by Sarah Lassez
Erlin cost a bit more than Angel, but what the hell. I’d always been taught to appreciate quality not quantity, and I figured if I started straight off with one of the top three psychics on the site, I’d have no need for the hacks. In truth, I was saving myself money by spending so much.
“Hello,” a soft airy voice said, “and welcome to Psychicdom. Please hold while we connect you with your adviser. You will be charged the rate of $4.99 a minute. Please don’t forget to leave feedback at the end of your call.”
I barely had time to panic before a calming, almost hypnotic voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Erlin. I sense you’re calling about love…about a love relationship.”
“Well, sort of. I mean, yes. Will I ever have one again?”
I could almost hear him smile through the phone, and the sweetness of what I felt was like sugar after a lifetime of salt. It washed over me. I will have love again, of course I will! Then my mother’s voice, informing me she was okay never having grandchildren, hit me with a thwack, and I tightened my grip on the receiver.
“I see him,” he finally said. “He’s your heart’s desire, everything you’ve ever wanted and everything you never knew you needed. He will absolutely sweep you off your feet.”
“When?” At some point I’d leapt from the bed and begun pacing frantically. I pivoted right as I reached my nightstand, then again as I reached my bookcase. I needed sweeping. I desperately needed sweeping.
“It’s soon, actually. I see him so clearly. He has blondish hair and blue or green eyes. Light eyes.”
I froze. Could he be talking about my Knight of Wands? My Knight of Wands who’d been teasingly announcing his arrival for the last year? “When? When do I meet him?”
Though I expected Erlin to ponder the question, to look into his crystal ball or summon the spirits, he instead immediately spit out, “Two weeks.” And that was that. There was no guessing, no big window of time, no room for error—simply “two weeks.” His confidence had completely sold me, and my belief in my knight’s arrival was so firm it was as if God had just faxed me an itinerary.
For kicks I decided to ask about my career, which, despite Angel’s encouragement, I’d pretty much given up on. Erlin again seemed very confident, very assured. “I see a lot of success in your future. Money will not be a problem.”
After a few seconds of joy it occurred to me that the success he was seeing could be from a career as an Internet marketer. I began pacing again. “Can you make sure you’re looking at my career as an actress? Because I’m doing another job on the side.”
“The side”—the side of what? I hadn’t been on an audition in so long that I was an Internet marketer through and through. There was no side. I worried that I was lying to the psychic, something that’s always terrified me. Even getting annoyed with psychics freaks me out, because what if they can read your thoughts? Shouldn’t they be able to read your thoughts? What if the words “You crazy bitch, where’s my Golden Globe!” randomly course through their brains as they’re mopping the floor, and they know it’s you? What if they feel your bad thoughts and put a curse on you? What if you never win a Golden Globe because of your bad thoughts?
But Erlin gave me no reason to think anything negative, as immediately he responded with, “Yes, your talent will be recognized. You’re very creative.”
“As an actress, right?” I knew I was being picky, but I had to be sure. I’d become pretty damn creative as an Internet marketer, too.
“Yes, as an actress. I see success and recognition.”
“When? When’s that happen?”
“This year there’s a little success, but I see a lot coming in the next few years. I see a role that fits you well.”
A role that fits me well…like on a TV series? A long-running TV series that would mean I’d get my Spanish-style house and my infinity pool? “So, I’ll be famous? I’ll be rich?”
“Yes, you will be famous—and money will never be an issue.”
Beep! The soft airy voice interrupted. “You have one minute remaining.”
“Do you see anything else? What else do you see?”
“You’ll be presented with an opportunity. You’ll be on a roll. You’ll feel strong and successful and fulfilled. You need to suspend doubt. Clear your head and make it your intention.”
Beep! “To continue your call at the rate of…”
I yelled a good-bye over the soft airy voice and hung up.
Wow. Love, career, fame, money, being swept off my feet—that was the best call ever. Of course, that call cost me about seventy-five dollars, practically a whole day’s work at my job from hell…. But a glimpse into the future was worth it! Erlin was like a gatekeeper who’d just swung open a door for me, his tux-clad arm indicating a path paved in dazzling gold. And it must be true, he must be right, because he was so highly rated. With Angel or Aurelia I’d always felt a slight tickle of doubt, since I had no proof they were accurate; they had no feedback. But Erlin, Erlin came with an accuracy report!
I ran myself a bath and knew it was just a matter of time. Now three psychics had predicted I’d be famous, so obviously I’d be famous. And love…the great love of my life was just around the corner, just about to appear!
I thanked my lucky stars I’d been led to Erlin and to Psychicdom, and dumped half a bottle of valerian and hops into the bath to promote sleep. It was close to midnight, yet I was so awake I could’ve painted the entire apartment.
As I slipped into the blue overpoweringly fragrant water, I was so excited about my future it almost hurt.
5
Wilhelm the Metrosexual
NOTHING TAKES OVER AN ANSWERING MACHINE LIKE one of Gina’s phone calls. It never matters that she’s essentially talking to herself; once she has yelled “Pick up the phone” a dozen times and is thus satisfied you’re not home, she will then have an entire conversation, asking questions, answering them, elaborating and debating. If you weren’t sitting idly by when she called, screening the message, then you’d get home later, press play, and stand there, legs aching, tempted to delete her rambling halfway through. But you can’t, because she tends to leave the important bits right at the very end. The tricky, sadistic girl.
So, almost two weeks after my introduction to Psychicdom, when I was searching for the right psychic for a little pick-me-up reading and I heard Gina’s voice careening into the room, I prayed for a full message box. However, that wish sometimes backfires, because the message would then be left on my cell phone’s voice mail, along with a supplemental speech on the importance of clearing your messages. I lay down, resigned to a long sprawling message. I just couldn’t handle a conversation with anyone right then, much less someone who might insist I leave my house. Just days prior the company I worked for had floated belly-up in its algae-filled Internet start-up pond, and I’d lost my job as an Internet marketer. This actually had made me very, very happy; with my layoff came severance and unemployment, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s being unemployed. Still, I was a bit miffed that not one psychic had managed to predict this. I mean, to other people the loss of a job would be monumental, something to predict. How had they missed it?
I was trying to zone out Gina’s ramblings and was about to put the pillow over my head, when suddenly my mind latched on to something she said. I sprang from the bed and yanked the phone from its cradle. “Who? Who’s my future boyfriend?”
It seemed she’d just met a friend of a friend, a sous-chef at a fancy hotel, whom she claimed was perfect for me. “He’s not an actor. Sarah, are you getting this? He’s got a normal job.”
“Yeah, I heard you. But what are you calling him?”
“Villl-helm.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You know. Wilhelm. German for William, I guess.”
“Wilhelm? He’s German? Great. His ancestors probably gassed mine, and we’ll have some fucked up karma.”
All right. Even I knew how ridiculous I sounded.
The truth was that for all my talk about wanting a boyfriend, I was terrified of getting involved again. So far it seemed that the universe tended to intervene in any way it could to mess with my love life, so it seemed a distinct possibility that this Wilhelm and I would be settled on the couch on some rainy day, flipping through old family photos, only to make the gruesome discovery. “This is my great-grandmother,” I’d say, right as he said, “Holy crap. That’s my great-grandfather with the gun. How funny!”
“Sarah, you’re being a freak. Listen. I have a feeling this is important, like this needs to happen. And he’s totally your type. He looks just like Elvis. A blond Elvis with green eyes.”
I paused for a moment, wondering where on earth Gina had gotten the idea that Elvis was my type. “Young Elvis or old Elvis?”
“Young Elvis. Jesus, like I’d set you up with old Elvis.”
After she insisted he was a pretty, clean, young Elvis, I agreed to meet him. Then my insides started doing somersaults when I realized his description matched all the predictions. Was this my knight? Was my knight a young blond Elvis look-alike German sous-chef?
On Saturday night Gina arrived at my house, took one look at me, and asked me why I was dressed as Superman.
“The S,” I informed her, pointing to my baby doll Superman T-shirt, “stands for Sarah.”
“Uh-huh. Okay.”
I realized then that in my mission to not be vulnerable and to keep my guard up, dressing as a superhero might have been overkill, but we were already late at that point, and Gina wouldn’t let me change.
“We’re supposed to be on the west side in ten minutes,” she said, pointing to the door. “Get in the car, Clark.”
With that she turned and clomped down the steps, stopping at the door and then looking back at me with an encouraging grin, as if to say, “Ready? Ready to meet your future husband?” I nodded, and finally followed her, because as a matter of fact yes, yes I was ready to meet my future husband.
It turned out there were three stages to this particular evening. The first was to meet her friend Dustin, an enormously tall German, at his place. The second was to head to the hotel where Wilhelm worked, so he could join us. And the third was to go to another bar, where, almost two hours after we’d left the house, we’d then officially start the evening. Such genius planning was only one of many reasons why going out seemed like work, but I didn’t complain as we pulled up in front of Dustin’s apartment building. Ever so casually, Gina turned off the car and dropped a bombshell.
Seat belt still on, I twisted toward her as much as I could, staring in disbelief. “He’s how old?”
Gina smiled. “Dustin’s age.”
“And that’s twenty-five? I thought Dustin was older!”
“He just seems older because he’s so tall. People often make that mistake. But no. Twenty-five. Come on, let’s go.” She grabbed her purse and got out of the car.
Not budging, I yelled after her, “I cannot believe you’re just telling me this now!”
I saw her heading to my side of the car, and I locked the door. I wasn’t getting out. No way. Not for a twenty-five-year-old. No. Twenty-five-year-old guys are still submerged in their frat boy lives; are still stuck in bouts of womanizing, bachelor pad black leather couches, and cinderblock end tables. They think a date means picking up the tab at McDonald’s and romance means not having a football game on in the background. You date a twenty-five-year-old guy when you’re eighteen, not when you’re thirty. In fact, if we got a move on, this thirty-year-old could be resting her ancient bones beneath a blanket and watching Grease within the hour.
Gina attempted to unlock my door with her key, but I planted my hand on the lock and foiled her plan. “No. I’m not getting out. You tricked me. You ambushed me with a child.”
“Sarah,” she said, trying to unlock the door and at the same time pull on the handle, a combination that was decidedly ungraceful and yet highly entertaining. “Open up. Come on, unlock it! You will not be sorry; I promise you. He’s mature for his age! He’s German; they’re born mature!”
“No.”
Then, suddenly, she stopped pulling. She knelt by my window. In the glimmer of her eyes I could practically see her brain switching gears.
“Look,” she said in a very calm and scarily soothing voice. “At the very least you’ll just want to mess around with him. That I can definitely promise you. When you see him, you won’t be able to resist. Okay? Just look at it that way, that this is a really cute, nice guy who will buy you drinks and maybe a dinner or two. He’ll get you out of the house and make you smile. He’s someone to think about. Who cares if he doesn’t turn out to be the one? What else do you have right now? This is a cute boy to kiss! Isn’t that a good thing?”
Damnit. She was right. I glared at her as I took my hand off the lock. This whole time I’d been thinking I was about to meet my knight, my future husband, and had been on a cloud nine of anticipation like a girl told there was fine-jewelry shopping or drunken disco dancing in her future. Now I’d have to completely realign my thoughts. I opened the door and stepped out, my heels immediately sinking in and aerating someone’s lawn. Cute boy to kiss, I repeated in my mind as Gina quickly locked the car behind me.
I admit, I took one look at the hotel, a glamorous and historic building with opulent décor and views of the ocean, and thought maybe this Wilhelm guy wasn’t that bad. Certainly they wouldn’t have a Senor Frog’s T-shirt wearing, beer-bong-partaking frat boy working here. Maybe he was mature for his age. Maybe there was hope after all.
Gina and I waited at the hotel’s glossy bar while Dustin disappeared to find his friend. The plan was to wait just a few more minutes till Wilhelm was off work, join him for a bottle of wine courtesy of his incredible employee discount, and finally all head over to a different bar, where he could knock back a few more drinks without being scrutinized by his employees. It was actually a shame, because his hotel was gorgeous and equipped with some great people-watching. Glancing around the room, I noticed that someone had meticulously planted a celebrity at every table, as well as in the entry-way, for that matter. On our way in, Dustin had almost stepped on a little sitcom actor.
Just for kicks I imagined dating this Wilhelm creature. I’d meet him at work and sit demurely at the bar with my leopard-print handbag and a black fifties-style coat, my lips glossy red, my dark hair shining. The bartender would rush to make me an apple martini as people looked on with awe. “Who is she?” they’d ask, discreetly trying to catch my reflection in the bar’s mirror. “She looks familiar. She’s got to be important for that bartender to move like that.”
Gina nudged me. “That’s him.”
I looked up. With mounting excitement I scanned the room for a clean, pretty, young Elvis, but saw no one who matched the description. What I did see, however, was Dustin heading toward us with someone who looked like a skinny human version of Mr. Burns, the boss from The Simpsons. I was about to ask Gina whom she was talking about, when I realized that this human Mr. Burns did kind of look like Elvis…if I squinted. Panic looped through me and I felt the need to fling Gina into their path and make a break for the door. She set me up with Mr. Burns?
Then he was before me. He took my hand as he said hello, and I had to admit I liked his voice. He had a debonair quality to him, like he’d own pocket watches and go to the opera, definitely not a frat boy. Yet now I couldn’t stop thinking of him as Mr. Burns. Stop it, I told myself. Give poor Mr. Burns a chance.
We took a seat at a table with a view of the dark and endless ocean. Along with the wine, Wilhelm had a tray of desserts sent over, and I saw Gina, across from me, eyeing the chocolate tortes with alarm. Gina was always on a diet and lacked the ability to have just one of anything, so I knew she’d either skip them altogether or within minutes have the tray on her lap and crumbs on her chin.
Wilhelm turned toward me. “Is this your first time here?”
There was a pause while everyone waited for me to a
nswer the question, but I couldn’t; I was too busy studying his head.
“Yes,” Gina finally said, furiously waving the dessert tray away when Dustin tried passing it to her, “we don’t come to this side of town too often.”
As she explained that there was nothing wrong with this side of town, that it was quite lovely but she’d become allergic to traffic, I figured it out. It’s his widow’s peak. I flashed back to just minutes ago, when he’d been heading toward us. It was the gigantic widow’s peak, the skin around it reflecting the overhead lights and shining like a mirror—that was what made him look like Mr. Burns. I squinted and this time saw Elvis. The sideburns! That’s why he also looked like Elvis. Sideburns. I’d never dated anyone with sideburns, and I wondered if they were his attempt at hair. Clearly he wasn’t having much luck with the strands on his head, so possibly the sideburns made him feel better. Wow, balding at twenty-five. Good God, he’s twenty-five…. What am I doing here?
It took me a second to realize everyone was staring at me. Apparently I’d just been asked another question. Drat.
“Right?” Gina said, kicking me under the table. “Silver Lake is where you live?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Silver Lake.” Wilhelm had really nice lips. Nice full, luscious lips. I’m a sucker for lips, their lure so powerful they could tempt me to overlook the rest of a person, though I was realizing that Wilhelm needed no overlooking. Once I’d torn my eyes from the very present sideburns and the glaring widow’s peak, I saw his actual face and was pleasantly surprised. He was very cute.
In the background of my mind’s appraisal I heard laughter at something he’d said, so of course I joined in, relieved to learn he appeared to have a sense of humor. Nice lips and a good personality. This was promising! And, I reminded myself, there were drugs for the whole balding thing. If he had insurance, we’d promptly order some prescriptions, and if he didn’t, we’d get some drugs in Mexico, maybe take a weekend trip and stay at a hotel perched on a cliff above the ocean, where we could eat gigantic bowls of cherry pit clams and buy lots of silver jewelry. Then, while the hair drugs took effect, I’d present him with baseball caps. He’d look cute in baseball caps. I was trying to decide what kind—not a sports team cap, since instinct told me he was too much of a pretty boy to be a sports fan, but maybe an Abercrombie & Fitch hat—when Gina whacked me in the arm. “We’re going to the next bar,” she whispered. “You can stare at him there.”