by G A Chase
Kendell returned from the kitchen with two cups of coffee. “Don’t mind her. It takes time for Cheesecake to warm up to men.”
“Cheesecake?”
Kendell handed him a cup and sat next to him. “It’s a silly name, I know. My parents gave her to me for my twelfth birthday. I fell in love with the puppy immediately.” She looked over at the dog basking in the morning light of the front window. “Didn’t I, my sweet girl?”
“Okay, but why the name?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “I was getting there. From the time I first tasted the dessert, I’ve been a firm believer that cheesecake is the ultimate in culinary achievements. And for us to be friends, you’ll have to agree with me. It’s a cake. It’s a pie. And it’s made out of light-as-a-feather creamy cheese. It’s sheer perfection.”
“I like chocolate.”
From the way she went silent, closed her eyes, and drew her lips into a stern thin line, he suspected she was counting to ten. When she opened her eyes again, he knew he’d made the mistake of the day. “Why are all the men who cross my path chocolate-headed Neanderthals?”
“There’s no such thing as chocolate cheesecake?”
She softened slightly. “There is. I can compromise that far. Just don’t go cake boy on me, or we’re through.”
He knew he probably shouldn’t poke her, but the target was too tempting to ignore. “But you said yourself one of the wonders of cheesecake is that it’s part cake.”
“That’s the Neanderthal part. Cake is just unevolved.”
He sipped his coffee to prevent her from seeing him laugh. “Okay, so you like cheesecake. Why give that name to the dog?”
“I don’t like cheesecake. At twelve, it was an all-consuming passion. I had dreams of becoming a chef specializing in making the ultimate cheesecakes. So when I met my puppy, my mother asked me the cruelest question I’d ever heard in my life. I cried I was so hurt.”
Myles couldn’t for the life of him figure out where Kendell was going with her story. “What did she ask?”
“She wanted to know if I loved the dog more than cheesecake. Can you imagine? I grabbed the puppy in my arms and just held her, petted her, and called her Cheesecake. I remember looking into her big brown eyes and promising I’d never, ever have to tell her I loved her more than cheesecake. She’d already know.”
Myles looked over at the dog, wondering what Kendell saw in her. Cheesecake’s pronounced underbite reminded him of a hairy Darth Vader mask. “Well, she doesn’t seem to think much of me, which is unusual for a dog.”
“Cheesecake doesn’t like to be lumped in with other dogs. She makes up her own mind about people. It takes time for her to get to know someone. Hurt her, piss her off, or worst of all, make her think you’re a threat to me, and she’ll never forgive you. She won’t even let most of my ex-boyfriends into my apartment. She’s never bitten anyone, but if I were ever really in danger, I think she would do it to protect me. And she can’t be bribed. Why do guys always think they can win females over just by offering us food? Cheesecake doesn’t base her assessment of people on them giving her treats any more than I fall in love because some guy takes me out to dinner. We’re both much more complicated than that. Aren’t we, girl?”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” The way Kendell kept talking to the dog as if she were a part of the conversation made Myles uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he didn’t think animals understood. They most likely did. He just didn’t like being in a multispecies conversation. Throughout his life, people had ignored him in favor of what someone else had to say. Being passed over for a silent dog did little to help his self-confidence.
He spun the small pipe tool on the end table like a pencil. Just as when he played with actual writing implements, he knew he was procrastinating.
She snagged the spinning golden cylinder off the table. “Explain to me how you read energy. I don’t understand why it is you could experience everything that pilot went through during a crash eighty years ago in a plane one hundred feet underwater, but you can’t tell what’s going on with this while it’s in your hand.”
He barely understood himself. “I was in a different mental state. Here, talking with you or standing in that shop with a bunch of people around, makes me very engaged with my surroundings. My brain is working. Out there on the water, I was attempting to be as mentally blank as possible.”
“How did you know you weren’t just imagining everything?”
He smiled at her politeness. “My friends on the boat were less diplomatic. They believed I’d been asleep and dreaming the whole scene. Honestly, I know the difference. I have drifted off more often than I’ve reached a quiet but alert mind-set.”
“So it’s kind of like meditation?”
He never went in for spiritual crap. “If you accept that professor’s idea that information is stored in objects, you could think of what I do as trying to be the blank screen for the movie to project onto. Meditation sounds too much like trying to turn off all the projectors, not just one playing my personal narrative.”
“I thought you didn’t like that guy.”
Myles couldn’t remember a single professor he did like. “I’m just not crazy about people talking about stuff when they haven’t tried it themselves. Studying all the theory in the world isn’t worth a damn if you never put it into practice. I don’t remember one useful topic regarding how to read energy, only what it might be like.”
“Sounds complicated. How do you know when it’s your mind making stuff up and when the story is coming from somewhere else?”
He took the small metal cylinder from her. “That’s what we have to find out. I need someplace peaceful where I can lie down. The room doesn’t have to be completely quiet. In fact, it would better if there were some kind of white noise, like an air conditioner, or something that would prevent me from falling asleep but not be a distraction.”
Her laugh made him feel included in her life—he could tell she wasn’t laughing at his expense. “A quiet room in an apartment on Decatur? You must be kidding. You could use my bedroom.”
Her innocence made him smile. Even a woman he wasn’t immediately attracted to would have things in her private sanctuary he’d find difficult to ignore. “The living room couch would be better, provided Cheesecake doesn’t mind me in her space.”
“That’s cool. I have some reading to do on psychometry. From what I gather, it works better if you’re holding the item. I’ll take Cheesecake and hide out in my bedroom. Would an hour be long enough?”
He’d never given much thought to how long it would take to connect to old energy. “I think it’d be safe to say that if I haven’t gotten some message by then, I’ll probably be asleep.”
“I’ll listen for your snoring just in case.”
* * *
He had to admit that Cheesecake knew her lounging spots. Winter in New Orleans made relaxing in the light of early afternoon a pleasure. Another couple of months, and he would be avoiding any possibility of adding heat to the already stifling day.
But relaxing in a woman’s apartment didn’t come naturally. Even with his eyes closed, the smell of her lavender-scented soap and pine candles made him think of being a kid, lying out on a grassy field in summer. So much about her reminded him of those carefree days when he was able to be friends with girls without worrying about sexual tension.
His mental image of a summer’s day transitioned to an old-fashioned young girl’s yellow dress covered in printed, brightly colored flowers.
A person’s thoughts didn’t accompany the mental movie, much to Myles’s disappointment. There was no narrative voice-over giving him insight into what went on in his character’s head. He was left with only the intense emotions and, if he was lucky, the person’s reaction as it played out in the private theater of his anti-imagination.
A girl’s small finger traced the letters engraved on the pipe tool. Instead of the dull, tarnished-gold cylinder he was familiar with, it
gleamed so brightly he could make out the delicate inscription: “To My Father. Love, Serephine.”
But as her finger covered up the Love, he experienced her intense disappointment. Her father had hurt her, but her emotion was more pity than anger.
Myles allowed his perception of the event to rise closer to his own thoughts. The girl’s feelings were intense but quiet. Unlike the pilot, whose terror had left crystal-clear images embedded in the cockpit, this child’s movie was in the soft light and long shadows so common to New Orleans. To really hear her, Myles would need an even deeper state of calm no matter what she had to tell him.
He let his mind go blank to sink back down to her awareness. A tear had fallen onto her hands, which held the tool, framed by her gossamer-soft blond hair. Whatever her father had done hadn’t resulted in her hatred. But love was a term she could no longer accept.
Her small porcelain-white thumb swung the blade out from the other thin implements. Her heart beat so fast Myles could feel his own corresponding blood pressure in his hands and feet. She drew a faint pink line across her wrist with the blade—at least, she’d intended to keep the pressure light.
Myles struggled to remain in the moment with the girl, but struggling was the opposite of remaining calm and blank. He sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The girl’s movie wasn’t finished.
He propped up the needlepoint pillow so the sun would shine on his face and lay back on the couch. Whatever had happened to the girl had been long ago. It wasn’t like he could help her. He could only hear her story.
She wanted to scream, but all that came out was a whimpering, “No.” The fear of anyone finding out what she’d done overwhelmed her need for help.
Ruby-red blood flowed across the girl’s lily-white wrist. She held her hand up to her face. The thick liquid ran down her arm and onto her father’s large leather office chair. In her other small hand, she still held the delicate knife.
The math didn’t add up. She wouldn’t have had the strength to press the dull knife deep enough into her flesh even if she had meant to. The little pressure she’d applied, and the unlikely gush of blood that followed, led to confusion in both Myles and the girl. The blood stained her cotton dress before seeping into her leggings and continuing to her patent-leather shoes. She arched her foot up, trying to stop the growing stream from hitting the floor. At the first drop that landed on the embroidered carpet, her only emotion was fear of her father’s anger at her for messing up his office.
Hazy black dots began rotating around the image in Myles’s mind. The girl’s emotions were deepening to a maturity he would have expected from someone much older. She laid the tool in the puddle of blood on the chair.
Again, there was a desire to scream. Death, however, was less feared than a life spent as her father’s daughter. She didn’t view him as evil, but she knew others would. And society’s impression of him would taint her as well. Death would free her of the bonds that held her to her father’s actions, to his legacy, and to being his daughter. The movie grew so dark he nearly missed the last image of a butterfly hatching out of its cocoon to fly away.
* * *
Myles was still searching for the hidden inscription when Cheesecake jumped on the couch to repossess her throne. At least she didn’t growl at him.
Kendell followed her dog out of her bedroom. “I’m sorry. She doesn’t like being cooped up.”
“It’s okay. I think I’ve got the answer I was searching for, but you’re not going to like it.” Women had a soft spot for children. Telling her about the girl’s unintended suicide wasn’t going to be an enjoyable conversation.
She sat next to him and held Cheesecake in her lap like some demonic teddy bear as he recounted what he’d seen. Each time he said something that made Kendell cringe, the dog started growling like it was somehow his fault for not saving the poor child.
“But you don’t think she had meant to cut her wrist?” The question seemed important to Kendell.
It wasn’t like his mental movies came with a rewind feature. “The only emotion I experienced was shock at seeing the blood. I don’t know what she intended. I don’t get to read her thoughts, just feel her emotions. The knife must have been sharper than she’d expected, but a pipe tool wouldn’t need to be razor sharp. It seemed like an accident. I don’t know how it happened. She must have been in shock. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why she didn’t yell for help. Though at the end of her life, I got a distinct feeling of relief.”
Kendell buried her face in Cheesecake’s thick, curly black-and-white fur. “And she was mad at her father? I can’t imagine how bad he must have felt thinking his daughter had committed suicide with something she’d given him.”
“Again, I don’t get to know what she was thinking. All I could experience was what she saw and her emotional responses. Even at her young age, she knew her father was not considered a good man. I don’t think she was so much mad at him as hurt for what he’d done to others.”
She stared into his eyes for so long he finally had to look away. “How much of her emotions affect you?”
Long ago, he’d learned to focus on himself after experiencing someone else’s story, be it real or imaginary. “I’ll be fine in a couple of hours.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Again, he felt as though she was prying into his intensely personal habits. “That girl’s suicide, intentional or not, will always be a part of me. I’ve experienced death before, as with the pilot, but I’ve never known what it is to take one’s own life. Now I do. It would be tempting to say I can isolate the event like reading about it in a book, but that’s not accurate. I was there. Intellectually, I know I couldn’t stop something that happened so long ago, but that doesn’t relieve the guilt of being behind the girl’s eyes while it happened.”
“And you carry that load every time you read an object’s history? How do you survive such a burden?”
Her question was one he’d struggled with since childhood. “I had a choice. Either I could grow cold to those around me, or I could embrace that we all have our issues to deal with. I wish I could tell you it was a one-time decision. The truth is I struggle with that duality every day.”
Kendell scratched at the dog’s ear as she thought. “So we have an object that we think carries an emotional event. And you’ve processed that energy to come up with a convincing narrative. I guess the next step would be to see if you’re correct. How would we go about doing that?”
Turning the pipe tool in his fingers, he could just make out the worn engraved B. “Some answers we’ll need to find the old-fashioned way—through research. As the girl was looking over the inscription, I did see this jeweler’s mark. There’s not much of it left, but with any luck, we might be able to figure out where the pipe tool was made. In New Orleans, family businesses don’t disappear. They just get folded into whatever comes after them like the layers of old peeling paint on the walls.”
“We should also go back to the antique gun shop. Remember he said the pipe tool came in with a collection of Civil War artifacts? Maybe he can put us in contact with the collector who sold him the stuff.”
Myles wasn’t crazy about returning to the gun shop and all its negative energy, but he didn’t see much choice. Coming up with a story, real or make-believe, was one thing. Proving it would be closer to the areas of archeological research he’d hoped to leave to others.
4
As a college student, Myles had studied the French Quarter, specifically Bourbon Street, every chance he got. Often, his explorations resulted in sitting in class the next day with a hangover. The research gave him a good grounding in which establishments to apply to after graduation. Though an archeology major, the only rocks he dug through these days were the ice cubes he used in making colorful concoctions for drunk tourists. Fellow service workers knew him in the Quarter. He thought he knew every business, from the historic, family-owned restaurants to the fly-by-night art
galleries, even if some of them he seldom frequented.
The upscale jewelry store gave him the willies. Walking in with Kendell at his side made him thrust his hand into his pocket to protect his wallet. At least she wasn’t his girlfriend, but the elegant lady who smiled and greeted them wouldn’t know their relationship status. Men didn’t often get dragged into stores displaying rings, necklaces, and other expensive items meant to enhance a woman’s beauty without the expectation of purchasing at least a little something.
The saleswoman spread her bejeweled hands out on the crystal clear glass case filled with gold rings. “Can I help you find something? We have a lovely selection of black star sapphire earrings and necklaces.”
At least she hadn’t started pushing the engagement rings. He had to admit the woman had pegged Kendell perfectly.
In spite of their objective, Kendell couldn’t help but stare at the gemstones. “They’re beautiful.”
“We have them in everything, from moderately priced earrings to elegant wedding bands. A wonderful aspect of star sapphires is they can be as easily worn by a man as a woman.”
He feared that in another couple of minutes, the saleswoman would have Kendell’s mind filled with ideas of where their nonexistent romance might end up. He pulled out the drawing he’d made of the calligraphy B. “Have you ever had a piece come through your shop with this mark?”
The store clerk managed to not look disappointed, but he suspected she’d just dropped her opinion of them from potential buyer to below casual browser. “Let me get Philip. He’s our master jeweler.”