“Well, I didn't actually watch the documentary. I read the description, though.”
“Well, that's a starting place. You can watch it tonight, and there's a work session at the arboretum tomorrow afternoon. I think I can get off in time to make it. I'll meet you there.”
“Nope, we're taking your car and I'm driving. That's the plan. For now, though, I want to hear what this psychic has to say.”
That reminded me of another question I had. “Is this okay for us? I mean, talking to a psychic? Can Christians do that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I don't know. It feels like dabbling in the occult or something.”
“Nonsense. The Bible said God gives some the spirit of prophecy.”
I gasped. “Hey! I read that verse just this morning!” That had to be a sign, right? If God had not wanted me to go see a psychic, He would not have given me that verse two times in the same day, surely.
That reminded me of my own low spirits that morning, though. I rubbed Stump's belly. “Do you ever think about what your gift is, Viv? That verse I read said that we're all part of the body and we all have our parts to play. Do you know what your part is?”
Viv looked at me with a crooked grin. “We have been friends for over a year now. I should think that would be obvious.”
I ran through the what I could remember – prophesying, obviously. Giving – well, I couldn’t honestly say I’d seen much of that. Teaching – maybe. Encouraging – when she felt like it.
“I give up,” I finally said.
“Salem. Clearly, I have all the gifts.”
chapter three
Bridled Enthusiasm
The changes to G-Ma's motel, although still in process, were impressive. Gone was the sad, seedy-looking motel and in its place was a cute, quirky place where you actually wanted to hang out. The place was shaped like a huge V, with Mario's tamale factory and the old swimming pool in the center. G-Ma had had the sidewalks widened and the old overhang taken down and replaced with a pergola that ran the length of both sidewalks. Trumpet vines grew in large pots and had already begun to climb the pergolas to create the beginnings of shade. What had been the pool area was now a quaint, tiny park, with grassy little hills, a koi pond with a footbridge and waterfall, and iron chairs and tables with striped umbrellas for people to sit and enjoy their pastries, smoothies, and coffees. It was encircled with another pergola that would undoubtedly also be covered in trumpet vines soon.
As we pulled into the motel parking lot, my phone made a siren noise.
Viv frowned, more annoyed than scared, and looked in the rear view mirror. “I really didn't do anything this time,” she grumbled.
“It's okay, that's my phone. That's the ring tone I set for calls from my mom.”
Mom was planning her wedding and being a bit of a bridezilla about it. I debated ignoring the call, but I felt guilty. Just last week my morning Bible study time had included the commandment “Honor thy father and mother.” If I was going to take the verse on prophecy as a green light for visiting Serena, I probably ought to take the commandment reminder, too. Picking and choosing surely lessened the effectiveness of trying to live by scripture.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Wait until you see the brochures for our honeymoon. It's like something out of a movie! I am so excited, I just went out and bought three new bikinis. Gerry is going to kill me.”
She laughed because of course he wasn't going to kill her. He adored her. At least, that was the story. Plus, he was loaded so he could afford it, and she would probably look dynamite in a bikini. Mom had kept all the hot body genes and selfishly refused to pass any on to me.
“Where is the honeymoon again?” I asked, to keep the conversation off the bikinis. Honoring your mother probably didn't include envying her tiny waist.
“Costa Rica! For the first time in my life, I'm getting a passport!”
“Woohoo!” I was proud of how not-envious I sounded.
“Oh, please,” Viv said, and I realized she could hear everything Mom was saying. “Come on, I'll bet that's her.”
I looked where Viv pointed, to the psychic's place across the parking lot. Two women stood chatting on the sidewalk in front of the swirly blue window. Both wore jeans and tennis shoes. I didn't think either one was Serena. With a name like Serena and a job like psychic, she had to wear a flowing caftan and have a wide streak of snow white hair, didn't she?
Mom was going on about what an ordeal it was to get the passport. I inserted an occasional “Uh-huh” and “Wow” to keep things going.
“Wrap it up,” Viv said. She opened her door. “We have an interview to conduct.”
“That's crazy, Mom,” I said. “Listen—”
“Not to mention the complication with the flights. You would think if we can put a man on the moon we could get a man from Lubbock to South America without going through Dallas. But no!”
Viv rolled her eyes, and I gave her an apologetic smile.
“Tell your mother she's going to Central America, not South America.” She gave up on me and left me there. The rat.
She crossed the parking lot, already pulling out another one of those horrible cards.
I figured, though, that anyone who carried a card for being a psychic probably didn't throw stones at anyone else's business cards, so I decided to skip my usual mortification over the cards. The two women finished their conversation and one walked off.
The other one, a petite woman with big eyes and cropped short brown hair, smiled and took Viv's card with one hand, closing the other hand over Viv's and holding it. She kept her hands there while Viv talked—presumably explaining who she was and what she was there for. The girl listened, nodding, smiling. She leaned forward, still holding Viv's hands, and said a few things. She appeared to be around my age—28.
“I mean, right?” Mom said with a laugh.
“Seriously,” I said, having no clue what I was agreeing to.
Viv cocked her head, then nodded briskly. Whatever the girl had just said, Viv had liked.
It went back and forth like that a few more times. The woman never let go of Viv's hands. She never stopped smiling that wide smile. Her eyes never left Viv's face. She talked, Viv talked, she talked again, and then they were done.
And I had missed the whole thing.
When Viv recrossed the parking lot, it was as if she was walking down a runway. Shoulders back, chin high, arms swinging.
G-Ma came out of her office, and Viv waved at her. “Virgie! Hello!” as if they were old friends.
As for G-Ma, she apparently didn't have time to waste on Viv; she had an empire to rebuild. She gave a short wave to us both and power walked down the sidewalk.
“Well, I guess I need to let you go, I have to finalize the menu with the caterer because today is the drop-dead deadline. I told Gerry if I ever get married again, I'm going to elope!” She laughed, apparently not seeing the irony of someone saying this while planning their sixth wedding.
“Good luck,” I said. “Talk to you later.” I ended the call.
Viv dropped into the seat. “Well. That was most helpful.”
“What did she say? Wait, is she leaving?” I had hoped to get to talk to her, but Serena was locking the door from the outside.
“She said she was just about to leave and would be gone already except she found that woman's—the one she was talking to when we walked up?—Serena found that woman's wallet on the sidewalk and was holding it until the owner came back. If that hadn't happened, we would have missed her. We just barely caught her! Synchronicity, right?” Viv leaned back and shook her head as if stunned by the miracle she'd just encountered.
“Wow,” I said, dutifully. “What did she say about Peter Browning?”
“Oh, that. Yes, we did talk about that, too.”
“Too? I thought that was why we were meeting her in the first place.”
“We were, of course. It's just...messages are more complicated than
that, Salem. She passes on everything she gets, so it's all a package. It's not just about Peter Browning, it's about the entire situation. Which, frankly, is pretty awesome.”
I nodded as if a young man dead before his time being “pretty awesome” made perfect sense and started the Monster Carlo. “Sounds great. What did she have to say about the entire situation?”
“Well, first I told her who I was—”
“Who we were,” I corrected.
“Exactly, who we were. I gave her the card. I told her we had heard she'd received a message on Peter Browning's death and I was prepared to hear it so I could pass it on to the proper authorities.”
“Great,” I said, pulling onto the Clovis Highway. “What did she say?”
“That she could tell I was just the person for her to go through, because she could see I was a person who was open to everything. I did not put up barriers the way most people do.”
I nodded. I thought of it more along the lines of “no boundaries,” but po-tay-to/po-tah-to.
“In fact, she said she could see along my entire time stream, and one thing stood out—one color ran like a bold thread throughout the entire length of it. Do you want to know what it was?”
I nodded. “I do. I also want to know what a time stream is.”
“Well, it's your life, of course. But maybe not just the dates between your birth and your death, but your entire, you know...soul existence.”
“You got all that while I was talking to my mother?”
“Well, she didn't explain the time stream thing, that's just my take on it. Anyway, guess what color I am?”
“You've got me.”
“Yellow! Yellow, for enthusiasm! I mean, isn't that just hitting the nail on the head?”
I had to admit that, as enthusiasm went, Viv was a major player.
“She said it was the brightest yellow, in fact, that she'd ever seen. She said I'd lived my life with unbridled enthusiasm and exuberance.” She shook her head again. “I mean, wow, right? Such wisdom and keen insight in someone so young.” She tapped her fingers against her knee. “Isn't it great when you meet someone who just gets you? Just clicks with you immediately?”
“That's pretty amazing,” I said. I wasn't sure if what I was feeling was residual envy from the phone call with Mom, or fresh envy for Viv's soul-to-soul encounter. “I wish I'd been able to talk to her.” Maybe she could give me some insight. Although to be honest, I was less than bowled over by her assessment of Viv. Anyone could see that Viv had the energy of ten men. But if she could give me enough insight to even point me in the general direction of my own strengths, it would be an improvement. I brought the conversation back around. “What did she say about Peter Browning?”
“Oh, that he'd been struggling with demons.”
I waited. But that was it.
“But, we already knew that.”
“Yes. She is quite certain the man had been struggling with demons. She thought it was a demon of vengeance, but she couldn't be sure.”
“But...what does that even mean?”
“I don't know, but we are definitely going to find out. She said I was the perfect person to get to the bottom of it and bring about reconciliation and healing, because she knew I would not give up until a sense of peace had descended over the situation.”
I couldn't help but think this was all about Viv and not nearly enough about Browning.
I got lucky two days in a row and finished my dogs early. I wasn't sure if I was happy about that or not—I wouldn't have been very upset to have a good excuse to miss the work day at the arboretum. I decided I would take getting off early as another sign that God approved of me doing this, although it could have just been a sign that business was kind of slow, as it was every year in early November, especially with all the rain we'd had. Nobody wanted to drop a fifty on getting their dog clean just to see it roll around in the mud immediately after. Still, it was what it was, so I took Stump home to sit in the recliner with my neighbor, Frank, changed into my grubbiest clothes, and drove up to Belle Court to get Viv.
My shabby attire earned me a couple of looks by the people at Belle Court.
“Viv and I are helping out at the arboretum,” I started saying to everyone who got within earshot. “Gonna go get our hands dirty.” This got me more looks, unfortunately.
I knocked on Viv's door, then opened it and said, “Ready to rumble?”
“Be there in a second,” Viv called from the bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I already had. I lounged on her sofa and thought about the afternoon ahead. Maybe God was putting this garden thing in my path because growing things was my “gift.” I mean, it could be. I'd never tried my hand at it. Maybe I would be fantastic at it and Tony's vision of eating from our very own garden was spot-on.
Completely unbidden came the image of me, blithely yanking up some rare, pride-of-the-entire-Lubbock-gardening-community plant, thinking it was a weed, throwing it onto a burning pile of garden rubbish as horrified onlookers screamed in anguish.
I gnawed my lower lip. By the time Viv called out, “Okay, I'm ready,” I had resigned myself to supermarket produce for life.
She hurried in, not wearing grubby working-in-the-garden clothes, but a sharp new pantsuit. She stood before the hall mirror and adjusted her collar and belt, then fluffed her hair.
I stood in my baggy jeans and ripped shoes. “What did I miss?”
“Change of plans. There's a meeting this afternoon of the planning committee for the Veterans Day thing on Sunday. Now, don't freak out, but we're kind of going to crash this meeting. Just follow my lead and act like we belong there.”
I nodded. I wasn't necessarily upset, since I could now quit worrying about pulling up a precious flower. But I was confused. “Okay, sure. Lots of questions, though. One, there's a celebration committee for wars? And two, we're crashing a committee meeting? Why?”
“It's for Veterans Day, actually, November 11. Belle Court always has a big to-do for the residents who are veterans. Mostly they're World War II—some Korea and some VietNam.”
“But Nigel's World War II.”
“Exactly. The committee is meeting today to finalize all the details. They did ask for volunteers,” she added, with a 'they have only themselves to blame' air.
“They're kind of leaving it until the last minute, aren't they?”
“Oh, no, they asked months ago. I just didn't volunteer then.”
“But you're volunteering now?”
“Yep. How does this look?” She unbuttoned her jacket to show a dazzling Union Jack t-shirt, with red, white and blue sequins that danced in the light.
“Classy,” I said. “So, Nigel is on this committee?”
“Would I have bought this otherwise?” She picked up a leather portfolio and unzipped it to check inside. I saw a pad of legal paper and four lipsticks. No pen.
She turned sideways again and checked her butt in the mirror, rolled her lips together and said, “Okay, let's go.”
I tagged after her, mentally debating whether I should just bail now. I looked like...well, like the gardener tagging along after the owner of the mansion.
“I'll need you to back me up with Imogene Hall, okay? She's the chairperson and already said I couldn't come to the meeting today because I hadn't participated before now. But we're going anyway.”
I stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Nope. Uh-uh.” I shook my head.
“Come on. She's not that scary.”
“She is, too! You said yourself she made your blood run cold.”
Viv and I had accidentally attended one of the Belle Court luncheons where Imogene spoke on her career working as an architect for a big firm in Houston and all the battles she'd fought for her gender. We were only there because we got the dates mixed up—we had meant to go to the one the week before, which was about how to make money speculating on futures. That interested us because Viv had money and I enjoyed watching her do stuff with it. But
we ended up at Imogene's instead, and she'd glared at me through the entire presentation, especially when she talked about the debt today's generation of women owed her and her counterparts, as we “walked through our workdays on the shoulders of those women who had gone before and paved our way.”
I felt really uncomfortable about the whole thing and kind of guilty for being a lowly dog groomer. I didn't think I was standing on anyone's shoulders at Flo's Bow Wow Barbers, but I hadn't exactly thought about it before, so how would I know?
I briefly considered getting a degree in architecture to make it up to Imogene, but I was pretty sure you had to be smart for that. So I just smiled apologetically every time I saw her, and then tried to see her as little as possible.
“Don't let her get to you. She can't hurt you.”
“She hates me.”
“So? She hates me, too. I don't let it bother me.” Viv pushed the button for the elevator. “Besides, this gives me more time with Nigel, and we've all agreed I need more time with Nigel if we're ever going to be couple friends and buy that boat together.”
“Boat?”
“Sure. Summer weekends on the lake. What could be better?”
I decided it must be so much fun living in Viv's fantasy world. I'd like to take a weekend trip there sometime. “I'm not dressed for committee meetings,” I said. I stuck my foot out. My shoe had an actual hole in it. “I'm dressed for gardening.”
“We'll garden after,” Viv promised. She moved into the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. “I swear. We'll garden our bums off. I just need to show Nigel what a...” She frowned at her reflection as the doors slid closed. She bared her teeth and checked for stuff in her teeth.
“Show Nigel what a what?” I prompted.
“What a clever dick I am.”
“Viv!” I said, shocked into laughter.
“No, it's okay,” Viv said. “Brits say that all the time. I mean, you could say that on Sesame Street over there and get away with it.”
“They have Sesame Street there?” I was confused.
“Oh, I don't know. Probably not. But you get my meaning. That's not considered foul language there.”
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