The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

by Anjanette Delgado

  “I wanna take a quick look at your astral chart before we begin. Exact date, time, and place of birth?”

  I looked from the laptop to Jorge, who put his hands up as if to say he had nothing to do with this.

  “September 24, 1972 . . . 11:58 p.m. . . . Miami.”

  He typed quickly.

  “Okay. Your hands?” he said, holding out his own long fingers and square, sturdy nails.

  When I didn’t give him mine, he motioned to a tarot deck and asked, “You want the cards instead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re more for confirming what you get, and there’s no need in your case.” He smiled.

  It was a kind smile, and I relaxed a little.

  He closed his eyes, and I put my hands in his. He took them as if to warm them, then let them go as if they were infectious.

  “Damn. This is not good.”

  It was also very fast.

  Being used to this reaction by now, I waited until he composed himself enough to close his eyes, take my hands in his again, and ask, “You want me to tell you your life, or you want to know what’s going to happen? Forget it. Doesn’t matter. I have to tell you what’s going to happen, or what’s happening.”

  “How bad exactly?”

  “Not sure. But bad.”

  “Then wait!” I said.

  He opened his eyes, his face a question mark.

  “If you’re going to tell me something bad, you have to give me a minute to prepare to hear it,” I explained.

  “You’re already prepared, but okay. Prepare.”

  I wanted to get out of there. I looked to Jorge, who was sharing a white vinyl armchair with several computer hard drives, smiling at me in what he thought was encouragement, but was more of a worried expression.

  Eddie stared at me for a minute, then closed his eyes again and began tapping his foot, as if impatient.

  “Okay. Tell me,” I said.

  “So you can see too.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I used to.”

  He closed his eyes again and began moving his head from side to side like Stevie Wonder singing “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”

  “Nah, you can still see. But you’ve been stupid, or afraid, same thing.”

  What was it with psychics calling me stupid? Was there no solidarity for a fallen sister? I thought. His words, his tone, reminded me of someone I couldn’t place.

  Oh, dear God. What if he was a fake? He had to be to think I could still see beyond my own nose.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you as much as I can. Slowly. But you have to hear this, so listen.”

  I waited, really wanting to know for once. Tired of running and needing to get it over with.

  “This man you’re seeing . . . he’s over.”

  Wow, I thought. But then he said, “Or he’ll be over like, now, or very soon. It’ll be ugly, like, really, really, really . . . you know, ugly. But as a result of this . . . bad stuff... he’ll finally get on his knees before you.”

  I exhaled, deflated. I’d felt so hopeful when he started talking. And then he’d ruined it. He was a fake. He’d guessed my visit was man-related and assumed commitment issues, a pretty safe assumption when a middle-aged woman wearing no wedding band gives you her hands to read in the middle of a weekday afternoon. He thought I was some chick-lit heroine trying to find out if my boyfriend would ever marry me. He’d gotten my attention by scaring me, and then tried to slip in the happy ending that would ensure a generous “donation” for the reading.

  I looked at Jorge, furious, weighing whether to tell Eddie the psychic that even if Hector weren’t dead and could get on his knees, he couldn’t possibly propose because he was already married, just so I could watch the look on his face at being caught faking it. But I decided against it. Why give him, and Jorge, more information?

  “And when he does, you’re finally going to get the only thing you ever really wanted from him.”

  “Right,” I said, swallowing the last sip of coffee in the cup and thinking that if there was one thing I’d never wanted from Hector, it was a marriage proposal. “Well, thank you.”

  “You don’t believe me,” he said.

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. I knew you wouldn’t,” he said, as I got up and went to the glass bowl filled with money that sat next to the makeshift coffee-making station to drop in a twenty-dollar bill. I figured he needed the money more than I if he needed to make his living ripping people off.

  “No, please don’t put any money in there. When you believe me, you come back and put in whatever you like.”

  Once again, he wasn’t asking, so I just nodded and said, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Jorge here is family. You should both come back sometime. My mom makes killer black beans, right, Jorge?”

  We said uncomfortable good-byes, got back into the car, and within seconds were driving over streets lit up from above by the sun’s spurting of the afternoon’s last orange-pink gasps.

  “You’re mad at me.”

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Bad judgment when it comes to psychics?”

  He did have a point.

  “You were just trying to help,” I said.

  “You wanted to see madrina, and Eddie is madrina’s only grandson.”

  Of course. No wonder his electric green eyes had seemed familiar. And another gifted child? Well, that certainly explained things. After a while, Jorge said, “I’ll tell you this: Whatever you’re looking for, I think you should keep looking.”

  “Oh, really, and why is that?”

  “So you can come back to your life.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Nah. You’re only half here. You used to be three-quarters here, but now . . .”

  You’ll recognize the feeling: Something inside me said “yes!” to what he was saying the minute he said it. Yes, I’d been missing from my own life. It’s what happens when you refuse to see: You also refuse to live. To be here.

  I smiled, thinking he was pretty instinctive himself. I wondered if this new demeanor of his had to do with his listening to his instincts when it came to his life. I wondered if he was happy.

  “You know what you’ve always had?” I asked.

  “Irresistible sex appeal?”

  “Ah, yes, yes, that, and the modesty, of course.”

  “Above all things, the modesty,” he said, laughing easily, his eyes crinkling.

  “But what I was going to say is that you always had this knack for really, really seeing me,” I told him.

  “Well, you always were easy to look at,” he said, smiling the smile I remembered.

  But then, just as quickly it was gone, the feeling of being comfortable around him. Suddenly it all felt wrong again, and Hector was back in my thoughts.

  “Mariela, you know, I have some leftover building materials from this project I’ve been working on. You’re welcome to have it. I’ll even drop it off, if you want. Might come in handy to fix your rental.”

  “No, no, but tell me about this project. Did you and your wife buy a house?” I asked, insisting on my fishing out of pure compulsion.

  “No, Mariela. We didn’t buy a house. I was just working at fixing up this locale, and I have leftover material: wood, plaster, some shelving, some cabinets, a counter,” he said with a questioning look, no doubt noticing the shift in me and thinking it had to do with his marital situation instead of with my own extramarital one.

  When we neared Le Jeune Road, not too far from the St. Michel, and my old Coral Gables neighborhood, I asked him to drop me off at Books and Books.

  “Sure you don’t want to grab a bite?”

  “I’m sure. Need to clear my head a little, you know?”

  I also wanted him to kiss me again and hated myself for it.

  “Sure,” he said, and was silent the rest of the way.

  When we got there, I scooted over to his side a
nd gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said then, and I thought, Good.

  He’d used the phrase people use to break up with each other these days. No wonder when a man tells me to take care of myself, what I hear in my head is “Fuck you.” So, good. He’d gotten the message. Asking him for help today had complicated nothing, unlike I’d feared.

  I waved him good-bye and turned to go in, ignoring the magazines next to the entry gate and the people eating organic fare in the courtyard. I’d hoped to hop straight over to the new age section, but the back of a man in multipocketed khaki shorts prevented me from it. A professional-looking camera rested on his right shoulder, and a dark-haired woman in heavy makeup and a light orange shift stood beside him, effectively blocking me.

  Then I saw who they were getting ready to interview. It was Mitchell Kaplan, the owner of the bookstore. The man Hector had hated with such passion. I’d often told him that he needed to get over Mitch. I’d muse that he sounded like the Joker in Batman, bemoaning the cool gadgets the other guy had, while dying of envy and the desire to get ahold of them for himself. Hector would always snort, snarl, and harrumph before telling me the comparison didn’t deserve an answer. I knew better: He had a hard time with comebacks when truly flustered.

  The reporter was saying, “Mitchell Kaplan is the founder of Miami’s foremost literary haven, Books and Books, and of the Miami Book Fair International. He’s agreed to chat with us today from his Coral Gables location about the state of publishing. How are you, Mitch?”

  “Nice to see you again.”

  “Tell us, how is Books and Books dealing with the ascent of the e-book and the fall of the brick-and-mortar bookstore?”

  “Brick-and-mortar is out? We hadn’t noticed,” he said, smiling.

  I smiled too.

  “In my world, it’s in!” he continued. “I love the physical book, and I’m attached to the physical book, but I am also about those third places where people congregate to talk about the books, digital or not. Like right here. You think this is out?”

  “Well, obviously you can’t see it here,” said the reporter, waving around and noticing the place was packed, she the one “obviously” out of her depth in the rattling-the-interviewee department. “Care to share your secrets with us?”

  “Well, we’ve always been a home for book lovers. Lately, we are working even harder to bring authors and readers together. We hold events almost every night in each of our four stores . . . and, just continuing to do what we do. I don’t know that I’d call it a secret, but there it is.”

  Oh, he was good. No wonder Hector had hated his guts so much. He’d turned the reporter’s premise into one that allowed him to get his piece in and managed to sound humble doing it. Despicable.

  “Good enough? You got everything you need?” he asked the reporter a few minutes later, handing the cameraman his lavalier and already focused on the people who’d assembled around me, curious.

  “Yes, excellent, thank you,” said the reporter, frowning.

  “And how are you?” he said to me. “I hope we weren’t keeping you from the books.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. It was . . . interesting,” I said inanely, entranced by his easy smile, good hair, and huge blue eyes. I remember thinking, what would it be like to own your world? To walk around with the effortless knowledge that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing where you are supposed to be doing it? And just like that, I envied him, just like Hector had.

  The excitement over, I headed for the occult section, and why not? Books had been my best friends in life, and they’d been Hector’s. Maybe I could turn to them like he often had and they’d come through, I hoped, as I searched for the one that would speak to me. My great-great-nana’s manual had been a start, but it had been three days of reading and rereading it, and I had yet to feel anything remotely resembling Hector’s presence. No sense of peace or love upon connection, as I’d get when I first got my gift more than twenty-five years ago.

  One thing was certain: In those twenty-five years, clairvoyance had gone mainstream. I’d thought my great-great-grandmother’s diary was unique, but there in front of me were dozens of books showing how to concoct spells, how to “open to channel,” describing witches’ commandments, Wiccan techniques, Celtic chants for talking to angels, and even voodoo strategies for the modern practitioner. There were also books about silence, gratitude, self-induced happiness, and self-love as psychic tools. I felt hopeful. Maybe I could reteach myself clairvoyance after all, get myself to that incredible feeling of loving the world again. And if I learned it right this time, maybe I could still help people, and help myself by ridding my days of all the garbage that regret, mourning, guilt, and self-loathing had stored in the garage of my life.

  Last night, after seeing Jorge, and knowing we’d be meeting with a psychic today, I’d tried all the things prescribed by my great-great-grandmother in her journal. I’d lit candles, played music, prayed, visualized, and held the books Hector had given me during our time together because he’d imbued each one with intention, and they’d each inspired an emotion in me. Seeing them, I’d realized these bound clairvoyants had correctly predicted each curve and turn of our relationship. There was the beginning, desperate and sexy in Love in the Time of Cholera. White Teeth by Zadie Smith was funny and charming, delighting me in the most carefree way, like our middle. And there among them was Chiquita, which had predicted our ending, with help from Hector himself. But no Hector that I could feel, despite hours of running my hands over them, praying and wishing to communicate with him one last time.

  Yet now, here, surrounded by books and the people who loved them enough to keep trying to sell them, I suddenly believed I’d reach Hector if I just kept at it. That I’d talk to him and find out what happened, and that once I did, I’d be protected from the police finding out I’d been the last person he’d seen and blaming me for his death. Then I’d be able to separate myself from this paranoid dread and mourn his death and the way things ended, maybe even find peace with the death of people I loved, with myself.

  That afternoon among words, I understood that I couldn’t leave things to someone else. That no psychic was going to magically appear and see what I couldn’t see for myself. But the realization didn’t weaken me, as it would have before. Instead, it made me hopeful that I could put myself back together, the woman and the clairvoyant, both made whole, united in some way.

  I kept searching for more books pointing in that direction: going within, gratitude rituals, creating a psychic space, playing with images as a way to turn intuition on, and many other things that sounded to me like things everyone should do regularly, like a pedicure or a haircut. Natural things. Things that pointed to your being part of a whole, as opposed to some isolated freak by virtue of being able to see, feel, and hear what others appeared unable to.

  A few minutes later, I’d chosen Opening to Channel by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, How to Rule the World from Your Couch by Laura Day, the classic Life After Life by Raymond A. Moody Jr., and, almost as an afterthought, 101 Ways to Jump-Start Your Intuition by John Holland. They’d do for a start.

  I took a taxi home, and when the cab neared the intersection of Twentieth Avenue and Calle Ocho, the corner where Hector had dropped me off just days ago, I paid and stood there, reliving that last afternoon we’d spent together, as the foreword in one of the books I’d just bought recommended. Then I walked the block or so to Del Tingo al Tango, feeling focused on my goal: connecting with Hector, understanding how he’d died and why, and making peace with his death, and with my not having seen it in time to prevent it.

  His bookstore looked so beautiful, like a woman, lovely in her mourning, the Cerrado Hasta Nuevo Aviso (Closed Until Further Notice) sign like a Victorian locket around her shiny glass neck. Then I ran my hand over Del Tingo al Tango’s doorknob, and the shift was immediate. Intense goose bumps shot from the inside of my right wrist to the inside of my right elb
ow until I withdrew my hand, my breath quick, listening, until I caught, if barely, the sound of a faraway radio blaring some Tito “El Bambino” song about forgiveness. Was it a message? If so, it was saying that my first order of business was forgiving Hector? Myself? My mom? Whoa, where had that come from?

  I stayed a little longer waiting for another sign, then gave up and walked the rest of the way home, knowing that, my urgency be damned, my reeducation as a clairvoyant would take place at its own pace. And I could either walk away from my sight with nothing to show for all my suffering or stand fast, be right here when, and if, it returned.

  Chapter 21

  Do you know what it’s like to sleep with a dead man? To feel his presence underneath your sheets, but not his morning rise, the space between his legs not really there, except for the anger of impossibility pulsing through onto this realm from some level of him. But don’t get me wrong. You will feel something when you’re sleeping with a dead man, the urgency of his urge manifesting in unexpected ways. You might, for example, feel his essence, cool and pointing, poking, or trying to poke, the space between the fleshy part of your buttocks like a laser beam, or a narrow field of energy.

  The reason for that is that you don’t have to be alive to be delusional. I never gave Hector my ass when he was alive. What was making him think I’d do it now? Crazy man to death and beyond it, which goes to prove all you’ve heard at wakes and funerals is bullshit. Death does not make you a better, more aware, or more profound soul.

  “Flaca?” I heard the casual Argentinean term of endearment, which literally means “skinny one,” but kept my eyes and mouth closed.

  “Flaca? I know you here.”

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, and shit.

  “I know . . . I know you . . . meeee.”

  I made myself still as a bar of soap, wanting to make sure I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing.

  “I know you . . . hear me,” he said now, followed by something unintelligible.

  “What?” I actually whispered back this time, realizing that even if he could guess I was listening, he couldn’t know I was utterly unable to understand him. Can you imagine? My possibly murdered lover back from the dead, and I couldn’t comprehend a word.