Valaki, aki nagoyn jó angolos! Lenne olyan kedves lefordítani ezt magyarra?

I was wondering if I should warn the girl about John’s coffee, which tasted like a cup of

battery acid someone had pissed in and then cursed at for several hours, when John turned

to her and said in a lawyerly voice, “Shelly, tell us your story.”

She raised timid eyes to me. “It’s my boyfriend. He... he won’t leave me alone. He’s

been harassing me for about a week. My parents are gone, on vacation and I’m... I’m terrified

to go home.”

She shook her head, apparently out of words. She sipped the coffee, grimaced with

distaste, then looked at it as if it had bit her.

“Miss-”

“-Morris,” she said, barely audible.

“Ms. Morris, I strongly recommend a women’s shelter. They can help you get a

restraining order, keep you safe, whatever. There are three in this city, and I’ll be happy to

make the call-“

“-He, my boyfriend, I mean, he’s been dead for two months.”

I let out a long sigh. John cast a little gleeful glance my way, as if to say “see how I

deliver for you, Dave?” I hated that look. She went on.

“I—I didn’t know where else to go. I heard, you know, through a friend of mine that you

handle, um, unusual problems.” She nudged aside a stack of DVD cases on an end table to

make room for the coffee mug and sat it down on what she probably thought was a silk

tablecloth, but was actually a pair of John’s pants. She looked at the mug distrustfully, as if to

remind herself not to accidentally drink from it again, lest it betray her anew. She turned back

to me.

“They say you’re the best.”

I didn’t inform her that whoever called us “the best” had pretty low standards. I guess

we were the best in town at this, but who would you brag to about that? It’s not like this stuff

has its own section of the phone book.

I walked over to a cushioned chair and scooped out its contents (four worn guitar

magazines, a sketchpad, and a leather-bound King James Version of the Holy Bible) and

settled in. A leg promptly broke off and the whole chair slumped over at a 30-degree angle. I

leaned over nonchalantly, trying to look like that’s exactly what I expected to happen.

“Okay. When he comes, you can see him?”

“Yes. I can hear him, too. And he, uh...”

She brushed the bandage on the side of her skull. I looked at her in bewilderment. Was

she serious?

“He hits you?”

“Yes.”

“With his fist?”

“Yes.”

John looked up from his coffee indignantly. “Man, what a dick!”

I did roll my eyes this time and glared at John once they stopped. I don’t know if you’ve

ever seen a ghost, but I’m guessing that if you did, the thing didn’t run over and punch you in

the face. I’m guessing that’s never happened to any of your friends, either.

“From our experience,” said John, “spiritual beings that can manipulate objects in the

physical world are as rare as live humans who can move physical objects with their mind. But

beings that can manifest themselves physically, they’re very powerful, and very, very rare.” I

guessed John had read that somewhere.

“When it first happened,” Shelly said, “I thought I was going crazy. Up until now, I’ve

never bel-“

“-believed in ghosts, right,” I finished. That line was always there in the fake stories,

everybody wanting to come off as the credible skeptic. “Look, Miss, I don’t want to-“

“-I told her we would look into it tonight,” said John, heading me off before I

accidentally introduced some rational thought into this thing. “He’s haunting her house, out in

(town name removed for privacy). I thought you and I could head over there, get out of the

city for a night, show this bastard what’s what.”

I felt a burst of irritation, mostly because John knew the story was bullshit. But then it

suddenly clicked in my mind that, yes, John knew, and that he had called me because he was

in fact trying to set me up with this girl. Button-cute, dead boyfriend, chance to be her hero. As

usual, I didn’t know whether to thank him or punch him in the balls.

Sixteen different objections rose up in my mind at once and somehow they all canceled

each other out. Maybe if there had been an odd number...”