Marina remembered the lumberjack shirt, how he didn’t blend in at all in these surroundings. “Where are you from?” she said, knowing that as a psychic she shouldn’t have to ask. But Gideon didn’t seem to be bothered by this. Instead, he hesitated to give her an answer. For the first time, his eyes left hers for a moment, darting up and to the left.
“I’m from Texas,” he said, and Marina knew he was lying, the first tiny bit of information she’d been sure of since she’d met him.
“Big place, Texas,” she said. “Lots of room to lose something.”
“Sure is,” he said. Then the two of them sat in silence for much longer than was comfortable. Gideon stared at her, his steady gaze holding just the shadow of a question and little else that she could define.
“Listen,” he said, finally breaking the thick wall of tension between them, “I think we got started on the wrong foot here and it’s my fault. Maybe I’m not ready for this.” Marina waited for him to go on—clearly, he had more to say—but he held his tongue and looked down into her table as if the mysteries of the universe could be found in its faux wood grain.
“So…you don’t want a reading?” It came out sounding much harsher than she’d intended it to. She didn’t want him to leave, Marina realized, and that threw her completely off kilter.
“I do.” He looked up from the table and directly into her eyes. “Or, I did.” He faltered, unable to decide on a course of action. Marina couldn’t tell what the options were, but his equivocation couldn’t have been clearer if he’d had a cartoon angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I guess I don’t want a reading. At least not right now.”
He reached over again and put his hand on hers once more. Whether this was to punctuate his apology or just a reflex, Marina couldn’t tell, but she didn’t have a chance to figure it out, because she was suddenly startled by a movement behind him. She looked up and for a split second was sure she saw a woman walking into the small bathroom at the back of the office. Marina jumped up out of her seat, knocking into the table. Alarmed, Gideon stood up.
“What is it?”
“I—Just a minute—” Marina couldn’t explain it. She walked the short distance to the bathroom and opened the door. There was nobody inside, of course. Nor was the exit door open or unlocked.
“Is something wrong?” Gideon was now standing close beside her, an expression of concern on his face.
“Kind of silly,” Marina said. “I thought I heard something back here.” She hadn’t consciously substituted heard for saw, but she knew why she’d done it. Hearing things that weren’t there was always more explainable than seeing things that didn’t exist.
“Someone knocking at the door?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Nobody comes in this way. It was nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, absolutely.” Marina turned and walked back to her table with Gideon following. The two of them stood there for a moment in an awkward silence. There was no reading to resume and therefore nothing else to say. Marina’s professional exterior had slipped and she struggled to pull it back.
“Listen,” Gideon said. “Can we…I’d really like to talk to you, Marina. Would it be…?” He was going to ask her out, Marina thought, and she was both surprised that he was taking this sudden turn and disturbed that she wanted him to. “Would it be totally out of line to ask you if we could talk somewhere else? I think I’ve been rude and I’d like to make that up to you. What I mean is, I’m wondering if you’d join me for lunch—or dinner. Or drinks. I don’t know, something involving food and beverages. What do you think?”
Marina allowed herself only the slightest hesitation. “I think that would be all right,” she said.
“Well, that’s great,” he said, and his whole body seemed to relax into a smile. “How do you feel about Chinese food?”
And that was how they had ended up at Lucky, which was tiny and tacky-looking, but known for the high quality and authenticity of its food. At the end of the meal, Gideon had offered her the choice of two fortune cookies on a small square tray. Marina had taken hers and held onto it while Gideon opened his and broke the sweet hard crust neatly in half. His cookie was empty, and he laughed at what that could mean—out to dinner with a psychic and no fortune in your cookie. Then Marina opened hers and pulled out two small strips of paper, a double fortune.
“Looks like you’re in luck,” she told him. “I have enough for both of us.”
And maybe it was luck that he’d lost, Marina thought, because after that moment, neither of them mentioned what he’d come looking for again.
Marina sat up in bed and stared at the outlines of her bedroom. What would their fortunes offer tonight? she wondered. The air was cold on her sleep-warmed body, but she was too lethargic to even pull the blankets up over her exposed arms and chest. It took a long time for her to get moving in the morning these days, and she knew the reason lay in several half-opened blister packs on her bedside table. For the last month, Marina had been sampling a variety of sleeping pills in an effort to turn off the nightly film festival that now made up her dreams. It wasn’t just the one repeating dream any longer; her unconscious was now teeming with wild, colorful panoramas. The dreams made her edgy not because they were frightening but because she had no control over them. Marina hated feeling out of control about anything. But the pills did nothing to stop the dreams, no matter how many or what kind she swallowed each night. What they did do, magnificently, was make her groggy and slow from morning until afternoon. She felt more alert when she was sleeping, Marina realized as she slid out from under the warmth of her covers and shivered.
Gathering the pill packets in her hand, Marina decided that it was time to stop. She wouldn’t throw them away—you never knew when you might need them for real insomnia—but she couldn’t afford to spend her days in a state of wooziness anymore. Marina walked unsteadily into her bathroom and stuffed the packets into her medicine cabinet. Her eyes felt as if they were full of sand and her legs were stiff and heavy. And it was cold. The weather was all anyone could talk about lately. The temperature had dipped below freezing in southern California and the oranges were dying in the groves despite the burning peach-pit fires set to keep them warm. Marina felt the chill. It was going to take a very long, very hot shower and at least two cups of strong coffee to wake her body up enough to keep pace with her mind. There was more on her schedule today than Gideon, even if all her mooning and dreaming indicated otherwise.
For one thing, she needed to do something about the crank calls and hang-ups she’d been receiving for the past few weeks. She’d ignored them at first—the “bitch” messages left on her voice mail and the heavy breathing followed by dial tones—chalking them up to kids playing games or stray perverts who’d gotten bored with Internet porn. But they hadn’t stopped, and it was starting to make her anxious. The most obvious solution would be to change her phone number, but she hadn’t yet figured out how to do that without calling every one of her clients to let them know—something that would arouse suspicion at best and turn people away at worst. It just wouldn’t look good. She’d call the phone company, Marina decided, and see what they could recommend.
More important than the phone, however, Marina’s clients needed tending to—especially those regulars who had been more demanding than usual lately. They were like children, Marina thought. As soon as Mommy diverted her attention even a little, they started clamoring, Look at me, look at me.
Madeline was the only one whom Marina felt even remotely responsible for, even though she couldn’t be blamed for doing anything wrong—the woman had clearly caused her own miscarriage. Marina grimaced, remembering the scene outside her office a few weeks earlier.
“I should call my doctor,” Madeline had said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” She was covered in blood from the waist down, Marina remembered, and her face was so pale. She was obviously going into shock. Still, in al
l the commotion of getting her inside and calling for an ambulance, Marina saw how venomously Madeline seemed to be staring at Gideon, who had arrived just a few minutes before she had. Where, in all the horror of losing the baby she had tried so hard to conceive and carry, had Madeline found the presence of mind to even notice that Gideon was there? It was just a moment—just a flash across Madeline’s exhausted face—but it had chilled Marina.
It was a good thing Gideon had been there, actually. While Marina spoke soothingly to Madeline, holding her hand and looking deeply into her eyes to give her a focus point, Gideon called the ambulance. He was so quiet and efficient about it that Marina didn’t even hear him make the call. The ambulance was just there suddenly and then Madeline was gone. Gideon had something to do with that, too. He managed to take control, get her out of there quickly, before anyone could stop to look and start asking questions. Marina supposed she owed Gideon for that, although it wasn’t exactly a sense of obligation that drew her to him.
Marina had been expecting to receive a call from Madeline soon after that and had prepared the response she’d crafted as soon as Madeline had been ordered to bed rest. It wasn’t all bullshit, either. Anyone who had half a brain could see how conflicted Madeline was over having this baby in the first place. All Marina had to do was to frame that observation in a psychic context for Madeline. It wouldn’t work for Andrew, however, who was absolutely not conflicted about having a baby and who was the one who called her, angry, bitter and threatening.
“I knew you were trouble the minute I laid eyes on you,” he’d said, his words slurry from alcohol. He was the most unpleasant kind of drunk (and a full-blown alcoholic, she could tell): quiet and mean. She gave him a wide berth, let him carry on as far as his angry line would take him, only occasionally interjecting how sorry she was for both of them and that she hoped Madeline was feeling all right.
Marina knew that she was an easy target for Andrew’s anger. His wife had left the house against doctor’s orders to see her, after all, someone he’d never approved of in the first place. Marina was a handy and obvious choice for blame, but she could have been anyone who’d played the same role for Madeline. At least this was what Marina told herself. What she didn’t want to admit was that Andrew’s tightly controlled rage was so charged that it frightened her. He finally finished his tirade by telling Marina, “I can tell you one thing: it’s over with you. You won’t come into my house again. And I won’t be giving her any money to come see you, either. I know how you people operate—you don’t do anything for free, do you? Let’s see what a…friend you are to her without a steady flow of cash.” He didn’t wait for a response before hanging up.
The call from Madeline herself hadn’t come until Christmas. She’d held out longer than Marina had expected.
“Andrew’s out,” Madeline had said into Marina’s voice mail. “We have a tree the size of the Empire State Building in this house. You can’t imagine what it’s like here. There are all these presents for the baby. He said he didn’t know what to do with them, but I think he’s just leaving them out to torture me. He blames me for everything. We need to talk, Marina. I know it’s Christmas, but…I have something for you—a present. And I want to…I’ll try you again another time. Maybe we could have coffee. I can meet you somewhere.” There was a long pause. Marina could hear the sound of Madeline breathing and the light tinkle of wind chimes in the background. “I could meet you at Darling’s,” Madeline added finally, “if that’s okay. Anyway, I really think we should talk. Merry Christmas, Marina.”
When Madeline called a second time, Marina kept the conversation short. Darling’s would be fine, she told Madeline, and they settled on a date—today. The conspiratorial tone and abbreviated length of the phone call made Marina feel as if she was planning an adulterous tryst. Perhaps, in a way, that was exactly what it was. Her relationship with Madeline had become very complicated. She felt some sympathy for the woman and that twinge of obligation, but the smart thing to do now was back out. Marina didn’t have a strategy in place for how she was going to accomplish this, but planned to take her lead from Madeline. She was glad they were meeting at Darling’s instead of the confined and too-private space of her office. But Madeline wasn’t the only potentially unbalanced woman she had to deal with today.
Cassie, Eddie Perkins’s paramour, was now also on Marina’s client roster and was scheduled for an afternoon reading. In Marina’s own set of business ethics, it was bad practice to have lovers or spouses as separate clients. Nor did she like to do readings for couples, because they inevitably turned into couples’ counseling. Were it not for the fact that she’d already bounced Eddie as a client when Cassie came along, she wouldn’t have agreed to read for her at all. Not that Cassie was forthcoming about her relationship with Eddie. She’d presented herself as a first-time client, assuming or maybe hoping that Marina wouldn’t remember her from Madeline’s party. But if there was one thing that defined Marina’s powers of observation, it was her ability to remember a face. Cassie’s had become more plush and pouty since Marina had first seen it, but it was instantly recognizable. And that added pout had everything to do with Eddie, Marina thought. Eddie—what a nuisance he was. Marina couldn’t understand Cassie’s lovelorn attraction at all. He’d stopped coming around finally, which was a tremendous relief. Gideon had had a hand in that one, too, Marina realized, although again in the most unobtrusive way. He’d just sort of happened to be there the last time Eddie had dropped by unannounced and had just sort of happened to scare Eddie off without saying or doing anything that could be construed as threatening.
“You must get this kind of thing a lot,” Gideon had said after Eddie’s “visit.”
“What kind of thing is that?”
“People coming around, wanting…” Gideon had trailed off awkwardly. Marina tried to figure out whether he was talking about needy clients or men who wanted to date her. Either way, there was a parallel to his own motivations.
“Eddie sees himself as a ladies’ man,” Marina said. “He isn’t used to being turned down. I’m not going to date him, so that makes me more interesting. But no, this kind of thing doesn’t happen to me very often.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you just haven’t noticed it. I don’t like that there are people—men—hanging around here. You’re out in the open. A target.”
“That’s sweet of you,” she said. “But I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
“But you have to be careful,” Gideon said. “You never know when—”
“We all have to be careful,” Marina said, and that was the end of the conversation.
Chapter 16
Careful. Marina rolled the word around in her head as she turned on her shower and waited for the water to heat up. People told you to take care when they were wishing you well. But care was not something Marina was taking when it came to Gideon. She shook out her hair—too long and wild now and badly in need of a cut—and stood directly under the pounding water, feeling the heat soak into her skin as her bathroom filled with steam. Hand at her throat, Marina realized that she’d forgotten to take off her ring and chain as she always did in the shower. Just one more indicator of how distracted she’d become. She closed her eyes and a visual echo of her dream flashed before her—the dark sky and bright stars, running, the rocks under her feet—before dissolving into an image of Gideon’s face. Marina let her consciousness stay there, lingering on his features.
If their meal at Lucky couldn’t be considered a date, there was no question about the second time they saw each other. He arrived at her office that afternoon carrying a bottle of amarone, an Italian red wine that he said was “made from raisins,” and asked if she’d like to drink it on the beach. Spontaneity had never been one of Marina’s strong suits, so she surprised herself by telling Gideon that it sounded like a great idea. They drove south down the Coast Highway until they came to a particularly beautiful stretch of beach just past the town
of Del Mar, and parked at the edge of the sand.
“I suppose I should have mentioned,” Marina said then, “that we’re not allowed to have alcohol or glass on the beach. They’re pretty particular about that kind of thing around here.”
“Well,” he said, producing a corkscrew and two plastic cups, “I suppose we’ll have to have a toast in the car first, then.”
Marina rarely drank and limited the amount when she did. She’d spent an entire childhood with out-of-control addicts and would never allow herself to become one of them. But even she had to admit that sometimes alcohol just made things easier. Alone together in Gideon’s truck and out of small talk, they needed the wine until they could relax enough to move on to whatever was going to come next. And there was some push and pull in their conversation. Marina wanted to know more about him, but she’d so thoroughly trained herself to learn through observation that she found it difficult to ask him direct questions about what he did, where he’d come from and why he’d wound up here. Gideon had no such reservations and wasn’t afraid to ask her how she’d started working as a psychic, how long she’d been living in California (“Seems like everyone who lives here came from somewhere else,” he mused) and what her clients were like. This was where the wine was especially useful for Marina, enabling her to loosen up enough to deflect his questions without seeming like she had anything to hide. “I can’t talk about my clients,” she told him. “It’s the same as if I were a lawyer or a doctor, only my tools are a little different. Tarot cards instead of prescriptions and briefs.”
He’d laughed at that, even though she sensed some irritation or impatience beneath the surface, and asked her if she could talk about those tools. So Marina found herself telling him about the symbolism of tarot cards and how they tied into astrology, which went back to the beginning of civilization. She talked about the significance of birth times and the influence of planets. He listened, drank his wine and smiled without condescension.
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