by Amber Foxx
“Whatever is the matter with you, sitting in the dark by yourself?” Jill turned on the desk lamp, closed the door, and sat on the foot of the bed. “You’re missing the party, dear.”
Kandy looked up. “I’m listening to it. That’s ... That’s enough.”
“You should join it.”
She glanced toward the door, bit her lip, and shook her head. “I need to finish this.”
“What are you writing?” Jill walked to the desk, sipping her Scotch. She set it down in front of Kandy. “Let me see.”
“Not yet.”
Kandy tried to cover the letter. Jill snatched it, held it out at arm’s length and read it aloud, eyes bulging with emotion.
“ Dear Jill. I’m sorry. I really tried. I tried all last night and all day today. But Jamie’s right. I’m not emerging as a shaman.” Jill slapped the letter. “And what else does Jamie say?”
“It’s not real. It’s not helping. I wish he was wrong, but it’s true. I’m the one that was wrong. I thought I’d get better here, but I’m not. ”
“Better than what? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with you other than giving up on the process. Do you think you’re going to reach spiritual enlightenment without a struggle? You have to go through it, dear. Jamie doesn’t have the courage. You do. Show him how strong you are.”
“I don’t feel strong at all. I’m so hungry I’m shaking, I’ve been crying all day ...” Kandy pushed the drink toward Jill. “I’m really struggling. Could you take this, please?”
Jill tilted her head, half-smiling, took a tiny sip, and set the drink back down. She resumed reading the letter. Her jaw dropped. “How dare you?”
“I haven’t done it—yet. But I should. If I talk to Dr. Ellerbee about what we do here, he could—”
“Rainbow. He could do absolutely nothing to help you.”
“Yes, he could.” Kandy stood suddenly, banging the desk. Her voice shook. “He has to. He could help me show everybody what you really do. How you made me fast all day and made me cry in front of everybody and nothing happened, how you said I’d be special and that I had gifts, and it’s all bullshit. Really expensive bullshit. People will listen to him.”
“My god, Rainbow. Do you want your money back because you didn’t see God yet? It takes time.” Jill crushed the letter. “Stan Ellerbee has no more concept of a spiritual experience than he does of how to be a father. Look at Jamie.” Jill paused, looking into Kandy’s eyes. When she spoke again, her tone softened. “What kind of friend tries to undermine you in your spiritual search? If you’re unhappy now, I think you should take a look at this so-called friend. He’s taken too much out of you. Don’t let him drag you down.”
“He doesn’t drag me—”
“Of course he does. You told me all about it. You can’t take that back. You gave up a lot for him. Are you going to give up more?” Jill sat on the desk and cupped Kandy’s cheek, turning her face to her. “You’re a woman. You can stop bowing to men. Jamie’s no friend to you. He uses you and then cuts you down. Stand up for yourself and see the light, be the light, on your own. If you don’t quit on me.”
Silence hung between them. Jill didn’t let go until Kandy sank into her chair and wept.
“Take my drink, dear. Pull yourself together. Let’s join the party.”
Still crying, Kandy stared at the Scotch. “I’m trying not to drink.” She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes and nose. “Remember? I’m an alcoholic.”
Jill flattened the letter and put it in her jeans pocket. “If you believe that powerlessness message from AA, you’ll feel that way. Weak and powerless. But alcohol has a spirit. It is a spirit. You can claim and conquer it. Along with your choice of ‘friends,’ this fear may be your obstacle to the emergence.”
She caressed Kandy’s neck, running a finger around to her throat and down to her collarbone. Kandy jerked, her eyes like a scared animal’s. Jill drew back and studied the young woman. “And that fear, too. My dear, dear Rainbow. Will you trust me one more night?”
Kandy hid her face in her hands. Jill patted her shoulder and spoke softly. “We have many breakthroughs to seek. If you’ll only dare.” She stroked Kandy’s hair and left.
Kandy stared at the drink. She picked up the pen, clenched it, stabbed it at the stack of stationery, and dropped it. Her eyes filled again with tears. Slowly, she drew her ring off her finger. Her hands trembled. She took an envelope from the desk drawer, sealed the ring in it, and wrote on it Goodbye Big Buddy. With a loud sob, she tore the envelope and took the ring back and gazed at it. After a long hard cry, holding the ring to her heart, she put it in another envelope and sealed it. This time she wrote Jamie Ellerbee.
She picked up the drink and gulped it down.
Mae’s vision blurred and spun through the party. Kandy began the evening trying to talk with the other women but soon dropped into the background, sullen and quiet, drinking shot after shot. Jill drank little but joked and teased with the more boisterous partiers, appearing to have forgotten Kandy. Then Kandy, sitting on the edge of a bed, lost her balance and slipped to the floor as she reached for a bottle to refill her glass. The vision slowed down.
“Rainbow’s falling out on us.” A woman in a broomstick skirt gave a tipsy laugh. “Falling rain.”
“I’ve got her.” Jill poured herself a fresh drink and carried it along as she helped Kandy to her room. She closed the door and sat Kandy on the bed. The intoxicated young woman reached for the drink. Jill helped her take it. Kandy swallowed the liquor and fell back with a gasping sigh.
Jill leaned down to kiss her full on the mouth. Kandy’s weak flutter of a hand might have been meant to push Jill away, but was too feeble to reach her. The vision went to black.
Mae didn’t want to see more. This journey had to be over—but it didn’t let her go. The tunnel took her again.
Mae’s perception was odd this time, both sharp and remote. She could see better, yet scarcely hear. Jamie and Lisa were curled together on a sofa amid pink and blue floral cushions, watching TV. They looked toward the door, and Lisa rose to open it. She met a tall, bearded, silver-haired man with gray eyes behind wire-framed glasses. He spoke to her in the doorway. Jamie looked up with a start. The tall man entered, and Lisa left the room. From the way he sat close beside Jamie and looked into his eyes as he spoke, Mae sensed the visitor was Jamie’s father. Stan took a folded envelope from his pocket and shook it gently, displaying on its open flap the ring that matched the one on Jamie’s hand.
As he listened, Jamie’s expression changed from shock to grief, then to wild despair. His father tried to stop him as he rushed from the room and into the kitchen, where Lisa stood in front of an empty drawer. Like a cornered animal, Jamie turned back toward the door. This time, his father managed to grasp his arms. Jamie fought to get away. Lisa held him from behind, helping restrain him until Jamie stopped struggling and collapsed on his knees. He tore off his bracelet and ring and curled up in a fetal position, arms wrapped around his belly, sobbing and rocking. Stan stroked his son’s hair. Lisa rubbed Jamie’s back until he sat up enough that she could wrap him in her arms.
Gasser began to mew plaintively from the kitchen, and Mae’s trance finally broke. She pushed up to a sitting position and let the ring rest in her palm. It felt heavy and almost alive.
Jamie’s grief haunted her. He and Kandy had had the opposite of a suicide pact: a promise to each other that they would live. The goodbye note Kandy had discarded—did it mean she’d intended to break the promise, or to end the friendship? Writing Jamie’s name instead of Big Buddy said something had shifted. Had she been trying to make sure he got it when she was gone? Or could she simply not bear to call him that pet name anymore?
Mae tried to imagine being Kandy at that moment, weak with fasting and emotionally overwhelmed. Jamie had undermined her faith in Jill. And then Jill had undermined her faith in Jamie. With a mother who didn’t protect her and a father who’d sent her away, Kandy m
ust have felt she had no one to turn to. Only alcohol. Whether she’d been trying to get up the courage to kill herself, or drinking to escape so much pain and disappointment, maybe she herself hadn’t known.
Gasser cried and then yowled, alternating between pitiful begging and forceful demands. Mae called to him to hush up and wait, but he didn’t stop. She closed the door to the kitchen, still needing to think.
How could Jamie never once have mentioned Kandy? It wasn’t healthy to hide a story like that. Was he angry with her? When The Urban Shaman came out, it must have looked like his best friend, whose death had already torn him to pieces, had betrayed him.
Mae stroked the rim of the ring. She could almost feel Kandy’s hand through it. The vision had been unstoppable when Mae wanted to pull out. Could Kandy’s ghost have driven it? Even the part that happened after she died?
The mewing took on a new urgency. Mae pocketed the ring and crystals and got up. Gasser might be stuck in some small space, his soft bulk wedged between appliances.
She found him pacing around his food bowl. “I don’t think Jamie would leave you to starve. I bet you ate everything he put out for you.”
Gasser continued to pace and meow.
Exercise helped Jamie’s anxiety. It should work for his cat. Mae got the leash and harness from the closet. Gasser hissed and fuzzed, resisting her attempt to buckle him up. As soon as she gave up on the harness, he resumed begging. Mae stuck her hand in the cat food bag and dropped three bits in the bowl. The cat wailed. It was like having a stepchild. Except her stepchildren loved her.
She rinsed the crystals in salt water and put them away. Upstairs, she placed the ring beside the roses and the rest of the jewelry on the upturned box, and sat and gazed at it. Jamie had felt that he would dig up a body if he unpacked. Mae had done it instead.
Gasser raised his volume. If he didn’t shut up soon, she would have to leave, go read her books somewhere else. She wasn’t caving in on feeding a cat the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. She could come back later and flatten the cardboard after Gasser lost his voice or gave up crying.
There was one thing left in the box where she’d found the jewelry. She took it out. The last of Jamie’s unpacking was that cheap metal frame she’d noticed earlier. Bits of paper stuck out of the cardboard backing. Mae turned it over. The picture showed Kandy and Jamie as college students, his arm draped over her shoulders and hers snugged around his thick waist. They stood in front of an institutional-looking building, their free hands giving thumbs-up. So loving, so hopeful. The best of friends.
Kandy’s picture should go in the spare room’s closet with Lisa’s, but Mae couldn’t bring herself to hide it, or the jewelry. Not yet. The force behind her visions made her feel these objects wanted to see the light.
Mae opened the stand on the back of the frame to set the picture beside the roses, and the cardboard popped loose. The sketches fell out: Kandy’s future Jamie and his candy rainbow heart. Touched almost to tears, Mae tucked them back in, pulled the tabs in place, and studied the picture. Perhaps they’d had it taken the day they made that promise. It was inscribed in round upright script: Stay strong, Big Buddy. Always with you, Kandy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Leaving his instruments in the Fiesta, Jamie locked it and hustled up the walkway to his apartment. Eighteen lonely months since he’d had a girlfriend, ten of them spent wishing he had Mae—and now she was in there, waiting for him. The lights were on. Her car was there. She hadn’t left.
For the entire hour driving back from Albuquerque, he’d fretted that his place might have scared her off. Dinner and roses would hardly make up for seeing proof of pathological procrastination. She’d seen him through all sorts of emotional messes, but not material ones. He hoped she’d spent the day somewhere else—galleries, museums, parks—anywhere but in his apartment with his boxes.
As soon as he stepped inside, he froze. The boxes were gone. His books were stacked in the middle of the living room. Mae was in the kitchen, doing something noisy. She must have been here for hours, doing his work for him. He hadn’t wanted that. He’d asked for all those months apart so she wouldn’t take care of him. Now they’d gotten together, and what was the first thing she did? Take care of him. This was all wrong.
He hurried into the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have—”
She let out a little peep of surprise, interrupted in the act of flattening cardboard by stamping a particularly stubborn box into submission. Those she had already conquered lay in stacks beside her like the pages of a gigantic brown book. “Hey, sugar.” She looked so pleased and proud, like a kid who’d brought home some awful piece of school-made art. Jamie’s annoyance choked on his love for her, and he lost the urge to scold. She said, “You don’t make a sound. You scared me.”
“Weightless.”
He glided to her and wrapped his arms around her. “So good to see you, love.” He kissed her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. His body craved to be skin to skin with hers. “Been thinking about you all day.”
Her lips didn’t lock onto his, her tongue didn’t tickle back. Jamie let her go, touched her face, and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She looked too serious. The love song on his heart radio broke up into static. Unpacking must have been unromantic. Fuck. Of course it was. “You didn’t have to do this, y’know. Jeezus, bloody awful yakka.”
“I didn’t mind at all. It felt good to do it for you. Anyway, it’ll help us shop for furniture tomorrow if you can see the rooms without boxes.”
“What’s wrong, then?” Bats of anxiety swarmed and flapped in his chest. Maybe it was the kiss. He’d probably suffocated her. Slobbered on her. He opened the refrigerator and got a beer. She hadn’t finished her dinner. “Was my cooking all right? You didn’t eat it all.”
“It was great. But three giant burritos is a lot even for a triathlete. I think you cooked like—”
“Like I was cooking for myself. Yeah.” He drank a long, cool swallow of beer, and leaned against the counter, opened the bag of blue corn chips and grabbed the last handful. A few of the bats went down with it. “I’ll get used to cooking for you. Give me a few days.” He sought her eyes. She looked down and flattened the last empty box.
“Jeezus,” he said. “What in bloody hell is wrong? Are you all right?”
“Yeah. It’s not about me. It’s just something hard to talk about.”
A serious talk was the prelude to a fight. Anxiety flapped its many wings again. “Fuck. You’re scaring me.” He drank more beer, got the leftover burrito from the fridge, and stuck the plate in the microwave.
“It’s not about us.” She added the flattened box to a hip-high heap and sat on it. “I ... I unpacked everything.”
That was obvious. Had she found something disturbing? Maybe she’d come across some really big pants. That might worry her. She might think he was headed back into them. She might have found Lisa’s picture and wondered why he’d kept it—or Kandy’s, and thought she was a girlfriend. He didn’t want to ask any more about what was wrong.
The microwave hummed in the silence between them and beeped. Jamie took the burrito out and began to eat.
Mae jumped up and got a placemat from a drawer, utensils from another. Nothing was where he wanted it. What had she been thinking, making kitchen decisions when she didn’t even cook? She set a place at the table. “Why don’t you sit down?”
He didn’t want to sit and act like he was having a meal with her not joining him. It would feel weird. This wasn’t a meal, he was just—eating. Was she giving him a warning: Better sit down? “Fuck. You telling me something that bad?”
“You’ll slow down and eat less if you sit—”
“Who said I’m trying to? Jeezus.” It was like she’d unpacked Lisa and turned into her. “I’m not having another girlfriend who nags me about my weight.”
“I wasn’t nagging you.”
“Yeah, you were. Don’t, all right? You love me, then love me as I am. I to
ld you that.”
This was the fight Gorman had tried to prepare him for. It hurt out of proportion to its size and content. In silence he ate the burrito and drank his beer, pushing his emotions back down, while Mae sat at the table, toying with the note he’d left her, and another piece of paper.
“I do love you as you are.” She sounded sad, her delicate orange-red eyebrows pulling into a little tent of tension. “I meant to help, that’s all. With everything. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Guilt poured into the whirlpool of fears. Jamie put his food and drink aside and knelt at her feet, taking her hands. “Don’t feel bad. Jesus. I just react, y’know? To old stuff. Lisa was so hard on me. If I gained weight, it was like a fucking crime against our relationship.” He searched her face for a smile. What he’d said was supposed to reassure her, but she looked even sadder and more worried. “Jesus. Was I that harsh? Sorry. I’m out of practice with relationship stuff. I’ll get better.”
“Sugar, it’s all right. We’re both out of practice. I’m so used to helping my clients lose weight I say things like that. And I should have asked before I unpacked for you.”
She should have. He would have to rearrange the kitchen tomorrow.
“No worries.” Jamie kissed her hand and returned to the counter to finish the burrito and the beer. “I should have thanked you. Sorry I didn’t.” He smiled. “Huge thanks. You’re an angel.” There. Survived the fight. Or had they? Her eyebrows were still in that unhappy position. “Do we still have to talk?”
“I’d like to. It’s about ... something I learned about Jill.”
“Fuck. Why didn’t you say so? Yeah, I hate her, but Jeezus, you made me think it was personal. Saying it was hard to talk about.”
Mae looked at his note in her hand and let it go. She sighed, wrapped her ankles around the legs of the chair. “I saw the artist’s mark inside your bracelet. I didn’t know you knew her.”
The meaning took a second to hit. This was how she’d learned something about Jill? Jamie slammed the beer bottle down, his insides churning. “You did psychic work with my things?”