by Amber Foxx
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Sorry. The water’s loud. Did you get my messages?”
“Yes.” Dana looked at the fountain again, remote and tense.
“I found out about two more women since I last called you. Recent. While he’s been seeing you.”
“Who?”
Mae hesitated. It felt like betrayal. “If I tell you, please don’t talk about them. I feel bad mentioning names.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I know when not to talk—and what it’s like to be talked about. To the dean.” Dana’s thumbs went under the railing and she pressed up on it as if she could pop it up like the inner lid on a mason jar. “But if you can’t tell me, I won’t believe you.”
A vestige of the skeptic survived.
“Bernadette.” It felt so wrong to say it that Mae wanted to apologize to Bernadette the moment the name was out her mouth. “She broke up with him before those days he took off. But there was some overlap with you. And—” This one was somehow even harder, more disillusioning, “Randi. And maybe another student, Marla Gresczek. He’s at least flirting with her.”
Dana exhaled a pained and angry ohh and spun a hundred and eighty degrees, folded her arms on her chest, and pushed her back against the railing. “No wonder Bernadette reported us to the dean. She was jealous.” Dana shot a fiery glance at the doorway of Spruce, as if she might charge through it and confront Bernadette. “And it’s even worse with Randi. We never told her we’re a couple, but she had to have guessed when she defended us to the dean. I was sure she really wanted us to be together. God. I guess she wanted him safe for her own sake.” Dana stared down at the bridge. “Poor Charlie.”
“Poor Charlie? Shouldn’t you be mad at him?”
“He needs me.” Dana turned sad, serious eyes to Mae. “If I leave him now, who does he have? Bernadette broke up with him. Marla’s a kid. And Randi—pretending to be my friend while she’s screwing him—what kind of person is that for a spiritual man like Charlie?”
“Spiritual? With four girlfriends?”
“Why do you think we all chose him? He’s no ordinary man. He can channel spirit guides, did you know that? He has past life recall.” It had to be a scam, but Dana’s defense was full of passion and conviction. “You don’t know him. The kinds of powers he has.”
“He’s got some powers all right.” Mae thought of the wolf, and its tongue. “But I think he does something bad with them.”
“What?”
“Some spirit thing he sends out, to get sex.”
Dana shook her head. “He doesn’t need to.” She pushed herself away from the railing, clutching her small purse and book bag to her chest like a schoolgirl. Looking off into the water on the other side of the bridge, she said, “His powers fascinate me. But he didn’t make me love him. I chose to.”
“He made you think so.”
“No. You don’t understand anything. I chose him before I was born.”
Mae’s bewilderment must have shown, because Dana continued. “There’s a lot you don’t know. You could learn from Charlie. He says that between lives, we choose. We look for our lessons, for our teachers. We choose our parents, our lovers, our friends, our enemies, even our hometowns. And then we come into our new body, a new life, and start those lessons.”
Mae had an image of disembodied souls playing Monopoly, picking towns and streets and buying houses and hotels. I’ll buy Divorce Street and I’m putting up Heartbreak Hotel. And I’d like to meet a bunch of other people doing the same thing. Maybe it was true, and she’d really shopped for this life from the other side, even picked Charlie for an enemy, but it sounded like a tall tale, one that could cover a lot of ground for Charlie and make every messy thing he did look mystical and destined.
“I don’t buy that,” Mae said. “Any of it. I thought you wanted to know what he was like so you could decide about him. Then I tell you he’s seeing all these women, and you still think he’s some kind of guru. If he’s not pulling the wool over your eyes or doing some kind of black magic, I don’t know how else that’s possible.”
“He had a heart attack.”
“He’s still a dawg.”
“I thought that at first. When you left that first message about him, but ... I’m glad I took time to think and didn’t jump on it. No one will let me talk to him. I’m not family, so I’m not allowed in. What if I’d broken up with him and then he’d had the heart attack? And I couldn’t apologize?”
Exactly what Mae had been afraid would happen. His medical condition would suck women back into his life who might otherwise have been spun out by the force of the truth. Dana’s thinking was irrational—she blamed Bernadette and Randi, ignored Marla, saw the relationships as some spiritual constellation chosen before birth in all their lives, and felt sorry for Charlie, who had been seducing his students for twenty or thirty years and didn’t even read their papers.
“But what if he isn’t spiritual?” Mae persisted. “What if he’s corrupt, and lazy—”
“He isn’t.”
“What if I could prove it to you? That he’s really a bad shaman, like a witch. And that he’s not even really a teacher.”
“Then he wouldn’t be the man I know and love.”
Dana’s shoulders drew back as she lifted her chin and moved her bags to her side. She didn’t say goodbye, but walked across the bridge to the building and disappeared through the heavy glass doors, straighter, brisker, and more military in her bearing than Mae had ever seen her. All that pride and courage, wasted in defense of Charlie.
A flow of students began to move from buildings and parking lots, one class ending, people arriving for the next. It somehow reminded Mae of Dana’s description of choosing your lovers, your enemies, your teachers before you were born, like registering for classes. Mae would have to prove Charlie was a fraud. If he got his energy from making women love him, the only way to un-witch him would be to make everyone drop him at once. Bernadette had. But Dana, Randi, and Marla had to let go, too. That would yank his battery out.
This is so weird. I’m trying to do to Charlie what Joe thought he was doing to me.
The soft-soled sound of footsteps approached, and stopped. Mae turned to see Patsy. “Hey.”
“Good to see you. You dropping in on class tonight?”
“No. I stopped by to catch Dana.”
Patsy frowned. “Is this about Charlie?”
“Why’d you say that? I thought you didn’t think they were doing anything. ”
“It’s been getting more obvious. She’s been asking to get hold of you, but I didn’t give her your number. I figured the only reason she’d want to talk to a psychic was probably something with him, and I didn’t want to encourage it.”
“Randi gave her my number. But believe me, anything I can tell Dana isn’t gonna encourage her.”
“Good.”
“But you know what is? He had a heart attack today. She’d put up with anything from poor sick Charlie now.”
“Really? Is he all right?”
“Last I knew.” As a group of students began to cross the bridge, Patsy looked at her watch. Mae understood she needed to go, and they followed the others into the building. “He’s at Sentara and he’s had a triple bypass. Still in intensive care. His daughter updates Paula and she updates everyone else, so I heard that from Bernadette. It was pretty bad—he was touch and go for a while. ”
“It’s not that surprising,” Patsy said, as they began to climb the stairs. “He’s a walking risk factor, abdominal adiposity and all that, and I bet a guy that’s screwing a lady under thirty is skipping his blood pressure meds.”
Mae paused in mid-step. “Why?”
“Of course I’m just guessing here, but he looks like a classic hypertensive type to me. Lots of the drugs for hypertension make you fly at half-staff.” Patsy restarted their ascent of the stairs. “Sex is like trying to put a marshmallow in a parking meter.”
“Patsy, I don’t want to thin
k about that.” Mae thought about it anyway. “I can’t even picture touching him let alone ... Anyway, I’m afraid Dana will be sucked in by the heart attack, and that none of the stuff I learned will matter.”
“She could she think loves him.” Patsy looked doubtful. “I mean, he’s charming. He’s smart. He’s powerful. Women can go for that.”
“But he wants her to give up her life.”
“Her military career.”
“If you talk to her, it’s practically the same thing. If I were her, I’d want someone to stop me.”
“If I was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan, I’d want someone to stop me. Could be part of why she’s with him.” They reached the second floor. “Come on, war zone or Charlie—what would you choose?”
“War zone.”
Patsy laughed, shook her head.
“I’m not joking,” Mae said. “If I were Dana I would.”
“Good luck with that.” Patsy looked doubtful. “I’ll see you next week at my new place. I’ll e-mail directions.”
Mae’s other life. The sane, sensible one. It was a relief to be reminded of it. “Yeah, I look forward to it. Let me know what kind of equipment your apartment complex has in their fitness center.”
Mae sat on the couch outside the classroom as Patsy went in, the spot where she used to study her personal trainer manual and wonder about the exciting things going on in this class. Back when she thought it would be an adventure to read the articles and hear the lectures, breaking Rhoda-Rae’s taboos. If I hadn’t walked through that door, would I still be with Hubert? Still have my young’uns? Still be in Tylerton, working in Cauwetska? Maybe so. She might have kept both her loves and her confinement. But sooner or later, like she’d told Hubert, it would have been something else. Some other door she would have walked through.
Maybe Dana’s marriage was destined to end too. But for Charlie? How could Dana choose to lose her son for such a man? Her career already kept her apart from her boy enough. Unlike Charlie, though, that had integrity. That made three reasons to stop Dana from caving in to Charlie’s illness. Undo the witch power, save Dana’s career, and her connection with Paddy. Dana had already forgiven what he’d done—maybe not so surprising, since Dana herself was unfaithful. But she had professional pride, and a sense of duty. So Mae had to convince her that Charlie had neither.
He used his role as a teacher to seem wise and magical to Dana and Marla. The same proof would probably work for deterring both of them. But what about Randi, who seemed so strong, who gave such a convincing talk on professional ethics and relationships? That she could have given in to Charlie was incomprehensible. Her card suggested she had wanted him, not been pressured like Bernadette, or deluded like Dana and Marla. How was that possible?
Mae rose and jogged down the stairs, hurried towards her car. She wasn’t going to get this answered as a psychic. She had to ask Pamela. And Randi. Randi first.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wearing bright pink workout clothes, Randi came out of the aerobics studio, her hair in a clip and her face slightly damp, trailing a crowd of perspiring women who laughed and talked on their way down the broad stairway to the lobby. Mae waited near the door to Randi’s office.
“Mae. What’s up?”
“Sorry to bug you. Have you got a few minutes? It’s about Charlie.”
“Sure.” Randi gave her a puzzled frown as she unlocked her office, let Mae in, and closed the door. “I talked to Maggi, his daughter, and she said he’s still kind of precarious, but he should survive. Still in intensive care. His blood pressure was through the roof.”
Off his meds. Patsy was right.
Randi sat, unclipped her hair. “What did you want to talk about?”
Mae took the chair near her and said, “Bernadette wanted to clean his office for him, as a sort of favor so he’d come back to something nicer. She’d just resigned when he had the heart attack. I think she felt guilty.”
“I knew she was putting off telling him. What—” Randi bit her lip. “What about cleaning the office?”
“Paula helped, too. Bernadette found a card you wrote to Charlie, and Paula insisted on seeing it. We all saw it. It made it look like—I can’t believe you’d do that but I couldn’t come up with any other meaning for it. I’m sorry. I just have to know. I won’t hate you for it or anything, but I keep thinking, how did he get that to happen? It’s not like you.”
“I know. It’s not. Jeesum, I ... he ...” Randi paused, looked around, her hands restless, and seemed to hold her breath before she finally spoke, facing her desk rather than Mae. “I hope I can explain it, it’s so weird. He used to tease me a lot, little sexy jokes, just funny stuff, and I laughed at it. I didn’t think anything of it.” She played with her hair clip, snapping it open and shut, then set it on her desk. “But then I started to— This is so bizarre, I'm embarrassed—” Closing her eyes, Randi spread a hand over her face. “Give me a minute.”
Mae waited. Randi’s phone rang. She turned to answer it, said she’d be out in a few minutes. “Okay, I guess I’d better get this over with.” She looked into Mae’s eyes. “I could swear he was messing with me, like touching me when he wasn’t touching me.” She blushed. “I say it, and I feel like I’ll go through the floor. I’ve been with Rick since we were college sophomores, moved here with him when his job moved him, and I’d never had sex with anyone else. It’s not bad, but no fireworks or anything—and Charlie would, I swear, like—” Randi’s breath stopped again for a moment, then she pushed on. “Foreplay, with just energy or something. And it was powerful. He'd give me this wicked grin like he knew I could feel it and I’d turn red.”
“Did he tell you what he was doing?”
“No. If I asked if he'd done something, he’d always act innocent. Finally ... Honestly, I was in such a bad place with Rick, and Charlie was so ... like, playful, you know? I asked him. I actually asked him to ... I’d had a bad day and a bad night and he was doing that chi-foreplay thing and I said, ‘Can we?’ I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was so intense. I had to ...” She looked at her desk again, pressed a fist to her mouth. “I had to do it for real.”
“So that’s that card. ‘She convinced him.’ ”
“Yes.” Randi turned pinker. “It was a joke. Sort of. I mean, he did start it, but it was ... I don’t know. He’s my friend. The power was incredible—and I was frustrated. But I didn’t want to do it again.”
“So you broke off after once?”
Randi nodded. “Sort of. I just avoided saying anything. I mean, he’s my boss, and my teacher as well as my friend. I didn’t have the nerve to face him until after you did the energy work with me. That day we met Pamela and I said golf, that was it. Charlie got it.”
One of those healings he resented—and somehow knew about. Mae said, “Did he still do—it after you said no?”
“Sometimes. I’d even get these strange dreams, like this—wolf with this ... tongue.”
Mae felt a chill as well as outrage. “But that’s like sexual harassment. Did you tell him that?”
“No.” Randi looked thoughtful, her embarrassment abating. “It’s different with Charlie and rules like that. He’s a trickster shaman. He has what he calls ‘the backwards medicine’.”
More bull, like the choosing before birth. “So when you’re healed you’re sicker?”
The phone rang again. Randi rose. “I’m sorry, Mae, I have to go. You can come with me, but I need to cover the weight room. One of the attendants is sick.”
Mae and Randi left the office and walked into the noisy, busy weight room. Mae remembered the routine from Health Quest. Walk around, offer suggestions to people who are about to hurt themselves with bad form, answer questions, remind the men with the hundred-pound plates to put them away. As they circled the room, Randi picked up where she left off.
“Back when I took his class, he said this medicine woman—Bernadette’s friend, Bessie—had told him he had this gift, that he had the
backwards medicine. That he’d be someone who teaches that way, by breaking taboos and rules. Turning things upside down. Like in coyote stories—sacred mischief.”
“And so it’s spiritual if he does these wicked things?”
“Yeah. You see it in him all the time. The trickster. It’s part of Charlie.”
Mae found herself stuck on the medicine person who identified his gift. The rest repelled her, but she wasn’t surprised. He was a trickster all right, but not a sacred one. “I don’t think he knows Bessie.”
“No, he does. He talks about her all the time.”
“Bernadette said he doesn’t. And he can’t get Apache words right.”
Randi stopped her stroll and looked at Mae. “He can’t have made all that up.”
Mae thought of his suggestions to Malba about her credentials. “Why not? He lies about other stuff.”
“Shoot. Don’t make me not like him. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s my spiritual wise guy—he’s got to have this backwards medicine thing. It’s the only way all this makes any sense.”
“Not to me.”
Randi shoved her hands into the pockets of her pink pants. She sighed. “I have to go grade his papers online. I need some of my files on the college server to do it, and I told Bernadette I’d see her tonight. You think if I ask her ...?”
“She’ll say he doesn’t know Bessie. I think she’s done letting him lie about her.”
“That makes everything so weird.” Another sigh. “I know you’re on to sub as a trainer, not this piddly job, but since you’re here, can you cover this shift until closing? There are some spare uniform shirts in the laundry room, kind of old, but we keep them for cases like this. The attendant pay sucks—”
“I’ll take it.” Mae needed even low pay, and it felt safe and sane to be in a gym, to hear the occasional clangs of the weights, the upbeat background music, the hum and thump of treadmills, far away from Charlie and his strange energies. “Thanks for talking with me. I feel better about that card. Worse about Charlie.”