RAZZLE DAZZLE

by Lisa Hendrix

  “Go away,” she groaned, but in the same instant she closed the door and took the chain off. She pulled it open and stood there staring at him, not knowing what else to do.

  His quick glance sideways to the bat in her hand brought the slightest curve to his lips.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “I need you to come with me.”

  “It’s nearly two in the morning.” And she was in a baggy T-shirt and boxer shorts, but that didn’t seem as relevant.

  “They mentioned that down at the Dubliner before they threw me out. Get dressed.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you if you’ve been drinking.”

  “One scotch three hours ago and a gallon of coffee. Would you please get dressed?”

  He put that soft emphasis on please again, just as he had when he’d asked her to dance outside his room. She turned to put the bat back in the umbrella stand, so he couldn’t see what that one word did to her.

  “A gallon of coffee. I guess that explains why you’re awake. All right, Mason. I will get dressed.”

  She left him standing on the porch and shut herself in the bedroom to pull on jeans and a long-sleeved, cotton knit shirt. Noises in the other room told her she was wise to have locked the bedroom door: he’d walked into the house uninvited again. After she found her shoes, she popped into the bathroom to run a brush through her hair and pull it back into a ponytail.

  Mason had a flashlight out and was rifling her junk drawer.

  “Gee. Just help yourself,” she said.

  “Do you have any spare batteries?”

  “They’re on the list. Sorry. Wait a minute, why am I apologizing? Get out of my drawers.”

  He raised one eyebrow, but shut the drawer.

  “Let’s go. You’d better have a jacket.” He stepped around her and opened the tiny coat closet, from which he pulled her favorite denim jacket.

  She resisted the urge to ask him where he was taking her, but simply locked the door behind herself as she followed him outside. Questions were harder to avoid when he led her not to the Rolls, or even his Jaguar, but to a late-eighties Japanese hatchback that had seen better days, but she bit her tongue. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking.

  The ride was short, and ended up in the least likely place she could have imagined: beneath a light on the street above the Canal Place

  site.

  “Whatever it is, I didn’t have anything to do with it this time.”

  A puff of air escaped him, almost a chuckle. “I was kidnapped tonight.”

  “Mason! By terrorists?”

  “Not unless my sister has joined the IRA. She and Paul conspired to bring me here against my will, where they forced me to trade the Rolls for this aesthetic wonder—it’s Paul’s, by the way; I know you’ve been dying to ask—and drove off. They left behind that.” He gestured over his shoulder.

  There was a large file box in the backseat, and Raine reached over and pulled the top item into her lap. It was a binder, which she opened. As she flipped through the pages, she grew more and more astonished.

  “It’s some sort of dossier on feng shui.”

  Mason nodded. “History, modern schools, opinions pro and con, what little scientific study has been done—and it’s pretty specious, I’ll tell you up front.”

  “This is amazing, And remarkably complete,” said Raine, flipping back and forth. “Although there’s a lot more that—”

  “It’s probably in the back. They left me books, charts, magazine articles, computer printouts.” He stared out the window toward the lights on the bridge. “They told me to read it all. Of course, when they left, I drove off. I was going to go up into the mountains and clear my head. Try to forget the last few days.”

  “The mountains area good place for that,” said Raine. “Were you successful?”

  “I never made it. There was a hellish accident on the 520 bridge right ahead of me and I sat there for nearly two hours. I don’t sit well without anything to do, and since Miranda and her accomplice had driven off with my briefcase and my cell phone, as well as my car, I was left with no option but to read what was on hand.” He reached over and tapped the binder cover. “That.”

  “And?”

  “Feng shui is archaic, illogical except in the most primitive way, and has no rational scientific basis whatsoever.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s also fascinating. The anecdotal evidence is as compelling as it is occasionally outlandish. I found myself wishing it worked.” He met Raine’s eyes. “I never felt that way about witchcraft, crystals, totem spirits, or any form of chanting.”

  “It does work. I’ve seen it work. Shoot, I’ve made it work.”

  “So I understand from the letters you sent Scott Johnson. Miranda somehow got her hands on them. They’re in one of those files in that box.” He pushed his hair back again, and then reached into the back for a couple of big rolls of paper. “Grab the flashlight.”

  He got out and Raine followed, meeting him at the front bumper.

  “These are architectural drawings for the new building.”

  “I know,” she said. “I have a set of my own.”

  “How did you—? Never mind.” He unrolled the site plan that showed the layout of the building and laid it out on the hood of the car, turning it to orient it properly to the site. “Show me what it is you see when you look at this.”

  “I— But— You—” She took a deep breath to collect her thoughts. “It’s complicated, Mason. I’m still a student.”

  “You were confident enough to make your conclusions public.”

  “After I checked them with a master. I have all of this at home, all worked out. It would be easier if—”

  “I want to watch you go through it. If you had your work checked, then you know it’s valid. Just show me the basics.”

  “It’s pitch black. You can’t see the lay of the land, which is where I need to start. I don’t even have my compass.”

  He held up a finger. “Wait here.”

  In seconds, he produced a topographic map of the area along with both a regular compass and a luo-pan, the traditional compass of the Chinese geomancer. “Miranda didn’t leave either of us any excuses.”

  “Mason.”

  “Please.”

  She sighed. “You’re as bad as a two-year-old. You think please is the magic word that makes people do what you’ve already told them to.”

  “Pretty please?”

  “Oh, geez, sometimes I hate you.” She walked away from the car to get a good reading, then went back and smacked her hand down in the center of the topographical map and spun it so that north on the map matched north on the compass. A quick shift about twenty degrees counterclockwise compensated for magnetic declination and brought the compass rose on the map more or less into line with true north.

  “Hold this,” she said, handing him the flashlight. “You are here. Canal. Queen Anne Hill.”

  She pointed out the landmarks one by one, then took the fountain pen out of Mason’s pocket and sketched in lines to show him how they fit together. She showed him how energy passed down the Ship Canal with the water and took her time explaining how the Chinese had named the landforms and how they were associated with lines of energy, positive and negative.

  “There are three major lines in this area,” she said. She sketched them in as she had calculated them. “Here, here, and here. See how they meet roughly in the center of town? It’s that energy that makes Fremont what it is and attracts the creative people to the area.”

  “Maybe it’s because this is where the bridge crosses,” he countered.

  “Ballard has a bridge. Can you picture the Seattle City Council proclaiming Ballard as Center of the Universe? Anyway, you plan to put your building here.” She slashed a big X through the site; her marks cut off two of the lines of energy before they reached the junction. “You’ll stagnate the energy flows. Fremont will die a slow, painful death.”

  “There ar
e several old buildings in this area. Why don’t they affect Fremont the same way?”

  “They probably do, but to a lesser extent. They’re wood, which is more organic, and they have a smaller footprint, so there’s more open space for the energy to flow around them. In general, they’re just more integrated into the area.”

  She could tell from his face he was having trouble with this, but he managed not to sneer.

  “Okay. Assuming I buy all that, what about the design of the building? Your letters say that the design is bad. Why?” He flipped the map out of the way to reveal the building layout. “What’s wrong?”

  “What isn’t? Just from a commonsense standpoint, it’s too tall and shiny.” She lifted the plan to show the architect’s concept drawings of the facade. “Look at this and then look around here. It doesn’t fit into the neighborhood at all. People already resent you for cutting them off from the water, and you haven’t even started construction yet. I can’t believe the planning commission let you get away with this design.”

  “They’re anxious to get rid of these old firetraps and get more productive use out of the waterfront.”

  “And kill Fremont in the process.” She was starting to get cold, so she stepped past him to get into the car for her jacket and slipped it on. “From a feng shui view, Canal Place

  is a disaster. Those sharp corners”—she pointed—“will be like poisonous arrows into the businesses across the street. All that mirrored glass will reflect energy away from the whole area.

  “Feng shui is about the relationship of humans to their environment, Mason. Most of the time that means the natural world, like the hills and the water. But sometimes it means to other humans. It all has to work together, or none of us will be well.”

  He stood there, looking out over the site, absorbing her words. “The Dubliner’s one of the businesses that would be affected, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I used to go to an Irish pub like that in Boston. A big, shiny, angular office building went in across the street and, six months later Sean was out of business.”

  “And everyone claimed it was bad business judgment on his part, I bet, ignoring the fact that he’d managed to stay in business for twenty or thirty years before the ch’i was fouled up.”

  “Or it could just be that the stockbrokers didn’t like stout and displaced his customer base. That’s the problem with anecdotal evidence, Raine. You can make suppositions, but you don’t know what happened because it wasn’t a controlled study. It could just be coincidence.”

  “Then there are an awful lot of coincidences. I’ve done studies and corrections on fifteen houses and a half dozen businesses in the past year or so. All but two owners came back to me saying that their health was better, or that they’d come into unexpected money, or that business was up.”

  “Okay. So tell me what you did. Even the two that didn’t work.”

  “All of them? That will take a while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  So she told him, about the house with the heavy beam over the owner’s bed, and the business with the T-junction in front of it, and all the other cases, straightforward or subtle, that she had helped or tried to help. Mason asked a thousand questions, made her draw things out and justify her assumptions, and generally aggravated her, but to Raine that was the clearest sign he was listening, and after so many months with no one listening, it was such a relief that she wanted to dump everything from her mind into his.

  At some point, about the time the flashlight batteries ran down, the summer night got too chill even with jackets. She and Mason crawled into the car and turned the engine on to get some heat while they worked under the dome light. A couple of drunks stumbled by on their way to some secret sleeping spot, but otherwise they were left alone until a patrol car shined a spotlight into the car.

  Hands held up where the officers could see, Mason got out to talk with them. When he came back he looked confused.

  “What the devil are submarine races? He wanted to make sure we weren’t going to them.”

  Raine swallowed a chuckle. “That’s what we used to call it back home when couples would go parking—watching the submarine races.”

  He still looked blank.

  “Up periscope,” she said, slowly uncurling a forefinger until it pointed skyward. As understanding dawned across his face, she burst out laughing.

  “Oh, lord,” said Mason, and then he broke out laughing, too, and they laughed until tears ran down Raine’s face and she wasn’t sure if it was because it was so funny or so sad that the officers had been that far off the mark.

  As their laughter faded, Mason handed her his handkerchief to dry her cheeks and sighed.

  “I can’t stop the building, Raine. MMT is the one part of our business where we have any pull left with the banks, and that’s because of this property. If Canal Place

  goes, I can parlay it into cash flow down the road that won’t be reliant on Wick funding. If I back out now, I’m out of options.”

  “You don’t have to back out,” she said. “The building can be built, it just has to be different. Lower. A lot more neighborhood friendly. And there has to be some way for the ch’i to flow through—glass block walls or a breezeway of some sort. Maybe you could put in a sculpture walk, which would also give you lots of points with the neighborhood if you included local artists. You can even make it so there’s better access to the waterfront than there is now, like Quadrant did for Adobe over on that side of the bridge. There are good architects who design in accordance with feng shui principles. It can be fixed.”

  “You’re talking a complete redesign. That costs a fortune.”

  “Then I guess what it comes down to is how much Fremont is worth on your balance sheets.”

  The sense of futility that had faded over the course of the night washed back over her. She stared out the windshield at the lightening sky.

  “I’m exhausted, Mason. And if that’s right”—she tapped the analog clock on the dashboard—“I’m due to get up in forty minutes anyway. Could you please take me home so I can shut off my alarm and take a shower?”

  They rolled up the plans and dumped all the papers back into Miranda’s box, and Mason started the car and drove her home. He walked her to the door, stood there while she unlocked it, and followed her in, all without saying a word.

  “Mason, what do you want?”

  “I’ll take you to breakfast,” he said. “Go on and have your shower. I’ll wait out here.”

  The rational part of her—the part he claimed she didn’t use—wanted to say no. Breakfast sitting across from him would just be too hard to deal with, and her heart wasn’t up to it. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the will.

  “All right,” she said. “Do me a favor and make yourself useful. Slap together a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and fill up my water jug. Lots of ice, please. It’s supposed to be hot again.”

  She took her time in the shower—after all, she wasn’t even supposed to be up yet—then clinked around with sunscreen and her hair until she couldn’t find any more excuses.

  When she walked into the living room, she found Mason crouched down in front of her bookshelf reading titles. “Feng Shui for the Home. The Elements of Feng Shui. Feng Shui for Beginners. I looked at your bookshelves last week. I don’t remember seeing all these. You must have twenty or thirty books here on feng shui.”

  “I had them in the closet,” said Raine. “I didn’t want you to figure out who I was until I had a chance to lay some groundwork.”

  “The Way of the Warrior,” he read. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You must have hidden these, too. Oh, God—Women Who Run with the Wolves. You don’t have any desire to actually own a wolf, do you?”

  “It’s allegory, Mason.”

  “Not at my house.” He stood up and stretched, then rubbed his back. “That car of Paul’s could stand better seats.”

  “That car could
stand better everything. You should pay him more. Come on, if we’re going to eat, we’ve got to get moving.” She grabbed her backpack off the knob of the closet door and started for the kitchen to toss the sandwiches he’d made into it, along with a couple of oranges. Not fancy, but filling.

  “Just a minute.” He stepped into her path, blocking her. “Down there at the site, you said that sometimes you hate me. How do you feel in between those times?”

  She wanted to turn away, but he hadn’t left her any room to maneuver. “It’s not relevant. Caroline will be back soon and you two—”

  “She’s already back,” he said. “She walked into the boardroom yesterday and announced our engagement.”

  “Oh. Congratulations.” She started to brush past him, but he held his position.

  “You still haven’t answered my question. How do you feel about me?” He put his hands on her waist. “Tell me, Raine. Please.”

  “There you go again, telling me what to do, then saying please like I’m… I love you, you idiot. Why do you think you can make me so mad?”

  A slow, deep smile lit his face, but he turned back to the bookshelf and continued reading titles while she stood there with her chest locked so tight that she thought her ribs would crack.

  When he reached the end, he shook his head. “Doesn’t it just figure. I fight for years to get my mother and sister to give up this New Age nonsense, and then I go and fall in love with a woman who apparently reads nothing else.”

  Her breath came in a shudder and tears clung to her lashes, threatening to spill over. “I do, too. The Shakespeare and Kafka and Raymond Chandler are on the shelf right below that. Next to my welding manual.”

  Mason stood up and gently touched one of the tears as it trickled down her cheek, then held the droplet up like a single diamond on his fingertip. “‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies, In the small orb of one particular tear.’ It’s going to take a lot of love, Raine.”

  “I won’t be your mistress, even if you do know the sonnets.”

  “Good girl.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Did I happen to mention that even before I got caught in that traffic jam last night, I had decided that Caroline Wickersham was the last person I would ever marry?” He pulled back a little and put on a prissy look. “She makes me feel so cheap. Besides, I’m going to marry you, Lorraine M. Hobart.”