Leanne Shapton - Guestbook: Ghost Stories

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright 2019 by Leanne Shapton

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Portions of Eidolon and Middle Distance, in different form, appeared in the Aspen Art Museum publication accompanying Mary Ramsdens exhibition In/It (20162017).

Passages in Eidolon are from the screenplay for Death in Venice, by Luchino Visconti and Nicola Badalucco (1970).

Cover art: Drawing of iceberg by Titanic survivor George Rheims, presented in his deposition in Titanic liability hearings, November 14, 1913.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shapton, Leanne, author.

Title: Guestbook : ghost stories / Leanne Shapton.

Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018048143 | ISBN 9780399158186 (hardback) | ISBN 9780525539070 (ebook)

Subjects: | BISAC : FICTION / Occult & Supernatural. | FICTION / Psychological. | PHOTOGRA PHY / History.

Classification: LCC PR 9199.4.S5255 A 6 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048143

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The stories in this book are illustrated by a combination of photographs taken and staged by the author and found photographs. All of the captions and characters are fictional, and do not represent facts or descriptions relating to the real people whose likenesses are pictured.

Version_1

For Librada

A geist

A gust

A ghost

Aghast

I guess

A guest

A DAM G ILDERS , 19702007

S AM HAS BLUE EYES. ExRoyal Canadian Air Force, flew a B-25 bomber in World War II. Likes his sherry and salted butter and conservative politicians. He wants to cheer her up. Sam keeps watch with night patrols and lands birds on her windowsills. He is seventy-five percent deaf. He is seen in the reflection of the porch door.

P ETER IS TALL FOR A F ILIPINO , AND THIN . He wears wide-wale corduroys in colors like rust, mustard, and moss. His hips are broad, and when seated in a chair, he crosses his legs at the knees. He likes ketchup on most foods. He has big ears and hands. His skin is the color of wet sand. Peter is methodical. He is the one who keeps her safe. He is the one who loves her and reassures her. He can be heard as the murmur of company in the living room.

T OM DISAPPEARS for weeks on end, but when he is there he is smiling and curious. He is mischievous with her fate and capricious with her time, putting things in her path that could spell disaster or wisdom. Tom is an augury. Tom is a finger shaker and letter writer. He can play the guitar. Guests have reported hearing his music late at night.

N ANCY HAS A BIG MOUTH . Opinionated, imperious, and uninhibited, she does not worry what anybody thinks. Nancy loves doing laundry. She launders everything. Nancy has big breasts and pushes them up. No qualms. Nancy is the one who makes her heart beat louder and her shoulders shrug. Nancy draws a circle around her. She holds her and is as dark blue as night, as white as noise. Sometimes there is the banging sound of sneakers in the basement dryer.

EIDOLON

D EATH IN V ENICE
Screenplay by Luchino Visconti and Nicola Badalucco, 1970

62. BEACH. HOTEL DES BAINS. EXT.

Tadzio has waded idly through the water and reached the sandbar. To Aschenbachs eyes the boy seems an improbable apparition against a foggy background without end.

As she is carried to the car after a Christmas party she nests her head in her fathers neck. The purple sky is like her fingers, and the wind is cold and smells old. Her father sets her on the backseat, fastens her seat belt.

Shes small, smells like sweet hair and pee, turds like little birds collect in her pull-up. Her lead levels are normal. Her sneeze like a wet tissue dropped on the floor.

Aschenbach rests his head against the chair-back, his arms relaxed at his sides, his head turned to watch the movements of the figure out there.

The car follows the cloverleaf onto a highway. The beam of a streetlight touches the hood and guides the vehicle along until the next beam picks it up. She falls asleep.

Horns on Fifth Avenue. Shes forty-three and has opened the kitchen window so the paint fumes wont linger with the fettuccine, the strawberries, the waterlemon.