Patricia’s home was on the far west side of Chamber, Florida. The neighborhoods get richer and richer the further west you travel, and I became more and more self-conscious in my boxy grey sedan that was only a couple of notches up from something that required a wind-up mechanism.

At eight o’clock sharp, I pulled into the long, circular driveway of an immense two-story home with a well lit, perfectly maintained lawn and a huge fountain in the center that sprayed water in perfect rhythm to the classical music playing from speakers on the sides.

Then I checked the card Patricia had given me and realized that I was at the wrong place.

At eight forty-four sharp, I pulled into the long, circular driveway of an immense two-story home with a dimly lit, possibly well-maintained lawn and an ugly statue of a naked kid with a missing buttock. I parked behind five much finer automobiles than my own and hurried up to the front door.

After I rang the doorbell, Patricia answered. She glared at me. “I could be dead by now,” she whispered.

“Sorry,” I said. “I read the address wrong.”

I entered the house and she led me to the exquisitely furnished study, where four other people were standing around having drinks. They all looked to be about Patricia’s age, two men and two women. The men were dressed in suits that made my own feel like an old piece of burlap with dead moths pouring out of the sleeves.

“Our special guest is here,” Patricia announced. “Everyone, this is Andrew Mayhem.”

“ The Andrew Mayhem,” said a gentleman with bushy white eyebrows and a handlebar mustache. “How interesting.”

Patricia took me by the hand and walked me over to him. “Andrew, this is Malcolm. He worked with my husband.” She said this in a way that implied I was supposed to pretend I had some vague notion who her husband was, so I said “Ahh.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Malcolm, shaking my hand. He gestured to the sharp-featured woman standing next to him. “This is my wife Donna.”

Donna nodded politely at me, but it was obvious from her expression that she fully expected me to start picking my nose and igniting farts.

“Hi,” I said, hoping my breath didn’t offend her.

Patricia led me to the other couple. The man was extremely short and thin, but carried himself like a drill sergeant. “It’s an honor, Andrew,” he said, shaking/crushing my hand. “I’m Stephen.”

“Vivian,” said his wife, who stood a head taller than Stephen but appeared to be painfully shy.

“So Andrew, how much of what you wrote in your book was true?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, you’ve read it?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to hold off until I knew how much of it was true.”

“Well, let’s put it this way. If I’d made it up, I certainly wouldn’t have made myself so stupid.”

I grinned. They didn’t.

I stopped grinning and returned my attention to Patricia. “Thanks for inviting me. You have a beautiful home.”

While I’m not positive, I’m pretty sure I heard Donna whisper “Yeah, like he would know,” to her husband.

“Thank you,” said Patricia. “I hired the decorator myself. Would you care for a drink?”

I was tempted to decline on the basis that I’d just finished sampling some moonshine from my homemade still, but I didn’t think she’d be amused. “Sure. I’ll have whatever she’s having,” I said, gesturing to Donna.

Patricia went to the bar and poured me a glass of white wine. Temptation struck again, but I behaved myself and didn’t ask for a straw. Messing with the minds of these people wasn’t worth losing my five hundred bucks.

I ate weird crackers with salmon gook on them and made small talk with the guests for about fifteen minutes, during which I’m pretty sure I overheard the word “inbred” being used by Donna in two separate sentences. Malcolm was pleasant enough, I guess, but I was still far out of my social element. However, snobbish as they were, none of the guests seemed like a potential murderer.

Finally, Patricia clapped her hands for attention. “Shall we begin?”

“Certainly,” said Stephen, and the others acknowledged their agreement.

“Wonderful. Let’s head to the dining room, then.”

Patricia walked out of the study and the other guests followed. I took up the rear, right next to Malcolm. He smiled at me, a glint of mischief in his eye. “Tell me, son, how much is she paying you?” he whispered.

I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a secret or not, so I decided to play it safe. “She’s not paying me anything.”

“Oh, come now. You’re not sleeping with her for free, are you?”

“I’m not sleeping with her at all!”

“Really? Then you’re the first.” He winked at me. “Don’t worry, it won’t leave this house.”

Somehow I just knew that word was going to get back to Helen that I’d become a male prostitute who serviced middle-aged women. That’s the kind of luck I have.

We filed into the dining room. A small circular table was covered with a black tablecloth, and there were five thick white candles burning. A larger rectangular table had been shoved against the wall, and was bare. This was apparently not a dinner party like I’d been told.

“What exactly are we doing?” I whispered to Malcolm.

“Didn’t she tell you?” he asked. “We’re going to have a séance.”

Great. Just great. Not only was my life going to be ruined by a gigolo misunderstanding, but I was going to have people pissed at me from beyond the grave. I vowed never to return to the Blizzard Room.

As the guests took their seats around the table, I approached Patricia. “A séance, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“That seems like a tidbit of information you might have considered sharing with me last night, don’t you think?”

“Whatever for?”

“What do you mean, whatever for? It’s a séance!”

“Yes, and…?”

There was no debating that logic. I lowered my voice. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Just watch. Carefully.”

She sat down. I didn’t really want to sit at the table in case the ectoplasm started flying, but it didn’t matter because there weren’t any extra seats anyway. I leaned against the wall.

“Tonight, we contact my departed husband,” Patricia announced. “Everyone take a deep breath to clear your mind.”

They did so, and then joined hands.

At this point, I started to feel a bit queasy. Apparently the salmon gook hadn’t agreed with me. If I got food poisoning from this job, I was demanding an extra twenty bucks.

After a few minutes of mind clearing, everybody closed his or her eyes, and Patricia began to speak in a firm, steady voice. “Charles. Charles Nesboyle. Are you there? Can you hear me?”

I was feeling incredibly sick now. I wiped some perspiration from my forehead and tried to focus on something else, like how ridiculous they all looked sitting there holding hands trying to conjure up ghosts, but all I could think about was how I desperately needed a lavatory.

“Charles Nesboyle, if you can hear me, speak! Speak to the others through me!”

She kept this up for another few minutes. My need was becoming more and more unbearable. If I didn’t get to the bathroom very shortly I was going to have an accident right there on the dining room floor. They probably assumed I wasn’t potty-trained anyway, but I still wanted to avoid that particular faux pas.

I was sure I could find it on my own, but I couldn’t just walk out and leave Patricia there with her eyes closed and a potential killer sitting next to her. It wasn’t likely that anybody could try something when all of them were holding hands, but I still had to give her some warning.

I managed to hold out another minute, and then walked over to Patricia and leaned down next to her ear. “Patricia?”

“Charles!” she gasped.

“No, Andrew.”

She opened her eyes and gave me a dirty look. “What?”