‘Let’s just do it, shall we?’ said Karen.
Jennie looked even paler today than she had yesterday, especially since she was wearing a black linen dress and a black chiffon scarf around her hair. She acknowledged Karen with a wan, distracted smile, and sat in the back of the car saying nothing at all as Jim drove them to De Longpre Park.
‘You heard any more from Lieutenant Harris?’ Jim coaxed her.
‘Nothing. Not a word. He probably thinks I’m hysterical.’
‘You’re not hysterical. If you saw something, you saw something.’
‘But that’s the point. I didn’t see anything, and neither did Tracey. That’s why I want you to try this – whatever you call it, this spirit-trace.’
‘Spirit-trace?’ asked Karen, with a skeptical lift of her eyebrow.
Jim leaned back in his seat as they swerved on soft, worn-out suspension around the corner from Santa Monica Boulevard into Cherokee Avenue, under the flickering shadows of the yucca trees. ‘Sure. It’s a thing that professional exorcists do. Like, any spiritual manifestation will always leave some kind of evidence that it was passing by. A vibration in the air. A fragment of ectoplasm. Even a fingerprint, or a footprint. A really good psychic can pick these things up, and tell you if a spirit’s been around, and what kind of a spirit it was. That’s the theory, anyhow. It’s a kind of psychic forensics.’
Karen took a breath, as if she were about to say something, but then she obviously changed her mind. Jim grinned at her. He guessed that she probably didn’t trust herself to come out with anything polite.
They found a parking-space on the street two blocks away from De Longpre Park, in between a VW bus decorated with sunflowers and a three-wheeler motorcycle with coonskins hanging from the handlebars. The psychic fair was crowded with bearded men in bandannas and women in kaftans and children with finger-painted faces and long curly hair; as well as earnest-looking types in glasses and crumpled linen suits and Birkenstock sandals. The smell of marijuana and herbal cigarettes wafted between the tents and stalls, and brightly colored balloons bobbed up into the morning sky.
‘My God,’ said Karen. ‘It’s the summer of love all over again.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Jim. ‘You weren’t even born in 1967.’
‘And how old were you? Two?’
‘I was an early developer.’
They wandered between the stalls offering crystal healing and palm-readings and i-ching lessons and vegan meditation-burgers. In the far corner of the park, a band was playing Love’s old song ‘Andmoreagain’. Jim approached a table where an elderly woman with wild gray hair and huge hoop earrings was selling psychic necklaces and dangly gipsy bracelets. ‘I’m looking for a medium.’
She took a deep suck on a suspiciously bulky cigarette. ‘You came to the right place, captain. We’re wall-to-wall mediums here. Wall-to-wall.’
‘I’m looking for a special kind of medium. One who can do a spirit-trace.’
‘Spirit-trace? Wouldn’t know what that was if it bit me in the ass. But try some of those tents along the back. How about a psychic necklace before you go? Only a ten-spot. Wear it when you go to sleep tonight, and you’ll dream the day when you’re going to die. Guaranteed.’
‘Guaranteed? So, if I don’t die, I can bring it back for a refund?’
‘That’s right. But be warned, captain. Nobody never came back yet.’
‘Okay, I’ll take one. Karen, how about you?’
‘Forget it, Jim. I know when I’m going to die. In about twenty minutes, if I don’t get some lunch.’
Jim handed over $10 and the gray-haired woman gave him a necklace of coins, freshwater pearls and colored beads. As he took it, however, he noticed a young woman in a low-cut black dress staring at him from the end of the next row of stalls. She had feathery black hair, layered and shiny like a raven’s wing, and a startlingly white face. She stared at him for a long moment, and then she turned away and disappeared into the crowd.
They walked along the rows of tents together, weaving their way between jugglers and mimes and fire eaters. At last they reached a small tent with a sign outside reading JULIE HOROWITZ, FAMED MYSTIC. TALK TO YOUR DEPARTED LOVED ONES.
‘Give me a minute,’ said Jim, and ducked his way in through the tent-flap. Inside, in tangerine-colored gloom, a young woman in upswept glasses was sitting at a small card table, with Tarot cards spread out in front of her. She looked more like a secretary from a 1960s comedy show like The Beverly Hillbillies than a ‘famed mystic’, capable of talking to departed loved ones.
‘Hi,’ said Jim. ‘I was wondering if you could possibly help me to track down a spirit.’
‘Of course. I can find anybody, so long as they’ve passed over. Who is it – somebody who was very close to you?’
‘Actually, I don’t know them at all.’
‘But you have a name? I have to have a name to call on.’
‘Unh-hunh. All I know is that something walked through a woman’s back yard a couple of days ago, and it may be responsible for drowning her son.’
‘I don’t understand how I can help you, I’m afraid.’
‘I need you to come to her house and tell me if it really was a spirit, and, if it was a spirit, exactly what species of spirit it was.’
Julie Horowitz took off her glasses and stared at Jim solemnly with bulging, unfocused eyes. ‘You’re talking about something called a spirit-trace. I’m afraid that’s way out of my league. I find spirits by connecting the yearning grief of the living with the bitter regret of the recently dead. I don’t do random manifestations. Especially random manifestations that might be irritated at being interfered with.’
‘Do you know somebody who does?’
‘I’m sorry … I don’t think you’ll find anybody like that here. We’re not ghost hunters, we’re more like an encounter group between the living and the passed-over.’
‘I see. Well, thanks for your time, anyhow.’
‘You’re welcome. But if you do manage to find somebody to do a spirit-trace for you, you should be very, very careful. I heard about a medium in Bel Air who tried to trace the spirit in some movie producer’s house, and she hasn’t been able to stop screaming ever since. Literally.’
‘Great, thanks for the advice.’ Jim pushed his way out of the tent and back into the sunlight. ‘No luck, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘These people can let you talk to your dead Aunt Rhoda, but that’s about as far as it goes.’
‘Maybe we can go for lunch now?’ asked Karen.
‘Sure,’ Jim agreed. ‘Jennie, how about I run you home? I’ll have another try tomorrow. I know a couple of people who might be able to help me.’
‘All right,’ said Jennie. Her disappointment was hidden behind her large dark sunglasses, but Jim could hear it in her voice. He took her arm and led her through the crowds toward the park entrance.
They were passing a stall hung with hundreds of different mirrors when Jim saw the white-faced young woman in black reflected in almost every one of them. She was looking at him out of mirrors with gilded frames, mirrors surrounded by seashells, hand mirrors with brass fairies for handles, distorting mirrors and mirrors with strangely tinted glass. Beside her stood a mime in a baggy white Pierrot outfit, with a face as cement-white as hers, and a black-painted slash for a mouth.
Jim turned around – while Karen and Jennie, not realizing that he had stopped, continued walking toward the entrance. The young woman stayed where she was, but she kept on staring at him with the faintest of smiles, her lips as white as the rest of her face. She had a broad forehead, and wide-apart eyes that were gray as a winter sky. Her dress was shiny black silk, with a close-fitting bodice and a full skirt, almost medieval. She was very full-breasted, with a large silver cross in her cleavage.
Jim walked up to her. The mime moved closer to her, as if he were protecting her.
‘Excuse me,’ Jim asked her. ‘But do you know me?’
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘But
I know what you want.’
‘Oh, yes? Is that why you’ve been following me?’
‘I wasn’t following you. I was waiting for you to find me.’
‘Okay then, it looks like I have. My name’s Jim Rook.’
She held out her hand. It was very soft, long-fingered and surprisingly cold. ‘Susan Silverstone,’ she said. ‘And this is my friend Medlar Tree.’
Jim gave the mime an army-style salute. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Tree.’
‘Medlar Tree is his whole name,’ said Susan Silverstone. ‘The medlar tree is the least known of all the magic trees. You can’t eat its fruit until it looks as if it’s rotten, but it’s a strong charm against devils and all kinds of black mischief.’
‘I see,’ said Jim, turned back to Medlar Tree and said, ‘Sorry.’ The mime gave him a sweeping bow. Jim had always detested mimes. As a language teacher, he thought that their deliberate refusal to talk was the worst kind of social arrogance.
‘So what do you think I’m looking for?’ he asked Susan Silverstone.
‘The same thing as most people: reassurance. But you want a very special kind of reassurance, don’t you? You want to find out if something wicked has come this way.’
‘How do you know that?’
She touched her temples with her fingertips, and gave him the most extraordinary look that any woman had ever given him in his life. It was like tilting your head back and staring up at the sky at night and seeing that all the stars had gone out.
‘I know because I’m a sensitive, and you’re looking for a sensitive, aren’t you? I know because I can feel your anxiety from fifty feet away. I know because the woman you’re with has just been bereaved, and she’s trying to find a reason why.’
Jim took off his sunglasses. ‘Are you trying to pull something here?’
‘Of course not,’ said Susan Silverstone. ‘You can ask anybody here. I’m renowned for my interpretation of other people’s auras.’ Behind her, Medlar Tree pulled his mouth downward like a theatrical mask, and disapprovingly waggled his head from side to side.
Jim said, ‘The way I’ve been walking around asking people questions, it isn’t hard to work out that I’m looking for something, especially since I’m not exactly dressed like Jimi Hendrix. And it isn’t hard to guess that this lady has been recently bereaved. Who else walks around totally dressed in black on a hot day like this? Apart from you.’
‘Then let me impress you a little more. Your anxiety has something to do with water, doesn’t it?’
Jim said nothing, but Medlar Tree began to perform a breaststroke in mid-air, and blow out his cheeks as if he were swimming. For the first time in a long time, Jim felt like gratuitously punching a person in the nose.
‘More exactly, your anxiety has something to do with somebody drowning.’
Karen and Jennie had realized that Jim was no longer walking alongside, and Jennie had turned back. ‘Jim?’ she said, looking at Susan Silverstone in apprehension. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘This lady seems to know what we’re here for,’ said Jim.
‘Can she do a spirit-trace?’
‘Of course,’ said Susan Silverstone. ‘Spirit-tracing is one of my specialties.’
‘How much do you charge?’
‘You’ve just lost your child. You don’t think I’d ask you for money, do you?’
‘How do you know about that?’ said Jennie. ‘Did you tell her that, Jim?’
Susan Silverstone laid a hand on Jennie’s sleeve. She had silver rings on every finger and on her thumb. Beside her, Medlar Tree rubbed his eyes as if he were sobbing in grief. Jim gave him his famous death-stare, but all he did was pout and flounce.
Susan Silverstone said, gently, ‘I didn’t need to be told. Mothers who have lost their children have a special look about them … the saddest look that you can ever imagine.’
‘Then you’ll help me? I’m sure there was somebody there when Mike went under the water.’
‘I’ll take a look for you,’ Susan Silverstone reassured her. ‘If there was anything there, then believe me, I’ll know.’
Karen came up and joined them. She pulled a face at Jim and tapped her wristwatch. ‘Come on, Jim, if we’re going to make it up the coast before twelve …’
‘If I’m going to do a spirit-trace for you, it’ll have to be now,’ said Susan Silverstone. ‘I’m going to Bakersfield this afternoon, for orchard counseling.’
‘Orchard counseling?’ asked Karen.
‘Of course. Trees can get stressed too, you know, just like people. Sometimes scores of them can be seriously traumatized. You can sense it, the minute you walk into the orchard. It’s a bad, bad feeling, like there’s an electric storm brewing. It unsettles the farm workers and it can have a totally devastating effect on fruit production.’
‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ said Karen. ‘My lunch is canceled because an orange grove has the heebie-jeebies.’
‘I’m really sorry, Karen,’ Jim told her. ‘How about we go for dinner instead? I can book a table at the Palm.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, too, Jim. Especially since this is the last day we’re going to be able to spend together.’
‘Wait up a minute,’ Jim asked Jennie and Susan Silverstone. He took Karen aside, next to a wholefood stall. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I can’t just turn my back on this. Jennie asked me for help and this is the only way I know how.’
‘That’s a pretty pathetic excuse for spending the rest of the day with some busty mystic in a low-cut dress.’
‘What are you talking about? I didn’t even notice her dress.’
‘So you’re blind as well as unreliable?’
‘Look, okay, I noticed the dress but I don’t care about the dress. I care about you. I was going to wait until later to ask you this, but the reason why I wanted to take you up the coast today was to find out if you’d consider coming to Washington with me.’
‘When?’
‘On Wednesday, when I leave. Or maybe join me in a week or two, when you’ve had the chance to pack up your things.’
‘You mean you want me to come to Washington permanently? To live with you?’
‘Is that such a terrible idea?’
‘Nuts?’ asked the woman behind the wholefood stall. ‘Pulses?’
Karen laid her hand on Jim’s shoulder. ‘Jim … I’m really fond of you. I almost love you. But can you see us living together? I’m fanatical about neatness, you know that. My sweaters are all folded away by color. My shoes all have shoe-trees. You can call me anally retentive if you like. But you – well, all I can say is that your closet is the nearest thing I’ve ever seen to a one-man rummage sale and your sock drawer looks like the snakepit in Indiana Jones. And your bathroom. Who else do you know who keeps half a bicycle and a set of golf clubs in their bathroom? Apart from that, we’re so mentally different. I believe in facts and figures and empirical proof, but what do you believe in? Spirits, and demons, and weird things that nobody else can see. I like Mozart and you like Hootie and the Blowfish. I like step aerobics and you like slouching on the couch. I like brown rice and you like cheeseburgers. Jim – you make me laugh a lot. Sometimes you even inspire me. But if we tried to live together, we’d end up murdering each other, I promise you.’
Jim frowned at her for a long time, still holding her hands in his. Eventually he said, ‘Is that a no?’
Three
By the time they drove up to Jennie’s house in Jim’s bruised old Eldorado, the midday heat had turned the sky an eerie cadmium yellow, as if the end of the world was only a few hours away. In the yard there was no wind at all, none. Heat rippled up from the bricks and the surface of the swimming pool was so glassy that the pool appeared to be empty.
‘Your husband not home?’ asked Susan Silverstone, stalking around the pool, looking sharply from side to side. She was wearing tiny gold-rimmed sunglasses with red lenses. Medlar Tree made himself comfortable on one of the sunbeds and started to roll a ping-pon
g ball between his fingers.
Jennie said, ‘Doug’s spending a few days with his brother in San Luis Capistrano.’
‘He didn’t stay to support you?’
‘He doesn’t believe I experienced anything. He thinks I’m making it up, because it was my fault that Mike was drowned. He always wanted a son more than anything.’
‘Sounds like a regular guy.’
‘I can’t blame him. He’s absolutely shattered.’
‘And you’re not, I suppose?’
Susan Silverstone walked around the pool again and again, her hands raised in front of her face as if she were praying. After about the tenth or eleventh circuit, she stopped by the oleanders on the far side of the pool, away from the house. She frowned, and then she said, ‘There was something here. It left the yard by way of these bushes.’
‘You’re right,’ said Jennie, breathlessly. ‘I saw the bushes move right where you’re standing, and the footprints were—’
Susan Silverstone raised her hand. ‘Don’t tell me where the footprints were. Don’t tell me anything. The spirit-trace has to be pure, without any prejudice whatsoever.’
She came back around the pool and picked up a cushion from one of the sunbeds. She laid it down on the brick patio and knelt on it, spreading her dress all around her like a black convolvulus flower.
Out of a black woven bag she produced a large diamond-shaped crystal, and something which looked like a shiny white ashtray. She set the ashtray down on the ground in front of her, and then she balanced the crystal in the center of it, on one of its points. Jim stared at it and said, ‘How does she do that?’ Medlar Tree responded by balancing his ping-pong ball on the tip of his nose and rolling his eyes. Jim instantly snatched the ball and crushed it in his fist. ‘Don’t you understand that somebody died here, you cretin?’
Susan Silverstone glanced briefly at him, and he was sure he caught the faintest suggestion of a smile. Then she said, ‘Whatever walked here, it deflected light and air and it disturbed the aura that always surrounds every house. That disturbance can be traced many weeks after its passing, especially if there was emotional distress here, and something tragic happened. The crystal will show us what it was and what it did.’
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