by Rob Thurman
She frowned. “I hope Saint Peter paddles your sassy butt when you get to the gates. You deserve at least that.” Then she zipped through grace at a record speed before I could insert any more taunts. She picked up her fork, then put it back down with a sigh of exasperation. “Lord love a duck. I almost forgot.”
Lord love a duck. I hadn’t heard that one since before my grandma died, and I’d not yet learned why the Lord loved ducks more than the rest of his so-called children, but what’s life without mystery? As I watched, she pulled a clear plastic bag out of her lab-coat pocket, using her napkin to lift it. “I didn’t think me handling it for a few minutes would hurt you much, but I didn’t want to take a chance. Not like these other vultures with no care for anything but their own tail feathers.” She glared at Thackery, who was far across the room, eating his own lunch. A Japanese bento box. No cafeteria swill for his refined palate.
“Take two a day,” she ordered, pushing the bag full of giant red pills over to me before putting the napkin in her lap and starting on her macaroni casserole.
I picked them up with a gloved hand, although she was right. She wouldn’t have touched the bag long enough to leave a land mine of memories behind. It was safe. “What are these? Suppositories for elephants? They’re bigger than my pinkie.”
“Vitamins. And they are not bigger than your pinkie, you baby, but I’ll bet they’re bigger than something else.” She lifted both delicate eyebrows in challenge, birds taking flight. Laughing birds. “And I take them every day without fail. You need to as well.” Laughter gone, the order was given with all the solemnity and stern demeanor of the entire medical field behind her.
“I’ve been eating this food for months,” she continued, “and I was weak as a day-old kitten until I started taking them. Without these vitamins, I’d have died of scurvy or malnutrition a long time ago.” She used the fork to stretch the cheese from the macaroni high in the air—a good seven inches before it snapped. “Jackson, sugar, do you think that came out of a real live cow? It’s probably glue that the Chinese had left over from a factory or two. They mixed in some food coloring, and when it turns us into mutant lactose-loving zombies, the FDA will say how awfully sorry they are they didn’t catch it sooner.” She sniffed suspiciously but took a bite anyway.
“Mutant lactose-loving zombies?” There I was, smiling again. “You watch a lot of horror movies, I’m guessing.”
“Only the cheesy ones.” She laughed, and I almost laughed with her—as bad as the joke was. And it was extremely bad. Some people have an infectious laugh, and she was one of them. I only managed to stop myself and save my reputation as bitter, cynical psychic of the year by stuffing a bite of my own macaroni into my mouth and chewing.
“It’s silly, I know,” she admitted, cheeks flushed with humor, “but in this life, sometimes silly is the only life preserver you have. You have to grab on until the big waves pass and you can make it to the shore.”
Her eyes were among the most happy and the most peaceful I’d seen. Either she’d never seen a truly big wave or she handled it much better than the rest of us. She checked her watch. “Oh, I can’t believe it. I only had twenty minutes for lunch, and I spent ten standing in line. I have to go.” She patted my hand, completely ignoring the leather between our skin. “Now, take your vitamins. You’ll feel better, I promise you. Otherwise, you’ll wither up to a husk like the ones I’d see in the garden spider’s web when I was little.”
In seconds, she’d taken her tray and dumped it and was out the door with healthy brown hair streaming behind like the tail of a running horse. An old guy at the gas station when I was ten used to tell me stories about cowboys riding tornadoes. Cyclone rangers, he called them. That was Eden, rushing from place to place so fast she’d have to be hitching a ride on a cyclone to get there.
“It looks like I wasn’t the only one with a lunch date.” Hector sat beside me, pale eyes far too pleased and smug. “And if ever there was someone who needed to be laid, it’s you. It’s difficult to be bitter when you’re a fulfilled man. And it’s difficult to get someone to go out with you when you’re a sarcastic, snapping one. Eden’s manna from heaven for you—and her name fits.”
He was trying to return the favor I’d done him with Meleah. It didn’t stop me from scowling. This wasn’t junior high. Not only that, but Hector had no idea what sore point he was poking with his nosy finger.
“Allgood, let me give you a few seconds of my sex life. This is the play-by-play.” I leaned close, cupped my hands around his ear, and whispered—but it was a loud whisper and penetrating. Inescapable. The way it was in my mind. “Did I wear clean underwear? Did he wear clean underwear? I remember that guy with the skid marks. God, that was horrible. What was his name again? Great! This guy’s are clean. Oh, Christ. What’s his name again? I’m terrible with names. Mmm. He’s not as big as I thought he’d … ohhh, he’s a grower, not a shower. Very nice. Names I forget, but I never forget a big dick. He’s a good kisser, although a little more tongue wouldn’t hurt. I wonder if he’ll be inspired to use that tongue downtown. Men are so selfish about that. What? He wants me on top? Nooo. I hate the way my breasts look when I’m on top. Maybe I should get a boob job. They’d stay plenty perky then. What does a boob job run these days? Crap, I’m losing my concentration. Ahhh, there it is. This is sooo good. This is so what I needed after my tests came back clean from the clinic. No HPV will set you free! No HPV will set you free!”
I dropped my hands and returned to my macaroni. “That’s the first five minutes. Now, how long could you keep it up with that in your head the entire time?”
“If she has that much attention available for an internal monologue, I don’t think you’re doing it correctly. Perhaps a book or an instructional DVD …”
“I liked you better before you developed a sense of humor,” I growled.
He took in a breath, held it, and did his best to aim for serious. I rated it two stars out of five. “Have you ever thought if you picked a different type of woman, took the relationship slowly, that her thoughts might be more encourag—ah … all right, let’s be honest, not so bad? Yes, let’s go with not so bad. Aiming too high before you’re ready can ruin your confidence.”
“Of course, I’ve thought about different types of women. I’m not an idiot, but there’s a bottom line you haven’t thought of.” Recklessly ignoring the fact that I shouldn’t read anyone else today, not after what Thackery’s reading had done to me, I took off my glove and held my hand out, palm up. The tattooed blue eye stared gravely up at Hector in invitation. “Go on, Hector. Take it. Take it, and tell me there isn’t at least one thing you’ve done or one thing you’ve thought in your life that you don’t want anyone to know. Ever. Not Charlie. Not Meleah. No one. Because it was wrong, maybe it was worse than wrong. And chances are, you being you, that you only thought it, didn’t act on it. But you still don’t want anyone to know, do you? Despite the fact that all people have those thoughts.”
I kept my hand between us. “Go on, Hector. Prove to me that I can have a normal life. That I can have a real relationship with no secrets. That I wouldn’t have to lie to her about what I know about her innermost thoughts. That eventually when she found out the truth, she’d be able to cope with the fact that I knew what shamed her most. Tell me it wouldn’t be the end.”
Hector studied my hand, lost in the blue of the nonblinking eye, but he didn’t take it. His own hand started to rise, but it made it no more than an inch off his leg before it returned. “I feel like an asshole.”
I put my glove back on. “People are people, Hector. If my clients knew that every aspect of their life belonged to me with one reading, I wouldn’t have any clients. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I wouldn’t let a psychic read me, no fucking way, no fucking how.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I feel like a coward. I use you to do what I wouldn’t want done to me. It’s not only cowardly, it’s the definition of a hypocrite.”
&n
bsp; He was such the martyr. Giving up on the macaroni, I said, “Fine, then. That’s an easy fix.” I had my glove back off and my fingers looped around Hector’s thick wrist in a second flat. He started to jerk away but stopped. Hector had misjudged himself, and now he was proving it. He wasn’t a coward or a hypocrite. After not quite a minute, I let go.
“Your version of Cane Lake wasn’t any better than mine,” I commented. “The day Charlie got you out of there was the best day of your life.” A day when everything was chased with sun and the claws of confinement turned loose of the grip it had on his mind and heart. It was like in The Wizard of Oz when everything turned from black-and-white to a thousand shades of brilliant color. “Charlie was your hero. He always had been, but when he stood waiting for you at the curb, he was like God to you. Someone who would never let you down, someone who would never leave you behind. You had him on that pedestal but good and a gallon of Super Glue to keep him there.”
He made a sound in his throat, choked, thick, angry. I exhaled, uncomfortable. This wasn’t what I did. I didn’t counsel. I found things, people, pets, told the histories of quaint old objects. I left this part of readings strictly alone. Until now. “Everyone hates them, Hector, the people who die on you. Every single one of us. It doesn’t matter if they died of an incurable disease, had an unexpected heart attack, were hit by a car, drowned, or even were murdered. It doesn’t matter. You still hate them, and you hate yourself because you know it’s not their fault—which makes you resent them more and makes you feel more of a selfish, worthless monster in your own mind. As deep, dark secrets go, Allgood, everyone in the world has that on their list.” The headache of a second reading too soon pounded behind my eyes, and I dug for the Tylenol again. “It passes. And I don’t have to tell you that from other readings. I can tell you from personal experience.”
I picked up the plastic bottle of water and washed down the pills. I thought about Eden’s vitamins but decided I’d take scurvy over the chance of choking on one of those horse pills and having Hector give me the Heimlich. “I forgave my mom for dying. I even forgave her for letting Boyd smack me around. I forgave her for not leaving him and maybe keeping Tess and herself alive. I forgave my grandma for having a heart attack and leaving Glory to the system and me to Cane Lake. And eventually, I forgave myself for hating them to begin with. Give yourself a break. It’ll get better, and Charlie wouldn’t hold it against you.”
“How long?” he asked grimly. “How long does it take? Until it gets better?”
“How long did it take when your parents died?”
“That long, then.” He wasn’t happy. The truth rarely makes people happy.
“The more you hate means the more you loved. It’s no consolation, but it’s true.” I hoped a different truth would help. “I was surprised to find that your deepest, darkest. Pissing your bed until you were eight, that would’ve been my best guess.”
There I was with more help. That was the kind of guy I was. I gave and I gave and I gave.
“It’s hereditary and linked to somnambulism—sleepwalking, you jackass.” He might not have been consoled, but he was distracted. That was the next best thing. “And I was seven and a half.”
I slapped his back. “Sure thing, Hector Peegood. Kids can be cruel with those elementary-school nicknames, can’t they?”
“I can’t believe I’m trying to save your life,” he snapped.
“I can’t believe my life needs saving because of you,” I shot back.
He covered his eyes before running the same hand through his hair instead of over it, and this time, it was Charlie hair, sticking straight up. He deflated slightly. “Charlie honestly wouldn’t think less of me?”
“Nope. He might think you’re an idiot and put Super Glue on your desk chair as a lesson about pedestals, but he wouldn’t think less of you,” I said honestly. I’d been less honest about my mother. I hadn’t forgiven her yet for not leaving Boyd. Tess could’ve lived if she had. I wasn’t confident I could ever forgive that. I could forgive the slaps and busted lips my stepfather had given me, but not Tess. I couldn’t forgive that my mother had been part of losing Tess. But there’s the truth, and then there’s too much truth. I gave Hector his truth. Mine was my burden alone.
“One more day, then.” I changed the subject. “Two days since the quarry and one more day until Charlie tries to come through again?”
“One more day,” he confirmed. “And then we set Charlie free.”
Into the freedom of nonexistence. The blackness of the void. The nothingness from where we came. That was another truth Hector had no need to have repeated at the moment. There were times when the truth was worse than any lie.
Like now.
17
The next day, I was back in the infirmary with a wet washcloth over my eyes and a nice plastic puke basin on the bedside table just in case. “You said on an average day, you read ten people without a problem. Kessler’s still MIA, and Sloane is avoiding everyone now, not just you. That made it only six. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I moved the washcloth a bare inch to glare at Hector with one eye. “Is that a concerned ‘What the hell is wrong with you’ or a where-do-I-find-parts-for-a-malfunctioning-psychic ‘What the hell is wrong with you’?” He knew perfectly well what was wrong—he simply didn’t want to admit it.
“Can’t it be both?” He sighed and settled deeper into the plastic chair that should’ve had his name painted on it by now, as often as I ended up here.
“No.” I gritted my teeth with both pain and annoyance and slid the washcloth back into place.
“All right. It’s the first. And I feel guilty. Since Charlie’s accident, I’ve felt nothing but guilt. Then you show up, the answer to it all, but I don’t get any answers—only more guilt,” he said, as I kept my eyes closed against the headache and let the heat of three warmed blankets soak into me.
I heard him blow out a frustrated breath before adding, “Two more sociopaths and one psychopath? Are you positive?”
“Scientists who want to work on a project that could lead to U.S. dominance of the entire world’s intelligence community. That reads like a job application for some kid’s comic-book supervillain. Did you think you weren’t going to get some bad apples? I’m kinda surprised there are any good apples. Didn’t you have some sort of psychological testing done on the applicants?” Now my jaw was locking up more from the irritation than the pain.
“They are all highly respected in their fields, all with PhDs and some with multiple PhDs.”
He sounded defensive. Good. He should.
“Because, Hector, the men who invented the hydrogen bomb only had their GEDs, and look what a great idea for the world that turned out to be. Now turn over any rock, and you’ll find a terrorist trying to make his own little radioactive toy, and every dictator has a backyard full of nukes. No one was looking at the big picture in that bunker.” I sat up and tossed the cloth. It wasn’t helping. “I’m glad I wasn’t alive then to read any of them. My brain probably would’ve melted and leaked out of my ears.” I pushed the blankets aside, too. The coldness of the sociopaths had mostly faded. What was left was bone-deep, where artificial heat couldn’t touch.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. Your three, four counting Thackery, need to be locked away and their brains donated to science to see where nature went wrong, but they didn’t kill Charlie any more than Thackery did. Why they didn’t do it, I don’t know, but they didn’t. Biding their time, maybe. You’ll have to ask them. Although Morganstern has killed two hookers so far, and he has no intentions of stopping.” That had been something I hadn’t enjoyed seeing through his eyes at all. A bullet in his head would do the world a favor.
“Now,” I went on, chilled and fed up with evolution’s mistakes, “I need to go outside and get into the sun. My bones feel like they’re made of dry ice.”
He cleared it with Meleah, and soon we were trudging through dried red mud that crumbled under our feet
, taking in the scenery of squat, ugly buildings, a fifteen-foot-tall chain-link fence, and the razor wire that looped along the top. It wasn’t a Hawaiian villa with your own private beach, but it had the sun. I’d make do. I’d thought life had finished teaching me about making do. Nope. Life never tired of making you its bitch.
“You’re out of here after tomorrow,” Hector said abruptly. He’d taken off his lab coat, not caring who saw the holster and gun he wore. Or maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t care. Hector was smart. He wanted whoever was out there to know he was ready. “Once we save Charlie, put him at peace, you’re going home. We’ll still try to fix the project, get Summerland up and running again before the spy makes off with all the schematics and computer codes, but you don’t need to risk your life for our work. And despite the fact that I’m putting him in the ground when all is said and done, Thackery will have a good shot at finding this guy. He’s not psychic, but he can think like the son of a bitch. He’s already shown us that.”
The blistering summer sun felt good, so much so that I wasn’t sweating a drop under my long-sleeved black shirt. My psychic gear. Yeah, like the rockers say, I was back in black—my head in the game. Jackson had left the stage, and the All Seeing Eye had taken his place. That had to be why I felt less than relieved at this talk of my departure—leaving a job undone wasn’t my way. I used to con, lie, and steal, but now I earned every penny I made. Plus, I didn’t like murderers of the innocent. Charlie had been a grown adult, but in his way, he was as innocent as they came. It had to be a combination of the two, because I should’ve been saying, “Praise Jesus, and I won’t let the razor wire hit me in the ass on my way out.”
What would be the point of me staying? I knew there was no justice. There was revenge. Yeah, that son of a bitch Boyd had seen that up close and personal, but there was no justice. It wasn’t my place, regardless, to help out Hector with either concept. His project, his exceedingly bad apples, and none of it my problem. Hell, I was a saint for sticking around to pull Charlie home. Mother Teresa herself would’ve lent me her spare habit and rosary.