The Astral

by V. J. Banis

  “Yes. I’ll see you to your car.”

  Neither of them made a move to go, however. After another long silence, she asked, “Where are you living now?”

  “I found a little place in Santa Monica. Tiny, but if you lean far enough out the bathroom window you can get a glimpse of the ocean before you fall.”

  She smiled, and then surprised even herself by saying, “Can we go there?”

  He sighed and she knew before he said it what the answer would be. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Did she really think that, in the privacy of his own apartment, alone with her, he would be able to keep his hands off her? Or was she just mocking him?

  Her heart sank. “No, you’re probably right.” She managed to shape her lips into a semblance of a smile at the same time she was mentally kicking herself. Why did she insist on making this fool of herself over him? Hadn’t he already made it clear that the past was over and buried. “Well, goodnight, then.”

  “I’ll see you to your car,” he said again.

  “No, that’s all right, thanks anyway.” She started to leave and then turned back to where he stood unmoving. “Would it be all right if I called you sometime? I...it really would be nice to think we could still be friends. I think I need friends just now.”

  “Absolutely. I’d like that.” He found a business card in his wallet and scribbled hastily on the back of it, and handed it to her.

  She tucked it into her pocket without looking at it and with a final quick nod, left him. He watched her get into the elevator without a glance in his direction, waited until the doors had glided shut and she disappeared from sight.

  * * * *

  The garage was nearly deserted. She was almost to her car when she heard footsteps and the muted sound of voices. Garages were notoriously dangerous places. The bad guys had lots of opportunities: unwatched cars to be broken into, unwary parkers to be robbed or assaulted. They could hear someone coming well in advance, and had no end of places to hide.

  She unlocked her door hurriedly and looked cautiously around as a couple came down the next aisle over. Nothing there to worry about, it appeared. Nevertheless, she slid quickly into the Jaguar, locked the door behind her and started up the engine.

  The couple reached their own car as she drove past. She heard the young woman say, “But I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Never you mind about any of it,” her companion said, unlocking her door and swinging it wide for her, “I’ll take care of everything. Leave it all to me.”

  Heading out of the garage, Catherine had a momentary sense of envy. How convenient that would be, wouldn’t it, to have someone else shoulder the responsibility for every problem? To be one of those old-time women who let the man do everything for her.

  Convenient, she thought, edging out onto Second Street, and utterly not for me. She stomped her self-sufficient foot down hard on the gas and merged into the traffic.

  Driving home midst the river of cars on the freeway, the lighted towers of the city gliding past, her thoughts turned inevitably, despairingly, to her latest meeting with Jack. She had a sudden thought, not a happy one: what if he were involved with someone else? He had been alone tonight, but that didn’t necessarily negate the possibility. She, whoever she was, might have had another commitment.

  She frowned into the glow of the dashboard. Part of her knew that, sensibly, it might well be best for him, for both of them, if he were involved with someone.

  Another part of her, however, did not like that idea at all. She smiled grimly to herself. What if he were? She could certainly deal with that, if that were the case. Let him try to make love to another woman with her standing at the foot of the bed. This “traveling” might not be such a bad thing after all, once she had gotten the mechanics of it down pat.

  She was immediately ashamed of that line of thought. It was petty and childish and whatever the reason she had been given the gift of travel, it certainly hadn’t been for anything so puerile.

  But the idea didn’t altogether go away, either.

  At home, she left the Jaguar in the driveway and, before she got out, took his card from her pocket and glanced at it. He had written not only his phone number, but his address as well.

  A Freudian slip? Or a deliberate invitation? Her spirits, sunk in a pit a moment before, soared toward the heavens. She put the card carefully into her purse and slid smiling out of the car and turned a little pirouette on the flagstone walk. She felt drunk, and not on the glass of wine she’d had earlier, but on something far headier.

  It was ridiculous, it was altogether scary, it was almost certainly immoral and illegal and probably fattening in some way she couldn’t yet fathom. Most of all, it was wonderful. For better or for worse, she was—still—head over heels in love with Jack McKenzie. And just at the moment, she couldn’t begin to imagine how she was going to deal with that truth. It was enough for now to have faced it, head on, without any pretense.

  She started up the walk, but halfway to the front door, she stopped abruptly, the hair on the nape of her neck rising. She had a sense of someone near, someone or something evil.

  She turned around in a circle, looking. The halogen lights made the front lawn as bright as day. There was no one to be seen, and yet the sense of a threatening presence remained.

  A stonewall and a row of citrus trees—a lemon, an orange, a grapefruit, neatly spaced—shielded the lawn from the street. There were shadows there among the trees, but no sign of any prowler lurking in them.

  Frightened, not knowing quite why, she hurried to the front door.

  * * * *

  In a seedy cottage a few miles away, Lester Paterson—Trash Can Paterson to those who knew him, though few of them were friends—woke abruptly, his eyes flying open.

  It was her, that woman again. He stared upward into the darkness. On the nearby sofa, J. D. Colley snored loudly.

  He knew her, he was certain he did. But who was she, and why was she popping into his mind this way, like a ghost? Not even into his mind, exactly, more like she was actually here, close by. He had a feeling that if he sat up and looked, he would see her across the room, the way he had that other time.

  Of one thing, he was certain: whoever she was, she was a threat to him. One that he had to eliminate.

  He needed to find her. Fast.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sunday morning dawned warm and sunny. Outside, the birds argued noisily over matters of territory and precedence. Catherine woke with a feeling of resolve. She had decided before she fell asleep last night that there were things that she must do, and first among those was one she had made up her mind she would not put off, the one she would do right away—before she got cold feet.

  She had determined to shed that wearisome past that had weighted her down for far too long now. Like the spoiled child who will eat nothing because he cannot have the apple pie he demands, she had cursed life because it was not what it had been before. Well, it wasn’t ever going to be. She had no idea what future lay hidden in the golden light from the window, but of one thing she was sure: she must make it for herself.

  The scent of fresh brewed coffee led her to the kitchen. As if she had never smelled it before, she marveled at the welcoming aroma. It was astonishing to contemplate how much of the pleasure of life was made up of those tiny sense impressions, too often not even consciously noted: the fleeting smell of coffee and a faintly lingering one of toast; a glimpse of some purple dyed bird outside the window, the faint insinuation of a car passing on the street outside. They made her feel alive again.

  Walter was in the kitchen, sipping coffee and nibbling at an English muffin while he read the morning paper. He nodded at her and went back to his reading. She waited until she had poured herself a cup of coffee before she interrupted him.

  “I’m going to leave,” she said without preamble. “Today.”

  His hand paused with the muffin halfway to his mouth, and he sniffed and looked up at her for
a long measuring moment. “You mean permanently?” She thought that was unusually perceptive of him. Yet, her announcement could hardly be unexpected, might even be welcomed.

  “Yes. I mean a divorce. I’m sorry. I don’t blame you any longer for what happened, and I know you have your own pain to bear. But it’s never going to be right again between us, Walter. Maybe it never was.”

  She had fretted much of the night over how he would take this news, and she held her breath while he regarded her solemnly. He was surely no happier in their current situation than she was, but sometimes pique ruled the day. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that though she had lived with him for more than a decade, she really did not know Walter at all.

  Finally, he sighed. “I won’t make any problems. However you want to arrange it. I’ll divorce you if you prefer. Take whatever you want. But you don’t have to leave, you know, I can move out and you can keep the house. Without you, without...it’s nothing to me.” He finally took that delayed bite of muffin.

  She shook her head and made an expansive gesture that took in the kitchen and beyond, the entire house. “No, I want to go. I don’t want to remain here. This place is too loaded with baggage. If I had been wise, I wouldn’t have come back here at all.”

  He chewed and looked around as if seeing for the first time the house they had lived in nearly all the years of their marriage. “Then we’ll sell it and split whatever we get. When will you....” he hesitated and swallowed. “Today, did you say?”

  “I don’t see any point in putting it off.”

  “No, you’re probably right. Have you found a place then?”

  “I’ll get a hotel room for now, just take a few personal items with me. The rest can go into storage till I have an apartment.”

  “Leave it here. I’ll stay till we get it sold, and when you’re ready, I’ll get your things moved. You can tell me what you want to keep and what to get rid of. Like I said, I won’t make any trouble. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  To her surprise, he returned his attention to his newspaper. She felt an odd sense of disappointment. Of course, she had hoped that he would take her announcement well. It was only that she hadn’t expected such studied disinterest.

  She turned to refill her coffee cup and glanced into the mirror over the sink. For a brief second, Walter had lowered the paper and his face was contorted with emotion: grief, certainly, despair—and something that she couldn’t read.

  It was so fierce it staggered her, literally. She took a step backward and turned to look at him, but whatever that expression had been, it was gone. The brief look he gave her was bland. He lifted the newspaper and she could no longer see his face.

  Had she imagined it? No, surely not. What then did it mean? Was he still too consumed with grief and guilt really to be rational? Which was to say, should she perhaps give him more time, stay and try to help him regain his equilibrium?

  Which was foolish, she knew that. She was only beginning to recover herself, and until she had fully accomplished that task, what good could she be at helping anyone else? Cliché though it might be, the blind really weren’t very helpful at leading the blind.

  Maybe she had imagined that fleeting look she had seen. Not imagined it altogether, but perhaps her own conflicting emotions had made more of it than had really been there.

  You are being a goose, she told herself; you ought to be thankful for his making things so easy. She managed a grateful smile. “I appreciate your being so reasonable, Walter, really I do. You’ve been kind. You’ve been a good husband in so many ways. I just....” She shrugged. “I just want to free myself of the past.”

  He looked up at her briefly, seemed on the verge of saying something and then, changing his mind, smiled wanly. It occurred to her that perhaps he knew of her love for Jack McKenzie, knew that Jack was a part of why she wanted a divorce. Maybe that explained that glimpse she had caught of some inner torment that he did not choose to share with her.

  She could do nothing to ease that pain for him, however. She had no idea if Jack still wanted her, would ever want her again the way he had before, but of one thing she was certain: he would never have her so long as she remained attached to someone else. Quite possibly not even then, but she had to try. She had thought that through clearly last night, lying in bed.

  Walter nodded again. “I understand,” he said.

  * * * *

  She went that same morning to The Sportsman’s Lodge on Ventura Boulevard. A long-standing institution by Los Angeles standards, The Lodge had been her Aunt Fanny’s favorite stopping over place. “Kate Smith always stays here when she’s in town,” she had said every visit, though so far as Catherine knew Aunt Fanny had never met the singer on their common stopping ground. Becky had liked it too, delighted especially by the swans that swam in the all too kitschy pond that one passed on the way in.

  She got a room overlooking the swans and by early afternoon had unpacked her single bag, had arranged a small pile of books by the nightstand and her laptop on the little table, and placed the single framed picture of Becky atop the dresser. She looked around at the cookie-cutter room and thought, wryly, “Home sweet home.”

  Only until she found an apartment. She had taken the room for a week, sure that in that time span she could find something that suited her. She wasn’t too particular, she needed nothing more than the basics: a reasonably functional kitchen—she wasn’t much of a cook—a bath, a bedroom and some place to sit down and prop up her feet.

  She had a late lunch in the Lodge’s dining room, glanced through rental listings in the Sunday Times, highlighting one or two, and went back to her room. She had brought An Almanac of the Paranormal with her and, kicking off her shoes, she turned again to the section on astral projection.

  That was another of last night’s resolutions: since it seemed she had somehow acquired this dubious gift, and since she was being prodded to use it, it behooved her to learn a little more about it and see if she could get any clearer on what it was she was supposed to do.

  The book, unfortunately, was big on generalities and short on specifics. Most of those who “projected” themselves did so in visible form, though others learned to do so invisibly. Few of them had any corporeal presence. Not physical themselves, they could not move objects nor did the people they visited feel their physical touch. Some, though, did find a way to “touch” people mentally, to make their presence felt.

  All very interesting, and clearly those were aspects of her “gift” she would need to work on. Unfortunately, the writer offered no instructions on how to do any of these things. She sighed and closed the book, putting it aside on the nightstand. She would have to find her own way, it seemed.

  She thought back over her previous experiences. Simply willing herself to go somewhere hadn’t worked. What had she done when she popped into Jack’s office? She had been just thinking about him, hadn’t she? Had seen him on the television screen, looked into his eyes, gone into his eyes in some sense.

  Visiting Jack was all well and good, of course, but that was too easy. There had always been a bond between them, a spiritual connection if you wanted to put it that way, but she had a notion that wasn’t why this ability had been presented to her.

  On the other hand, she didn’t exactly relish a visit to her two nemeses, though a part of her had begun to understand that this might well be the point of it all—but not, please, until she had gotten a better idea how to handle these “trips.” No more horrible scenes to witness unprepared. Especially, she did not want them to see her. She did not want, really, ever want to see that man’s eyes on her again.

  She thought of Walter. Yes, that would be safe, harmless. She could try making herself invisible and if he should see her, he would almost certainly think it a product of his imagination. Except that Walter was short on imagination.

  She closed her eyes, relaxing, and conjured up an image of their house, saw Walter’s face, familiar and yet in some ways ut
terly a stranger’s face—and as easily as that, found herself standing just inside the door of his home office.

  For a moment, she thought that he wasn’t there, that she had somehow alighted in the wrong spot. Then she saw him, kneeling on the floor beyond his desk. She looked past him and saw to her surprise an opening in the floor of the closet that she had not known was there, a cubbyhole. He was just putting something into it and, as she watched, he replaced the flooring and pulled the turned-back carpet into place over that.

  She remembered what she had just read: there, but not seen. All right, then, that was certainly what was needed for this situation. Only how did you...and discovered that it was far easier than she would have imagined. It was like dialing down the volume on the radio. She could feel herself fade, even as the room before her seemed to mist over. She still saw everything, but it was like seeing it through a veil of gauze.

  Make yourself felt? She had no clue how one did that either. She stared hard at the back of Walter’s head and mentally called his name.

  Suddenly he froze, cocking his head as if he had heard something. Or felt her standing behind him.

  “Catherine?” he called aloud and turned in her direction—and looked right through her. There was no indication in his expression that he had seen her at all. His puzzled gaze swept the room, came back to where she was standing, and went about the room once again.

  Jackpot, she thought triumphantly, and the next instant was back in her room at The Sportsman’s Lodge, her head throbbing. He hadn’t seen her, and of that she was glad. She hadn’t intended to spy on him. He had a right to his privacy, after all, and especially so now that she had abandoned the pretense of wifeliness.

  She couldn’t help wondering about that cubbyhole though, and what he had been hiding in it. Again she realized how little she knew the man with whom she had lived until today. Pornography? Drugs? Perhaps a cache of money and the makings of another identity? She had read of men who maintained marriages to two or sometimes more different women, different families and careers.