by Amber Foxx
Mae looked at the money. No cut taken out by the store. Tax free, under the table. The looming costs of being single in a big city pulled in a tug-of-war with her aversion to the work. Mae couldn’t live in Bernadette’s tiny apartment forever. This was almost half a deposit on her own place. “You’d be willing to have me work longer on this?”
“It’s my life. My whole life. I need to know.”
“I mean the cost. This is a lot of money.”
“Charlie thinks Randi and I are out to dinner. He gave me this wad to spend on a girls’ night out. He always gives me too much money.”
I’m taking Charlie’s money to spy on Charlie. Mae felt an instinctive recoil.
Dana continued, “We can probably get into his office during a department chairs’ meeting. Or on a Sunday. He never goes in on Sundays.”
“We? I don’t need to be there, do I?”
“It’ll save time. You’ll be in the middle of everything. I won’t have to pick and guess. You’ll be deep in all his history in that office.”
This felt worse all the time. “Do you have a key?” Mae knew Randi did, but wondered if Charlie would go so far as to give one to Dana, who was only a student.
“No. But we could ask someone. A lot of the faculty have master keys for the building, and so do the secretaries and the janitors. It can’t be that hard. Or I could let you into the house when he’s out.”
“No. Absolutely not. That’s going way too far.” Mae knew this might cost her the money, but she had to say it. “This feels ... If I wanted to investigate this much into someone I was gonna move in with, I’d already know I didn’t want to.”
Dana shook her head. “No. It’s the other way around. I already know I want to. I’m making sure that I’m right.”
Some hidden part of Dana’s mind had to doubt her choice, though, or she wouldn’t be doing this. “All right.” Mae finally put the money in her purse. “We’ll go to his office.”
Much as she wanted time to process what she’d committed to doing, Mae felt it was more important to call Hubert between Dana’s and Randi’s sessions, to make sure she got in touch before the twins’ bedtime. Brook and Stream were unhappy about her being so far away, but ended up telling her about their day and sharing some silly kindergarten-style jokes and laughing. She wasn’t quite sure they forgave her yet, even while she knew they loved her.
With Hubert, Mae also talked about ordinary things, as if the sound of each other’s voices mattered more than what they said, in a lost, pained attempt to be friends. After the strangeness of her encounter with Charlie, her family felt like a return to earth. She missed being in the house with them, wished she could see and touch them, in spite of knowing she couldn’t live there now.
Randi came in as Mae ended the call and turned her phone off.
“There are so many self-help books,” Randi said. “I just spent an hour in the self-help part of the bookstore and I’m blown away.” She dropped into an empty chair. “I could have bought one on how to fight fair, or how to stop fighting, or how to be happy single, or how to find your soul mate, how to end your relationship lovingly, how to get in touch with your anger, how to be vulnerable, how to be tough ...” She scooped up her hair from her neck and let it fall, stretched her arms up and dropped them. “I couldn’t even decide which one I needed.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I want to know which direction to go. Can you see what happens around a corner?”
“I never have.”
“You’re kidding. I thought that was what psychics do.”
“I’ve never seen the future. I’ve seen people’s diseases in their bodies, and seen where lost people are, seen the reason for a problem that maybe the person isn’t looking at—something in the past—but not the future. I think some of these things help people make decisions about their future, though.”
Randi almost pouted. “But I already know my own past. Really well.”
Mae felt she still had to be helpful. She couldn’t simply drop this session and fail. This was her job. She wouldn’t tell a personal training client, Sorry, I can’t help you, and send her away. Randi needed to get what she came for. “If you tell me what the decisions are, I think I could look for something that’ll tell you your best choice. It’s hard to say what would come up, but I’d be surprised if I saw the future.”
Randi hesitated. “I really don’t want to look at the past. I’m trying to decide if ... just something I need to talk to someone about. I want to see if it gets me in trouble or if it turns out all right. I’d rather not say what it is, though”
“I did something with Dana that helped her, but it wasn’t psychic. It was—”
“Oh, with the crystals? She said that was really cool, like she could think so clearly after. Like you defragged her hard drive, is how she put it.”
Mae didn’t think Dana was thinking clearly, wanting to move in with Charlie, but she had become decisive. “I could do that with you. It might help you decide. I mean, even if I could see the future, it doesn’t mean it’d happen. I think we get to change our minds.”
“So you won’t be doing anything psychic? Like, you can choose not to see anything?”
Mae wasn’t sure she could. She had seen a lot of Bernadette’s past during that healing. This was such a new practice Mae didn’t know what she could expect or promise. “I didn’t see anything when I did it with Dana.”
“Great. I like that.” Randi smiled. “That’s even better than a reading. It’s like energy healing, right?”
“I reckon. Yeah, that’s what it is.”
As she had Randi lie on the blanket, Mae wondered again about Randi’s strong objection to having her past or present examined, but she was glad not to be asked.
She chose her grandmother’s rough unpolished ruby. According to the book, rubies would help with decision making, new beginnings, and change. She didn’t ask a question or look for the source of the problem. As she had with Dana, Mae quieted her mind and then let the energy from the crystal and the client come into her. Slowly she moved the stone over Randi, feeling it want to stop over certain parts of her body, sometimes pulled like a magnetic current that ran between the woman on the floor and the crystal in Mae’s hand. It was so powerful at those times that Mae had to let go and rest the crystal on Randi’s heart, hands, and throat.
Although her eyes were open, Mae lost her sense of time and normal perception. The process took what might have been ten minutes, or an hour. The input through her hands and through her eyes was not quite visual, not quite sensory, yet had elements of both, and of a quality like sound, a new sense, not one of the normal five.
Eventually she sensed the work was done, laid the crystal on Randi’s lower belly, and felt drawn to wrap her hands around Randi’s feet, holding them for a while. Mae then rested her palms on Randi’s head. It felt like she was balancing some kind of current and sealing something in.
When Mae removed the ruby, Randi opened her eyes, her face relaxed, her eyes clear. “Wow.” She sat up slowly. “That was incredible.”
“I hope it helped.”
“Oh my God. Yes.” Randi smiled. “I can move on. Now I know why I did what I did. I get it.”
“Did what?”
Randi made a dismissing gesture, waving the thing she’d done away behind her. “Something crazy. But it’s okay. Thank you.” She got to her feet, and Mae added the ruby to her collection of crystals to be cleaned. “I think I can handle it.”
“I’m glad it helped.”
“Totally.” Randi picked up her purse, and still in a dreamy, relaxed state, said, “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow. Get you ready to take on DAB.”
Turning off the leaf-lamp and closing up the green, tree-shadow room after her last client, Mae felt an urge to say goodnight to the place. She walked down the long hallway to Tammi’s office to make a schedule for the coming week. Mae and Tammi agreed on nine hours a week, Thursday evenings and Saturday a
nd Sunday afternoons. She also said she would do more weekday nights if there was a demand. It would be worth the trip for one hour.
As she drove back to Norfolk, Mae did the math in her head. With a few more personal training clients or a few more sessions a week at Healing Balance, she would be able to pay rent. She could start looking for an affordable place. Maybe Randi would even want her as a roommate. It was progress, but painful. Every step towards her success here was a step away from her life with Hubert.
When Mae arrived at the apartment, she discovered Bernadette at her desk, clearing out drawers, dropping some items into a trash bag, others into cardboard boxes.
“Hey. Cleaning out?” Mae locked the door behind her.
“Better than that.” Something about Bernadette’s face and eyes looked young tonight. “I’m packing. I got a new job. I’m leaving.”
“Congratulations. When do you move?”
“As soon as classes are over. Early May. I haven’t felt this good in years. I feel like I just shed my old skin—like I’m taking off a costume.”
Mae sat on the couch. “Where are you moving? What’s your new job?”
“I’m not telling anyone. I know I’ll show up on the new college’s web site as new faculty in the fall, but I want ... I want time to disappear for few months. Where Charlie can’t call me, can’t e-mail me, can’t figure out where I am.”
“I wouldn’t tell him.”
“I know. I’m just being careful. You know what it’s like here at night. I hope if he doesn’t know where I am, he can’t follow me that way, or physically.”
“You think he’d stalk you?”
“He already does, as that wolf.” She paused in her packing. “I don’t know what else he’d do. I hope he can’t send it if he doesn’t know where I am.”
Mae thought of her vision of Charlie with the medicine bag, and wondered again if that was what he’d been attempting. “It didn’t follow you on your interview?”
“It got into my dreams. But it wasn’t there. It was different. Easier to get rid of.”
“I saw Dana tonight. She came for a reading at Healing Balance. I think you’ve guessed what’s going on there. Don’t you think he’d leave you alone if he’s got her?”
“Not the way he is, no. When I tell him I’m leaving—and I’m waiting as long as possible—I may ask him to stop. Mention that I know what he’s doing. I don’t want him angry with me any more than he already is for any length of time. He gets toxic when he’s angry.”
“I know.” Mae described the encounter in which Charlie had looked back at her.
“Why are you doing this?” Bernadette shoved a full box aside with her feet and faced Mae. “If Dana wants to check out rumors about Charlie, she should be up front and ask people. You’re not a private investigator. You’re a seer and a healer.”
“They don’t want anyone to know about them. She’s still not decided about her marriage. And she wants to know for sure if he’s who he tells her he is before she moves out and quits the Air Force for him. She’s only got a few weeks to decide.”
“She could ask Paula Hart. Paula’s known him for thirty years, and would protect Charlie from anything and anyone, including the dean.”
“So why would she tell Dana the truth, then, if it’s bad?”
“She might or might not. It’s a route worth trying, though. I’m sure Paula wouldn’t tell the dean about their moving in together.” Bernadette bent down to start work on the bottom file drawer, pulling out the first file and opening it, then flipping through a few pages and letting them drop. “I don’t think you should do this work. Let them be. Charlie is Dana’s karma. For cheating on her husband, she gets a man who cheats.”
Mae didn’t like the idea of letting Dana get that hard a lesson. “I don’t like spying on him, and I’m not supporting her cheating or anything—but she could ruin her life. Give up her family and her career for him.”
Bernadette rose, went to the kitchen and came back with a paper bag, into which she dropped the contents of the file. “You sound like that bothers you more than the spying.”
“It does. She’d be giving up everything that matters to her to be with a man who’s a bad idea on wheels.”
Bernadette sat in the desk chair and looked into Mae’s eyes. “Isn’t that your own story—twice?”
“Once.” Mae couldn’t regret marrying Hubert. “And I wish someone had stopped me.”
The wolf stalked through after midnight. Mae heard Bernadette pray it out of her room, but as it left it paused to look at Mae, stopping so close to the edge of the sofa bed that she could have touched it if it were real. Staring back, Mae wondered if Charlie could see her, the way she had seen him, and if he knew this was her. She didn’t know if he saw in this form, or if he only sensed energies or powers the way she did during the crystal healings.
More disturbing than its stare, it seemed ready to spring, but didn’t, holding a coiled, pre-jump position. The longer it waited, the more she became both frightened and impatient. It was like a batter-pitcher psyche-out, delaying, unnerving the opposition. But what did he want? What was the game?
Then the wolf spirit sprang. This time it landed, and Mae sensed a weight to its paws on the bed, though she could see the shapes of the room’s furnishings through its body. Rather than attack, the wolf walked on her bed, sniffed her, and its tongue came out to lick the arm she instinctively raised to ward it off. An energy that was both sensual and devouring came through that tongue. Shocked, Mae wanted to throw the shadow animal out the window, pitch it into the brick wall of the next building, and even as the thought exploded into her mind, the wolf vanished.
He had to think he’d found Bernadette. He doesn’t know I’m here. Does he?
Mae shuddered. The touch of the wolf’s tongue had been more invasive, more appalling, than if it had tried to bite her. Was this what he did to women? Did he use this power to be seductive? Did women feel aroused by him? If they didn’t see him as a wolf, all they would feel was the energy, the way Mae had felt sexual energy around Hubert all those years, and they’d think it was love or desire. They wouldn’t know Charlie was witching them.
Mae lay back down, staring at the ceiling. Bernadette might think people had to learn their own lessons, that Charlie and his victims had to work though their karma or whatever it was, but she didn’t agree. Not after this. If Dana and Bernadette both left Charlie, it wouldn’t be good only for them, it would unplug him. But he’d be desperate and look for a new woman. It wouldn’t be over.
The next morning, Mae drove to Oceanfront Wellness, hopeful of confirming a schedule with the client from hell that Randi had offered her, and maybe getting additional sub work as well. The gleaming smoked glass and black granite building with its name in misty gray lettering was so close to the waterfront Mae could smell the ocean when she parked. One of the iconic Norfolk mermaid sculptures adorned its small green lawn. The area was heavily developed, with office towers and shops and restaurants, and Mae felt she was in the world of wealth and power. The impression continued inside the lobby, with its black leather chairs, silver-toned tables, and juice bar with leather-padded bar stools and a high-priced smoothie menu.
At the broad black-and-gray front desk, Mae asked to see Randi, explaining she had an appointment. In this cool, snobbish place, Randi would be a relief. The attendant called, announced Mae’s arrival, listened, and hung up. She looked on the desk, found a folder, and handed it to Mae with a pen. “She said for you fill this out. She's talking with a member right now. And if you can give me your certification card and your CPR card, I can make copies of those for our files.”
Mae took the cards from her wallet and gave them to the girl, and took the folder of papers over to one of the leather chairs. By the time she had completed half of the first form, the attendant returned her cards. Mae noticed the girl had a uniform—black polo shirt, gray pants. Would Mae have to buy a uniform to work here? Spend money to make money? The c
lient had better not fire her.
Reading the description of an independent contractor, Mae noticed she was free to make her own schedule. The downside was that she had no benefits and no guaranteed work: full-time staff had priority in being given clients, and either party could terminate the relationship at any time. Not secure. But her whole life was like this now. No guarantees.
The front desk attendant spoke. “Ms. Martin-Ridley, Randi’s free to see you now. Her office is the first door on your right as you go towards the weight room.”
“Thank you.” Mae rose and walked to the office.
Randi, in the uniform, but with top and bottom colors reversed, sat at a small curved gray desk that grew out of the darker gray wall in a graceful, legless flow, the way tree-ear fungus grew out of rotting trunks in the woods. In the other gray leather chair sat a six-foot-tall woman, who glanced about restlessly, tapping one foot and flipping her platinum hair back over her shoulders. She wore fitted knit pants and a body-hugging shirt that flattered a firm but well-endowed body. Diamond earrings glittered on her earlobes, and a substantial diamond ring flashed on her left hand. Mae felt she recognized her, yet she knew they had never met.
Randi rose, took the folder of paperwork from Mae, and gave her a smile that lacked her usual uninhibited warmth, then sat back down. “Mae, this is Pamela Giardi. Pamela, Mae Martin-Ridley. Mae, I was just explaining to Pamela that I brought you onboard especially for her.”
“You’d better live up to the hype,” Pamela said. She had a soft Tidewater accent like Patsy’s. “I’m sick and tired of constantly changing trainers.” Pamela looked Mae over, frowned, and then nodded. “At least you look acceptable. I hated that little skinny, short girl. She made me look huge. And that old guy. I didn’t even like to be seen with him.”
Mae almost laughed when she realized this woman approved of her because she was a similar type, a flattering accessory. The fact that Pamela didn’t even hide her vanity was somehow funnier. “I’m glad I pass inspection.”