Her thin red eyebrows lifted high. “Jack, it’s Saturday evening. How did you get rich in less than three days?”
Ah, yes. It had been less than a week since the psychic powers had landed on me. And less time since Ansgar’s visit this morning, after Warren’s accusation visit. “Well, I guess . . . I guess that will be part of what I share with everyone when they arrive.”
Her expression became skeptical. The door bell ringing saved me.
“Hey guys!” I said as I opened the door and saw Petros, Leroy and Carlos standing on the top of the stairs. They were each dressed casual, two in jeans, one in khaki pants, no one wearing a suit. Their initial smiles at seeing me became lifted eyebrows as they saw my suit. “I know. I know. It’s the fanciest clothes you’ve ever seen me wear. I’ll explain later. Come on in!”
The three marched past me, though Petros gripped my left shoulder and whispered. “Heard you got shot. Went to hospital. That true?”
I sighed. “Yes, it’s true. Come on in.”
I followed after them. Leroy and Carlos sat on the couch next to Christine. Petros took one of the chairs. All three focused on the coffee table, their looks a mix of pleased and surprised. “Hey, grab a beer. Use my Swiss knife to pop the caps. Or have some ice tea. Red and white wine are in the fridge. Christine has a head start on you three!”
Carlos the grouch harrumphed but reached for the Tuborg. Leroy grabbed the Corona Light, which made sense given his diabetes. Petros frowned thoughtfully, then wrapped thick fingers around the Blue Moon wheat ale bottle. Cap popping filled the living room as folks relaxed back, nodded to Christine, looked around my apartment, and mentally calculated what I liked and did not like. Since my walls were hung with cheap prints of French Impressionist paintings by Degas, Van Gogh and Cezanne, reproduced prints of Japanese ukiyoe wood block drawings and a black and white photo of the Eiffel Tower that I’d taken shortly after meeting Sally, I figured they would find my taste agreeable. Being seniors like me they had all been exposed to a variety of artwork, cultures and peoples. Though only Leroy was an Army vet, the others all respected our service members. The door bell rang again. I got up.
The door opened before I got there. Standing in front of me with big smiles on their faces were Angelina and Mabel.
“Hey bud, I brought Mabel with me. Figured you would approve.” Angelina gave me a smirk.
Mabel looked hopeful. I stepped forward, my arms reaching out. “Hey brave gal! Welcome! Give me a hug!”
Our waitress’s face became a giant smile. She hugged me back. “Jack! So nice to visit you. My, you have a nice place up here atop the garage.”
I nodded to Angelina. “After you, boss lady.”
Our 70s Afro rebel gave me another smirk. “I will. Thank you.” She stepped inside, followed by Mabel. “My, oh my. You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Jack.” She pointed at the terrarium. “Is that an Arizona Alligator Lizard?”
Surprise hit me. Of all my buddies, I had never expected Angelina to be a lizard fancier. An expert dancer, yes. A choir singer, likely. And surely a discerner of men worth her time, as I’d seen her go out on dates after lunches we had all shared over the years. Telling myself to ignore the brilliant colors of the auras of my six buddies, I closed the door and headed for my recliner.
“Yes, it is. His name is Pancho. And he loves snatching up live crickets or grasshoppers.”
“Oh really?” chirped Christine, leaning forward to peer at my only pet. “He looks cute!”
“I agree,” called Angelina as she joined Mabel in sitting on two of the chairs that faced my leather recliner and Pancho’s glass terrarium. Her gaze remained on my pet. “I like what you’ve done with his desert layout. That’s a nice basking rock. And the small cup of water half hidden under that other rock sure fits what I’ve read about Southwestern desert lizards.”
I blinked. Then grabbed my Sapporo from the end table. Noticing Mabel had poured an ice tea for herself while Angelina had grabbed the Heineken and popped its cap, I lifted my beer in a toast. “To good friends and fun times at Mabel’s café!”
“For sure!” grunted Carlos.
“Yeah!” chirped Christine.
“Right on,” muttered Petros, surprising me that he used that 60s phrase.
“I quite agree,” said Leroy softly, raising his beer.
“To the moon with Mabel’s café!” sang Christine, her soprano echoing off the peaked roof of the room.
Mabel chuckled, then touched her tea glass to the raised beer bottles and wine goblet. “You guys make it so much fun to be your waitress! I love having you there every morning.”
We all sipped our drinks. I felt their personas relax. I kinda relaxed. Then Christine broke the mood.
“Okay, Jack. Out with it! Why this get-together at your place? And how did you get rich and start wearing fancy clothes?”
All my buddies and Mabel looked at me, varying degrees of curiosity showing on their faces. While all but Mabel were in their late sixties, few of them showed the wrinkles common to senior aging. Though Leroy’s narrow face did show wrinkles between his cheeks and his eyes. And like the other guys he was clean-shaven. Which made his mood even more clear. If I didn’t have the ability to read personas, listen in on surface thoughts and see auras I could still have figured out the moods of the guys here. Same for the three women. Even Mabel’s pudgy face, so often alight with a welcoming smile, was clearly eager to hear from me. I took a final sip of my Sapporo, then put it down on the end table between me and Christine. I looked to them all.
“Well, folks, on the fancy clothes, that’s easiest. Thursday afternoon I met with a rich NYC guy at the Railyard. We talked. He gave me investment advice. Then he went to the airport and flew out on his private plane.”
“Really?” cooed Angelina, her low rich voice sounding like a feminine eight cylinder engine revving up.
Christine nodded to her friend. “Really. In less than three days our bud has come into $100 bills and spendy clothes. Which, I must say, look quite fine on you, Jack.”
“Congrats, Jack,” muttered Carlos, his mustache tips moving slightly as he spoke. “But how did the short guy fly up and hit the ceiling?”
Petros nodded quickly. “Yeah, glad you got bucks to spare. But how did those robbers go up in flames? And one fly up like he did? All after you pointed at them.”
Mabel frowned thoughtfully. “Jack, I love that you rose up to defend me. But everything after that was weird. Were you involved in any of what happened?”
Leroy sat back on the couch, his beer in one hand, his bald head shiny under the skylight. His thick black eyebrows rose. “Yeah, Jack, you’ve always been the most solitary one of us. What drove you to intervene?”
I fixed on Leroy. “Well, Leroy, I could say some fancy words about what I did at the café. But I would rather you. And my other buds. It will make things easier. Put down your beer and reach out with your hands. So I can hold them. Please?”
Leroy was 68. Only two years younger than me. So men holding hands meant only one thing to him. But he knew me for the dyed in the wool hetero I have always been. Which left him confused. He put down the beer. “You want to hold my hands?”
I nodded. “I do. Things will be clearer for all of you after I hold your hands.”
He shrugged. Then aimed his left ear hearing aid at me. “Well, I guess I heard you accurately then. So, let’s hold hands.”
I gave him an encouraging nod. Then I reached out and held his hands in mine.
A sudden image of him in three dimensions flashed in my mind, similar to the medical textbook image I’d gotten when I Healed Sally’s hands. Instantly I sensed the poor quality of his hearing, though his left ear heard better than the right one. And his pancreas was an inactive lump, hence his need for insulin to handle sugars from anything he ate. But his heart was fine, with no artery blockage of note. There was no cancer anywhere in him, either in his lungs or in his prostate. And his brain was flickering very normal
ly as thoughts flittered through his neurons. I focused on his ears and his pancreas. In my mind I thought of healing energies flowing down my arm, through my hands and into his ears and pancreas. I felt that happening. Then my healing energies stopped flowing. I let go his hands.
“How do you feel now?”
Leroy seemed dazed. “I feel like I’ve touched a car battery and gotten a bad shock. What the . . . what did you do, just now, Jack?”
I caught his blue eyes with mine. “I just healed your ears. And your pancreas. Leroy, take out your hearing aids. Put them in a pocket. And tell everyone here if your hearing is worse, or better.”
He did as I told him. Around us Carlos, Petros, Mabel, Angelina and Christine looked from me to our bud.
“Talk to me. Again.”
I smiled. “Leroy, I am almost whispering now. Yet you should hear me loud and clear.”
“I do. I do!” he cried out, looking delighted. He glanced right and left, gaining the attention of our buddies. “Christine! Your soprano has always been hard for me to catch. The high tones and all. Talk to me.”
Christine looked surprised. Then intent. “Leroy, you always were a dufus. And you were clueless the three times you asked me out. But I enjoyed your company. You twit.”
Everyone laughed, including Leroy. Who focused on me. “Jack. Jack, I, yeah. I hear like when I was 18, long before my hearing faded in my 40s. You say I don’t need insulin anymore?”
I gave him a grin. Then a thumbs-up. “Nope. Your pancreas is working fine now.”
Leroy reached down to the coffee table, grabbed his beer and held it up. “I’ll toast to that!”
We all held our drinks up, some clinking against fellow beers or glasses. Then we drank. The auras of my six buddies were even more yellow than earlier. Carlos fixed on me.
“Jack, what do you call what you just did to Leroy?”
“I call it Healing. It’s a . . . it is a psychic power that landed on me early Tuesday morning. I’ve been coping ever since.”
Surprise showed on most faces. Some were thoughtful. But no one showed open disbelief. Not after seeing Leroy hear Christine’s high toned words. But our nuke engineer was still focused on me.
“Psychic power? Like telepathy?” Surmise showed on his brown face. “Or levitation? Did you make that fourth robber fly up and hit the café ceiling?”
Damn. Admitting to one power naturally led them all to wondering what else I could do.
“Carlos, everyone, I can Heal injuries on other people. I’ve done it for my ex Sally. And a few other folks in whom I am totally confident they will keep it confidential to themselves.” A few nodded. Petros raised his eyebrows, impatient. I caught his gaze. “Petros, yes, I made that robber fly up. His aura was not solid black like the other three robbers, including the one who slapped Mabel. His aura showed him not to be a murderer, or someone intending death to another. So I spared him.”
“Spared him?” said Angelina softly, her tone as rich as a 100 year old Scotch whiskey taken neat.
“Yes. I spared him.” I sat back in my recliner and drank the last of my beer. Then I handed the empty to Petros. He reached to me from his folding chair on the other side of the coffee table. “Petros, throw that empty at me. Please.”
I raised my barrier field but held it just out from my body. No need to turn over furniture and people. Petros looked surprised, then he shrugged. And threw the bottle at me.
It bounced off my field about two feet from contact with my fancy suit.
“Damn!” grunted Carlos. “That ain’t normal.”
“It sure ain’t,” Leroy said softly. “But like my hearing, it really happened.”
Angelina, Christine and Mabel all looked up from watching the empty roll around on the large rug that filled the middle of my living room. All three of them were looking surprised and intensely curious. As were the three guys. Leroy and Carlos leaned forward on the couch. So did Christine. So did everyone else.
“As you all have now seen, those robbers could not have hurt me when I stood up to them. Good Petros was ready to tackle them without my mental protection. He’s the hero among us.” I scanned each face, each aura, each persona, but stayed out of their minds. “Yes, I have other psychic powers. Healing and my barrier field are two of them. The rest I would rather not discuss. Can I trust you all to keep this a secret? From anyone and everyone?”
All six said variations of “Yes!” “For Sure” or “Right!”
Christine’s surprised expression became thoughtful. “Well, Jack, it’s great you are immune to muggers and robbers. But your sudden riches, well, I am sure that is due to more normal reasons. Any chance the rest of us can learn how to get rich in three days?”
I laughed. “If I told you exactly how I landed in a pile of money, you would not believe me!”
“After what you just did with the bottle?” scoffed Angelina. “I’d believe you if you said a UFO landed and ladled out piles of U.S. Treasury bills. In all denominations!”
Everyone laughed again. Most finished their drinks. Mabel looked me over.
“Jack, is there a real get rich quick option? That’s open to the rest of us?”
Well, I was not about to invite them onto my next currency shredder visit. But could I share some of my good fortune with them?
“Guys, no, you cannot copy what I did that landed me in fancy clothes and plenty of bucks. But maybe I can—”
My mind flashed with the image of Monday morning. The morning that would yet happen. The New York Stock Exchange would open then, it not being a holiday. Amid all the trading and sales happening, one thing stood out to me. A mining company named Arco Exploration would announce it had found a deposit of the rare metals used in smartphones and computers. In Australia’s northwest mountains. Their stock value would increase 12-fold. In truth, a mining engineer with the company would mention the new find to an Australian business reporter, who would flash it over the internet. So the news would get out during the trading day, rather than wait for the planned formal news release Monday evening, after trading was done. Wow.
“Uh, folks, if early Monday morning you buy all the shares of Arco Exploration you can afford, the share value will jump really high later in the day.” I saw skepticism on the faces of all of them. “Hey, it’s legal to buy shares. And no one at the company has talked to me. I know this . . . I know this because I just had a flash of what will happen on Monday at the NYSE. It’s called precognition. The ability to see that something will happen in the near future.” I licked my lips. And hoped no one would press me further on my other psychic powers.
Carlos was the first to nod. “I’ve heard of precognition. It’s like knowing who is calling on your phone before you answer it. Right?”
“Right.”
Mabel looked thoughtful. “Well, I do have some savings at my bank. Guess I can use that.”
“Me too!” muttered burly Petros, his thick fingers moving as if already folding a wad of money.
My other friends had similar reactions. A sudden thought brought me up short.
“Uh, folks, it may be that someone from the feds might call you about your share purchase. Especially if their computers track the fact that six folks from a town in New Mexico all bought shares just before the news got out.” Everyone now looked sober, and worried. “Since you can’t tell them about me, you could just say you heard one of the biz types tell the robbers to buy this company, just before the robbers went up in smoke. That way the feds can try to figure out which among the three dozen people at the café had a way to know this. And excited utterance works both in police work and in managing money,” I said, smiling as I recalled a criminology class I had sat in about nine years ago.
Relief showed on their faces. “Sounds plausible,” Carlos grunted.
When Carlos, the most logical thinker and fact-focused person in our group, said those words, everyone else gave a sigh, followed by big smiles.
My phone buzzed. I took it out of
my pocket and looked at it. There was a new phone message. The ID text said it was from Channel 13, presumably one of their reporters. Damn. With my picture and name in today’s paper, the media would be pursuing me even more than at the end of the week. Well, they couldn’t find me if I wasn’t in Santa Fe. Or New Mexico. A morning teleport trip to Central Park, then a walk to Ansgar’s condo tower sounded like the right thing to do. Especially now that I had discovered I had the ability to foresee the near future. Surely Ansgar would have some ideas on how to use this power. And maybe not use it. Buying shares in a company about to suddenly become super-valuable was likely a behavior to be avoided. At least I did not have to pursue that route. Between the two bundles of money and future shredder visits I had more than enough money. Maybe Ansgar could give me tips on quality art I could now afford to buy. Thus building my new image as an arts supporter. Monday would be a good day to do that. Maybe even tonight.
“Jack?” called Leroy, cutting through my musing as my buddies chatted among themselves about future purchases with their newfound wealth.
I looked to him. The man I had Healed of hearing loss and diabetes was looking me over in a way I had never seen him do before.
“Yes, Leroy?”
“Would you like to come to church with me tomorrow morning? My Lutheran pastor lady is very liberal and very welcoming to people of all spirit paths. You don’t have to be Christian in order to be welcome at our church.”
Wow. I had not seen that coming, precognition notwithstanding. “Leroy, why do you think I should go to church with you?”
All our other buds had quieted as they heard Leroy say something unusual. While the man had mentioned several times that he knit ‘prayer shawls’ for giving away to the homeless in Santa Fe, they only knew that. Now I wondered if it was something he did as part of being a member of this church.
He looked me over again, his expression unique. “Well, Jack, this week you were blessed with psychic powers. You Healed me by a laying on of your hands. Such Healing is very rare, but real. Have you wondered about the source of your new powers?”
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