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“The ghost,” he said. “I want the whole story.”

I laid it all out and the longer I yakked, the more preposterous it sounded. For the past four weeks I’d slept quite poorly, despite changing my mattress and the position for sleep. I tried hot baths, warm milk, deep breathing, valerian, melatonin, and shiatsu. I tucked pillows beneath my neck, between my legs, and under my hips until I lay in a cradle of shims. Nothing worked. The ghost still woke me every night. When I snapped awake, it was there, lurking just beyond my sight.

Chuck demanded details of time, frequency, clarity, sound, smell, and temperature of the room. For the first time in our friendship, I had his full focus, like being scrutinized by a Cyclops. He inquired after my diet, alcohol and substance use, vitamin intake, family history of mental illness. When I finished, Chuck sat motionless, his eyes shrouded as if turning his gaze inward.

“First of all,” he said, “there’s absolutely no such thing as ghosts.”

“I know.”

“Death means awareness ends and tissue decays. It is such a terrifying concept that we imagine an afterlife. Some form of immortality is the one common denominator of all religions and many superstitions. Nevertheless, I believe you.”

“Maybe I’m nuts.”

“Could be,” he said. “Are there any extenuating circumstances in your life?”

“I got divorced six months ago.”

“I mean in the past month.”

I nodded, humiliated by the truth.

“I haven’t been able to finish a story,” I said.

He sat patient as a lighthouse keeper while I explained myself. A month ago, Michael Chabon invited me to write a story for an all-genre issue he’s guest editing of McSweeney’s, a San Francisco magazine. I refused because my father was a genre writer who’d published more than 150 books under various pseudonyms. I’ve long been terrified of copying him further than I already do.

Michael urged me to participate and I agreed. That night the ghost woke me and I lay in the dark for a few hours, realizing that I didn’t want to write anything anymore. I never really wanted to be a writer, and had only pursued the occupation in the hope that my father would like me.

I sent Michael an e-mail trying to beg off, saying genre writing was too connected to my father’s work. Michael e-mailed back saying that he’d read my father’s books when he was young and wasn’t it cool that my dad was my dad. He also told me another contributor was Harlan Ellison, a science fiction author with whom my father had a public and long-running feud that began nearly thirty years ago at WorldCon.

Then I broke my glasses, and my car shit the bed, and I had returned to the story out of financial desperation.

“So,” Chuck said, when I finished telling him all this, “you have writer’s block.”

“No, I don’t believe in that. Other artists don’t suffer that way. You never hear of ballerina’s block. I just can’t finish this story. It’s never happened before and I think it’s the ghost’s fault.”

“It all fits together perfectly to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Time travel, Chris.”

“Yeah, sure. Maybe we should go back to the clones.”

“Think about e-mail. You send a note to someone, but they don’t check their e-mail for a week. Did your message arrive from the past, or did it enter their future?”

“I guess it’s the same.”

“Exactly! Anything in motion leaves a trail, even through time. What we call a ghost is really the footprint of a time traveler.”

“Great!” I said. “All you need is to invent a time machine.”

“I did. A month ago. I’ve been using chimps.”

Chuck was incapable of lying; to do so would violate his concept of science. I’d never seen him with such a grave expression, yet the skin of his face twitched with enthusiasm. After the poker game, Chuck had entrusted me with his biggest secret: “I don’t sleep with women,” he’d said, “because I’m gay. And I don’t sleep with men because all men are pigs. I love my lab and that’s enough.” Chuck’s an odd guy with odd quirks such as endlessly readjusting the ball cap he perpetually wore. No one would suspect