Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Instead, there was a puppy. A vapid, fluffy, big-eyed puppy sitting in a field of daisies. I fanned out the pile. More dogs, but that’s not all. Interspersed with the puppies, bugs. Not interesting bugs, either, but the type of pointy, squirmy, venomous-looking things that make you chafe your forearms and shake out the bath towels.

  Jacob picked up the other pile and shoved it back into the box. “Never mind.”

  “So what’s the deal? You seriously thought I’d psychically sort the puppies from the bugs? Wait, don’t answer, that’s exactly what was going on, according to my mystical powers.” That and the look on his face. “And now you’re pissed.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Look, I never claimed to be a mind reader. If you cooked up some fantasy where I was, that’s your own damn recipe. Not mine.”

  I re-reminded myself how much he’d done for me and headed for the bathroom to put my hair up before I said anything I’d regret. Boyfriend cred only stretches so far. We’d gone from warm and fuzzy to cool and distant in the span of a single card game. It was pretty obvious where I wasn’t meeting his expectations. For some reason, he thought I had talent—aside from my skill at hair design, or copyediting, or fellatio.

  Unfortunately, the disappointment was mutual. I’d thought Jacob was into me for who I was, and not who he imagined me to be. Maybe he’d done a great job of playing the white knight, but once the dust settled, it turned out Mr. Perfect wasn’t so keen on scratching around in the dirt with plebes like me.

  Chapter 26

  My shift sucked ass, definitely not in a good way. I got called off the floor by the manager not once, not twice, but three times. Apparently my pants were too tight. And saying “dick cheese” wasn’t professional. And making a jerk-off motion, complete with spurting noises, offended some customer’s tender sensibilities. I would’ve told management to peel open my tight pants, kneel down and eat my dick cheese—accompanied by jerk-off motions and a few juicy spurting sounds—had I not been within half an hour of ending my shift. I suppressed the urge. I couldn’t afford to jeopardize my puny paycheck and even punier tips.

  In the face of so much rampant disapproval, I could hardly be expected to deal with Maxine. Sure, calling her to cancel would only invite more recrimination, but better to endure it for the course of a phone call than the stretch of an entire evening.

  Luckily, when I got home, Lydia was leaning up against the building enjoying a cigarette outside on a mild spring evening, so I wouldn’t need to spend the entirety of my tips on a nicotine fix. I parked myself beside her and said, “Got enough to share?”

  She shook out a cancer stick and passed it over. “Rough day?”

  Rough day? Week? Year? Fuck, I couldn’t even remember the last time something had gone my way. Even back when I made good money and lived in a human abode, how could I count any of that as good fortune when eventually it all went to shit?

  I shrugged.

  “Whatever it is,” she said, “people always say you should talk it out. But I think talking’s overrated. It’s what you do that really counts.”

  I suspected she was trying to make me feel better, but it backfired. All I could think about was how everyone seemed so disillusioned with me that I was beginning to suspect I was inherently flawed. I finished my cigarette, flicked the butt into the gutter, then said, “This guy I’ve been seeing, the cop…I thought he was in it for the hot sex, maybe the free haircuts. But it turns out he had the crazy notion I was psychic.”

  She slid me a look through her smudgy fortune-teller eyeliner that said, “What’s so crazy about that?” as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud.

  “He had this ridiculous deck of cards….”

  “Colors? Shapes?”

  “Poodles and centipedes.”

  “Ah…I’ve heard of those. That’s based on new research—and I gotta admit, I’m more than a little curious.” She cocked her head toward her palm reader sign, now dark. “C’mon inside and tell me all about it.”

  We parked ourselves at her kitchen table, a burn-scarred slab of plastic veneer that was peeling at the edges. She set out a couple of shot glasses, then set a bottle of birthday cake flavored vodka beside them.

  I slammed my shot, shuddered, then described the card game as best I could. “I felt like I’d let him down,” I said, and tossed back another sickeningly sweet shot.

  “Maybe it’s a decent litmus test. If the two of you aren’t compatible, you’ll want to know sooner, not later.”

  “Compatibility’s not the problem.”

  “So he has a big dick,” she said. I may have snorted some caustic vanilla into my sinuses over her ability to read between the lines. “So do plenty of guys. Just because someone’s good in bed doesn’t mean they’re your soulmate.”

  “Is this advice of a general nature…or is it telepathic?”

  “Get your terminology straight, bucko, I’m a precog. And no, I haven’t looked.”

  “Why not?”

  “Matters of the heart are touchy. How much time something lasts is beside the point. It’s what you get out of the experience that counts.”

  I did a third shot, thinking I’d be used to the cloying sweetness already. I wasn’t.

  Lydia pulled a pad of sticky notes from her junk drawer, then dredged up a chewed pencil. “Do you think you’ll be better off in the long run for having met this fella?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Exactly. So tell me more about this test.” She scribbled herself a note. “What did he say when he gave it to you?”

  “He told me to focus on him.” About a million times. “And to guess high or low.”

  “Nothing about the puppies?”

  “No, I didn’t see the pictures until later.”

  “So you thought you were guessing numbers. Not feelings.”

  “I didn’t think much of anything. I was just doing it to humor him.”

  The syrupy vodka churned in my empty stomach. I wandered into the bathroom, waited for a few minutes to see if it was gonna revisit me, then came back out and topped it off with a glass of tap water in hopes of keeping down the alcohol.

  “I want to make sure I’ve got this straight,” she said when I parked my ass back at the table. She held up a note, sticky side facing me. “So this is a card. And you’re supposed to guess high or low, right?” I gave a whatever hand flick. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if you guessed happy or sad?”

  “It’s adorable that you think logic applies in this situation.”

  “C’mon, kid. Let’s try it my way.”

  “Happy,” I said. She put the note face down on the table. “Happy. Happy. Sad. Sad….” I wasn’t being entirely random—I did consider her for a moment before each guess. Jacob and my mother were both profoundly disappointed in me. I couldn’t afford to alienate anyone else that day.

  Once I guessed through all the notes, Lydia said, “Huh.” Then she stuck the two piles together and stuffed them in her pocket.

  “You’re baiting me. Is that it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Were they blank?”

  “Nope.”

  I crooked a finger. “Then give it up. I played fair—so I get to see the score.”

  With an overdone eye-roll of resignation, Lydia handed over the stack of yellow squares. I expected the top note to have a word on it. Instead, she’d jotted a dollar sign. I peeled them apart. Dollar, dollar, dollar, heart. What the heck? Dollar, dollar, heart, heart heart….

  “I don’t get it,” I finally admitted.

  “Love and money. I guess I’m a true romantic, and you picked up on it. Probably doesn’t hurt that you’ve got the same predilections.”

  I peeled through the notes again. The top half was mostly money, the bottom mostly love. “I’m still not sure what I’m looking at.”

  “Money—sad, love—happy. I could’ve just written the two words, I guess, but that wasn’t how the puppy deck worked, was it? Pictures are mor
e conceptual, more visceral. I’ll bet a successful stockbroker going through a divorce would’ve had the opposite result…if he was sensitive enough to pick up on it, anyhow.”

  I stared at the notes without grasping the point, awash in that maddening tip-of-the-tongue feeling that comes with forgetting a word you’ve known your whole life. I’d watched her sort the two piles as I guessed, and I’d seen her stack one on top of the other. The preponderance of dollar signs up top and hearts beneath went way beyond mere chance. “So you tapped into your precognitive talent and guessed which way I would pick?”

  “Do those things look like my tarot? Sorry, kid, I’m off the clock. If anyone tapped into anything, it was you.”

  * * *

  I’d left Lydia’s apartment with the intention of looking up anything I could find on psychic empaths, but soon discovered her wi-fi was acting up and my crappy, overpriced data plan was tapped out. Since internet research was a bust, I ended up swinging by the grocery store and grabbing a bottle of plain vodka to dilute the fake birthday cake I’d already imbibed. Besides, mid-priced vodka was a heck of a lot cheaper than limoncello, or another gig of data.

  This notion that I might actually be an empath was, of course, ridiculous. And yet so many people I knew and trusted—Lydia, Carolyn, and even Jacob—were convinced I’d picked up on more than body language when I spotted the loser who’d robbed me.

  On the way to ClipLand the next morning, I pondered my fellow bus riders. How many of them thought they were some flavor of Psych? And, of those folks, who among them actually were?

  I felt subdued during my shift. Pensive. The other stylists decided I was hungover, and teased me ruthlessly whenever the manager snuck out back to talk on her phone. I didn’t play along, exactly, but I didn’t correct them either. Sure, the two different cheap vodkas hadn’t mingled in my gut very well, but mostly I was just wrapped up in my own thoughts, at least until the guy in my chair exploded.

  “What the fuck, man, you can see my scalp! I look like I’m getting drafted into the fucking army.”

  He’d told me to take it down close—what was I supposed to do, read his mind? Like…Red?

  Red fucking Turner. I tried to push him out of my head, but it was too late. I was already awash in the memory of losing myself in his big, dark eyes. He’d always struck me as self-contained, even cagey, and now it made a lot more sense. Red kept himself to himself because he knew secrets. Not because anyone blabbed about them in his presence, but because he soaked them up through the pores of his being. He hadn’t just imagined the wind in Olga’s hair. He’d seen it, or felt it. Maybe even lived it for that fraction of a second in which she’d been on the receiving end of his whammy.

  Going home, I was happy enough to ride the bus for once, because I was so lost in thought, who knows where I might have ended up if I’d driven myself. I didn’t know what to make of anything anymore. Sorting my way through a stack of hearts and dollars should have been the big wakeup call that made me a believer after all these years of clinging so passionately to my carefully cultivated mantle of skepticism. It wasn’t, though. It was the memory of Red saying, “Tell me a story,” and gazing deep into a customer’s soul.

  Not only that, it was the certainty that in the storage closet, when he’d grabbed me by the head and asked about Ralph, he’d subjected me to that same psychic scrutiny.

  How I felt about that, I didn’t know. Equal parts violated and vindicated. He didn’t blame the fiasco on me, but that hadn’t actually mattered. In the end, I supposed the purity of my intent didn’t amount to a hill of shit. It hadn’t kept Red in Chicago, had it?

  What good was being psychic if it didn’t help you satisfy a ClipLand customer…or figure out your boyfriend was screwing all your co-workers? I was struggling with both my philosophical conundrum and my mailbox key when the outside door opened and a big, backlit figure filled the doorway.

  Jacob.

  Interesting. Despite my feeble mind-reading performance yesterday, he hadn’t given up on me after all…unless he’d come sniffing around for an argument. What his antagonism might look like to my inner eye, I had no idea—and besides, he wasn’t lighting up. I wouldn’t know what was on his agenda unless I could get a better look at his physical tells—body language, facial expression—so I cocked my head toward my door and said, “Come on in.”

  As he mounted the stairs behind me, I reached for a sense of how he was feeling. I got a whole load of nothing.

  I let us in, and locked the door behind him. He had on a dark suit that made him look like an extra from a generic cop show, and his expression was serious. My “smart mouth” was itching to offer up a snarky apology for not adequately sorting his puppies, but I stopped short when he pulled a wallet from his coat pocket. My wallet.

  “The cash is gone,” he said apologetically. “But the DA isn’t prosecuting, so I pulled a few strings and had it released from evidence.”

  Okay, so maybe it was a bit of a brag, but it was touching anyway. Lydia’d had me convinced I’d never get back so much as a scrap of lint. And here was my wallet. Just a stupid piece of cowhide. But maybe….

  “Your license is there,” Jacob said.

  “Sweet. I’m sick of pointing out my emerging crow’s feet every time someone cards me.” I flipped it open, and there it was. Along with a Lincoln Square coffee shop loyalty card, various business cards, and….

  “Oh my God,” I breathed. And then I immediately felt guilty as I snagged a dog-eared corner and tugged out the old photo, because the only thing Miss Mattie ever scolded me for was taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  The print was faded. It looked like I was seeing it through an Instagram filter, but that was all age, not special effects. Dad shot on film until I was well into high school, and in this picture, I couldn’t have been more than eight. That’s how old I was when Mattie’s heart gave out. And there she was with her arm around me, smiling at the camera, very much alive.

  Maxine was in the background, talking, mid-sentence. Informing my dad that he was doing something wrong, no doubt. She was always criticizing him. And he’d always say, “Yes, dear,” then go about doing his thing without even pretending to alter his course.

  In contrast to my parents, Mattie just felt so…present. Everyone else had their scripts they’d parrot, a predetermined list of observations and responses they’d choose from. But not Mattie. When we talked, she wasn’t busy sorting through her response list for the pithiest reply. She actually listened.

  Maybe Jacob was ready to listen, too. It just took him a bit longer. He shuffled his feet and said, “I know the wallet doesn’t make up for me springing that empath deck on you yesterday….”

  “Like hell it doesn’t.” I propped the photo on my bookshelf, tossed the wallet on my coffee table, slung my arms around his neck and thanked him with a big, wet kiss. “You want to play cards, we’ll play cards. Just be upfront about it, okay?”

  One kiss led to another, which then inspired a delightful round of make-up sex. While obviously the first thing on my mind was getting my rocks off, simmering beneath that basic urge was the concern that maybe, at heart, I wasn’t as much of a lone wolf as I’d always presumed. I’d figured Jacob was history because I couldn’t deliver on a pile of puppies, but here he was, not just apologizing, but smoothing things over by recovering my one and only photo of Mattie. Was it possible I’d never bothered with relationships simply because I was too quick to bail? Scary thought.

  I was stunned at how relieved I felt over patching things up with Jacob. If the depth of that feeling was any indication of how far gone I was, I’d need to consider the possibility that I was officially smitten.

  Chapter 27

  Though Jacob and I were both on our best behavior, attempting to be all lovey-dovey and contrite, the next morning saw our usual disagreements rearing their unwelcome heads. For Jacob’s excuse, I supposed he was just tired. He was no morning person, and sleeping at my place meant he had to get
up at least half an hour early to go home and gear up for his PsyCop gig, freshly coiffed and suited. My bathroom did have ample hot-running water, but it was so narrow it could fit in his shower stall. And while I could have invited him to bring along a fresh suit the next time he dropped by, I was mortified by the thought of a stowaway insect dropping out of his sleeve while he was grilling a confession out of some perv.

  So of course it was more logical for me to stay at his place, but for whatever reason, it was the last thing I wanted to do. It might’ve been the fact that there were only 24 hours in a day, and I wanted to spend as few of those hours as possible on the bus. When you’re really into someone, you’ll do whatever it takes to be with them, so I’m guessing the bus-aversion was just an excuse. More likely my stubbornness was a gut reaction to the way he’d started dropping comments, yet again, that there was “plenty of room” in his condo for me.

  “Seriously, do I strike you as the type of guy who could deal with being your kept boytoy?” I blurted out. After which, he worked his jaw a few times, shook his head, and left. And then I felt like a massive jerk for driving off the guy who’d gone through great lengths to rescue my wallet from an evidence locker.

  I gazed into Mattie’s smiling face on the faded, dog-eared photograph, and wondered what sort of advice she’d have for me. People who state things as if they’re incontrovertible tend to bring out the contrarian in me, and leave me grasping for every disagreement I can think of. But not Mattie. When she made a pronouncement, my gut reaction was always yes, of course, that makes total sense.

  “Is his biological clock ticking or something?” I asked the photo. “I shouldn’t be expected to move in with the guy to prove I’m committed.”

  I was committed, I realized. Random men hadn’t stopped showering me with the Vibes that would draw me into all kinds of questionable liaisons, but I’d totally stopped acting on the impulse to pursue them. Initially, Jacob’s perseverance hadn’t left any room for me to hook up with anyone new. He’d show up, and before anyone else even got a chance to catch my eye, we’d have dinner in our bellies and a spent condom or two in the wastebasket. There was no “now we are a couple” conversation. After a few actual dates, though, I’d sensed a tacit agreement that it would be seriously uncool to score with anybody else.