My thoughts were a jumble. It was cold outside, but I hardly felt it. I walked around for a couple of hours—until the dinner crowd gave way to the unsavory panhandler crowd—then headed home. Graffiti was already accumulating on Lydia’s fresh plywood. If the universe had any mercy, it would spare her the sight of it until the landlord replaced the window, but I wasn’t going to tempt fate by checking on her.
I snuck upstairs and made it to my bed without waking her, then climbed under the covers and tossed and turned myself to sleep. Who did Red think he was, traipsing back into my life out of nowhere?
What kind of idiot would I be if I let him slip through my fingers again?
After a fitful night’s sleep, I woke up no more rested than I’d gone to bed. I rolled to face Miss Mattie’s snapshot, which was currently wedged between my clock radio and a stack of lucid dreaming books. “It’s stupid of me to want this guy,” I asked her, “isn’t it? I should’ve learned my lesson about falling for arrogant bastards by now. Right?”
Mattie smiled back from the photo and said nothing.
As I rolled out of bed, it occurred to me to have a look at the graffiti by the cold light of day. I threw on last night’s clothes and crept down the stairs, marker in hand, to survey the damage.
Gang tags. I couldn’t tell you which specific gang, but they all have the same rushed, jagged quality to them. Once the gangbangers marked the turf, other random assholes who just so happened to be carrying around markers decided the plywood was fair game. In addition to the tags, there was some random scribbling and a few choice swear words, but dominating the tableau was a ginormous, erect dick protruding from a cushion of hairy balls.
Just what our customers needed to see.
Or Red. Not that I was hoping he’d come by. But he might.
I got to work scribbling out the graffiti, but it took a fair amount of elbow grease to make it look anything other than dick-shaped. My arm was sore by the time Lydia discovered me on her way home from the overpriced coffee shop down the block. “Isn’t that the same shirt you had on yesterday?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Well, good. You’re young. You should be out sowing your oats, not sitting home and worrying about me.” The only oats I’d sown lately were stuck to my microwave carousel, but I neither confirmed nor denied her presumption that she’d intercepted my walk of shame.
Did Lydia have any customers booked? Did she need help cleaning up? Would she let me make good on my threat to revamp her digs in thrift store chic? In the past, I would have pressed her on those issues, but I knew her well enough by now to realize that if I got too pushy, I’d only piss her off again.
Yesterday, I’d had to invent a reason to make myself scarce, but today there were people to see and places to smudge. I headed back up to get my stuff together. The cannery is gigantic, and I didn’t want to run out of herbs halfway through. I was on my tiptoes, nudging a box of resin off a high shelf, when the shop door opened. My first thought was annoyance that I’d left it unlocked. I never do that, not since my tablet was stolen. But then the Vibe washed over me, and I realized the unlocked door felt like a tiny piece of the grand mosaic. I stared hard at the shelf without seeing it as longing washed over me, hopeless and resigned.
Red spoke. “What I said at Rainbow Dharma about deciding to come back…there’s more to it.”
“Is that so? I never would have guessed.”
“Would you at least look at me, Curtis?”
I turned around and crossed my arms, and imagined a barrier of protective energy springing up between the two of us. “I’ve got two minutes. So talk.”
Before he could, someone else barged through the door, a chunky, windburned guy pushing a stroller—a big one that would never fit down the aisles. “We’re closed,” I snapped, and he completely ignored me because he was too busy talking to someone named Joey.
“Joey, come here. Joey…Joey, come over here. Joey.”
A three-ish kid squeezed past the stroller, darted up to the books, and started plucking them out of the rack and dumping them on the floor.
“Come back during store hours, and leave that monstrosity on wheels at home.”
“Joey,” the dad pleaded, with utter ineffectiveness. He was too busy trying to disengage the stroller from a soap display to stop the kid.
“You’re about to be the proud new owner of several copies of the I Ching Workbook,” I told the guy.
The stroller screeched free, and the dad lurched after his kid. “Joey! Joey, come here. Right now. I’m gonna count to five.”
Joey kicked a book aside and darted toward the prayer candles. “Hey, kid,” I yelled. “You really don’t want to mess with those.”
“Five…four…three….”
I had my doubts that counting down to one had ever resulted in getting the little darling to do anything other than what he damn well pleased. But at the end of the countdown, I’d be itching to slap Mr. Dad upside the head.
Red was closest to Joey. He hunkered down beside the kid so they were eye to eye, and in those low, soothing tones of his, said, “Hey, you want to look at these? Let’s do it carefully and make sure nothing breaks.”
They locked eyes. Joey stopped, transfixed by Red’s hypnotic gaze, and turned the Fast Luck candle around in his grasp, slowly, deliberately. And then, just as deliberately, he flung it down. There was a thunk of glass on hardwood. Prayer candles don’t shatter, the glass is too thick, but they’re still breakable. A few heavy shards went spinning off, and Joey’s dad scooped him up, looking at me helplessly.
“Just…go,” I told him. And he jammed his brat into the oversized stroller and proceeded to squeeze him back out the door, which I promptly locked behind him. Red, meanwhile, crouched down to collect the broken glass. I was worried he’d cut himself. Either that or I was kind of hoping he would. “You too,” I told him. “Time’s up.”
“Not until I say what I need to say.” He cupped the broken glass to his solar plexus, shielding it like a hatchling fallen from the nest, and said, “I’m sorry you got caught up in the middle of Ralph and me.”
“Gimme a break. That’s not yours to apologize for—you didn’t know. It’s not as if Ralph announced that he had the entire staff pants-down over a barrel. I can’t even fault you for not knowing he was a sociopath. It took me longer than it should have to wise up to his twisted mind-games myself. But the way you let me walk out of Luscious alone? That’s what still burns.”
“It was a mistake. A big mistake.”
“And it took you two fucking years to come to that conclusion?”
“I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said. It’s so unsatisfying to argue with someone who keeps insisting they’re wrong. I held my hands out for the glass, and he handed it over with exquisite care. What would we have done without that Joey brat? Thanks to him, we could both stare at the broken shards to avoid looking at each other. “I’d be surprised if you weren’t upset. But, please, believe me when I say that each and every day I’ve been regretting the choices I made.”
No doubt he had plenty of time for self-reflection while he was meditating with suburban yoga moms and sipping organic green smoothies at his cushy Buddhist va-cay. I turned away and dropped the glass into the nearest wastebasket. “You know what they say about regret. That and fifty cents will buy you a cup of who-gives-a-shit.”
“Curtis….”
“No. Just…no. I’m sure you’re sorry. I believe you’re brimming with enough good intentions to pave a road to Shangri-La. But you dropped off the face of the earth, with zero indication you’d ever be back. So, as sincere as your apology may be, I’m just not up for it. Not today. I’m slated for a house smudging,” I glanced at my phone, “right now.”
To demonstrate that I actually was busy, I tapped Vic’s scowling contact pic, dismissing my conversation with Red before I said anything I couldn’t unsay.
Red must’ve been itching to have the last word, but it was clea
r I wasn’t in any mood to hear it. He gazed at me sadly for a moment, then slipped out the door and shut it quietly behind him. I cradled the phone on my shoulder, turned to my shelves and began jamming things into my bag—charcoal, copal, frankincense, sacred salts and sage bundles. Part of me was very satisfied with itself. But part of me suspected the satisfaction of driving him off again would be cold comfort indeed.
When Vic answered, I said, “I hope you don’t expect me to take a bus in this weather.”
“Actually, I’m right downstairs.”
I found him out on the sidewalk staring at the dick-shaped scribble, and nudged him toward his car. “Let’s go,” I said. “Jacob wants me to be extra thorough. Says he’s worried you’re all bringing home FPMP energy. I’m not sure if that’s even possible…but why take chances?”
Vic shrugged awkwardly.
I climbed into the car, strapped in, sighed, and said, “I just don’t get people. Take this wholesaler I’ve been dealing with. Part of their order arrives damaged, and when I exchange it, suddenly I’m stuck with a shipping surcharge for not meeting their minimum order. Now customer service says they can’t change the computer. Come on, man, I wasn’t born yesterday. Add a fucking credit. How hard can it be?”
“Probably not very…uh….”
“But I explain the situation, and all I get for my trouble is some drone parroting back the shipping policy. It’s right there on the site. I can read it. I have eyes.”
“Sure.”
“I’d even take that credit in merchandise on my next order. I’m flexible. And I’m sure as hell not out to take advantage of anybody.”
“Yeah. I mean, no.”
“But there’s flexible, and there’s flexible. Someone takes advantage of your good nature, it’s up to you to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s naive to expect anyone to change their stripes once they’ve already proven they’re not reliable.”
“I wonder where that stripe expression came from,” Vic blurted out in a valiant attempt to change the subject. “Maybe a nautical reference? Or the way they repaint a parking lot but you still see the old traffic lines peeking through once the black paint on top of them starts to wear off. Plus they’re shinier than the blacktop around them.”
Right.
It occurred to me that I didn’t feel quite as passionate about Midwest Waxworks as it appeared, and I had my panties in a twist over something else entirely. “I don’t know how you can stomach the whole relationship thing. Because it’s not like anyone ever does what you expect them to do.”
After an awkward pause, Vic said, “That’s true.”
“Like this guy Red, who waltzes back into town expecting to pick right up where we left off, like I’ve just been sitting here for the past couple of years, waiting around for him to come to his senses. You don’t just leave when things get tough, and then come strutting back. And go around acting like everything’s fine and dandy.”
Red’s leaving was bad enough. But as I walked through the ugly love triangle with Vic—a sordid tale I’d never told anyone—I saw precisely which jagged edge had cut my heart the deepest. “Red could’ve made a choice: the owner, or me.” But instead, he’d chosen no one.
“I’m boyfriend material,” I said. “I’m the type of guy you’d consider settling down with. Right? I’m not bad to look at. I can hold up my end of a conversation. I’m actually fairly easygoing on most subjects, and open to negotiation on most others. As for the deal breakers…well, I’d never diddle around with someone to begin with if they weren’t a decent human at heart.” Not anymore, now that I’d seen the error of my ways. I’d never go so far as to be grateful to Ralph for teaching me about human nature, but I’d sure as hell learned my lesson.
Chapter 50
I’ve heard that funerals benefit the living more than the dead. I suspect you could say the same thing for a house blessing. Bad juju is real, no doubt, though I’m not convinced that it clings to wood and brick, asphalt and concrete, as tenaciously as my PsyCop buddies think. But Vic would exude such relief whenever I shored up the cannery’s psychic defenses, I decided the best course of action was to keep my mouth shut and take the sweaty wads of bills he pressed into my hand.
I’m not big on prayers—they’re too much like begging, for my taste. But I did approach the monthly smudging with as much intention as I could muster. Starting at the front door, I got my sage bundle smoldering and walked the perimeter of the main floor. Their loft was spotless, as usual, though the giant “temporary” tent in the living room was still there, with a fine sifting of dust across the top that would send the clean freak into a tiz if he ever noticed it.
Vic skulked around while I worked, edging away like he was afraid of contaminating the proceedings. It would be useless to tell him his ramped-up energy wasn’t inherently flawed. He wouldn’t believe me. And besides, who was I to rob him of his hard-earned discomfort?
While he hovered around the dining room table, I made the rounds—kitchen, bath, basement and stairwell—then headed upstairs, where the normal-height ceilings felt cramped compared to the wide open spaces down below. Jacob was parked in front of his desktop with the screensaver running, working instead on a small, dated laptop he’d planted where the keyboard normally went. I didn’t ask.
Back downstairs, I skirted the nylon dome and joined Vic at the dining room table, where he was shaving some cardboard off a jigsaw piece with a pair of dull, plastic-handled scissors.
“Two years is nothing.” He didn’t look up from his arts-n-crafts as he spoke, but there was no doubt his attention was on me. “I’ve been in the same situation before. Only I was the other guy. The jagoff who left.”
Vic wasn’t one to spill his secrets to just anybody, so whenever he was willing to talk, I listened. I watched him shove the piece partway into a hole, pry it back out, and start reworking another one of the tabs. I sat, and I waited. Eventually, he said, “Camp Hell. It was a shitty situation. No love triangle, but plenty of lies to go around, and veiled threats, and rumors. I ditched my boyfriend there, and it took me fourteen years to wonder what had become of him.” He snorted. Gently, but a few flecks of cardboard went skittering across the tacky puzzle he was bent on destroying. “If that doesn’t take the asshole trophy, I don’t know what does.”
“Maybe there is no trophy. Just a certificate of participation for everyone involved.”
Vic rotated the piece and snapped it into place—the place it was actually supposed to go—with its mangled edges facing the jagged gap he was trying to fill. “It’s not that I didn’t care.” He brushed some cardboard slivers into his palm, stared at them for a second, then tipped them into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “More like I had to work up to it because it was all so intense, I couldn’t deal with it until I was ready.”
It was definitely food for thought. Red and I, both of us had changed. It seemed inconceivable we might both be in the right place to synch up, but maybe, finally, we were. Vic dropped me off to open up the store, and I was so deep in thought, I nearly jumped out of my skin when Lydia swung open her door at the sound of me rattling my warped mailbox.
“Aha, it is you!” she said. “And who was that?”
“Who was what?”
“The one who just drove away. Your handsome new beau?”
“As if.”
“About time you finally hooked up. I’ve been dreaming about that guy for at least a month.”
She turned around and marched back into her boarded-up shop, and I followed, hot on her heels. “What guy?”
“The black guy with the technicolor hair and the cute butt.” When I made a sputtering noise, she said, “What? I might be old, but I’m not dead.”
“He’s not a hookup.”
“Booty call. Friends with benefits. Pelvic affiliate. Whatever you’re going by these days—who can keep up with the vocabulary?”
“Red Turner is plenty of things to me, but fuck-buddy sure ain’t one of ’em.”
>
“Whatever you say.” Lydia gave me a finger-wave and a knowing look as I escaped upstairs to open the shop with zero minutes to spare. I did my best to put the conversation out of my mind over the course of the day, but in the lulls between customers, her words kept repeating like an old episode of Clairvoyage…because in all the time I’d known her, she’d never once claimed to have dreamt anything about me, and her newfound psychic scrutiny had me spooked.
One thing you can always count on in Clairvoyage. Ten minutes before the show ends, there’s a big revelation that changes everything. It might seem unrealistic that something so pivotal can happen in such a small amount of time, but it can. A quick call to a Rainbow Dharma pal yielded the name of the sangha where Red had spent the past couple of years. I plugged it into a search engine expecting to find a bunch of cheesy sayings accompanied by photos of stone stacks or bamboo. Instead, I got a stiff dose of reality.
Divine Mind Center had a bare-bones website that stretched beyond minimal, reached past utilitarian, and landed firmly in ugly. Not a single artistic stock photo to be found, just shots of a plain, drab facility.
The place itself wasn’t what gave me pause, though. It was the people.
No trendy organic cotton yoga gear. The monks wore traditional ochre robes. Everyone else had on some sort of homespun beige pajamas that made them look like hospital patients or prisoners. And as much as the fakely sublime facial expressions of cover models on meditation books always irk me to no end, the blank stares of the mendicants were far more disturbing. It wasn’t minimalist. It was barren.
The sangha’s rules and regulations were just as extreme. Mandatory silence. Cramped cells that contained a single, narrow cot. And the food? Let’s just say mushy lentils would’ve been extravagant. In an effort to discourage attachment, luxury items were prohibited. I’d never considered my personal idea of luxury to be particularly refined. The sangha didn’t even allow their people a comfortable chair. Compared to Divine Mind Center, I was living like a Rockefeller.
Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8 Page 37