by Amber Foxx
Pamela gave the joke a half smile that suggested annoyance more than amusement and leaned back, looking into Mae’s eyes. Pamela’s eyes were dark blue and subtly made up. “So, when are we starting? I have to let you know, I want a trainer to kick my ass, and I mean kick it. I was on the basketball team the year CVU went into the final four against U. Conn, and I still work that hard.”
“I get it. I ran track and played softball—not at the level you played, of course.” Mae knew she’d better kiss that ass as well as kick it. “We can start Monday.”
“I’m here, why not today?”
“I have other people on my schedule.” No need to say they’d be at Healing Balance, in case Pamela was a skeptic. “This isn’t the only place I work.”
“You two work that out, then.” Randi’s voice and eyes betrayed anxiety behind her smile. “I’m confident this will be a great relationship.”
She gave Mae Pamela’s file, and Mae and Pamela walked out to the lobby and sat down in the black leather chairs. Pamela crossed her ankle onto her thigh like a man, tapping the floor with one foot and the air with the other, while Mae read the programs various fired or burned-out trainers had written. Hard, but boring. Mae sensed how Pamela’s attention wandered. She’d need mental stimulation as well as physical challenge. The woman radiated a kind of power that craved a fight.
“I can work you harder than this,” Mae said, closing the file. She would have to add agility drills that would please a former basketball player, change the workout often, and do a lot of planning and preparation to be ready for her. “What are your goals besides having your ass kicked?”
“Making it so firm you’d break your foot when you kick it.” Pamela sat back and folded her arms under her bosom. “I hate exercise as much as I love it. I’d be as lazy as a dog if I didn’t have someone to make me do it. I want the whole works here. I hate trainers who give me homework. Cardio, strength, everything, I want you to really push me.” Pamela sounded almost angry, as if she were daring Mae to succeed. “Three times a week at least, four if you can do it. And it’s either got to be really early or really late. I work a lot. I’ve got three businesses.”
Mae took the calendar out of her purse and looked at her schedule. This was a bucket of money falling into her lap. Nowhere near enough to live on, but still a windfall. She had to keep Pamela happy. She suggested four weekday mornings and mentioned an hour that she doubted anyone would want. The fitness center opened at five thirty, and Mae suggested six.
“What, are you sleeping in? What’s wrong with five-thirty? Ninety minutes.”
“Five-thirty Monday,” Mae said. Pamela rose, and Mae stood also and shook her hand. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”
Pamela let out a short laugh. “We’ll see if you still are by Wednesday.” She started towards the juice bar and glanced back over her shoulder. “I work my trainers hard.”
When Mae returned the file to Randi’s office, she found Randi on the phone. “I don’t have time,” Randi said. “I was ...” She listened, sighed. “All right. Sheesh. I’ll be down. But I can only talk to you for five minutes.” She hung up and looked at Mae. “Can you stand her?”
“She’s no worse than my mother. And I’m getting paid to make her sweat. I just hope I can keep her challenged enough.”
“Thank you.” Randi stood and hugged Mae. “She was bitching so hard about changing trainers again I thought I would cry.”
The pressure was even higher now. Not only for her own financial well-being, but Mae owed it to Randi as well to succeed with the diamond-ass bitch.
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
Randi picked up her keys. “I have to run out for a minute. Can you stay for an orientation? Since you’re not regular staff it’s mostly equipment and safety.”
“I’ve got to go to work at Healing Balance. I’ll have to come back for the orientation. How late are you working?”
“Seven o’clock. I live here on weekends to make up for the time I spend on campus.”
As they left the office, they made plans for getting Mae a uniform—yes, she had to pay for it, they were only free for full time staff—and for introducing her to the other trainers so they could call on her as a sub. Pamela was coming from the juice bar, carrying a take-out smoothie, and she walked a few steps ahead of Mae and Randi as they stepped outside.
Right in front of them was the last person Mae expected to see outside a gym. Charlie leaned against his shiny blue car, illegally parked on the yellow line. A hard-edged smile crinkled the lines around his eyes as they lit on Randi, a smile that froze and died at the approach of Pamela. He drew back his shoulders and stood taller.
“Charlie Tann!” Pamela purred, looking him up and down as if to critique every inch of him and find it wanting, but smiling flirtatiously while she did it. “Still breaking the rules, I see.” She tapped the car with a pink-nailed hand, so close to his belly that she made it clear she was referring not only to his parking but his physique.
Mae expected Charlie to banter back with his typical public persona. But he braced his hands against the car and fixed an icy look on the tall woman, saying nothing until Pamela had walked on, swinging her hips, glancing back at Randi and Mae with a little flipping gesture of her diamond-flashing hand as if to comment on his triviality.
Mae moved away a few feet, unsure if she and Randi needed to set a specific time for her orientation, or if she should just show up later in the evening. It was rude to walk off without saying goodbye or making a firm plan, but awkward to stay. Though Charlie had to have seen her, he hadn’t acknowledged her yet, which was just as well after their psychic encounter.
“Wow. What was all that?” Randi asked.
“Poison.” Charlie’s normally mellow voice was hard. “Don’t have anything to do with her.”
“I kind of have to. She’s a member, and I’m in charge of personal training. How do you know her?”
He said the name as if he had not said it for a long time, as if it was like the taste of cold steel in his mouth. “Pamela Gresczek.”
“She’s Mrs. Giardi now.”
A short, harsh laugh escaped him. “So she found a husband.”
“A rich one. Was she a student?”
“You could call her that. I let her graduate.” He seemed to imply she had deserved to fail. “Are you coming with me?”
“No. I told you I’d just run down and say hello. I’m at work.” She glanced at Mae, an urgent look that Mae read as saying Don’t go yet. To Charlie, Randi said, “Let’s play golf soon, though, okay?”
“Golf.” It came out as an infinitely subtle drama of rejection and wounded pride.
“Yes, really.” Randi nodded. “I love playing golf with you, Charlie.”
His eyes went cold again, but he smiled, miming warmth without seeming to care whether the act succeeded. “Fine. Call me when you want to play golf.”
He opened the car door and let himself in, closing it with a hint of a slam before pulling out without saying goodbye.
“Poison.” Randi shook her head. “I’ve never seen him like that.”
CVU basketball. Charlie’s ex-girlfriend. Owns three businesses. Mae knew where she had seen Pamela before—the image that struck her when she’d tried to heal Charlie’s bad knee. Diamond Ass Bitch was his former lover, the bitch from hell he’d told Bernadette about when he gave her the Yellow Gentleman. “She’s his ex.”
“No way. How crazy is that? Mr. Woo-woo Magic Guru getting down and dirty with Miss Money-Honey?”
“I’m serious.”
“Wow.” Randi gazed after Charlie’s car as he pulled out on to the street. “How did you know that?”
Knowing the psychic material felt invasive enough without sharing it. Mae said, “He told me he used to date a basketball player. Put two and two together.”
Randi took a breath, looked at Mae. “I’m sure that looked weird, Charlie stopping by here to talk to me like that.”
“We are. It’s not—don’t put two and two together about me, okay?”
Charlie had somehow gotten some very smart or very attractive women to fall for him. But Randi? Mae could see her on that first night of the personal trainer course, freezing out the flirting men with her speech on professional ethics. “Not you. You don’t date your clients, or your teacher. It’s not an option.”
But even as she said it and saw Randi’s relieved smile, Mae felt the weight of a deep, uneasy doubt.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dressed in her Breda clothes, Mae got to the café at Healing Balance in time to grab a quick lunch before her first client. Malba Cherry sat at the table by the window in her Maloo role, putting the carved bones back in their wooden box as an elderly couple rose from the table, thanking her in awed, hushed voices.
“I heard you were back,” Malba said as her clients left, loudly enough for Mae to hear clearly from the counter, where she was looking at the menu. “Breda is back. Big news.”
“Hey, Maloo. How are you?”
“I’m all right. I appreciate your not working Saturday mornings.”
“You’re welcome.” Mae ordered her lunch, and went to the water cooler and filled a large cup.
“I’m done for the day.” Malba packed her little sign into a large, bright purse that clashed with her equally bright dress and head wrap. “Sit here if you like.”
“Thanks.” Mae took the chair opposite Malba.
Malba raised an eyebrow, rested her hand on her box of bones. “Heard you left Tylerton.”
“I’ll go see my young’uns.” Word sure traveled, but Mae shouldn’t be surprised. “But, yeah, it was time to go.”
“Shoot, girl, they ran you out of town on a witch hunt.”
“No help from you.”
“Don’t blame me. I can even tell you what you need to learn if you want to go back.” Malba’s voice became low and confidential, and she leaned in towards Mae. “Keeps me out of all that trouble you made for yourself.”
“I already know what you do. You saw Arnie’s good luck like you saw my bad luck. You see the future, but you tell people you prayed it into happening.”
“Listen to me. I’m giving you advice. If you said you prayed something into coming, no one would believe you, would they? If you said God showed you where Ronnie Farmer’s lost cat was, no one would buy that with a wooden nickel.”
The blue-haired girl from behind the counter brought Mae’s sandwich to the table, and Malba paused until the girl had returned to her workstation. The nearest customers were several tables away, out of earshot, but Malba still kept her volume diminished. “You need credentials.”
Mae pictured some psychic training program and exam like her personal trainer course. It was silly, but it was all she could think of. “You mean you can get certified?”
“Did I say that?” Malba scooted even closer. “Long as you promise not to work Saturday mornings, I’ll let you in on this.”
Mae nodded, chewing a mouthful of humus on whole wheat.
“When I was working as a nurse, I came up here to CVU for a continuing ed course on alternative medicine. I already knew a lot of traditions about herbs, picked up some more from that class, and found out where to learn more. So I can read all these medical journals and nursing journals, and my family’s been doing herbal medicines for years, but that doesn’t make me look like an official expert, does it? Put that on my business card: She reads a lot?”
“Did you take the class with Dr. Tann and Dr. Pena?”
“Six years ago. So when it’s over, I told Dr. Tann I wanted to start my herb shop, and that I have this gift for seeing the future. I want to help folks out by doing this. But you know what the culture is like. So he helped me come up with my credentials.”
“To be a naturopathic doctor?”
“I have a diploma.” Malba smiled. “Got one in divinity, too. Unity School of Natural Health. Unity School of Christian Ministry. They make sure you know how to set up as a church or as a natural healer so you can stay out of trouble with the law. Read a couple of books, take a few little tests, you get a diploma. Not bad. And it’s easy. You could do it in a month. You could get their certification as a healer, they have that too. Call yourself a minister and lay on hands. If you’d done that, Joe wouldn’t be so proud of chasing the witch out.”
Mae felt shocked and insulted. As if I’d become some fake minister. And Arnie was being tricked. But—he was getting well. Could she really hold that against Malba? The herbs worked, Malba really was knowledgeable about them, and without the fake credentials, Arnie might not buy them. Still, Malba was half a fraud, or even three quarters. “You never went to school for this?”
Malba sniffed. “Splitting hairs. I took that class at CVU. That’s school. Unity School is online, but you could say I went to school there. See, I already know how to do what I do, I just have to make it look better. Like these names Deborah makes us use. We’re good without ’em. But people like us better with ’em.”
“A name is different from a degree. I’m not calling myself Doctor Breda. You mean Dr. Tann told you to do this?”
“Absolutely. The man knows how to work the world, Breda. He even gave me a voodoo mask he got in New Orleans and a doll, told me a little about some voodoo woman he knew there. So I work that angle, too, for those fools. You know there’s people believe in that. I don’t, but it keeps Joe thinking that’s how he got him a new girlfriend or how he doesn’t get sick even though he’s old and smoking. I already know he’s got good luck, and I make him think I brought it on him. The day it runs out, I’ll tell him someone cursed him.” Malba grinned. “Maybe you.”
“That’s not funny.”
Still amused, Malba let out her hooting laugh. “I could sell him a charm against you.”
“If he got lung cancer or something?”
“Joe isn’t gonna get lung cancer. He’ll die in bed with some young thing of sixty with a bottle of whisky and pack of cigarettes half-empty on the bedside table.” Malba rattled the box of bones. “Want to see how you die?”
Mae shuddered. “No. How’d you learn to do those bones? Did Charlie make that up, too?”
Malba shook her head. “Always been folks out by the swamp who know how to throw the bones. Goes back to Africa. The bones are real. You touch ’em, part of you goes out into them, and it’s like a little string tied to your future makes ’em roll and land a certain way.”
“But you see the future for people like Arnie. He’s never thrown the bones.”
“It’s like those rocks you use. They make you better, right? But I can do without the bones if I’m alone and quiet. I like Arnie. He’s a good man and a good customer. I’m glad I see nice things for him.” Malba rattled the box again. “You want to see what’s next for you?”
“Can’t afford it. I can barely afford my lunch.”
“Then I guess I’m done with you, if I can’t make a sale.” Malba rose and dropped the bones box into her purse. “You look up that Unity School. Helps my herb shop no end. Might help you set up for yourself.” She picked up a shawl off the back of her chair and tossed it around her shoulders with practiced flair. “You sure you don’t want a reading? I think I might have seen you in someone else’s future.”
This had to be a marketing ploy. Mae swallowed a bite of her sandwich, sipped her water. “Whose?”
“Long time ago. Don’t expect he remembers. Charlie Tann’s.”
The prediction crept up on Mae between clients. It troubled her as she changed for a run on the beach after work, followed her along the sand, and still haunted her when she returned to Norfolk for her orientation at Oceanfront Wellness in the evening. What if Charlie remembered the prediction? Was it about something that had already happened? Or was there something big yet to come?
Mae parted with some of Dana’s cash for the uniform, and with more of it for the discounted
basic membership required of contract trainers. At least she had the discount, and a place to work out, but the expense took her back a step after taking two steps forward. And spending the money made her feel stuck in the commitment to help Dana.
When Mae got to the Madison, Bernadette was out. The apartment was half-packed, as if its resident was so eager to leave she could live without half her dishes, half her clothes. A little stack of books on the sofa bore a sticky note: For you, if you want them. More in my office. A thin book on Ayurveda. An introduction to shamanism, another on meditation. The gesture touched Mae deeply, and she curled up on the sofa with the books, holding them without even opening one. It was as if Bernadette knew what she craved, knowledge, and it also felt like a gesture of apology for not saying where she was going.
Charlie was behind Bernadette’s eagerness to leave and her refusal to tell anyone where her new job was. And the healing Mae had done had shaped that move, the break with Charlie. Was that Mae’s footprint on Charlie’s future, or would there be more? It was worrisome to think she could have such a role in Charlie’s life that Malba had seen her coming six years ago, when Mae’s only thoughts of Norfolk were of the Promised Land she would never see, where people who escaped Cauwetska went. Strange to think her shadow was already on it.
In the morning Dana called.
“Sorry, I can’t meet you. I need to spend any time I can with Paddy in case ... you know. You can find your own way into Charlie’s office.”
Mae doubted she could, but didn’t want to argue about Dana being with her son. If Mae’d had the choice to be with Brook and Stream, she would have. “How am I gonna do that?”
“Dr. Hart works a lot on Sundays. She might be able to open Charlie’s office if you say that he told you that you could borrow a book or a journal. He practically gives his things away, lends them out to students all the time.”
“I’m not a good liar, and I’m not a student.”
“Then say you’re picking something up for me, that Charlie left some books on his desk for me. I don’t know. Paddy’s waiting, I need to go.”