. Often I took in the freezing daybreak.

By now, I’d explained to my sister the truth of what had happened. That Gershon was actually dead. But most of the time I still ignored her calls. What I was doing was unhealthy, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was heading to another stranger’s apartment when I dialed Talia’s number. Why are you calling? she said. Because she’d given me her number, I thought she’d be more welcoming to a call, that she’d even been expecting one.

I wanted to ask you about Gershon’s gift.

What gift? Did he leave behind a gift?

He could see spirits, isn’t that right?

Oh, she said, that.

Then: Gershon held strong beliefs in many things. 

You don’t believe he actually could communicate with the dead?

Why are you asking me all these questions? 

I can feel him, I said. In the apartment.

It’s all in your head.

Should I see a Jewish psychic? Do those exist?

You hardly knew Gershon at all.

I’m sorry, I said.

Move out if it’s such an issue, she said before hanging up.

More days passed. At school, Shelly marked up my lesson plans in front of me. Red ink seeped through the draft she destroyed. You’ll get a hang of it, she said once she was done, pushing the paper in my direction with that smile. Her eyes twitched. I was loitering by the school entrance after dismissal when my sister called. She said she was at my building, and could I open the door?

You weren’t answering your phone, she said after I reached my apartment. I needed to make sure you were alright. Her teeth caught the light, so bright, and I closed my eyes.

My roommate is dead, I said. I’m allowed to act this way.

You weren’t even close.

You’re a social worker. Shouldn’t you be more understanding than that?

No, Rhea said. The opposite actually. I should challenge you more. Why else do you think you’re acting the way you’re acting? It’s obviously about Dad. 

This has nothing to do with that.

He’s worse than ever.

It could just be about my dead roommate Gershon, I said before unlocking my front door. Except for a note from Talia, the living room was exactly as I’d left it. She wrote that she’d taken all of Gershon’s personals, and that anything else she’d left behind I could keep or get rid of. 

Did he have no one else? my sister asked.

I’d never even heard of Talia before, I said, and I told her about his father who had lived nearby in Midwood but who’d died the year before, and his mother, who had returned to Israel when he was a kid, and who’d also since passed. Gershon had been an only child. He had no one else.

That’s depressing, my sister said.

The way Talia cried, I said. It was unbelievable.

From the living room, I stared at Gershon’s door. After we finished our takeout, my sister made her way into my bedroom. I told her I’d be right behind, but I stayed in the living room, my gaze continuing to drift to his door. And when I got sleepy, I grabbed my coat and left.

At the bar around the corner, it took me a long moment before recognizing the man beside me. Someone I’d once hooked-up with. CowboyPeri. You look sad, he said. Sadder than before.

My roommate died, I said. We weren’t even close.

Shit, he said. Ice cubes swirled as he fingered the bottom of his empty glass.

He could see ghosts. Spirits, I mean. And now I can’t help but feel like his spirit is in that apartment.

Oh, CowboyPeri said, I can see spirits too.

He had a round, moist face. I said, It’s like everyone and their mom can.

Why don’t you move out? he said, chewing on ice chips with a violence that surprised me. He chewed and chewed, his mouth open, ice scraps flying out.

I know, I said, feeling moisture on my neck.

If you’d like, I can come to the apartment and try to communicate with him.

CowboyPeri swayed a bit as I unlocked the front door. I told him to be quiet, that my sister was in the other room. Only under the living room’s bright light did I see how drunk he was. His cheeks were red and his eyes too.

Were you bullshiting me? I asked.

The man loudly brayed. 

Shhhh. You’re going to wake my sister.

I began to push him towards the door when he bent over, a splatter of puke to the floor. He groaned before stepping over it, and then his foot slid, and his body was knocking into the wall. CowboyPeri was flat on the floor when my sister came into the living room. What the fuck? she said.

He lied, I said. He told me he could talk to ghosts. He was going to talk to Gershon.

Is he rolling on the floor? my sister asked.

I looked down. He was.

Rocco floated down the hall, knocking his knuckles against lockers. Once he’d reached my post outside the boys bathroom, I saw he had a welt on his face now too. Was that Manny? I asked.

He sucked his teeth. It was my father.

Oh. 

Rocco pinned his back to the nearest wall. He doesn’t like my girlfriend very much.

I’m sorry.

She’s pregnant, I mean. Rocco stared at the overhead lights as he said this, and I thought of the young boy I’d met at the start of the year, the one who carried his bible around, reading passages at his desk while waiting for class to start. I didn’t like this transformation of his. I didn’t like his girlfriend very much either.

Shit, I said.

Yeah, he said, and he went back to biting his nails, a terrible habit so many students seemed to have. There was hardly any skin around the nail, and the skin he did have was all pink and raw.

I could have had it worse, you know? I said. With my dad. I’ve spent so many years hating him that I’ve kind of forgotten why. He was a dick to me when I was your age, but I was a dick to him too.

Rocco spat a skin or nail chunk to the floor. I have already forgiven my father, he said. It wasn’t so hard.

Good, I said. Resentment does nothing but build.

He looked up. Resentment? What’s that?

Nothing good, I said.

I thought you looked vaguely familiar, the man said when he invited me into his home later that night. BeCool&Chill No Drama. Another person from the apps.

My sister had flown back home earlier in the day. I was grateful for her visit, though we both knew it did little to fix my situation—I was back to sleeping with strangers from the internet. You were a little drunk, I think, he was saying, when we met the first time. Fat guy’s house? Likes to watch?

In his living room, he looked more handsome than I remembered from the last time I saw him. As handsome as the initial photo I’d received, perhaps even more.

That guy was a total hoarder, I said.

Handsome shrugged. He’s nice enough.

Did he pay you?

I’m not a hooker. Did he pay you?

Fair enough.

Handsome made tasty Negronis before we made our way to his bedroom. He was so warm and tender with me I cried before we even got started. Handsome didn’t ask what was wrong. He collected me in his arms and tightened his grip. I let out another cry and sank further into his hold until there was nothing left in me, nothing at all, and then his hold was warm and tender again, and I was kissing his neck, grinding down into him, and I could feel his solidity beneath me. I’m so alone, I said, and Handsome grew strange and stiff, and I ran my hands down his hard, hairy chest. All the time.

Hey, my father said.

Hey.

I made a beeline to the window and stared at the grey tufts drifting above, searching for what to say into my phone next. Below me, kids congregated at the Burger King beside their bus stop. The one with all the ratted derelicts coming and going. Trash gathered at the entrance in large clumps. A train whined as it came to a halt. Then, below the tracks, a bus came to a rollicking stop. Gone to seed, I thought, like everything else.

I heard your roommate died, my father said in his quiet, drained voice.

I didn’t know him so well. We’d only been living together some months.

A death is a death. Someone died in your home.

This place isn’t a home.

You’ll always have a bedroom here.

Florida isn’t home either.

My father’s breath into the line was a whistle. He said, It took me so many years to find my place in the world. I hoped you two would fare better.

Have you? I asked. Found your place in the world?

This is the most settled I’ve ever felt. I only have so many years left to live. I own this house. I have my pension. No one can take these things from me.

It sounds like you’re just waiting to die. Doesn’t that make you anxious?

I take Valium for that.

I didn’t break my lease. I could have, I think the landlord would have been understanding, but I decided to wait out the remaining months. I made enough teaching to pay for the full amount in rent. Had enough savings too.

Only once did I enter Gershon’s room. After I heard a thud from behind his door.

I’d been keeping an eye out for Gershon’s presence, but so far nothing had materialized. I wasn’t like him, I didn’t have his gift.

The bedroom was mostly the same. Talia hadn’t taken many of his belongings after all. The curtains stirred in the wind; he’d left the window open all this time. 

I closed it, good. And I sat in the silence, alone.

At school, Manny floated around the library with a stack of books, back for another community service shift. When’s your trip to Madagascar?

I’ve had a change of heart. I think Rocco opened my third eye when he punched me? Manny said this and pointed at the center of his forehead.

And what does your third eye see?

That knowledge is privileged.

Okay, I said. I’m glad anyway that you’re sticking around.

Consider it a blessing in the skies.

Joshua Vigil is from El Salvador by way of Florida and now lives in the Pioneer Valley, where he's an MFA candidate at UMass-Amherst. His work has appeared in Hobart, Joyland, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.