I thanked Nick for their time and started considering what I was going to do. After I closed the computer, Lona sat on the couch, staring out the window, idly. She was frowning and did not talk at all for a few hours. I made myself dinner and she did not join me in my cooking like she normally did. After dinner, I sat next to her in silence. I put on some movie. I did not care what it was. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she would only give one-word responses. This was not like her at all. She was an awful movie watcher. She would comment about every little thing and make jokes, scream, shout, and get really invested. She would also find a way to crawl into my lap or under my arm and rest her head on my chest every time. This time she was distant. She did not see the movie in front of her. She just sat despondently in a haze.

  I made a decision right then and there. “Come on, get up.”

  “Why?”

  “I'm going to paint you again.”

  “What's the point?” She asked. Her voice was incredibly small. She did not look up at me as I tugged at her arm.

  “Well, we can't get a custom doll of you without a good front-facing picture. And unless you're hiding a ghost capturing camera in your butt, I am going to have to do another painting.”

  “Y-you can't afford it.” She said, her voice cracking. She looked up at me, tears brimming her eyes.

  “I'm an accountant. I'll figure something out. Money is easy.” I responded.

  “No! I can't ask you to spend that much on me! That's totally ridiculous.” She shouted and the lights in the apartment flickered.

  I tugged her up until she was standing just before me, watery eyes trying desperately to avoid mine. I pulled her into a hug. “Let me do this. I know how much you want to interact with people again. I can figure something out.”

  I had not realized it until then, but my eyes were also leaking. I could not stand to see her cry. I had always been bad at letting people cry. I always want to fix it. But it was worse with her. Not just because she lived with me. Damn it. I've fallen for her, haven't I?

  After we were done crying and her face had cleared some, I sat her in a chair and started my sketch. Her back was straight and her hands were in her lap. She was fully clothed, this time. It took a very long time, but I got two full paintings done. The first was a full body. Her in her skirt and her tight t-shirt and her long socks. The second was a close up of her face. I got every detail I could. The way her nose was slightly upturned. Her dimple on the left-hand side. The tiny scar over her eye. Her freckles. It was strange. Normally I got impatient with drawings and painting. I seldom ever bothered to finish. But I had to finish these. It was important. And because of that, I did not get to bed until 2:30. I had to be up at 5. God damn it. But the look on her face when she saw them was so worth it.

  The next day, I went to work dead tired. I probably made a lot of mistakes and did not get a whole lot done. But it was Friday. No one seemed to notice. Victor was still out of the office, so I could not cancel even if I had wanted to. But I did not at this point. I was going to find a way to make this work.

  Madalyn, Jerry, and I had lunch together. They were both talking to each other and I listened as best I could. Truthfully, I was not invested in anything they had to say, but it was nice just sitting at the table with them.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Jerry turned to me and asked. “So, uh, John. What about you? Any big weekend plans?”

  I looked up and blinked. I had lost track of the conversation at some point. “Uh . . . No, not really. Well, I guess I'm going to look for some way of making some extra money. Probably Uber or something.”

  “Y'know,” Madalyn began, “with your math skills, you could probably make a killing doing Blackjack. Do that card counting thing. I tried it once. Wasn't very good but I made $400 bucks. With your skills, you could probably clear a lot better than I could.”

  “Huh. I hadn't thought of that. That's a really good idea. Thanks, Madalyn.” She nodded at me with a smile. I spent the rest of the afternoon Googling how card counting worked. I was familiar with the base concept but was not really sure how it worked. Turns out it is pretty easy. It is just extrapolated statistics, for the most part. There are lots of different methods. But I could risk getting caught. It was not illegal, but I did not want to end up on the unfriendly end of a baseball bat. I had seen that in a movie at one time. I did not know if it was accurate or not. But it would take a while to build up to it.

  Before I got home I went to a drug store and bought four decks of cards. I spent a while learning how to shuffle them when I got home, listening to Lona practice a monologue from some play I had never heard before. I am not particularly good at shuffling. And with four decks in play, I lost more often than I won. Not by much. Blackjack is statistically the easiest game to win.

  “You kind of suck at this,” Lona said, having gotten bored of her practice. She was watching me struggle to shuffle all of the decks.

  “Yeah, I should have gotten a deck shuffler.”

  “Let me try!” She said, grabbing a deck. She started to bend the cards to bridge them but they exploded out of her hands and went everywhere. I watched bemused and she took another one of the decks and did the same thing. “I forgot how fun 52 pickup is.”

  “Right now it's 104 pickup,” I grumbled and started cleaning up the mess.

  “Why are you trying to learn Blackjack anyway?”

  “It's how I think I can pay for your body,” I responded, digging a card out from under the couch.

  “I thought you said you were good with numbers.” She countered, disapprovingly.

  “I am.”

  “Then, like, why are you gambling? It's totally a scam. Like bottled water. You just lose money.”

  “Well, you see, I'm going to cheat. I'm practicing card counting.”

  “You're no Rain Man. Sure you can keep all of those cards in your head? Two days ago, you totally started a fire because you forgot about your tortilla.”

  “I did not start a fire. It just started smoking.”

  “And set the smoke alarms off. Causing the sprinklers to go off.”

  “Shut up. I can do it.”

  I shuffled the decks together and started doing it. Passing out to five other spaces at the table and then checking. I won this time. The next three times were not as good for me. Lona laughed and started playing, too. She was very lucky and won almost every hand. After a while, though, she got bored and started to drift away and watched some YouTube. After several hours of me just playing with myself . . . Not like that . . . She was getting ready to go to bed. She did not really need sleep. Not like I did. But she liked the bedroom the best. “Even with all of your booby toys, perv,” was what she constantly said.

  “You coming?” She asked.

  “No, I am going to try a couple more hands.” I said, not looking up. I busted again. Then started dealing again. I revealed a Ten and a Three. The dealer was showing an Ace and Seven. She sat down next to me and leaned into the deck. Literally into it. Her eye went straight through it.

  “You're going to lose.”

  “What? No, I won't.” I revealed the next card and surely enough, it was a Jack. “Damn it! Wait. Could you see the card when you leaned into it?”

  “Yeah. It's difficult and feels pretty weird, but I can do it.” She muttered, rubbing her eye. That was when I realized it. I had the answer right in front of me. I was trying to do this like anyone else would. Why would I cheat like a regular person when I have the ability to talk to ghosts?