The ghost in Bea's basement has been sleeping for most of the day in the space under the exposed pipes. She sleeps on fiberglass insulation and listens to the rush of hot and cold water as she dozes. The washing machine is slamming Bea's tennis shoes around in circles. The banging shoes make the ghost open her eyes. She turns her head and sees the sun reflect off the scattering dust. It looks like stars in a sky of soft light. She tries to sniff at the dust and then turns her head back into the insulation. She licks some dust off the pipes and wishes she had fat healthy lungs that could suck in air and smell. She bites off a chunk of insulation and pretends she can taste it. But she can't, so she spits out the insulation and the dust. She leaves her mouth open. A soft moaning noise comes out. The sudden sound embarrasses her. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

Bea, upstairs, is drinking water. Every day she drinks eight glasses and tries to feel like her insides are being perpetually washed. She thinks about the water rushing to her stomach and out into her limbs. But her insides don't really feel washed so the groaning sound from the basement is painful and familiar. The noise hits her in the base of her spine. She spits out her water and runs downstairs. Her shoes make wet crashing sounds inside the washing machine but everything seems to be working. She sniffs for burning rubber. Nothing. She bends over and checks the wiring.

The ghost has heard the girl stamping down the stairs and looks toward the washing machine. The ghost sees her back. The bones from the girl's spinal column make ridges against the skin on her neck. Her shoulder blades are sharp and push against the shirt like wings smashed backwards. The ghost closes her eyes. She wants to drink beer and smoke a fat cigar and listen to Tammy Wynette. Sometimes its hard to be a woman giving all your love. The ghost thinks about the sad thunder of singing and hears, underneath the slamming shoes, the kid's breathing. The ghost tries to make air come in up through her lungs and can't. She tries to sleep but keeps hearing the girl's breath and the echo of Stand by Your Man. The ghost is furious and tries to yell, Shut up--Bitch, but her voice only makes a coughing whine.

Bea hears the noise and is terrified. She runs upstairs. She sits down and moves her hands over her face. The sweep of her cheek bones has been getting sharper and sharper over the months. Her face has been loosing color. Under the light in the bathroom her skin looks yellow. In the rear-view mirror of her car it looks gray. She hates both colors and avoids the bathroom mirror and tries not to recognize herself when she's backing out of the driveway. She likes looking at her face best when it flashes by in windows. Her skin looks dark and glassy. It seems like you can see through it. She likes this idea of her face best and watches for herself in other people's sunglasses and storefronts. Bea looks at her hands. She sees the small bones and veins and feels sick to her stomach. She pours herself another glass of water.

The ghost decides she doesn't want to nap. She concentrates on the streak of sunlight in the middle of the basement. The dust sparkles and it reminds her of beer. She remembers swaying her thick hips to the jukebox. She remembers the sound of her voice singing along. Sometimes its hard to be a woman giving all your love to just one man. She remembers three or four men, nightly, stumbling over themselves to dance with her. She usually danced with them unless their breath stank or they spent too much time talking about their trucks. The men usually smelled like beer. The ghost listens for the rustle of spiders but her ears are not that good. Where the hell is that skinny girl? What's she doing up there? The ghost listens for traffic or mice but can't hear anything except for the washing machine. She wonders why the girl is so skinny and has a vague notion of making her scrambled eggs. The trick is frying onions with the egg so the taste seeps in. The tiny pieces of dust flashlight and fly through the middle of the basement. They are dazzling. She tries to forget what onions taste like and concentrates on the sun coming through the window. But what the hell can that skinny kid be doing up there? The ghost pounds on the pipes.

Bea hears the pipe's pound and kicks the sink. If this piece of shit breaks, the landlord's paying for it. She runs the faucet. The sound of the water crashing into the sink is comforting. The pipes stop pounding. Her kitchen is clean. There is no clutter, only neat stacks of recipe books ontop of the refrigerator. She has pictures of a blackberry pie and cheese cake taped to her cabinet. There isn't any dust in her kitchen so the light falls straight on the tile floor. Bea has just graduated and is an assistant manager at the cafeteria at Green Oak's retirement community. Every Friday they serve spaghetti, every Tuesday, macaroni and cheese. Bea doesn't make these decisions. She balances the accounts and yells at Anette, the fat cook who smokes in the dishroom. This is against health codes and, besides, Bea wants the dishes to smell only like hot water. Anette usually laughs and says, shit, take it easy. Bea thinks about how Anette laughs, a deep gurgling sound that is louder than the cafeteria's dishwasher. Bea is a little scared of this sound. She hates it when people make loud noises for no reason. She opens the refrigerator and gets out half a tomato wrapped in aluminum foil. She cuts the tomato half into eight even pieces. The yellow juice runs onto the tinfoil. Some of the red pulp sticks to the knife which she carefully washes. She pours herself another glass of water and smells each of the pieces. The tomato's been in the refrigerator for a week and doesn't smell like anything but she pretends it smells like wet dirt and her grandfather's garden. Bea puts the slices on a plate and licks the foil. She eats one of the pieces and feels it slide down her throat and catch in her stomach. She imagines her stomach expanding slightly and is disgusted with her stomach and the runny orange tomato and its dirty smell and she is embarrassed at herself for slobbering over tinfoil. She drinks the water and imagines it washing over her cheekbones. She drinks some more water and thinks her cheekbones look angelic and beautiful like in Botticelli painting. She feels light headed and this makes her feel more angelic.

The ghost in the basement stopped banging on the pipes because she was starting to feel like an idiot and the kid obviously wasn't coming down, so fuck her. The ghost is staring at the wet cement that was under the starry dust and sunlight. At first she thought the water mark looked like the profile of a man whose hair is flying off. But now, after staring at it for a while, she decides it looks like a terrier giving a blow-job to an elephant. The water mark terrier is as big as the elephant which she guesses makes sense. If she were an elephant she wouldn't have anything to do with a terrier that wasn't as big as she was. She hates little dogs anyway. They're high-strung and pee all over the place. She remembers when her ex-husband ran over his new wife's poodle. The ghost starts to laugh. The noise of her laughing sounds like a bullfrog but is quieter than the washing machine. It's the most natural noise she's made since she's been a ghost. She starts laughing harder. The poodle was named Roy after Roy Orbeson. The new wife spent days after the death listening to his tapes and crying. The ghost's croaking laughter swallows up the sound of the shaking washing machine. Her laughing is making the insulation above her disintegrate into pink dust.

The noise echoes up through the pipes and floor. Bea feels the croaking under her feet. The vibrations carry through her bones and jolt her spinal chord. Bea is not frightened. The image of fat Anette saying, shit--take it easy-- flashes through her mind and makes the croaking sound familiar. Bea, instead, is furious. What the hell is making all this noise? She hates Anette putting a layer of smoke over the hot water smell of the dishroom. She hates the loud strange noises coming from the pipes. She hates the tomatoes and cheesecake and her stomach that makes her sick wanting them. She hates her yellowing skin that holds her stomach. What the fuck is down there? The question suddenly makes her rage seem absurd to her and she is embarrassed. Tomorrow she'll get some mouse traps. She looks at the seven tomato slices left and is still disgusted. She smashes them between her fingers, wraps them in the aluminum foil and throws them away. Then, she runs the tap as hot as it will go and imagines the hot pipes frying whatever is down there.

The ghost hears the sudden swoosh of running water in the pipe by her head but can't feel the difference between hot and cold. She stops laughing. She puts her face up to the pipe and tries to feel the vibrations from the water but can't. The pipe sounds like thunder. She pushes her face closer. The thunder gets louder but doesn't pour in through her cheeks. The ghost is furious and kicks the pipe. Before she was a ghost she was a waitress. She always had Wednesday night off. She usually went to Bob's Brassring Bunker with her Tisha from work or sometimes her husband. They all ate onion rings and rubbed the grease off on their jeans. They called each other baby and honey and fell into each other, laughing, when they drank too much. Honey, don't get me started. Baby, you put a little too much energy in that dye job. The ghost has never heard the girl speak and wonders what her voice sounds like. She knocks on the pipes very softly and nervously the way people do at doors the halfway want opened. The ghost hears the girls bare feet on the steps. The girl comes into view. She crosses the streak of light and dust and steps on the copulating elephant and terrier. She goes over to the washing machine which has stopped thundering without the ghost's noticing. The girl pulls out a red sock and yells, Shit. She throws the sock into a corner. She pulls out her gym shoes, which are dyed pink, and puts them into the drier. The girls voice is thin and high and reminds the ghost of glass breaking. The ghost is glad to hear her swear, though. She wants to fry cornmush and bacon with the scrambled eggs for the girl so her voice can deepen a little. The ghost wants her to be able to say shit without sounding so fragile. The shoes rattle and thump in the drier. The girl goes upstairs.

Bea feels light and empty and is glad for this. She sits down in the kitchen and rubs her feet. Looking at her hands, she sees the red sock-dye has leaked onto her hands and she is a little disgusted. She wishes she threw away those stupid red socks her mother gave her. She hates bright colors --in her laundry and food and in the perfume adds in magazines. She hates the underwear bargain bin in the department store where shiny greens and yellows and blue pile together in dazzling scraps. She doesn't like colored Christmas lights. She hates how mustard looks smeared over bread. She hates ketchup. The idea of one color leaking into another makes her stomach contract. She washes her hands. Her sink is the color of milk. The red washes off her hands but doesn't stain the sink. There is a little tomato pulp in the sink from the knife. Bea pushes this down the drain. She stares down the drain and hates that her body is too bulky to let her fit down it. She sticks her fingers in the drain and wonders about what happens to things in there. She puts her face close to the drain and quietly calls, hello.

The ghost grabs onto the pipe above her head. There is no water rushing through it. She hears the hello echo down and almost calls hello back but remembers the awful noise her mouth makes when she tries to speak. She lets go of the pipe and turns over onto her belly. She grabs tufts of insulation and chews on it. It has no taste. She thinks about her husband--her ex-husband now--who used to brush her hair and call her Katydid. Before she was a ghost she was Katy. When he was around her he always tried to keep his hand on her side, in the space before her hip became her waist. She remembers being seventeen with him and driving around wheat-fields in truck. He and his father used the truck for fishing so during the spring and summer it held a weak smell of dead fish and rain. They drove with the windows open to get rid of that smell until they found a place to park. Then they went back and rolled around until they both smelled like each other and their mouths were sore and stretched out from trying to cover each other. Then she remembers her Wednesday nights off and complaining about him to Tisha and dancing with beer-smelling men on the sticky floor. The ghost chews on pieces of insulation and remembers sitting with Tisha, eating chicken wings and crunching on the bones. The ghost turns and tries to bite onto the pipe. Nothing happens--no hole, no dent, not even teeth marks.

Bea stares into the sink's hole. The ghost hasn't broken the pipe so there isn't any light, just old hair, grease, and tomato pulp. It's too dark for her to see them but she knows they're there. The sinks in the kitchen in the cafeteria are connected to garbage dispensers that fill with spinach, carrots, strawberries, onions, spaghetti, bread, hot water and probably Anette's cigarette butts. The biggest sink is behind the office Bea works in. It's huge and steal and probably silver but in the morning, under the fluorescent lights, it looks gray. Bea could probably curl up in there and fit--but she never does because Anette would probably laugh at her. From her office Bea can see them fill the sink with water. They'll cut up vegetables into the water to clean them. Then they'll take them out--broccoli flowers or sliced red peppers-- and put them in big pans. In the gray mornings, in the gray sink, the colors from the vegetables will irritate Bea so she'll concentrate on her figures. Sometimes the food will invade her as she works and her concentration does no good. Sliced ginger fills up the kitchen and the smell makes her stomach squeeze in tightly. But the best thing to see in the morning--what always makes her look up from her papers, is to see them gut out the green peppers. They slice off the top of the pepper and with their hands, scoop out the center and the seeds. The peppers are hollow cups that float in the water until eventually they fill up with water and sink. The sight of the peppers pouring out water always strikes Bea. She imagines her rib cage being emptied. In her kitchen, staring down into the heart of her milk-colored sink, Bea imagines being flushed. She imagines a lightness inside of her and feels like floating. She turns on the tap and drinks some water and feels light and angelic and beautiful. She feels clear and imagines that if anyone would walk into the kitchen they would see through her yellowish skin and only really notice the white sink.

But then a horrible noise comes from the basement and Bea remembers that she has a yellow skin and bones that shiver from the noise. Someone in the basement is screaming. Bea wants to run out of the house--into the huge cafeteria sink maybe, where she could curl up and sleep. She doesn't want to go into the basement but finds herself running down there. She runs through the falling sunlight, through the shining dust, over the terrier and the elephant who are too wrapped up in their own bliss to care, through the shadowy strip infront of the washing machine. The drier churns violently. The washing machine is drained. Bea's cheek bones feel like they're shattering. Her ribs are going to collapse. But she keeps breathing. She sits in the washing machine and cries. She opens the drier and throws her shoes and her wet socks at the terrible noises coming from the opposite wall. The ghost screams from behind the insulation and bangs against the pipes. The ghost wants to live and understands that Bea doesn't. The ghost's noises make the shimmering dust shake. The ghost's and Bea's screaming fill up the basement and push against each other. The band of light and floating dust separates them and makes no noise.