Second Guessing

by K. J. Emrick

  If she notices the change in my demeanor, she doesn’t show it. “So tell me, Sidney. You aren’t in the Marines anymore, you aren’t married. What do you do now?”

  “I work here in Detroit,” I tell her, although I’m not sure why I’m still having this conversation. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “My, how interesting,” she says, and sounds as if she really means it. “You always did have this desire to help everyone else. First the military and now a private investigator? That’s just so… you.”

  It’s funny to hear her saying exactly what I was thinking on the way here. Actually, it’s a little surprising that she remembers anything about me at all. I didn’t know she could stop thinking about herself long enough to give anyone else that much of her attention. This whole thing has gotten extremely awkward. The bodyguards have moved the people back to their seats, although they can’t keep them from watching us and pointing. I’m not the kind of girl who likes the spotlight. Not like Amelia does. I’m going to be a lot more comfortable when I’m out of here, away from her, and back in my own apartment.

  “Well, I should get going. It was nice to see you again.” That’s a complete lie, and it’s everything I can do not to add, Let’s do this again, in like a hundred years. That would be just too soon.

  I raise my one milkshake in a sort of parting salute and turn for the door.

  And my future-sense tells me she’s not done talking yet.

  Oh, wait.

  Damn. So close.

  “Oh, wait. Here. Take this.” Amelia snaps her fingers to one of her bodyguards and when she does, he produces a business card from somewhere and hands it over to me. “That’s my number. Well. My answering service, anyway. I tell you, Sidney, it’s so hard being a star and having to let other people handle so much of your life. I’m not even allowed to carry my own cellphone. Donnie here gets to carry it for me, don’t you Donnie?”

  That’s the guard who was whispering in her ear when she came in. The guard who just handed me her card. The same one who keeps sharing secret looks with Amelia. Those two are in a relationship that’s not just business. I’m sure of it.

  I take the card awkwardly with my fingertips, holding it in my hand with my cup. It’s just her name, in cursive, and a phone number. I’m guessing it’s what she gives out to agents or producers or whoever controls the movie industry these days. That’s a world I’ll never understand, that’s for sure.

  Amelia lays her fingertips on my wrist. “Anyway, Sidney, I’m in town to start filming my next movie and my agent said I should be seen around Detroit. That’s why I’m in here. Not really my usual kind of place. Kind of boorish, if you know what I mean. How about you and I have dinner soon and catch up? We’ll have it somewhere nice, my treat. I’ll call you. Or, oops…” She laughs softly, as if she just said something incredibly funny. “I’ll have someone call you. Like I said, can’t do anything for myself. The price of fame, right? Some days I just wish I could be a normal girl again and do things for myself. Oh well. See you around, Sidney.”

  With that, she turns around and strides up to the counter, her bodyguards flanking her, waving back to the fans who are still buzzing about seeing a famous actress in a place like this.

  I’m left standing there and feeling like I’ve been dismissed. I mean, I wanted to leave anyway but Amelia stopped me long enough to bounce in and out of my life in two minutes flat and make it seem like she’d done me a favor for giving me that much of herself.

  Although… it almost seemed like she was honestly glad to see me again, even if we hardly ever spoke to each other back in the day. Whatever. I don’t need to renew a friendship that had never existed in the first place. I need to get home, and find another client, so I can get that next paycheck.

  Using my shoulder to push through the Shake Shack’s front door, I step outside and drop Amelia’s card in a curbside garbage can. Maybe I should have had her autograph it. At least then it would have been worth something to me.

  Sipping one milkshake through a straw, carrying the other along with the bag of my food, I walk home under a clear blue sky, enjoying the warm sun, and already forgetting my little reunion with Amelia Falconi.

  My apartment’s on the city’s east side, in a densely populated area of streets and apartment buildings and single-family homes. It’s also just a quick drive and a ferry ride away from Belle Isle Park, where there’s a beach and an aquarium and a conservatory. I go there maybe four times a summer just to unwind. It’s kind of amazing that in a city this size they’ve set aside an entire island as a park for people to relax.

  I mean, it’s mainly there for the tourists, but the rest of us get to enjoy it, too. When we have the time. And the eleven bucks to board the ferry.

  I can swing that, for now, but it’s another half a month before I get my military pension check, and I’ve learned the hard way you need to limit your spending if you expect to eat a meal or two every day. Which I do. I maintain my figure by working out, not by starving myself.

  My apartment building’s just three stories high, but I’m up on the third floor, and walking the stairs lets me burn off some of the calories from lunch. I finish the last bite of my hamburger and stuff a few stray fries into my mouth that I found in the bottom of the bag, as I step out into my hallway. My shake’s already gone.

  The second one I got is sweating condensation down the outside of the waxed paper cup. This one’s not for me. It’s for my roommate. He has a weakness for milkshakes.

  I know, I know. Here I’ve been talking about how I don’t have a man in my life, and I’m bringing home a delicious frozen Shake Shack treat for the guy living in my apartment. It’s not that kind of relationship between me and Harry. We’re friends. Well. More than friends. Just not that kind of more. It’s, um, complicated.

  Harry helps me with my cases sometimes. He shows me another side of things that I often miss because he has a very singular way of looking at life. He cooks for me, making these amazing ethnic dishes with names I can pronounce only about half the time but are always delicious. He reads romance novels. He makes me laugh.

  So no, we don’t have that kind of relationship. We’re just friends. That’s all. Really.

  Although it is pretty wild how quickly I got used to a genie being in my life.

  You heard me. My friend is a genie. He literally poofed into my life one day and he’s been staying here ever since and frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. We became friends pretty quick, me and him, and it’s more than just the help he gave me when I really needed it. Harris—or Harry, as I like to call him—just makes it easy to like him.

  Halfway down the third-floor hall is a door with a sign hanging over it. The sign faces the stairways on both ends so everybody can see it. “Stone Investigations,” it says, short and sweet. Makes me easy to find. Not that I exactly have clients beating down my door to hire me at the moment. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. There are weeks when I’m turning work away because I can only do so much at a time, and then other weeks I’d gladly hire myself out to find missing dentures in a nursing home.

  Inside my apartment I smell the rich, earthy aroma of Turkish coffee. It’s made with the grinds left in, and a layer of foam on top, totally different what you can get at a drive-thru window. Oh God, I love that smell. I’d never experienced really good coffee until Harris came into my life. He’s pretty much ruined me for anything from Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, I can tell you that.

  “Harris? Hey, where are you?”

  “Here as always, my lady.”

  I’m startled to find him standing right next to me, stepping out of the living room right up to my shoulder while I was looking around the kitchen-slash-dining room. My apartment isn’t big, just one bedroom and a bathroom the size of a postage stamp, and these two rooms here that basically make one open area with half-walls between them. I would have seen him soon enough, but the point is… I didn’t know he was there. I didn’t see him in
my future flash. I should have heard him saying hello three seconds before he spoke. I should have seen him standing next to me three seconds before it happened. But with Harris, my special gift doesn’t work.

  That’s what you get, when your roommate is a genie.

  He smiles at me now as if he knows what I’m thinking, which he does a lot of the time. His deeply tanned face is all angles but that smile softens everything and makes his deep brown eyes light up. Under the guyliner, I mean. Harris is a genie from another time period, and he does things like line his eyes with black makeup and wear copper hoops in both ears, and metal cuffs at his wrists. At least he’s stopped wearing his thick black hair in a topknot. Now it just hangs loose around his shoulders. He gave up the baggy gold pants and the pointy shoes, too. I convinced him to try khaki pants and t-shirts instead, like that goofy one he’s got on today with the tic-tac-toe board on it. Sadly, that shirt is covering up the nicest set of pecs and six-pack abs I’ve ever seen.

  I’ve known, ever since he literally popped into my life, that my future-sense doesn’t work with him. It’s weird for me. This is what it feels like to be normal, I guess. Not knowing what’s coming next. Not hearing what someone’s answer is to your question before you even finish asking it. My life isn’t normal, by any means, but with Harris around I kind of get a sense of what normal might feel like.

  Even if it is with a genie.

  “I see you made coffee,” I tell him. “I’ll trade you a cup of that for this wonderful milkshake.”

  “Ah!” he beams, reaching out to take the shake from me as if it was the most precious thing in the world. “You remembered. I simply can not get enough of these. Mmm. So good.”

  He’s sucking it back through the paper straw one gulp at a time, savoring the mixture of peanut butter and vanilla ice cream. Milkshakes hadn’t been invented back when he was a child, back before the fateful day when he was bound into service as a genie somewhere around 2300 BC. From what he’s told me, the long list of masters that have used him since then didn’t exactly care about his personal needs, or about bringing him little treats. The relationship we have is different. I don’t think of him as some kind of servant. Harris is my friend, and I’m his.

  There’s a reason why I bring the milkshakes to him instead of making him go and get his own. Harry’s kind of what you might call housebound. Or rather, he’s bound to that rug covering a good portion of my living room floor. He literally can’t go anywhere unless the rug goes with him.

  Every genie is tied to a physical object, and when they’re not with their master they’re trapped inside of that object. For Aladdin’s blue friend in the Disney movie it was a lamp. For Harry, it’s a beautifully exquisite Persian rug. If he wants to go anywhere outside of my apartment, I have to bring the rug along with me. And let’s face it, the Shake Shack wasn’t designed to accommodate a woman carrying a rolled-up rug across her shoulders. Especially one with tassels.

  Plus I love listening to that deep, sonorous voice of his with its smooth Middle East accent, going on and on about the awesomeness that is the peanut butter milkshake. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures.

  I drop my keys and wallet and other stuff on top of the half-wall between the stove and the dining table, and then drop myself into one of the chairs there. I toss my Shake Shack bag with my wrappers over onto the sink to take care of later. Right in front of me is a steaming cup of coffee with a frothy head of foam. Cinnamon sprinkled on top. Heaven in a cup. I relish every sip, the same way Harris is enjoying his shake.

  “Couldn’t you just wish one of those up for yourself?” I ask him. “I mean, you’re the magic genie who can make things appear out of nothing. Just snap your fingers or tug your ear or whatever and make magic milkshakes for yourself. You could do that, couldn’t you?”

  Taking a long sip, Harry sighs in pure pleasure. “I could do that, certainly, but… it just wouldn’t be the same. Not like the real thing.”

  After another long sip, he sighs with pleasure.

  It wouldn’t be the same? That’s an interesting bit of information, and I sort it away with everything else genie related that I’ve learned about Harry so far. He’s been living with me for months, and I’ve seen him do all sorts of amazing things, but when he makes me Turkish coffee, he does it from scratch. The pot he brewed the drink in is still in the sink to be washed. A lot of his cooking he does himself, actually, and I had just assumed it was because he enjoyed working with his hands. There’s something attractive about a man who does things with his hands, you know?

  So I hadn’t thought about it before, but maybe magic doesn’t always live up to the real thing. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

  “I’ve got to make some calls,” I tell him. “I need to reach out to some contacts who might have work for me. Will you be all right for a while?”

  “Ah, yes my lady, I will.” He holds up the half-empty shake cup. “I have this, and there is a fascinating show on channel four that I’ve been watching. I believe it’s called a Suds Opera.”

  “Soap opera,” I correct him. “Yeah, they’re pretty addictive. Just remember that’s not how people really behave in real life.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I remember one of my masters who had a different boyfriend every week, cheated her brother out of his inheritance, stole her neighbor’s dog…” He trails off when he sees me staring at him, and then he shrugs. “My previous masters weren’t always nice people.”

  “I’m getting that picture. Glad to know I’m doing better by you.”

  “My lady, you have no idea.”

  Setting my coffee cup aside, I take out my cellphone and drop it on the table in front of me so I can scroll through my contact list. I’ve got a lot of business contacts in here. Michelle Garrow might have some Worker’s Comp claim investigations for me. I suppose I could give her a call. Not my first choice, but it’s easy work.

  For those of you who have never been a private investigator, comp claim cases are boring. See, when someone claims they got injured on the job, and can’t work, insurance companies pay people like me to verify they’re telling the truth. So, I follow the person around for days to see if the injury is real, or faked. Basically, I try to catch them lying. Like, if they say their ankle is broken after a fall down the factory stairs, but I can get pictures of them running in the Twin Cities Marathon. Or, if they claim they threw out their back lifting all those heavy boxes at work, but I find them carrying furniture into their new apartment all by themselves. Stuff like that. I snap a few photos of them being big fakers, and I get paid. Or, I report that they’ve been laid up on the couch for a week unable to move, and I still get paid.

  It’s not fun work, but a lot of private investigations is like that. Like I said, we don’t always do criminal work. Most of what we do is civil stuff, in fact.

  Like the work I’ve done in the past for William LaFleur, Attorney at Law. He’s another one who might have some stuff for me to do. He specializes in inheritance cases and pays me pretty well to get background information on his client and the other parties named in the last will and testament. He’s looking for anything that makes his clients look good and everyone else look bad. That way, he can argue for a bigger chunk of the estate to go to his client, which in turn means a bigger payday for him. Again, not the kind of work that will put me in the newspapers, but it is the kind of work with a guaranteed paycheck.

  That’s the kind I like.

  I shoot a text message to LaFleur first, and then make a call to Michelle. When she doesn’t answer I leave a voicemail. Then I go back to scrolling. There’s one name in my contacts who I could call, and who might have a good job to throw my way… but he gets a little testy when I do that. Last time he actually told me, Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

  Kind of rude, in my opinion. Well, this is the twenty-first century. The girl doesn’t have to wait for the boy to call her anymore.

  I dial his number and wait with the phone at my ear, spinning
the cup of coffee on the table, watching what’s left of the foam spin lazily around the top. There’s a belief in certain Middle Eastern cultures that your future can be read from the coffee grinds left at the bottom when you’re done. The way you move the cup around while you’re drinking it is unique to you, and the little specks of the grinds settle into a unique pattern that spells out your fate.

  It sounds hokey, I know. But the last time I had Harry read my fortune that way, he told me that it said I was going to die. Kind of unsettling. If you believe in that sort of thing…

  “Hello?”

  When my call is picked up, the voice on the other end of the line is strained. I guess Chris is having a bad day. Must make it a day ending in Y. That’s a joke. Any given day can become a bad one when you’re a detective with the Detroit Police Department.

  “Is this Christian Caine?” I ask him, pitching my voice high and nasally. “I have a complaint to file. My neighbor’s cat is singing a Bon Jovi song but he’s way off key and I’m just wondering if there’s some way to get the cat singing lessons, or…”

  His sigh is heavy, impatient, and full of recognition. My brilliant playacting didn’t fool him for a second. “Sid, this isn’t a good time. I’ve got three open cases I’m working on and I’m about to have the main suspect in one brought in, only I’ve already got a guy in interview room three who’s confessing to the same crime and I still haven’t had lunch. So. Do you have a real police complaint or are you just calling to waste more of my day?”

  “Wow. You’re cranky.”

  “You can drop the funny voice now. I know who you are.”

  I do, but only because he made me. “Spoilsport. You’re no fun.”

  “Not when I’m having a day like this. You want fun, go to the circus. Watch the monkeys.”

  “I prefer the guy who juggles chainsaws.”

  “Feels exactly like what I’m doing today.”

  Harry looks over at me from the couch before turning back to his soap opera. He’s listening in on my end of the conversation, interested in what I’m saying, or at least who I’m saying it to. These two guys are basically my best friends in the world, but they haven’t ever met each other. Not yet. I might have gotten used to a genie sitting on my couch and watching soap operas on my television but a cop like Christian Caine might have… questions.