by TylerRose.
He handed over the key to the apartment.
“I don’t like the sofa. Where should I send any furniture I replace?” she asked.
“Tell the Super. He’ll have it moved to my storage area downstairs. See me to the door unless you want me to break the agreement and put you up against the wall and have you right now.”
She crossed the room to hold the door open. He paused in it to look at her, resisting the urge to cup her breast.
“You’re very sexy when negotiating your terms. When next you’re with me, I’m going to get my money’s worth out of every minute.”
She smiled. “I’m sure you will. I look forward to quite a long and hard spanking for my bad attitude.”
In his Jaguar with the engine and the a/c on, having sent her suitcase and box upstairs with the Super, he sat there a minute to get himself under control…and called Hades.
“You failed to mention what a force of nature she already is.”
“I did,” Hades replied. “Many times. You just didn’t believe me, Odin. I’m guessing you’ve just gotten a full dose of Tyler’s intellect.”
“Tell me. How often does she have those powerful visions?”
“I’d say almost daily there’s some vision or another.”
“How often does she remote view?” Odin asked, pulling out of the parking garage and turning right. “We were in the apartment and she remote viewed to the Bosnian war, to a building taking heavy fire and coming down.”
“Probably a couple times a week, but she doesn’t know that’s what it’s called. You wouldn’t let me teach her those things.”
“I don’t need editorial comments, Hades, just answers. Since she’s been here, have you been bringing her souls to pass through her portal and store for her final evolution?”
He stopped at the light.
“Not since she moved there, no. I was thinking to start up again soon.”
“Yes, do. Twice a week in her own apartment and one day that she’s with me overnight. She’s heading fast for her first Widening. It’s time to start pushing. I doubt she’ll take much longer than the end of the year. February at latest. I’ve assigned Glum as her driver so she’ll have someone with her while she’s out. Give Earnol less opportunity to get to her.”
“Odin, if you think she’s going to let someone you picked drive her everywhere, you’ve got a lot to learn about Tyler. She’d rather walk five miles in the snow. Don’t smother her with trying to control her. She’ll do exactly the opposite of what you want if she feels her freedom is threatened,” Hades warned.
“She’s going to have to turn herself over to us at some point. Sooner rather than later.”
“At some point, yes; but dammit, you need to listen to me. If you push her too far too fast, we’ll be here for two hundred years chasing her and waiting her out. One weekend does not mean you know her or that she sees you as an authority. You’re just paying her for a job as far as she’s concerned. That doesn’t mean you get to rule her.”
“I’ll manage.”
Odin hung up, the conversation too circular for his taste or patience. Glancing in his rear view mirror, he saw her walking in the other direction. The car behind honked at him. Pulling through the light, he saw her cross the street to catch a bus. He called Glum to catch up and follow the bus and get the girl into the car at his earliest opportunity.
Glum caught up at the shopping center where Tyler got out. He introduced himself, pointed out the Lincoln Town Car, said he’d be waiting when she was ready to go.
“My name is not Miss Daisy and you are not Morgan Freeman. I will take a cab home,” she said, and turned her back on him to go inside and buy new clothes and put in an order for a new top mattress to be delivered.
He was there when she came out, taking the bags from her hand.
“You’re right, Miss Tyler. I’m not Morgan Freeman. But my boss is Daddy Warbucks and if he knew I allowed you to get into a cab when he’s paying me what he’s paying me, I’d get into a great deal of trouble. I need my job, Miss,” he pleaded in plain tones. “I promise you I will not tell Mr. Holmes anything that you do or anyone you meet. My job is chauffer, not informant.”
She stared hard at him, deep into his soul. He wasn’t lying. He was just a driver and bodyguard.
“Okay, fine. I have one more thing to do inside. Then I need to go to the grocery store. I want pizza to take home for supper. Know a place?”
“I know the best place on the way back to the building,” he smiled.
“Fine. I’ll be out shortly.”
She went back inside, directly to the music store, and set about filling a hand basket with cd copies of every cassette she had left behind in Toledo. One basket filled and left at the counter, she started on a second. Going through the 80s section of Various Artists in Pop/Rock, she picked out discs that had at least two or three of the songs she liked.
“You might want to start taking these out of the cases,” she said to the counter attendant when she brought the second basket up. “I’m going to fill one more, I’m sure.”
He picked up the case key and started popping them open, making stacks while she went the classical section. Basket filled, she looked at cd players and storage towers. In the end, she decided to go to the furniture store again, to get a better stereo and a nice bookcase to be delivered with that mattress.
Glum was waiting in the shade by the door. He carried three of the four bags of music as they walked across the blacktop to the car.
Her bags in the trunk, they headed first to a grocery store. When they were checking out, he called the pizza place he knew of and put in her order for a small pie and cheese bread. She waited in the car with a joint while he went in to get the pizza. At the building, he helped her up with her bags. The sun was lower, not so warm.
“I’m going to change and then I want to go to the beach,” she said, taking one piece of pizza into her bedroom.
“Yes, Miss.”
Warm beach in the lazy sunset and he kept back far enough that she didn’t care he was there.
“You are too pale to be from around here,” she heard from the window on the other side while she waited for her ice cream cone.
She looked up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. “And?”
He smiled. “And your ice cream is here,” he pointed, and walked away with his smoothie.
She walked in the opposite direction and went out onto the Santa Monica pier to look down into the water and out over the waves. Standing there, ignoring people, she could shut out the rest of the world and see nothing but the horizon and the sky. The sunset was spectacular. When the last ray of the sun had faded, she sighed a peaceful sigh and turned around to walk back to the car, putting a lot of thoughts behind her.
She’d done nothing to demean herself. Far as she was concerned, it was a woman’s right to receive money for the use of her body. She also enjoyed the fact that she’d enjoyed the fuck outta being with Thomas. He wasn’t an asshole. Was a gentleman, more or less. Had manners and education. Didn’t mind when her manners lapsed or she didn’t know something. She could deal with seeing him two or three nights a week. Or one night and the weekend.
Glum saw her up to her apartment and left, promising to be there in the morning, waiting in the restaurant next door until she was ready to go somewhere. No doubt she had more shopping to do.
That she did, she thought, seeing the drab brown bedding. She couldn’t stand the smell of however many woman had been on that mattress and on those pillows, and took her own pillow and a clean blanket from the closet to the second bedroom. It wasn’t as bad. Most of the action had happened on the other bed.
Thomas wasn’t much of a sofa person either. He liked it in the back of his limo, his jet (which she would no doubt find out come Friday when he took her somewhere) and in his bed, and that was about it. Even putting her against the wall had been an idle threat.
Leaving a message with the Super to bring the mattress up to
the apartment when it arrived and take away the old one, her first stop in the morning was a pancake breakfast with Glum. She was dying for pancakes and sausage and coffee. She’d forgotten to buy a coffee maker so that was her next stop. She selected a full size maker and a thermal carafe.
“Hello again,” she heard from a familiar voice, and looked up to see those same blue eyes she’d seen on the beach.
He was wearing a name tag. Alen, with an e rather than a second a. He was young twenty something with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail for work.
“Can I help you find something?”
“I don’t think so. You don’t seem to have a problem finding me. Is there some particular reason?”
He smiled. “Yesterday was my day off. I always go to the beach. Today you wandered into my section. You have a coffee pot there, but have you looked at tea service?”
He gestured to a ceramic pot she thought was downright ugly.
“No, thank you, Alen. I have what I need.”
“Then would you have dinner with me?” he asked. “I’m off at five.”
That same whooshing rush of panic that told her to flee. Just the same as the one that had made her leave Toledo.
“No,” she said, and abruptly headed for a register not in his section.
She called Glum to bring the car to the doors, having a sudden need to be somewhere silent. Pushing through the shaking to conclude her transaction, she got herself outside as fast as she could.
“Take me to the nearest Catholic church,” she told Glum, handing over the bags.
He took her to St. Joan of Arc, a ten minute drive away. A pretty little white building in the Mission style, tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood. He pulled onto the narrow drive to let her out at the door, then pulled forward off the drive to park where she would see him.
Putting a fifty in the donation box, she picked up a stick and started lighting candles to clear her head. No prayers to go with them, she pushed all thoughts out of her mind. When they were all lit, every last one, she knelt in the middle of the floor to let the calm she’d created settle around her.
“You’re where?” Odin asked.
“I’m outside the St. Joan of Arc Catholic church. She went inside.”
“What happened?”
“One of Earnol’s people was at the store she went to and approached her posing as an employee. He tried to get her to go to dinner with him. She had a panic and wanted to go to a Catholic church.”
“Which of his people was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know them all on sight. He has longer brown hair and blue eyes.”
“That’s the new one. He’s not one of Mik’Hail’s progeny,” Odin said, thinking about how the Dautan were going at her.
They were trying to appeal to her high sex drive, sending the hunky one to make contact and infiltrate. That meant Earnol knew she was in California not under Hades’ immediate protection anymore. She was vulnerable. Hades was the fighter. Odin was not. Nor was Glum. There was no one else out here to protect her physically if Earnol sent someone to kill her. Hades couldn’t suddenly appear and insert himself into her life again. It would be far too suspicious.
“She’s coming out. Looks angry,” Glum said.
“If she wants to go to another, take her to the Immaculate Heart.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Can I help you?” she heard behind her after a moment on her knees on the hard floor.
A voice that disrupted her peace and grated against her aura.
“No, thank you. I just need the quiet,” she replied, trying to remain cordial.
“You seem troubled. A confession might be helpful.”
The candles all flared up a foot high with her anger and she rose from the floor to stomp out of the nook. The priest backed away from hehir furious glare, and watched her go. Looking to the candles all extinguished, looking after her, he crossed himself.
“Take me to another one,” she growled angrily, getting into the car.
Without a word, Glum drove her the forty five minutes it took to East Hollywood, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in a neighborhood that looked not too dissimilar from East Toledo. She didn’t notice how long it had taken to get there or the churches they passed along the way, too into her own mind in her anger.
He pulled up to the curb to let her out. She stalked up the walk and the few steps and paused to take a calming breath before going into the doors on the left. Passing the holy water to go directly to the nook of candles at the far end, off to the side of the alter, she turned to follow the perimeter of the pews so as not to disturb the baptism going on.
Another fifty dollar bill into another collection box and she set to lighting candles with slow deliberance to get back the peace she’d not attained at the other church. Slow breath in to cleanse, slow breath out to release the negativity.
“It is a very dense darkness that needs so much light to dispel it.”
“I paid for the candles,” she replied, with only twenty more to light.
“I really don’t care if you did or did not. Light as many as you wish. I have plenty more to replace them. I’m here if you want to talk.”
“What does it mean? Immaculate?” she asked unexpectedly. “An immaculate room is very orderly and clean. But is that all there is to it? Mary was allegedly very clean and untainted? The alleged virgin impregnated by an alien?”
He overlooked her choice of words, seeing that the concept of “immaculate” more important than dickering over the rest.
“It also means blameless, morally pure and free from corruption,” he told her, and sat on the bench just outside the nook. “That it was not her fault she became pregnant even if she had lain with a man. What troubles you, child?”
Sounding so much like her grandmother Addie that she nearly burst into tears.
“I don’t know,” she said, reining in her emotions. “I suddenly feel energies pushing and pulling at me like I did a few weeks ago. Two sides both wanting their own way and I’m in the middle. But I don’t know either one of them. They know me but I don’t know them. Seems no one cares what I want.”
“Have they stopped now you are here?”
“Seems like it. I still felt them at the other church. Here I don’t. I wondered if it’s something about the word Immaculate. But that sounds silly. A word shouldn’t make any difference. Catholic church is a Catholic church.”
“Sounding silly does not make a thing untrue. That the world was round sounded silly five hundred years ago. Yet it was accurate.”
All the candles lit, she took a step back and knelt on the floor as she had in the other nook. Facing the closed end, back to the priest and the church, sitting on her calves, feeling safer here for some reason, the urge to run dissipated.
“It’s not paranoia if they actually are out to get you, you know,” he said. “Whoever ‘they’ may be. Then it’s just heightened awareness. Are you in trouble with the law? Or is someone harassing you?”
“No. I’m not in any trouble. Just a troubled old soul who doesn’t know why she’s troubled. I find myself in great need of some peace.”
“Then I will leave you to it. Feel free to come light all our candles whenever your soul needs soothing. Mass is at five if you’d like to leave before service begins. Or if you’d like to stay for it.”
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Reverend Peter. You can give me your name next time if you choose.”
He left her be. Within minutes the tension drained from her and she was no longer troubled or upset. She left the candles burning and went out to the car.
“Where to now, Miss?” Glum asked.
“Home.”
Her new stereo, bookshelf and mattress had arrived, the old mattress taken down to Thomas’ storage area and the stereo assembled on the shelves that had already been there. She made up the bed with her new sheets, comforter and pillows. While making supper, she started to re
move the cellophane from her new cd collection. She continued while eating, sorting into piles that made categories.
Meal finished, she took piles to the bookshelf already put together for her and placed between two windows in the front room. Rock at eye level, Benatars first, the rest alphabetized. She put various artist discs at the end. Soundtracks went on the next shelf with Classical beside.
She was so oddly tired that she stripped to her skin, climbed into bed and crashed. She woke up to the phone ringing at nine in the morning. Thomas reminding her the driver would be there at eleven to pick her up for lunch. Before joining him at the restaurant, she was to stop to have a passport photo taken.
“Why?” she yawned, eyes blinking to realize the time on her new clock.
“If I’m going to take you to Paris or Brazil, or any other country other than Canada or Mexico, then you’re going to need a passport, love. I can have it expedited so it won’t take two and a half months.”
“Oh, okay. See you soon,” she yawned and hung up on him without realizing she’d hung up on him.
She ate some toast to hold herself over and ran a bath. She hated to have a shower this early in the day, water from a shower head feeling like a cheese grater on her skin. She was ready when Glum showed up with the car.
“Here you go,” she said, putting the little envelope down on the table for Thomas to look at. “Two passport photos and a third picture I hope you’ll like.”
Of her with the neckline of her dress pulled down and her breasts out.
“The photographer smiled a lot,” she teased when he looked at her.
“I’m sure. You’re fishing for a spanking, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Where are we going today?” she asked after giving her order to the waiter. “Seems to me you want to get away for the weekend.”
“I do. We’re flying up to Seattle.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Yes, the air smells better and I like the rain,” he said. “I also like the coffee.”
“Good reasons,” she nodded.
“You said you had left the Catholic church. But yesterday you visited two of them? Why?”