“The garden isn’t that much different ... There are two theories about how it works. One is that you are actually hearing the voices of the dead, or some other type of spirit. The other, which is the one I believe, is that our brains are just very good at finding patterns in things. You expect to hear voices, so you hear them. You know the answers to the questions so you give them to yourself.”
“So you’ll give me twenty dollars for everyone I refer to you? How do we handle the payment?”
Jeremy pulled out a thin stack of the business cards he had printed the night before. They were simple, displaying only his address and ‘The Whisper Garden’ on parchment colored stock. He chose to give Robert the stack with a small crescent moon in the lower right hand corner. “Give one of these cards to anyone you refer to me. Make sure that they know to give me the card. Every time I get a card with this crescent on it, I’ll drop by and give you your twenty.”
“How much would it be worth it to you if I call ahead and clue you into what the questioners are likely to be asking about?”
Jeremy thought for a second – a little prescience could add to his credibility – and then add a little more if he told customer how he did it. “An extra five.”
They swapped cell numbers. Jeremy set a custom ring for Robert’s number: Bach’s Toccata and Fugue – everybody’s favorite piece of creepy organ music.
Sunday February 9th
7:00 p.m.
Jeremy was sitting nervously in his living room when Sarah knocked on his door. He had been nervous ever since she had called earlier in the afternoon. He kept telling himself that he didn’t have any reason to be nervous. They had already had an excellent, if somewhat unconventional, first date. She obviously liked him; after all, she had called him. He hoped he hadn’t lost any points by making her call, but he had been afraid of losing points by calling too soon and looking over-anxious. He knew he was thinking about it too much, but he couldn’t help himself. No girl had made him this nervous since high school.
He opened the door and was once again struck with her beauty. She had an odd sort of beauty, like Uma Thurman or Demi Moore (though she didn’t look like either one of those two) a beauty that is deep, rich and uncommon. A beauty that might seem funny looking or just plain at first glance, but that somehow grows with each successive look. He stood there stupidly grinning for a moment.
She said, “You sure are lucky that I think it’s cute when you gawk at me like that.”
Jeremy blushed and opened the door wider. He made a sweeping gesture and said, “Would you like to come in?”
She shook her head. “I’m pretty hungry. Why don’t we just go on to the restaurant.”
Jeremy was both excited and curious when Sarah had called. She had offered to take him to dinner, but wouldn’t tell him where. “Where are we going again?”
She grinned with her whole body, making a gesture that started with her mouth and sort of shimmied down to her knees, and said, “Follow me, you’ll see.”
He looked at her and then down at himself. “Am I dressed okay? I feel at least one or two levels of elegance down from you.” He was wearing a white Oxford button-down shirt and khakis. She was dressed in the proverbial little black dress.
She looked him up and down. “You’ll do,” she said.
Jeremy grabbed a jacket from the coat rack by the door and stepped out, locking the door behind him. She gave him a quick hug and then turned and started walking. Jeremy was pleased to discover that somehow, in the process of her greeting, they had wound up holding hands. He felt it was sort of like having his pocket picked in reverse – reaching in and finding more money than he had when he started, except this time instead of money he had the hand of a beautiful woman.
They left his house, turning left. They walked down Jeremy’s street, St. Phillip, and crossed Bourbon. They turned right on Royal Street. Jeremy was beginning to think of it as ‘their street.’ Sarah said, “We could have gone down Bourbon, but I have to confess I don’t like it much.”
“Especially this time of year. All the tourists think it’s what the Quarter is all about, so that’s where they go. I guess they must think that the whole city is some sort of a drunk’s theme park, nothing but tourist bars and T-shirt shops.”
“Don’t forget the rides,” Sarah added, “there is the famous spinning sidewalk, and the world renowned bead-a-coaster, where cheap plastic causes gravity to reverse in the area around drunk college girls’ tops.”
They passed a street statue who was dressed as a construction worker climbing a ladder that was leaning on nothing. Jeremy dropped a dollar in the hat at the ladder’s base. The construction worker tipped his hard hat at him. Jeremy told Sarah he liked her act better. She didn’t say anything, but her hand gripped his a little tighter.
As soon as they turned onto Bienville, Jeremy realized where they were going: Arnaud’s – one of the best restaurants in the Quarter, which meant it was also one of the best in the world.
“Sarah, are you sure you can afford this?”
“Positive. Life is too short not to splurge.”
They chatted about the weather over appetizers. He ordered escargot, she had crab claws, they shared. Each claimed to prefer the other’s.
By the time the entrees arrived they were each on their third glass of wine. Jeremy had speckled trout. Much to Jeremy’s amazement, Sarah had ordered sweetbreads. He asked if she knew what they were. She did. He asked how she could eat them if she knew what they were. She told him they tasted good. He reminded her they were a vestigial internal organ. She shrugged.
Once the waiter left, Jeremy said, “I still don’t see how you can eat that. Nobody even knows what it was for.”
“I’ll show you, “she said, taking a nibble, “open your mouth.”
Jeremy shook his head, but as her fork approached, she said, “Trust me.” He looked at the fork, and then looked at her eyes. Her eyes won the contest with his better judgment. He opened his mouth. She deposited a small bite on his tongue. He chewed. He swallowed. He smiled. He was a sweetbread convert.
He said, “You win that one, but don’t expect me to like everything you do.”
“Of course not, what fun would it be if we didn’t have anything petty to quibble over? All I ask is that you agree I’m right on everything major.”
He grinned and said, “I suppose that is not too much to ask, as long as you actually are right on everything major.”
She asked, “Have you seen me be wrong yet?”
He considered. “Well, you made an excellent choice both in restaurants, and dining companions.”
“See, we’ll get along just fine.”
They set themselves to the task of eating. After a while Sarah said, “Okay, I’ve finally had enough wine to be giddy enough to get serious.
“We told each other some tall tales the other night, but I got the feeling that some of yours were true.”
“I confess, I am an international man of mystery. Agent double oh six point nine, at your service.”
“Not that one. That was cute, but no.”
Jeremy squirmed a little. “I know. But I’m scared. I’m not going to lie to you, but I know it sounds crazy. I’ve had friends for years I haven’t told.”
“It does sound crazy, but you brought it up the other night, so I think you are ready to talk about it. I think you brought it up because you like me, and would rather scare me off than risk getting too close.”
Jeremy took a deep breath. “No, that’s not it.” He trailed off. Maybe it was? He didn’t know why he had told her, it had just felt right at the time. His mind raced, but couldn’t get any purchase on any one thought.
Sarah said, “let’s start small. So you’ve never had a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Because?”
“I was afraid to let anyone get too c
lose.”
“Because?”
“When I was a kid I made a promise to myself to not ever hurt anybody the way my father hurt me and my mother.”
“By dying.”
“He died.”
“But, you can’t promise yourself not to die.”
“No, but I could promise myself not to get too close to anyone before I died. And since I knew I was going to, I could keep from getting too close.”
“So you really believed in your curse. I’m not going to say that doesn’t sound crazy.” She wasn’t going to say that it didn’t sound crazy, because clearly he thought it did, but she had enough swamp in her veins to not think that believing in a curse was too crazy. “But I’ve thought about it, and don’t know if it is crazier than a lot of things people believe. So tell me about it.”
“Everyone in my family believes. You’ve seen my house? It was paid for from the insurance money. My dad’s version of my promise to myself was to take care of the people he loved after he died. He was so certain that he was going to die at twenty-six that he saved his money for years so that he could buy a huge insurance policy just before he turned twenty-six.”
“That sounds as much like he was planning on killing himself as it does believing in a curse.”
“No life insurance covers suicide, and I’m pretty sure his biggest fear was that he might die in a way they could call suicide. But he couldn’t have staged the way it actually happened. I was there. It was the Fourth of July. We were at a big picnic. I was six years old. He had me young so he could have some time with me before he died. I have no idea who we were celebrating with, maybe people from where he worked. Anyway, my father was standing next to the guy who was running the grill. The guy was telling a story, and waving one of those big barbeque grill forks around while he talked. Some teenagers were playing football, and the ball got away from them. The ball hit the handle of that fork, and drove it into my father’s throat.”
Jeremy paused a moment, took a drink of wine, took a deep breath and continued, “It cut his left carotid artery in two. It only took him a couple of seconds to hit the ground right next to me. Do you know what his last words were?”
Sarah guessed, “I love you?”
“Nope, the last thing he said was, ‘this isn’t so bad.’ See why I say he couldn’t have planned that as a suicide?”
“It does seem pretty unlikely. But why did he say, ‘this isn’t so bad?’ what was he expecting?”
“Given our family history, his last words make sense.”
“How messed up is it, if a messed-up thing like that makes sense?”
“Up until now every male in my family has died at the age of twenty-six. Some of the deaths have been worse than others, like my great-something-grandfather who got run over by a plow. Which was really strange and horrible because he wasn’t a farmer and was run over by a plow while walking on the sidewalk on Main Street. It was a Sunday afternoon, and some farmer had a heart attack and ran off the road in his tractor. Not only did the plow tear him up, it dragged what was left of him for a few hundred feet. Compared to that, getting your throat cut with a barbeque fork and bleeding out on the way to the hospital seems pretty easy.”
“Sheesh. Are all the stories that bad?”
“No. Some, like falling off a ladder, are boring by accidental death standards, but they all happened at the age of twenty-six.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“As far back as anybody in the family could ever trace. Every male on my father’s side died at the age of twenty-six, at least as far back as the mid 1800s.”
“So why did you stop believing?”
“I’m twenty-seven. I figure if I made it through twenty-six, then I am just a normal guy.”
“How do you know you aren’t going to die tomorrow?”
“I don’t. But anyone could die tomorrow. Now that I am past that hump, I figure my chances are probably the same as everybody else.”
“It does sound crazy. But, assuming that all those men in your family actually died, that’s less crazy than a lot of what I hear on the news.”
“So my curse isn’t going to scare you off?”
“I’m not the least superstitious person in the world, but my gris gris bag has never won me the lottery. I’ll take my chances, both with the curse, and the crazy.”
“Okay, now it’s my turn. How did you get into the business of being a sidewalk angel?”
“I thought it would look good on my résumé.”
“Oh, are you trying to work your way up to standing on top of a cathedral?”
“I want a career in acting. I figure that making my living as a street performer looks a lot more interesting than waiting tables. Besides, it feels a lot less like actual work.”
Jeremy raised his glass. “Amen to that.”
The waiter came asking about dessert. They were both full, but felt it was the sort of night to go beyond full. They ordered a flaming banana dish for two. It was spectacular.
During dessert Jeremy learned that Sarah had wanted to be in theatre ever since she had seen a production of Peter Pan when she was seven years old. One of the children in the play had been played by a classmate of hers. Sarah had been blown away by the magic of it, that normal people could become other people. Until then she had never really thought about the people she saw on TV or in the movies. In retrospect she guessed that even though she had known it was make-believe, she had assumed that actors were pretty much like the characters that they played. But when she saw the transformation of her classmate, she knew that there was magic in the world.
When the check arrived, Jeremy made exactly one offer to help pay, but was silenced by Sarah. This meal was her suggestion and her treat. He graciously backed down.
The walk back from the restaurant was chilly, so Jeremy gave his jacket to Sarah to wear. He liked the way it looked on her, not quite big enough to swallow her, but close. It was close to ten o’clock when they got to his house.
Jeremy situated Sarah in the living room and excused himself to go to the bathroom. While he was gone, Sarah thought she heard a voice from some other room say, “Ask him?” She said, “Jeremy, did you leave a TV on in another room?”
He said, “You hear it too?”
“I heard something.”
“Good, then it won’t sound too crazy when I try to tell you the details about how I am trying to make a living.”
“How is that?”
“I’m charging people to listen to white noise.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Why would they pay?”
“Because people can hear voices in it. I call it a free-form séance, or self-directed psychic experience.”
“How does it work?”
“I’ve set up a garden with a lot of fountains. People sit in it and hear voices. One theory is that they are hearing voices of spirits. My theory is that the human brain is just really good at finding order in random things, even when there isn’t any order there. I usually don’t tell them my theory though. I tell them it is a self-directed psychic experience.”
“Can I try it?”
“Sure.” Jeremy led Sarah to the garden and lit a couple of tiki torches. He kissed her. He hadn’t planned to do it, at least not then. He hadn’t even had a thought like, oh this is the perfect moment for a first kiss, he had just done it with no more thought than he would put into breathing. It felt that natural. It also felt that necessary. He was thrilled when she kissed him back.
She kissed back for a long while and then said, “Now shoo, I want to see if this place works.” Jeremy shooed.
A while later Sarah found Jeremy sitting in his sitting-room/office noodling around on his electric guitar.
She looked contemplative so he asked, “Did you hear voices?”
She nodded and said, “Yep.”
/>
“What did they say?”
“That I should hang on to you.”
He looked sheepish, “Now you are gonna think I faked it for my own benefit.”
“Nope, it felt pretty real to me. So I want you to tell me something.”
“Okay.”
“How could you spend your whole life believing in a curse, but not believe in this?”
Jeremy didn’t have an answer. It was a good question that somehow had never crossed his mind.
“When I was growing up everyone around me believed. My mother believed so much that she left, because she couldn’t stand knowing she was going to lose me. I was raised by my great-aunt, who had lost a brother and a nephew to the curse. I guess with that much belief around me, I never thought to question it.”
“Your mother left when your father died?”
“Yup.”
“That is the worst thing I have ever heard. But why were you mad at your father for dying and not at your mother for leaving?”
“Oh, I was pretty mad at her too. On my more cynical days I assume that she didn’t believe in the curse, like she said, but that she thought that life with a couple of million dollars in insurance money would be a lot more fun without a kid around. On my more sentimental days I believe what my great-aunt told me, that she left because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing me.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. That’s why I believe it.” He sighed. “Let’s talk about something more cheerful. Tell me more about your theatre career.”
They talked, hopping about on topics, until midnight when Sarah said she had to go so she could get some sleep before class in the morning. An hour later they were still saying goodbye at the door.
Jeremy kissed her and said, “So, when can I see you again?”
“Not till the weekend, I’ve got a lot of studying to do.”
“Friday night? I’ve got a gig at House of Blues, and I’d love it if you could come.”
The Whisper Garden Page 5