“Are you hurt?” Ping called after him.
Sam laughed and got up, wiping crusted snow off his clothes. “I’m good.”
“Okay, I think it’s time to get going. How about if I buy you guys dinner?”
Mara emerged from the darkness packing her hands together, a gleam in her eye. She threw the snowball at Sam just as he bent over to wipe snow from his pants legs. It flew over his bent back, splatting into the cabinet door.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that.” Sam scooped up two handfuls of snow and packed it together. He reared back with the snowball in an overhand stance with one leg raised for added momentum.
Mara waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, don’t. You heard Ping. We’re going out to dinner. I can’t get all wet.”
Everything stopped.
Snowflakes hung in the air, paused in their descent. Sam stood frozen like a paused video, bent forward with his arm extended, a snowball and its icy contrail suspended in the air two feet from his fingers, on a flight path for Mara.
“Ping!” Mara stared at Sam, and Ping followed her gaze. “I think I froze him.”
Ping batted at suspended snowflakes in front of him. They fluttered around his hand but did not continue their descent to the ground. “It’s the element of Time. You didn’t freeze Sam. You froze Time. Look, even the snowflakes have stopped.”
“Why aren’t you frozen?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps you weren’t focused on me.”
“What do I do?”
Ping shrugged. “Unfreeze it. Concentrate.”
Mara closed her eyes, pictured the snow falling again. She heard Sam laugh and opened her eyes to see the snowball arc at her. She raised her hands and yelled, “No!”
She and Sam disappeared in a flash of light, then reappeared in each other’s place. The snowball arced downward and struck Sam in the temple.
“Hey! No fair.” He laughed, wiping sludge from the side of his face. “That was cool. Did you do that on purpose?”
Mara looked at Ping, dazed.
“I think that was the element of Space,” he said.
Mara’s eyes grew wide. She held up her hands and stared at them. She disappeared and reappeared three times in less than a second, sputtering like a bulb about to burn out.
Ping jogged toward her. “Mara, you’re definitely flickering. Are you okay?”
She fell to her knees. “I’m not sure.”
The snow stopped falling.
CHAPTER 47
THE TURN SIGNAL of a white Ford F-150 blinked at the curb in front of Mason Fix-It Shop—just after Mara drove past, thinking she would have to park on a side street. Since it was gray and misty, and the forecasters were saying it would be heavy rain that evening, she decided she’d rather loop back around the block and snag the Ford’s spot instead of trudging through the rain at the end of the workday. As she passed Ping’s bakery, she glanced over and saw him looking out his front window, a worried look on his face. He didn’t recognize her car as she turned off Woodstock and cut through the alley behind the shop. Less than two minutes later, she slid into the still-empty parking spot.
Ping walked up to her as she got out of the car with a basketball under her arm. “There you are. I was getting a little concerned,” he said.
“Concerned about what?” Mara asked. She walked up to the shop door. Ping followed.
“You are late coming into work, and, with everything that happened last night, I was concerned. How are you feeling this morning?”
She jiggled the lock, trying to unlock it with one hand. “Believe it or not, I have nonmetaphysical things to do. I had to drop off some machine parts at the fabricators. Here, hold this.” She handed him the basketball. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you keep it and give it Sam.”
“I think you should give it to him. It’ll be a good reason for him to stop by and see that you are okay without showing any obvious concern.”
“What?”
“He’s worried about you too, but he won’t want to make an overt display of it.”
She shook the doorknob while twisting the key a few times. The door gave way with a loud rattle punctuated by the jangle of the bell hanging above it inside. She stepped in, flipped on the lights and turned the Open sign to face outward. Ping followed.
“I don’t really understand why you men go to such lengths to hide your feelings, but whatever. Anyway, I don’t think there is anything to worry about. The tiredness seems to go away after a few minutes. It’s sort of like how you feel after running a sprint. You’re winded for a short time, but you bounce back quickly,” she said, taking off her jacket. “I’ll be right back.” She walked into the rear of the shop and returned almost immediately without the jacket.
“Mara, you don’t flicker like that after you run a sprint,” Ping said.
“Yeah, that does freak me out a little.” She held out her hands, looked at them, then patted her shoulders. “But I’m feeling pretty solid right now, so I don’t think there have been any long-term effects.”
“It might be a good idea for you not to overuse your abilities until we understand what is going on a little better.”
“Fine by me. I’ve got too much work to do anyway—which I need to get to, if you don’t mind.”
Ping nodded and bounced the basketball one time on the floor toward her. “Sam will stop by in a couple hours. His tutor, Mrs. Zimmerman, is taking the afternoon off.”
Mara caught the ball, walked behind the counter, crouched down and rolled it onto a shelf. The bell above the door jangled, announcing Ping’s departure. She noticed a few things out of place and began reorganizing the shelves: sliding tools, parts and boxes of screws and nuts around so they were easier to get to. When she stood up, a brown-haired young man wearing a gray Portland State University hoodie stood before her. He carried something under his arm.
“Oh, hi. I didn’t see you there,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
He sat a dark gray platform slightly larger than a shoe box on the counter. Mounted on one side of the platform was a stumpy cylinder. On the other was a shallow bowl squatting on top of a circular stand. It looked like a homely trophy forced to live out its existence affixed next to a gray can of stew. A thick black electrical cord snaked from the cylinder over the edge of the counter.
“I have a friend who says you might be able to fix this for us,” he said.
“Well, that depends. What exactly is it?” Mara asked, bending down to eye the device.
The young man laughed. “It’s a bowling ball spinner.”
“It spins bowling balls?”
“It does when it works.”
“Okay.” She looked up at the guy. “Why would you want to spin bowling balls?”
“Mostly to clean and polish the balls, but you can use it to sand and refinish them too.”
“So you just sit the ball in this bowl, and it spins around.” She placed her hand on the cylinder. “This must be the motor that drives it.”
The young man shrugged. “Seems reasonable. What do you think? Is this the sort of thing you guys do?”
Mara smiled. “It’s exactly the sort of thing we do. What happens when you turn it on? Does it do anything?”
“It sorta hums and vibrates, but it doesn’t spin the ball.” He raised his hand, smacked himself in the temple. “Man, I meant to bring a bowling ball for you to use while you were working on this.”
“No problem.” Mara walked from behind the counter and crossed the narrow shop to a row of shelves toward the back. She bent down, straightened and turned around, carrying a black bowling ball. “I’m not sure why this is here, but we’re covered.”
“Excellent,” the man said.
“Let me get your name and number, and I’ll let you know this afternoon if we can repair this for a reasonable price.” She walked back to the counter and looked around for a place to put the bowling ball.
“Here, let me.” The young man took the bal
l and sat it into the bowl of the spinner.
*
The chains holding the cuckoo clock’s pine-cone weights kept getting tangled while Mara tried to figure out what caused the little bird not to emerge at the appointed time. She had set the clock on a shelf ledge so the chains could hang down freely, but she kept knocking the weights with her legs as she struggled to get a good look at the internal workings. There was no point in disassembling the entire piece if it needed only a minor adjustment. Unfortunately her ineffectual contortions and lack of concentration had conspired against her. She stepped off the riser she had used to reach the clock and sat on the stool behind the counter.
She gazed at the dark wooden cuckoo clock and imagined the little wooden bird sliding out its little wooden door, announcing the hour. After a minute or two, she stepped up to the clock and moved the long hand to twelve. The cuckoo came out and cuckooed three times; the short hand was on the three.
It now worked. It had not before.
She shrugged, took the clock down from the shelf and set it in the box its owner has used to transport it to the shop. The phone rang, and Bruce shouted from the back of the shop, “I’ve got it!”
She added some packing material around the clock, closed the flaps of the cardboard box, grabbed a shipping-tape dispenser and ran it over the box, sealing it. She slid the box onto a shelf under the counter. She would call the owner later so he could pick it up.
Bruce stepped out from the back. “You already finished with that cuckoo? My grandfather could spend a week working on one of those.”
“It seems to be working now, so I didn’t have to do anything to it,” Mara said. “Was that a call for me?”
“No, it was my mother. She says my grandfather is taking longer to recover than expected and wanted to know how we were holding up. I told her that you had everything under control,” he said. “She thinks he will need to retire or cut back to part-time when he gets better.”
“We can keep things going until he gets back on his feet and decides. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. Are you?”
“No, I just hope he doesn’t decide to close down. That means I’d have to figure something out for the bicycle garage.”
“I wouldn’t worry. If the shop pays the bills, he’ll keep it open. This place is his whole life. He’s not just going to close up shop on a whim. He loves it too much.”
“You’re probably right. We seem to have enough business,” he said, looking down at the counter. He raised an eyebrow. “What’s with the bowling ball?”
Mara gave the ball a light slap. “It’s my next project.” She grabbed the power cord and bent down to plug it into a power strip on the floor behind the counter.
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Good luck with that.” He turned around and headed back to the bicycle garage.
She flipped the power switch on the side of the platform. It hummed and vibrated just as the customer had reported, but the ball did not spin. She turned it off. Reaching under the counter, she grabbed some old newspaper—normally used to cover the counter when working on greasy jobs—wadded it up and put the pile on the counter. She grabbed the bowling ball and sat it on the mound of newspaper. Slowly removing her hands to make sure the ball would stay in place, she flipped on the power switch. It hummed smoothly. She bent over the spinner’s bowl and could see the mechanism inside spinning. Straightening, she arched an eyebrow and flipped the power off again.
She tried it again. The mechanism spun. She turned it off. Maybe the weight of the ball prevents it from spinning. She grabbed the bowling ball between two hands and lifted it back into the bowl. She flipped the switch, and the bowling ball spun.
Mara stared at it. The blue and red lights of neon signs hanging behind the counter reflected on the glossy black ball as it rotated, flames licking around its circumference, spreading over its oily surface, spiraling faster and faster until it was engulfed. Like a world of brimstone caught up in a great conflagration, it spun, floated in space, setting the horizon ablaze. Mara squinted into the brilliant flames and leaned into the warm breeze that blew across her face. Somewhere in the distance she heard a bell jingle.
“I hope that is not my basketball you are barbecuing,” Sam said.
A ball of fire spun in the air above the counter.
Mara blinked. A burst of sparks erupted from the ball, stalling its spin and extinguishing the fire. It fell six inches back into the spinner bowl with a thud.
Sam stood on the far side of the counter. He waved his hand over the bowling ball, dispersing the thin stream of smoke that rose from it. “Do you have some kind of grudge against sporting equipment?”
“What? Um, I wasn’t aware that was actually happening.” Mara reached out, touched the bowling ball and snapped back her hand. “Hot.”
CHAPTER 48
MARA SAT ON the stone hearth poking at the log in the fireplace, sending sparks shooting up the chimney, being mindful not to get caught up in the glow of the embers. A speck of ash flew out, landing on her gray sweatpants. She flicked it back into the fire then moved the black metal screen in place before returning to the couch. Picking up her book, she curled up against one arm and pulled a beige-and-maroon afghan over her feet.
Diana walked into the room, wrapping a white croqueted shawl over her shoulders. “Why are you sitting around on a Friday night all by yourself? Why don’t you come with me? Mrs. James would love to see you.”
“Mrs. James is more interested in seeing my aura than seeing me,” Mara said. “And I don’t need her to tell me it’s running a little on the gray side at the moment.”
“She could do a vibrational assessment and help you with any blockages, get some more colors flowing around you.” Diana smiled.
“Please. You don’t really believe that stuff do you?”
“It’s not important whether I believe it or not. If Mrs. James believes it, she can make it real, use it to help people. That’s what’s important.”
“So you think her beliefs can make things become reality?”
“I think our beliefs can shape this reality.”
“This reality? You believe there is more than one reality?”
“I feel like there is more to existence than what we can see in this life. Some people think those feelings come from past lives. Others believe we exist as pure energy, and this life is just a temporary state.”
“What about alternate realities, other dimensions of existence?”
“Some people believe in those too, I suppose.” Her eyebrow arched. “Are you okay? This conversation seems a bit…metaphysical for you.”
“Just making conversation, Mom. I’m not coming over to the enlightened side or anything.”
“God forbid,” Diana said. “You sure you’re okay?
“Fine. Just need to recharge my batteries. It’s been a long week, lots happening at the shop. Don’t worry. Abby’s stopping by in a while.”
“Okay, I shouldn’t be out too late.” Diana gave a little wave as she closed the front door behind her.
*
Three loud thumps pulled Mara out of her book just as she was getting into it. She set it down on an end table next to the only lamp lit in the room and padded over to the front door in her socks. She didn’t have to look through the tiny vertical panes built into the door to know who was on the other side. She flipped the dead bolt and opened the door.
“Dude, it is getting nippy out there!” Abby launched herself through the doorway and put her hands on each side of Mara’s face.
Mara squealed and squirmed away from her. “Stop. I just got all toasty. Close the door and keep your cold hands to yourself.” She jogged over to the couch and slid back under the afghan.
Abby sloughed off her jacket, threw it onto one of the armchairs near the fireplace and flopped down in the other one. “So what are you doing?”
“I was reading when you knocked on the front door.”
“What?”
“What, what?”
>
“Are you suffering from dementia? What were you reading?”
“Just a book. Nothing special.”
Abby jumped up from her chair and dashed to the end table. She grabbed the book off the table just as Mara reached for it.
“Must be smut if you’re ashamed for me to see it. What is it, Fifty Shades of Gadget Repair?” Abby flipped over the purple book and read the cover aloud. “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene.”
Mara reddened. “It’s not smut.”
“I can see that, but why are you blushing? What is it? Some of your mom’s New Age stuff?”
“No, this is science or at least scientific theory. Physics, quantum mechanics, things like that. The author teaches physics at Columbia University.”
“I see. Are you getting bored with regular mechanics and want to upgrade to the latest, greatest thing?” Abby flipped through the pages. “Hmm, parallel worlds, multiverses.”
“I saw it in the mall and thought it looked interesting, so I picked it up.”
“You just happen to be perusing the physics section at the bookstore in the mall and had to have it? Sort of an impulse buy, where you had to choose between the quantum mechanics book or the latest push-up bra at Victoria’s Secret, and you went with the book?”
“Something like that.” Mara snatched the book away from Abby, snapped it closed and put it back on the end table.
“So why are you reading it?”
“I told you. It looked interesting to me.”
“What is so interesting about it?”
“Some of the concepts in it are kinda cool. For example, some scientists believe that infinite realities may exist in which every possible outcome to every event is being played out. Even the laws of physics may be different in different realms.”
“Fascinating.” Abby flopped back into her armchair. She cocked her head and took on her best condescending expression. “I know why you’re reading that book.”
“Really. Why is that?”
“You’re looking for a way to relate to your mother and her beliefs, but you need to have some kind of logical reasoning for it, or you’ll feel like you’re caving in to her. Typical teenage psychology.”
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