The Grift

by Debra Ginsberg

  “It’s nice to see you, Rosa.”

  “Cómo estás, Marina? It’s so hot outside. Nice in here.” Rosa hesitated and then offered the bag of pastries to Marina. “I bring for you,” she said.

  “We’ll put them in the kitchen,” Marina said.

  Marina could sense Rosa’s anticipation edging into impatience as she settled herself at the kitchen table, waiting for Marina to pour two cups of hibiscus tea from the carafe.

  “Marina,” Rosa began, but she held herself back out of politeness, Marina knew, and respect. Marina took a sip of tea and looked at Rosa, allowing her eyes to soften their focus and her thoughts to still. She waited. After a few moments the girl appeared, as if she had just walked into the room, and stood behind her mother. Her hands rested lightly on Rosa’s shoulders.

  “Es Luz?” Rosa asked. “Está aquí?”

  “Yes,” Marina said. “She’s here.”

  Luz—at least the version of Luz that Marina was seeing—smiled and tilted her head to the side. Rosa came regularly, but the girl didn’t always make an appearance. Marina knew that Rosa lived for these moments of communication with Luz and was always disappointed when Marina couldn’t see her. It was her unquestioning faith that had driven Rosa to find Marina soon after the fire—showing up at her door, her hands folded, pleading. “You saw my daughter,” Rosa said. “I need to talk to her. Please, please, don’t send me away.”

  Marina let her in, never asking how Rosa had managed to find her. In the scheme of things, that detail just didn’t seem very important. Nor did Marina question the immediate ease she felt with Rosa or their ability to communicate using few words. Rosa needed no proof of Marina’s gift, nor did she try to test it as so many of Marina’s previous clients had. Rosa operated on faith and intuition, both of which were deep and strong. She knew, for example, that Marina was pregnant before she began to show. She brought special teas and juices for “la pequeña,” along with fruits and pastries. Marina never asked Rosa for money, but sometimes she’d find a ten-or twenty-dollar bill folded into a napkin in her white paper pastry bag. Marina knew that Rosa probably gave her more than she could afford, but out of the same respect Rosa had for her, she never tried to give any of the donations back.

  Soon after her first visit to Marina’s house, Rosa began referring friends and relatives for readings. That small group had started referring their friends and relatives, and Marina was now building a brand-new client base of people who would never have been able to afford her services before. They worked hard and bought lottery tickets on Saturdays. Some of them went to church and all of them prayed. They were superstitious and worried about the weather. They clipped coupons and bought what was on sale. There were no Madelines among them and no Coopers. They were all scraping to get by, and not one of them had time to be bored or disaffected. The biggest difference, though, was that Marina’s new clients came to her ready to hear whatever it was she could tell them—not what they wanted her to say.

  Sometimes Marina could tell them very little and sometimes she received so much information that she couldn’t differentiate between what was important and what was just noise and interference. But this didn’t seem to bother any of her new clients, who accepted whatever she could tell them and were thankful for it. Marina knew that their faith and acceptance made them targets for charlatans of all kinds. As with Rosa, Marina took whatever form of payment her new clients were able to give her. Sometimes that came in the form of small bills, but more often she received food, services, even furniture. Thanks to Victor, a mechanic, she wouldn’t ever have to worry about paying to have her car serviced. Linda, whose husband was a carpenter, had given her a beautiful, intricately carved rocking chair. Sarah, who sold crafts at street fairs, had given her a large moon-faced clock that glowed softly in the dark.

  Marina was grateful for all of it, but it was only going to go so far. She tried not to think about what would happen once her retirement nest egg, which she was now living on, was depleted. And none of her new psychic abilities would tell her what would happen once the baby came. She was going to have to wait until the answer became clearer or try harder to uncover it—just as she was now doing with Luz, who had stopped smiling and stroking her mother’s shoulders and was trying to speak.

  “Dónde está Luz?” Rosa said. “Can you see her?”

  “Yes,” Marina said. “I see her.”

  “What is she doing?” Rosa asked. “What does she say?”

  Marina focused all her attention on Luz. She was wearing a white, gauzy dress with red and pink embroidered roses at the neck and hemline, and her long dark hair, so much like her mother’s, flowed loose over her shoulder. Luz plucked at the shoulder of her dress and pointed to Marina and then her mother.

  “She wants me to tell you about her dress,” Marina said. “It’s white with roses sewn onto it. I haven’t seen her wear this before.” Marina didn’t tell Rosa that Luz was usually dressed in the hospital gown she’d died in.

  Rosa clasped her hands and pressed them against her mouth. Her eyes filled with quick tears. “That is the dress we bury her in,” she said.

  Luz leaned over her mother, putting her arms around Rosa’s shoulders. “She’s right with you,” Marina said. “She doesn’t want you to be sad.” Luz’s presence was so strong that Rosa began to pat her own shoulder as if she could literally feel the girl’s hand there. In a way, Marina supposed, she could. Luz raised her head and looked into Marina’s eyes. Marina heard the voice inside her head.

  Tell her she did everything she could. Tell her she is a wonderful mother. Tell her I love her.

  Rosa held her face tight while Marina relayed her daughter’s words, but she couldn’t stop the small, fierce sobs that escaped from deep within her chest. Luz nodded at Marina and raised her hands, palms up. This time there were no words, but Marina understood exactly what Luz wanted her mother to know.

  “Rosa,” she said softly, “Luz needs me to tell you…She says…She’s ready to move on. She needs you to let her go.”

  Marina’s voice sounded wrong to her own ears. Her tone was too cold, her words too saccharine and clichéd, like a drugstore greeting card. Luz was communicating without language—as if she were speaking in shapes or colors. It was beautiful, and Marina was frustrated that she lacked the ability to show it to Rosa. She bit her lip and tried again. “It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “It’s better for you—and for her. And you don’t have to forget her.”

  For a moment Rosa didn’t respond, and Marina worried that she had caused Rosa to feel the loss of her daughter all over again. Luz stood to the side of her mother now, easing her way out of the room. She wouldn’t be coming back again. Marina was about to speak, to reach for words of comfort, when Rosa lifted her head and took Marina’s hands in hers.

  “I understand,” she said. “Gracias, Marina. Thank you so much.”

  Chapter 30

  Sudden exhaustion, Marina was learning, was a side effect of her gift. Of all the changes, this was proving to be one of the most difficult to adjust to. There were times when she felt almost literally knocked out and had to sleep in the middle of the day. She might have attributed this to her pregnancy, but it wasn’t physical fatigue she felt. After her readings, especially when she was communicating with the dead, Marina found herself drained and light-headed, as if her life force had been drawn out of her body.

  Her last session with Rosa had been particularly intense. Marina was so tired afterward that she just passed out sitting in her rocking chair. Sleep was fierce, dreamless and so deep she could barely rouse herself when she heard persistent knocking on her door. Feeling as if she was underwater, Marina made her way to the door on unsteady legs. There was more knocking and then, “Ms. Marks? Ms. Marks, are you there? Police officer. Please open the door.”

  Marina froze, her senses suddenly alert and buzzing. She opened the door partway and peered through the crack, seeing a bit of blue jacket and tan slacks. Plainclothes, she
thought, but her intuition was giving her nothing else.

  “Marina Marks?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Franks. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Can I come in, please?”

  The “please” was perfunctory and meaningless, and served to make the question sound even more like the command that it was.

  “Can I see your badge?” It was something people said often enough in the movies that it had become an accepted response, so Marina threw it out to buy some time. The truth was that she was still woozy enough that she wasn’t sure whether or not Detective Franks was a flesh-and-blood presence or a spectral vision. If he showed her his badge, she could touch it and make sure it was real.

  The detective sighed, annoyed, but reached into an unseen pocket and pulled out a wallet and badge and thrust it through the doorway. Marina didn’t look at it, just ran her fingers quickly across its surface. Solid—and warm. She opened the door.

  “Come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  Detective Franks was tall and heavyset and had graying blond hair cut in a style that was too boyish for him. Marina felt a wave of embarrassment and her cheeks flushed red. She put her hands to her face, confused, trying to hide…

  “Something wrong?”

  Detective Franks had narrowed his eyes and was looking at her with suspicion. It was his embarrassment she was feeling, Marina realized. He’d had very bad acne for years—she could see the scars now—and the pain of it was still real and fresh enough to be a dominant part of his personality. Marina feinted badly, mumbling something about its being hot. She asked him if he wanted a glass of water. He didn’t.

  “But why not?” Marina asked. “You’re thirsty.” She dug her fingernails into her palm. She had to learn not to keep stating what was obvious to her and wondered if she would ever be able to stop playing catch-up with her own intuitions. “I mean, you must be thirsty. It’s so hot.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked, and he didn’t wait for a response, just parked himself on Marina’s faded green love seat. He pulled a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket and made a notation. It was for show, Marina knew. He was dysgraphic, unable to write legibly. He’d been covering it for years, developing his own shorthand.

  “This is a nice neighborhood,” he said. “I haven’t spent much time up here. Cute little houses. Probably cost a fortune, though, right? Out of my price range.” He gave her a narrow, closed smile. She couldn’t tell if his small talk warranted a response.

  Marina realized she was still standing. Detective Franks was so much taller that it still seemed he was looking down on her even though he was seated. She sat down in the rocking chair and waited for him to continue.

  “How long have you lived here, Ms. Marks?”

  “Almost two years. You can call me Marina.”

  “Marina.” He smiled again, a tight curving of his lips. “You live in the right place for a name like that, huh? With the ocean and everything. Were you born on a boat?”

  “It’s a Russian name. My grandmother was Russian. At least that’s what my mother told me.”

  “Huh. Russian.”

  Detective Franks made a few scribbles in his pad. He was thinking about the fire, formulating the words he was going to use to ask her what she knew. He had information—she could see it twist like a worm in the corner of his brain—and he was trying to figure out how to use it for maximum impact.

  “You said you had some questions for me?”

  “I do. As I’m sure you know, we’ve had an ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fire on—”

  “Yes,” Marina said too anxiously. “Have you found out who—how the fire started?”

  “As you also know,” Detective Franks continued, “this is not just an arson investigation but a homicide investigation. There was a victim.”

  “Yes,” Marina said. “I know.”

  Detective Franks observed Marina carefully. He was watching her for clues, for tells. He was taking in the way she folded her hands, the direction her eyes moved, whether there was sweat forming on the top of her lip. She watched him watch her, observed the way he tried to look into the core of her being and pull out the truth. It was exactly what she would have done with him had he come for a reading six months ago. For a moment, Marina was jealous. She would never be able to return to that mode of operation and she missed it with an almost physical ache.

  “The body was very badly burned,” he continued, “which made identification very difficult. Especially when nobody was reported missing. Or was seen in the area around the time of the fire. There was no ID on the body. No vehicle.”

  Marina said nothing, but continued to watch him. There was a shimmer in the air around him and she had to close her eyes for a moment to refocus. When she opened them, Mrs. Golden was sitting next to Detective Franks on the love seat, her hand pressed against her neck at the empty place where her ring had hung. Marina shifted her gaze to Detective Franks and tried very hard to keep it there.

  “You make your living as a psychic, is that right, Marina?”

  “I don’t…That was my office that burned, Detective Franks. I haven’t made much of a living at all since then.”

  “But you are a psychic?”

  “Yes,” Marina said. It sounded like a confession. “I’ve told the police this before. A few times.”

  “Must be a tough business.”

  He didn’t know the half of it, Marina thought. “How do you mean?” she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mrs. Golden tapping at her neck with her index finger and then pointing at the detective.

  “Well, I imagine that people come to you wanting things like the winning lottery numbers and that sort of thing. Don’t they? Must be difficult if you can’t give it to them.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Marina said. It was a line, the mantra of psychics everywhere, which she’d used even before she knew it to be true. It fell from her lips automatically.

  “How does it work?”

  “It’s a gift,” Marina said. She could see Mrs. Golden frowning. “Like any gift, you receive what you’re given. You don’t really get to choose what comes in.”

  “Still,” he said, “I’d guess people might get upset if your gift doesn’t live up to their expectations. Especially if they’re paying for it. Of course, some people will believe anything you tell them. But I think others might feel, I don’t know, ripped off. What do you do when that happens? How would you make it right?”

  He needs to trust you.

  Marina heard the words inside her head. She glanced quickly at Mrs. Golden, who was once again tapping at her neck, and back to Detective Franks, who was now leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Why wouldn’t the old woman speak?

  “It sounds as if you’ve had a bad experience with psychics, Detective.”

  “Well, I suppose you’d know, wouldn’t you?” He straightened up and placed his pad and pen on the coffee table. Marina saw his next statement before he spoke it, the words falling like black rain from the top of his head to his mouth and out into the room.

  “We’ve identified the body,” he said. “His name is—was—Gideon Black. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  It wasn’t a surprise. Of course, Marina had known all along. But until that moment she hadn’t realized how tenaciously she’d been hanging onto the hope that he was alive. Now the physical evidence of Gideon’s death came as such a shock to her that it literally took her breath away and she found herself gasping. Her reaction was so intense that it never occurred to Marina to tell anything but the truth.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice shaky, “I know him. He was my…I knew him.”

  “He was your what?” Detective Franks leaned forward again, his mouth snapping over the question as if he were a hungry fish reaching for food at the top of a tank.

  “We were…romantically involved. Briefly.” Marina felt a fluttery kick from
deep inside.

  Detective Franks raised his eyebrows, whether in surprise or judgment, Marina couldn’t tell. For a few moments he sat very still and just watched her for reaction. It was an old method; say nothing and wait for them to talk. Eventually, they would fill the space just to avoid the silence. But Marina knew enough to avoid this trap and had no fear of silence. He’d have to work for his information.

  “He was your boyfriend,” Detective Franks said finally. “You were in a relationship with this man.”

  “Like I said, it was brief.”

  “How brief?”

  “I don’t know…” Marina struggled for some kind of vision and came up empty. Even Mrs. Golden seemed to be fading into a collection of misty particles on the love seat beside the detective.

  “When was the last time you saw Gideon Black?” He was getting impatient. The questions were going to come faster now and they would be more difficult to answer.

  “It was…” A fleeting spark of her dream lit up behind Marina’s eyes. Gideon walking. A flash of light. Fire. The ring. Take it now. “I haven’t seen him for a long time. I think it was…the beginning of the year. January. I think it was January.”

  “January?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure about that, Ms. Marks?”

  “I don’t know the exact day in January, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. What I’d like to know is why, if the last time you saw Gideon Black was in January, he came to be in your office on the night of March fifteenth? I’m also a little confused as to why you never informed us that Mr. Black was missing.”

  “I didn’t know!” Marina said sharply. “I don’t understand it. He left—he was gone. I hadn’t seen him. I don’t know why he was there.”