The Astral

by V. J. Banis

  In short, they did all the things that every other couple in love normally does in those initial weeks together. Of course, not every couple got to practice astral projection.

  “I do need to bone up on this,” she said. She was more determined than ever to master it, though she could not altogether shed her fear, either.

  “We’ll make a game of it, why don’t we?” Jack said. “You pop in whenever and wherever you like, and try to keep me from spotting you, and I’ll do my damndest to catch you at it.”

  Which was what they did. At first, he always caught at least a glimpse of her, though in all fairness, it was deliberate on one occasion, when she found him in conversation with the redhead from the hotel steps.

  “It was purely business,” he assured her afterward. “And thanks for not letting her see you, that would have been hard to explain.”

  By Friday, however, in the privacy of her office with the door closed, she projected herself into his office and stood for several minutes waiting for any sign that he saw her. When it became clear that he did not, she decided to brush up on yet another skill. She stood behind him and stared hard at the back of his head, willing him to telephone her.

  For a long while, it seemed that she would be unsuccessful. Then, abruptly, he turned from his word processor, cast a glance around the room without spotting her, and picked up the phone. She waited just long enough to see that he was dialing her number, and was back at her desk in time to take his call.

  “Tell me you didn’t see me,” she said when he came on the line.

  “Just now? No, not a glimpse, you just popped into my head all of a sudden and I thought I ought to phone...oh. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Hmm. I suppose it might be all right to know that you can drop by unseen whenever you wish, even, say when I might be taking a shower....”

  “Now there’s an idea.”

  “...But it’s kind of scary to think that a woman can just plant an idea in a man’s head whenever she chooses.”

  “Darling, women have been doing that since Eve looked up and saw a glimpse of red in an apple tree.”

  He laughed and she was grateful once again that he was self confident enough to be able to play this game with her.

  Except, it wasn’t exactly a game. Even now, traveling only to Jack, she was ever aware of that other presence. It seemed to hover just beyond the borders of her consciousness, Marley’s ghost, waiting to catch her off guard.

  But she did not mention that to Jack. He would tell her she was imagining it.

  Maybe she was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They ate together every night. On her night to “cook,” it was Chinese take-out at her place. “If you thought you were getting a kitchen wench in the bargain,” she told him, placing a container of cashew chicken on the table, “You made a bad deal. I can boil an egg and butter toast, and I make a hell of a pot of coffee and a great martini. After that, it’s take-out, darling.”

  More often, dinner was at Celestina’s. Young Sergio continued his clearly instinctive flirtation with Catherine, which they both took in stride.

  “It would be a bit more flattering,” she explained to Jack, “If I didn’t see him practice the same wiles on every female who comes into the place, age and figure notwithstanding.”

  Celestina made her special meals for them and beamed at them as proudly as if she had stage-managed the whole business herself.

  “So happy they are now,” she told Sergio. “Not like that first night, when they both looked scared to death.” At least, she thought, until they had eaten the beautiful meal she had cooked for them. It just proved what she had always known: a good dinner was the cure for most of life’s woes.

  “At this rate,” Catherine said, finishing off a dish of chicken parmagiana, “I shall be as fat as a cow. A mad cow, I assure you.”

  “I promise you lots of exercise later.” He gave her a lecherous wink.

  It was more than the food, though, that made this particular dinner special. They were just finishing their coffee when he came around the table and, kneeling on one knee, slipped a diamond engagement ring on her finger.

  “I wanted to make it official,” he said. “That is, if you’re still agreeable.”

  “Oh, darling, yes,” she told him, tears in her eyes.

  Celestina, already informed of Jack’s plan, beamed from the kitchen doorway as they kissed.

  * * * *

  After dinner, they drove into Beverly Hills for Christmas shopping. Rodeo Drive was crowded with chic shoppers, women in Donna Karen and Dior, men in Armani. Bored drivers leaned against waiting limos outside Saks and Neiman Marcus. Christmas trees and wreaths lined the streets and a band of carolers in Victorian costume fronted a crèche that might have graced an art museum and certainly bore little resemblance to the original manger of their song. “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful....” they serenaded the passersby in sweet harmony.

  Where the passersby were invited to come, apparently, were the high-end stores that beckoned at every hand, their windows glittering and flashing with every kind of luxury item imaginable. The neon lights that made the wet streets glisten highlighted satin and velvet as well and sparkled on jewels and perfumes in precious bottles.

  Catherine set cynicism aside and let herself enjoy the music, the mad rush, the fabulous displays, all presented to make the shopper feel she or he had to have this or that particular treasure to make the holiday complete.

  They were in Tiffany’s, shopping for something for Peter Weitman, when a voice behind them said, “Jack McKenzie, hello.”

  They turned, and there was the redhead from the Beverly Hills Hotel. She looked utterly chic, Catherine thought, in tight black pants with a faux leopard jacket. A Kelly green scarf tied prettily at her throat showed off her pale skin and auburn hair to its best advantage. At her feet a white poodle with a matching green bow in his hair strained at his leash to sniff Jack’s shoes.

  “Maurice, do behave,” Kitty scolded the poodle. She gave the leash a tug, and said brightly, “Isn’t Christmas the most fun?” She looked from one to the other of them, and at the sales clerk behind the counter, on the surface addressing the whole group, but it was clear to Catherine that she had singled Jack from the herd as if she were a champion sheepdog at the field trials and he an errant lamb.

  To his credit, the lamb feinted and tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed the bitch’s maneuver. “It certainly has been tonight,” he said.

  The sales clerk drifted tactfully away and Jack introduced the two women. On an impulse, Catherine shoved her hands into her pockets. It was tempting to show off her new ring, but better sense told her it was tasteless to flaunt one’s happiness, and tempted the fates as well. For all her stylishness, Kitty Fane did not have the look of a happy woman.

  Or, she chided herself, maybe I am just being mean. One could not indulge in sour grapes without leaving a bad taste in one’s mouth.

  “It’s so good to meet you,” Kitty said with a brittle smile.

  “And you as well.” Catherine wanted to mean it, but Kitty had already shifted her attention back to Jack, her smile infinitely warmer. “I hope you haven’t forgotten our rain check.”

  “I had, as a matter of fact,” he said. “I’ve been pretty occupied, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, it will keep.” Kitty smiled brightly, seemingly not at all discouraged by what Catherine would have taken for a polite brush off. “And the champagne’s still cold.” As was the glance she gave Catherine. “Do take good care of him, he is very special. To us at the studio, I mean.”

  “And to me as well,” Catherine said. “Goodbye now.”

  When they had left the store and were safely on the sidewalk outside, she said, “She’s very pretty,” and added in an almost inaudible voice, “for the type.”

  Jack found himself fascinated by a collection of ties in a passing shop window. He did, however, reach to clasp her hand in his, a
nd held it tightly when she would have pulled it away. As for Kitty Fane, she had a habit of making acid remarks about their fellow workers at the station. He had no doubt that his back would make an equally attractive target, now that it was turned.

  It wasn’t his back, however, but Catherine’s that Kitty was studying as she came out of Tiffany’s. She saw Jack take her hand. Someone special, then, she wondered? There had been no scuttlebutt, and office gossip more often than not was pretty sharp on that sort of thing. Theirs was a news office, after all.

  On the other hand, he had been sporting a schoolboy sort of excitement the past few days, like a man with a secret. She remembered a recent occasion when she had found an excuse to visit him at his desk and he had suddenly glanced over her shoulder with a chuckle that had made her look around.

  “Just remembering a joke,” was the explanation he gave, and certainly she had seen nothing that ought to have made him laugh. Thinking of his new lady friend, she pondered now?

  She looked at Catherine’s derriere with a critical eye. A little too fleshy for jeans, in Kitty’s opinion. Some women ought to pay more attention to what they put on. Though she supposed some men might like that full figured look.

  The poodle was making an enthusiastic inspection of a fire hydrant. “Don’t be vulgar,” she told him with a sharp tug at the leash. She started in the opposite direction from that taken by Jack and Catherine, but paused to glance at her reflection in Tiffany’s window. She preened a little, and was pleased with what she saw. No excess poundage on her anywhere. She was careful about that.

  The trouble was, men simply had no idea how hard a woman had to work to keep herself in tip-top shape. If they did, they would appreciate it more.

  She had been on her way home, but somehow her empty apartment seemed less appealing to her. Thaddeus Tremayne had said he “might” call later, but that prospect was too slim to cheer her any. Even if he did come by, it was unlikely to be an exciting interlude. The dynamo of the boardroom, as he was known, had turned out to be a dud in the bedroom. As that type so often did.

  When it came to sex, to sex for pure enjoyment and not as part of a business calculation, her taste ran more toward the working class: gardeners, garage mechanics, construction workers. Nothing too polished, too polite. Often when the sheets were down they turned into animals. Even a little roughness was exciting too, so long as she had the upper hand. You didn’t very often get that with the business suits.

  Her instincts had told her that Jack McKenzie was an exception and on that score her instincts were never wrong, but so far, he had given her no opportunity to prove them.

  She thought about a drink at the Polo Lounge to see what stars were out tonight. No, not the Polo Lounge—that sort of dingy place in Westwood, where the jocks from U.C.L.A. liked to hang out, that was more the mood she was in.

  Maurice shifted his attention to the trunk of a palm tree. “Come on,” she said impatiently.

  * * * *

  As if they both wanted to cement the shift in their relationship that the ring symbolized, they made love that night with a special intensity, a long, almost leisurely ballet of love that only in its final moments built to a frantic, bone-jarring crescendo that left them both spent and breathless. It seemed to her, impossibly, to be better each time.

  Later, they watched Casablanca on the bedroom television. At least, she watched Casablanca. He was more interested in looking at her. He had all but forgotten the nearly foot-long scar that ran up the inside of one thigh, relic of a young girl’s bicycle accident. Somehow, instead of diminishing her beauty, the scar that some men might see as a flaw was oddly endearing to him. Perfection was boring, wasn’t it? He wanted a woman who was real, not some airbrushed centerfold—and not a dumb blonde type, either. Some men might turn on to that sort, but he found intelligence sexy. He traced the faint white line of her scar lovingly, first with his finger, and then with his tongue.

  And somewhere between Paris and Morocco, Casablanca was forgotten.

  * * * *

  He woke during the night to find her sitting up in bed, arms clasped about her knees. She came easily into his arms when he reached for her. “Another bad dream?”

  “Not as bad as before. But I could feel him looking for me. It’s like he is searching through space, trying to pin me down. And I’m so afraid that sooner or later he’s going to find me.”

  He held her tight. He wanted to tell her he would protect her, but how did you protect someone from a phantasm? Particularly one that might only be in her mind. He chided himself for his disloyalty, but he could not rid himself of a suspicion that Catherine phantoms were a means of consoling herself.

  Of one thing, he was certain: there was something more at play here than mere vengeance, something he could not yet put a name to. Even when she had gone back to sleep, resting comfortably in his arms, he found himself staring up at the ceiling, trying to understand the unease that nagged at him.

  * * * *

  On Saturday morning, she took Jack with her to Becky’s grave. He was the first person with whom she had shared that particular pilgrimage, something he seemed to understand tacitly and respect. It was amazing, she thought, how quickly and easily they had slipped back into the old rapport, things as often as not needing no explaining. Except, sadly, for that one area....

  They said almost nothing at the gravesite. He stood patiently while she removed a few weeds and arranged fresh flowers around the headstone: yellow and purple glads, white mums—and some carnations dyed a hideous blue, like nothing in nature. They puzzled him, they were so unlike Catherine’s usually impeccable taste, but he kept his questions to himself.

  When she was satisfied with the result, she rose and he put one arm around her to hold her close and gave her all the time she needed in silent contemplation.

  “She liked flowers, the more colorful the better,” she said.

  “I wish,” he began and stopped himself. “I shouldn’t say it, I think.”

  “You wish you had known her?”

  “I wish she had been mine,” he surprised her by saying.

  Her eyes filled with tears, the gold and white and purple of the flowers blurring into a rainbow haze. She hugged him tightly. “Oh, Jack,” she said in a voice that threatened to break. “So do I, my darling. So do I.”

  She shivered suddenly, and looked over her shoulder with frightened eyes.

  “Something?” he asked. He had begun to recognize that frightened gesture.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen: a funeral service just emptying from one of the chapels down the hill, mourners collecting in little puddles around shiny cars.

  “Someone walking on my grave, I guess,” she said, and shivered again.

  He had again that worrisome sense of some doom pending, like taunting ghosts gathering around them. “The air’s gotten cool,” he said, taking her arm and steering her toward the Porsche.

  She hated the thought of hurrying away from Becky’s grave, but a dark cloud seemed to have descended upon her. She glanced up at the sky, and was surprised to see that it was still clear and blue.

  * * * *

  “But what are we doing here, Trash?” Colley asked, steering the van slowly up the winding drive of Forest Lawn Memorial Park. “How are we going to find any kids in a cemetery?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just something I felt. Pull over,” Paterson said, indicating a parking area next to a chapel. The doors of the chapel swung open as they parked and a group of mourners began to file out.

  Paterson and Colley sat in silence, watching. A young girl appeared, grown men on either side of her. Father? Uncle? Brothers? She was pretty, as near as they could tell from the distance, thirteen, maybe fourteen, with that air peculiar to adolescent girls, veering from graceful to awkward and back again in the space of a heartbeat.

  “We’d never get ahold of her and get out of here,” Colley said.

  Paterson opened the glove box, revealing the
gun inside. His fingers itched to pick it up. He had an urge to, he wasn’t sure what, to start shooting, somebody. Something. Why were they here? He had felt this hunch while they were on the freeway, and followed it blindly until it had led them into the cemetery, but now they were actually here, he had no clue what or who he was looking for.

  He glanced around. There was nobody else to be seen: just the group from the chapel and up the hill there, a silver Porsche. As he looked, it began to move, disappearing around a curve of the driveway that would take it to the exit.

  The mourners were getting into limousines and cars, a black-suited man directing traffic. The girl had disappeared. Colley was right: it would be suicide to try anything in this crowd, in broad daylight, and no quick way to escape. Anyway, whatever instinct had guided him to this place had faded into nothing. That tingling sensation he sometimes got was gone.

  He slammed the glove box door shut. “Let’s go,” he said. “There ain’t anything here for us.”

  But there had been. He was sure of it.

  * * * *

  Without asking, Jack drove from Forest Lawn to San Marino, to the Huntington Museum, one of their favorite spots in the long ago past. Catherine had always considered the Huntington a gem. Unlike, say, Hearst Castle, which was, if one were frank, a showing-off place, the Huntington had clearly been designed as a home, in which one could actually imagine living, if on an admittedly grand scale.

  There was the main art gallery too, with Pinky (“Too precious,” she had pronounced it) and Blue Boy (better, “But he’s an arrogant little brat, isn’t he?” Jack opined) and Catherine’s favorite, Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse, all browns and golds and velvet folds that begged you to reach and touch them. The famous actress in her over-dramatic and wonderfully self-absorbed pose was, as Catherine had once put it, an olden and artful version of the vanity license plate.