Shaman, Healer, Heretic (Olivia Lawson Techno-Shaman)

by Green, M. Terry

  “Really?” she asked, stopping in mid-wipe.

  He smiled.

  “Yeah, really.”

  She didn’t know what to say. People didn’t usually worry about her.

  “I remembered your address,” he offered, breaking the silence. “I waited at the front gate until somebody was leaving.”

  “Right,” she said, finally looking away, embarrassed that she’d been staring.

  “So,” he said slowly. “How are you doing?”

  She focused on the crumpled and dirty paper towels she’d thrown on the ground.

  “I’m good,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “How’s your head?”

  Her hand flew to the back of her head.

  “Oh that! You know, I haven’t really noticed it, so I guess it must be okay.”

  “Good,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets. “Well then…”

  “Would you like to come inside?” she blurted.

  “That’d be great,” he said, smiling again.

  “Okay,” she said, as she bent over and started grabbing the used towels and cleaning things. “Let me just get this stuff.”

  He picked up the cleanser.

  “Thanks,” she said, as she opened the door. “Come on in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  AS SOON AS they had stepped through the door and Livvy closed it, she realized it’d been awhile since she had cleaned. The kitchen was the worst area and she headed right for it. Half a dozen syrup bottles of various flavors were grouped near the dish rack. She pushed them into a corner.

  “Sorry for the mess,” she said, as she grabbed dishes from the counter and put them in the sink.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, as he strolled over to the altar. “Wow, this is quite a collection.”

  Before she had realized she was a shaman or had any interest in the shamanic world, she had collected sacred objects and set them up on display. Later she had learned that all shamans create altars, some more elaborate than others. By now, she had hundreds of little things and the altar had multiple levels.

  “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to small black lacquer box.

  She came over, opened it, and handed it to him.

  “It’s sand from a Tibetan Buddhist mandala. They have a ceremony that lasts a few days where the monks build the mandala, grain by grain, on the floor. It’s enormous when it’s done, fifty feet in diameter. It portrays the life of the Buddha, full of small vignettes and symbols, circles within multicolored circles. Then, on the last day, once it’s completed, it’s destroyed and the sand is blessed and offered to observers.”

  He smiled as he looked down at it, tilting the box back and forth.

  “Have you been to Tibet?” he asked.

  “Ha, no,” she said. “Luckily, the monks travel. This was from a mandala they did at the Natural History Museum a few years ago.”

  “It’s nice,” he said, handing it back to her.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked.

  “That sounds good.”

  As she filled the kettle, he came over to the table.

  “Looks like you’re in the middle of a project here.”

  She looked at the disassembled goggles.

  “Just some tinkering,” she said, putting the kettle on the stove.

  He nodded.

  He had to know that she was a shaman because he’d heard her report to the police. If he’d only suspected before, the altar should have confirmed it, but the goggles might be a different story. Maybe he’d never seen a techno-shaman wearing goggles or didn’t even know that techno-shamans existed. She didn’t say anything more.

  “Sit down,” she said, indicating one of the chairs with a box of tea. “Genmai-cha,” she said, showing him the first box, “or raspberry.”

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” he answered.

  She put a couple of Genmai-cha bags into the two waiting mugs.

  “Actually,” he said, as he took a seat, “I’ve been in the neighborhood a lot lately.”

  “Oh?” she said, watching his leg muscles work through the dark blue pants as he crossed his ankle over his knee.

  “Lots of calls.”

  “Lots of calls?” she asked, tilting her head.

  “911 calls.”

  “Oh,” she said slowly.

  “It’s been non-stop,” he said, shaking his head. “Just incredible.”

  The kettle started to whistle, forcing her to take her eyes off him. Livvy poured the hot water, brought over the two mugs, and took a seat.

  “But I guess you already know that,” he said, taking the mug. “Thanks.”

  He moved the tea bag around by the string and she studied his face while he was looking down. He seemed like he might be Hispanic or maybe Mediterranean, probably about her age, and definitely good looking.

  “I think it’s a busy time for us all,” he said.

  Us, she thought. She’d never heard anyone in the medical professions include shamans together with themselves. Us. It had a nice sound and he’d made it seem like it was a given. They were both healers, in their own ways.

  “Yeah, it has been busy,” she said quietly, nodding. “It’s been difficult too.”

  He looked into her eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Me?”

  “Because if you weren’t all right, I’d want to know,” he said, still looking at her.

  She tried to take a sip of tea but inhaled a tiny bit instead.

  “Thanks,” she managed to get out, coughing.

  He sipped his tea but Livvy noticed that it was an experimental taste. He’d probably never had Genmai-cha before but he was going to try it anyway. She liked that. He nodded with approval and smiled at her as she realized that she was staring again. She quickly looked down.

  “You’ve seen the news?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how I can avoid it.”

  “True,” he said. “Shamans seem to be taking a pretty bad rap.”

  Shamans–it was the first time he’d used the word. Hearing it surprised her. She raised her eyebrows as she brought up the mug.

  “I just think it’s a shame,” he ventured.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “And it’s not true. We’re not making people sick.”

  “Of course not!” he said. “I wasn’t implying–”

  “Oh no,” she said, “I didn’t mean that you–”

  “Oh, okay,” he said quickly.

  They each took a sip of tea. Content to watch him, she eventually realized that she was burning her tongue. She set the mug down but smiled when she realized he was watching her.

  “I have no idea what’s really going on,” he said, finally, “what’s really making people sick, but the emergency rooms are all flooded and a lot of the patients that I run across don’t seem to have a…conventional ailment.”

  “Exactly,” said Livvy, as she considered how much to tell him.

  It was one thing to know or say that someone was a shaman but it was a different thing altogether to talk about the multiverse.

  “I’m not fishing for information,” he declared. “I’m really not.”

  Livvy put her mug down, still considering.

  “Maybe I should go,” he said, putting his mug down too.

  “No!” said Livvy.

  He stopped and smiled at her.

  “I mean I wasn’t thinking that,” she tried.

  “Yeah, you were,” he said, still smiling. “That’s all right.” He checked his watch. “But really I should be going.”

  He stood up and took the mug to the kitchen as Livvy watched.

  “Anyway, I’m glad to see you’re all right,” he said, when he turned around.

  “You don’t have to go,” said Livvy, standing up.

  “Well, I do actually, but…” He went over to the door. “Maybe I could stop by some other time?”

  “You can stop by anytime,” she c
hirped.

  “Thank you for the tea,” he said, opening the door.

  She saw the remnants of paint on the door but the pentagram wasn’t distinguishable anymore. In the short time he’d been here, the vandalism had completely slipped her mind. Seeing it again sobered her. He saw her looking at it.

  “It might be a good idea not to go out after dark,” he said.

  “I don’t,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Good,” he said. “Well, not good, but, well, you know.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  He turned to go.

  Suddenly, Livvy thought of something. Quickly, she touched her fingers to the doorknob and discharged some static electricity.

  “Wait!” she said. He turned around.

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Oh for crying out loud,” he said, coming back. “I’m Joel.”

  He held out his hand.

  “Joel,” she said, smiling, taking his hand. “Nice to meet you Joel.”

  His grip was gentle and he held her hand a little longer than was necessary.

  “Nice to meet you, Livvy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY be serious,” said SK as they waited for their pancakes.

  “I am totally serious,” said Livvy. “This can work.”

  “I don’t care if it can work,” said SK under his breath, looking around. “Now is not the time to get shamans together for the first time ever.”

  “So, you think other shamans would be interested?”

  “I didn’t say that. You know it’s the unwritten rule.”

  “For god’s sake, SK, aren’t we past the rules? How many shamans do you see a day? Two, three? Has anybody had a normal journey?”

  He waved his hand to keep her voice down and looked around to see if anybody had heard. A middle-aged couple looked away.

  “And how’s business?” she asked. “Not exactly booming, is it.”

  “I’ll get by,” he said.

  “Well I won’t.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  “I lost a client,” she said quietly. “Tiamat.”

  “What?” SK yelled. “You had another encounter with–”

  “And I got mugged behind my building.”

  “What? Livvy, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now,” she said simply. “I wasn’t hurt, just some kids who wanted to scare the shaman.”

  “By all the gods, Livvy,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “You should have called me!”

  The waitress arrived with their plates and set them down without saying a word. SK ignored the food.

  “We can’t live like this,” said Livvy. “We can’t work safely and we can’t live safely.”

  SK stared hard at her, his mouth working into a grim frown. Finally, he took a deep breath.

  “How is getting a bunch of shamans together going to help?”

  “I don’t know if it will,” she said, honestly. “But what is there to lose at this point? Who is able to carry on by themselves anyway?”

  He seemed to be thinking.

  “If we get together and we get hooked together, we might be able to pool our power. It might be enough to defeat…you know.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said quickly.

  “You’re the one in the middle,” she said. “The common point of contact. We all trust you. They’ll only talk to me if it comes through you.”

  Livvy had already starting cataloging the names of the few shamans that she knew about in the area.

  “It’d be easier if you made an introduction,” she continued. “It’d be even better if you came with me.”

  He stared at his pancakes.

  Livvy picked up a syrup bottle and set it next to his plate.

  “Here, eat,” she said, and reached for a bottle of syrup for herself. “You always think better when you eat.”

  As he reached for the syrup, an overweight man in his late thirties appeared next to the table. He was wearing a shirt and tie. Livvy and SK both looked up at him.

  “Uh, look,” he said. “We don’t want any trouble. So, how about if I box that up for you.”

  “What?” asked Livvy.

  SK looked down at the food and back at the man.

  “It’ll be on the house, but it’ll have to be take out.”

  “What?” asked Livvy, again.

  “I’m the manager,” the man said. “And we’d like the rest of our patrons to feel…comfortable.”

  Livvy looked past the manager to the other booths. Everyone in the restaurant, including the waitresses and bus boys, was looking at them. Even though Livvy didn’t dress like a shaman, snippets of conversations that had been overheard might have been put together. In fact, it looked like they had been.

  “Come on, Livvy,” SK said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “We haven’t even started.”

  “He’s kicking us out,” he said, under his breath, starting to scoot out of the booth.

  “But he can’t–”

  “Yes, he can,” said SK, standing.

  Livvy started to scoot out, as the man picked up the two plates.

  “I’ll box these up for you,” he said.

  “Keep it,” snapped Livvy.

  “Don’t listen to her,” SK said. “Box it up.”

  Livvy made a face at him.

  “I’m hungry!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  LIVVY WAITED AS SK finished the last of his pancakes. She’d barely touched hers since he’d only had one kind of syrup. He had driven them to his place: a luxury condo in Santa Monica with underground, gated parking and a security guard in the lobby. As she looked around, she wondered if any other shaman had ever been here.

  Like his car, his condo was tailored for him. He’d had the counters lowered in the gleaming and modern kitchen. The furniture was shorter as well–not particularly smaller, but lower.

  “You cook a lot?” she asked.

  “I don’t cook at all,” he said, sipping orange juice. “My cook is a little person. I like to support the community.”

  “Oh, your cook,” Livvy said.

  “Of course,” he said, putting down the glass. “Who has time for that?”

  “Right,” she said slowly.

  The view from the living room was spectacular, taking in the shoreline looking south toward Catalina Island. Livvy couldn’t stop staring at it. He came over and looked down the coast with her.

  “Who knew shaman work could be so good,” she said.

  He laughed.

  “What, this? My father owned a ball-bearing company on the west side for years. When he and my mother died, I sold it to his employees. Well, that’s the nice way to put it. They forced me out, but I took a good chunk of change with me for the trouble.”

  Despite the tailored suits, she had somehow assumed that he wasn’t much better off than most of the shamans that he interacted with. It must rankle him to come to her neighborhood, she realized.

  “So if you don’t need to work, what are you doing with all the shamanism stuff?”

  “I didn’t say I don’t need to work.”

  “Why shamanism?”

  “Kind of a fluke,” he said as he went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

  He took out a plastic container of cleaned and cut vegetables.

  “Carrot?” he said, putting the container on the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen.

  “No, thanks,” she said, coming over and taking a seat on one of the low stools. “What kind of fluke?”

  “A fluke,” he said, shrugging and munching. “That’s all.”

  She watched him in fascination for a few seconds.

  “Where do you put it?” she asked, as he popped another carrot in his mouth.

  He shrugged again, munching.

  “And you,” he said. “How did you get into shamanism?”

 
Her back stiffened. Dumb, she thought. If you ask, he’ll ask. Dumb.

  “Oh, cat got your tongue?”

  No one else in the world knew about her beginning in shamanism. She had never been able to bring herself to tell a soul. In fact, she had sometimes managed to put it from her own mind, until a moment like this. Then the horror of it came back–and the shame.

  “Earth to Livvy,” said SK.

  She blinked a few times and then stared at him.

  “I…” she started, as her hands clenched into fists on her thighs.

  The pained look on SK’s face made her wonder what hers must look like. She tried to smile.

  “Okay,” he said. “Maybe that’s enough question and answer for today.”

  He turned and put the vegetables back in the refrigerator.

  The pain in the palms of her hands made her realize she was digging in her nails. Slowly, she unclenched the fists and took a deep breath.

  SK left the kitchen and went over to the window, hands in pockets as he looked down at the beach.

  “You know, I’m a traditionalist,” he said, still looking out the window. “I think the rules are there for a good reason.”

  Livvy slumped down on her stool. In the diner, he seemed like he might agree to help her. Now, he’d had time to think about it. He turned around to face her.

  “I also think that there comes a time when the rules may not help.”

  She perked up.

  He shook his head and grimaced.

  “It goes against millennia of tradition,” he continued. “It makes me…uneasy, but I don’t see another way. It can’t go on like this.”

  He paused and looked at her as Livvy held her breath.

  “But that’s not how most shamans feel,” he said. He took out his phone. “Still, there might be a few who would see it that way.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I’m not promising anything. You know how shamans can be.”

  “I was thinking that maybe Alvina, out in Palm Springs, would be a good one,” she offered, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.

  “Oh, really,” he said, scrolling through his address book. “And how do you know Alvina?”