by Lee Nichols
“I’ll pay, of course. One hundred an hour. Does that sound fair?”
—psychic. Dollar signs explode before my eyes and keep me from saying the word aloud. I hear Carlos whispering into my ear with his Latino accent: Take the money, Elle. Take it and run.
I’m a fraud. What will I say to her—for an hour? What if it’s all wrong and she sues me? What if 60 Minutes does a feature on psychic scams, and features me? What if…what if I’m forced to move to Sedona and live with my mother because I can’t afford rent? What if I can’t take care of Miu Miu because I don’t have any money?
I smile. “One hundred is fine. Why don’t you come upstairs?”
Into my parlor.
Chapter 34
A hundred dollars. Cash. For telling Valentine what she should wear to the Art Museum Gala Ball: “I’m seeing a long, flowing dress of white silk.”
“I don’t own a white silk dress.”
“Yes, I know. You’re going to buy one for the ball.”
“Oh, of course,” she smiles. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Not all of us have the Gift.” I don’t know where to look. In her eyes? Out the window? Really I’m just imagining what she’d look good in, but it’s hard not to be too obvious that I’m only doing her colors. This is why crystal balls must be so helpful.
She was impressed with my apartment. “So clean,” she said.
“Good Feng Shui. It helps me concentrate during readings. I find that clutter and distraction leads to—”
“Oh, my goodness! Is that a dog?”
Then we had fifteen minutes of dog stories. She recommended her veterinary acupuncturist, then looked abashed and said, “But of course you already know that.”
So I was twenty-five bucks ahead of the game before we even started the reading. I think I should charge for an hour, no matter what we talk about. It’s like a lawyer. Besides, I could be reading her aura or something the whole time, couldn’t I?
We discuss possible designers for the dress, then she wants to know if Mr. Tupner will ask her to dance.
“Hmm. I definitely see you dancing together…”
She brightens.
“…but the decision is yours. He’s worrying that you’re not going to ask him to dance.”
“He is shy,” she admits.
I close my eyes—much better. “Well, dancing is quite likely—a waltz?” I open my eyes and pierce her with a serious gaze. “But Valentine, it’s up to you. You must ask him to dance.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she titters.
“You can, Valentine. You do. I’ve seen it.”
“Well, I suppose…you’ve seen it?”
I offer a silent prayer to the saint of fake psychics that Mr. Tupner not be in a wheelchair, married or utterly boorish, and nod. “I see you, Valentine, asking a handsome man for a dance, and I see him accepting—and I see your smile.”
She smiles wistfully, and looks almost girlish. “Why not? If it doesn’t hurt, and it makes us happy?”
Moments later, I smile too, putting her cash in my wallet. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Miu Miu’s not officially allowed inside Shika, so I sit at the end of the bar, with her around back. Before settling onto her blanket, an old beach towel of Maya’s, she shakes thoroughly—and is so well-behaved that she doesn’t even spray gobs of spittle in every direction. The front of her body finishes shaking about three seconds before the back, so her bony hairless butt shakes alone for a moment, sufficiently energetically that it almost knocks her spindly back legs from under her.
I call Maya and Monty’s attention to this cute attribute of boxer engineering, but they ignore me.
“Lizard,” Maya says. “Though it does look like ostrich skin.”
“Rat. Looks more mammal than reptile,” Monty says.
“As long as her landlord doesn’t find out she’s a closet herpetologist,” Maya says.
Monty looks confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because the dog has scales, Monty.”
“So that means Elle is a man-woman?”
They become increasingly baffled until I step in: “That’s a hermaphrodite, Monty. A herpetologist is someone who studies snakes. And she does not look like a snake.” I call to her, in a singsong voice: “Miu-Miu. Miu.”
She looks up, her wrinkled brow quizzical, her eyes alert, and her string of drool bobbing. “See?” I say triumphantly.
“You’re right,” Maya says, cocking her head. “She looks like Winston Churchill.”
“Put that in your cigar and smoke it,” Monty says, before excusing himself for a meeting of some sort.
When he’s gone I say: “You know my Charlie’s Angels fantasy?”
“Not entirely.” She fills a bowl with water and puts it in front of Miu.
“Well, I’m thinking Monty can be Boz.”
I want to have a heart-to-heart type girly chat with Maya, but I’m afraid to tell her what happened with Merrick. “So one of my clients from Psychic Connexion tracked me down.”
“Oh, no,” Maya says. “Another lawsuit?”
“It was only small claims. And I won.”
“So another small claims suit?” She giggles. “I just realized that you were involved in a suit suit.”
“Very funny. Anyway, I just earned a hundred bucks. Cash.” I show her the money. “For fifty minutes of my time. I’m getting paid a hundred bucks an hour, and it’s not even a whole hour!”
“For what?” Maya asks, her voice nervous.
“To be a psychic. Face-to-face. In living color. She tracked me down for a reading.”
She looks me straight in the eyes, attempts solemnity and bubbles over with laughter. “A reading?”
“It’s not funny! I’m good at it.”
“B-being a psychic!”
“Not really a psychic. An intuitive counselor. That way people won’t ask about palms and horoscopes and stuff.”
“With a shawl and a crystal ball…” She finds this far funnier than it is.
“A pashmina,” I say, and don’t tell her I’m actually considering the crystal ball.
When she settles down, she says, “Oh, Elle. Thank you. I needed that.”
“I live to be the subject of your scornful amusement,” I say.
“I didn’t mean it,” she says. “Well, only a little. It’s just that I’ve been kinda depressed.”
I make sympathetic noises as she comes around the bar and sits next to me. I feel bad. When I have a crisis, I immediately turn to her, but when she has hers, I’m off in my own world.
“It’s not the miscarriage, really,” she continues. “But it got me thinking. I want to take a break from the bar. Figure out what I’m doing with myself. But we can’t afford someone full-time, and my dad isn’t feeling well—I’m worried about his health. And I don’t know, do I want to be bartending the rest of my life?”
I am about to offer her some pearl of wisdom, when I think it might be best to keep my mouth shut. Every now and then, when I worked at Psychic Connection, I’d get a caller who just wanted to talk. Just wanted me to listen. I have a feeling that’s what Maya wants, so I shut up and wait.
She talks. For half an hour, about Brad and her father, about the bar and going back to school. About her mother, and falling into a rut—even if it was a rut she was pretty happy with. I continue to keep my mouth shut, until she finishes. She wipes her eyes and says, “You know, maybe you’re right. You’re not so bad at this. Now if only you could read my palm.”
I take her hand and squeeze it, and smile at her; she has to know that whatever she does and whatever she wants, I’m there for her. “That’ll be a hundred dollars,” I say.
She swats me, then asks about my client, the one who tracked me down.
“I saved her dog’s life,” I say. “With long-distance veterinary acupuncture.” I tell her about Valentine and Rowdy.
“So now you’re taking money
from old ladies?”
“She can afford it,” I say. “Montecito money. Anyway, I told her to tell her friends. It’s gonna be like that old Fabergé commercial. She’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on.” I try to make my voice sound stereophonic at the so on part.
“I loved that shampoo,” Maya says, nostalgically.
“Do they still make it?”
She shakes her head. “Wouldn’t be the same, anyway. But aren’t you worried it’s illegal? Like practicing therapy without a license?”
I give her an incredulous look. “You’re telling me that? A bartender?”
She grins. “Good point.”
“And I have a hot-sheet of crisis lines, just in case.” But I don’t want to talk about this, because I’m afraid Maya will convince me not to daydream about it. And it’s all I have, in terms of employment possibilities: a daydream about Valentine in a shampoo commercial. So, I say: “I went to Merrick’s house.”
Ten minutes later, Maya is staring at me in disbelief. “She called him honey?” she asks in stunned horror.
I nod. “And I ask if she’s his sister. Grasping at straws. She says she’s his girl Friday and slithers up against him, and I flip.”
“You flip? Like a…an Elle Medina special?”
“The special-est. A shrieking fishwife, hair-pulling hysteric, eye-gouging special.”
“Eye-gouging? You didn’t—”
“No-no. No ambulance was called. Strictly verbal abuse, until Merrick made it clear that she was his new assistant, they were not sleeping together and he was not, in fact, a scumbag bigamist Chernobyl-headed fucktoad.”
She looks at me with something approaching awe. “You called him that?”
“And worse.”
“And…and, what did you say after?”
“After it became clear I was the fucktoad? What could I do? I fled. Raced up the street to 7-Eleven and called a cab.”
She considers. “Wow. Classy.”
“With a capital K.”
So, Miu Miu and I were talking, and it’s not like I’m stupid. I can see now that maybe I had too much invested in Louis and expected him to rescue me from my life. I wanted my parents to rescue me, my job to rescue me, my fantasies about Joshua and L and everything to rescue me.
I’ve got no money and no skills and no magic wand. The phone has not rung with referrals from Valentine. I suspect that if she told two friends, who told two friends…that someone along the line was not wearing her hearing aid. My run as a $100/hour psychic included precisely one client.
Manpower had a one-day job for me, answering phones for a real-estate broker. I answered the phones. Then I went home, $52 richer after taxes. Coincidentally enough, I calculated that I need $52 after taxes, seven days a week, to support my little family. Manpower had no more work.
I get a call from one of my applications. It looks like I have a fifty-percent chance of being hired to deliver newspapers. It’s early, early morning, but that means I can work afternoons, too. And I do own a car, might as well exploit what resources I have.
I finally crush my fantasy about IKEA; the one where a gorgeous Swede, possibly Sven Ikea himself, knocks on my door with a large check. They were so impressed with my honesty they think I deserve a reward.
So yes, I’m still falling apart. But no, nobody is going to rescue me. Nobody can. All they can do is postpone the inevitable. And even if they postpone it six years—I’m still me. This rescue, I have to pull off myself.
Miu Miu thinks I’ve taken the first steps. With Carlos and IKEA and with her. She thinks I ought to stop avoiding all the unpleasant realities. She thinks I ought to come clean.
About Merrick, for example. Am I falling in love with him? Have I fallen in love? Well, maybe. Maybe I have. And do I still want him to rescue me? Sure I do. But I know that’s not how it works. So maybe I’ll knock on his door. Maybe I’ll apologize and—if he doesn’t laugh me out of his office, if he doesn’t tell me I was right about being a pathetic loser—maybe we’ll talk. But I know he can’t rescue me. Not really. Nobody can, except me.
I ask for only one thing: When I knock on his door, please God, do not have cool, collected, itsy-bitsy Betsy answer.
I knock on his door.
“Oh, hi,” Betsy says. “Elle. Are you…okay?”
I attempt not to die. “I’m fine, thanks. Is Merrick in?”
“Louis? Yes, but Neil’s picking him up in a few… Well, let me get him.” She retrieves Merrick from his den and discreetly disappears, and Merrick and I are left alone staring at each other. Eventually, I figure I have to say something.
“I—I wanted to apologize. For…the condoms and the doggie bags and your newspapers and…everything. I’m sorry. And I wanted to thank you. And…and…”
He inspects me steadily. His eyes crinkle, but his eyebrows don’t move either direction. His hair catches the light, and glows a hideous orange.
“…and I haven’t been myself, much—I mean, maybe I have, but I’m just getting to know me, really, and—” shut up, Elle “—that sounds stupid, I know. I mean, this whole thing—” I gesture, indicating my entire life “—has been new to me, and I’m still figuring it out. And you’ve been good to me, for no good reason, and I wanted to thank you and…I mean…”
He runs a hand through his hair and I see it: his roots aren’t red. Oh, my God. His roots are definitely brown.
“I mean, I wanted to say, to say…your roots are not red.” I freeze in a stunned silence at the fact that I’ve said this aloud.
“Forget my roots.” His lips quirk. “I want to hear more about my newspapers.”
He doesn’t hate me. Must not weep in relief. Instead, must focus inappropriately on his hair: “Your roots are brown! Is this…vanity? But red, to cover the gray?”
“I am not going gray, Elle.”
“Of course you aren’t.” I nod solemnly. “But still…you dye your hair. You dye your hair.” I sound like him, talking about a lawsuit.
“It’s not like that,” he says. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to.”
“Oh, no. I’ve heard about that. Mysterious abductions, people forced to dye their hair. The only thing they remember is the smell of Clairol number thirty-six.”
He laughs, and my heart expands.
“It was for my niece,” he says. “She’s in beauty school here. She had a test and the girl whose hair she was supposed to dye backed out. She called me at the last minute, frantic for a replacement—and so I went.”
I shake my head. “If you expect me to believe that—”
“I swear to you…”
I look at him in wonder.
“You don’t believe me.”
But I do believe him. And I think it is the sweetest, most selfless act I’ve heard, well, ever. Yet I’m too giddy to let it go. “How old is this alleged niece? You’re not old enough to have a niece in beauty school.”
“My sister’s twelve years older. My niece just turned eighteen. I wanted her to go to college, but she chose cosmetology school.”
It only made the whole story dearer—that he disapproved of her choice, but supported her anyway.
“It’s true!” he says.
“Of course it is. I believe you. I couldn’t…I couldn’t not believe you. You’re so utterly…right.” The words come out the wrong direction, and stick in the air. They hang between us, heavy with meaning.
“You’re right,” he says. “I am right. And you’re right. And—”
—and I kiss him.
Nine hours later—after romantic walks on the beach, making passionate love under the stars, sipping lemonade on the front porch loveseat and exchanging heartfelt vows—the front door opens.
“Santa Barbara Municipal Airport,” Neil says scornfully. “You pull into the parking lot, they charge you three bucks. Even if you’re only gonna be there—” He looks between me and Merrick. “What are you two doing? Charades? I hate charades.”
Merrick kisses me.
“Oh,” Neil says.
“I’m going to New York, Elle. For five days,” Merrick pulls away. He’s gorgeous. “Promise you won’t do anything…anything…while I’m gone?”
“I promise.”
The only anything which even tempts me is the job delivering newspapers. I tell them I’ll take it. Because though I’ve been sick with elation and dread about Merrick’s impending return from New York, I will not allow myself, even in my most fantastic fantasies, to consider that he’ll rescue me.
As I tell Maya during a love-maddened midnight phone call: “I don’t want to fuck this up over that kind of ancient baggage.”
“No?” she says. She can’t really emote, because she’s at work and—for once—has customers. So I pour out my heart, and she replies telegraphically.
“No. If I fuck this up, I’m gonna do it with brand-spanking-new baggage!”
“Louis Vuitton?”
“Kate Spade. No—I’m just not going to fuck this up. Because I’m going to be me from the inside out, I’m going to—”
“Please.” Heavy on the scorn.
“I know it’s stupid, but it’s true. I’m going to make it happen for me, and until I do, he’s going to have to take a back seat. He’ll understand. Oh, God, what if he doesn’t understand? What if he meets some woman in New York and marries her?”
“Elle.”
“Don’t Elle me! It could happen. Nobody knows that better than I do. But if this isn’t about being rescued, if he actually can’t rescue me, where’s the line? I mean—do I not take anything from him? Dinner and stuff is okay, right? But I don’t expect anything from him, maybe that’s it. I make my own life work, and where we overlap, we overlap, but I don’t leech onto his life and—”
“Kid,” she says.
“Kids? Jesus, Maya. We’ve hardly even kissed. All he said was I shouldn’t do anything until he gets back. He probably meant I shouldn’t flood his apartment from my bathtub. Oh, God. What if that is what he meant?”
“Was talking to Kid. Billy the.”
“Oh.” And so on. Ad nauseum—but it was Maya’s nauseum, and my delight. He returns in three days!