The house was miniature Norman castle, hands down the most imposing building on the cul-de-sac. Upturned floodlights embedded in the lawn showcased a virtual stage set. You’d have to sleep blindfolded to get any rest under these conditions. Were we staying for Christmas? Details seemed fuzzy or were missing. I could only hope my room would be at the back of the house; in the servant’s wing. Otherwise it would be like sleeping on an airport runway.
All that raw newness made the house seem thrown together overnight, like a fake-front Disney castle. A “Potemkin village”. Is this the kind of house that bankrupts build? You didn’t need to be psychic to intuit disastrous cracks, fundamental leaks, yawning chasms beneath all that stucco and stone. Or is this rental maze jealousy spilling over?
“I better warn you I’m unpredictable around money,” I told Chase. “Everyone I’ve ever known has been broke. ”
“There are so many levels of brokenness,” said Chase, holding my hand. The ornately carved front doors opened in a central turret; a sort of castle keep, guarded by stone lions. I imagined them swiveling blank orbs to inspect as I went past: “Who goes there?” in some foreign tongue, but a door opened before Chase could ring. The tiny, shriveled figure standing there could have been any age from child to grandmother.
“Hi, Mom,” said Chase. “Long time no see.” “Steven!” she breathed out in a great rush ofjoy, embracing him in a mighty hug. Finally turning to acknowledge me.
“I’m Zoya,” she told me shyly. Rigidly coiffed, heeled and pearled, she was heavily made up and had unlikely red hair but her eyes were soft and gentle. When she reached out to embrace me I could feel her birdlike bones. I couldn’t hug back because I was holding the damn plant so I just stood there like a lump of baloney. It would have been an excellent moment to unload our gift but it was far too big for her. Chase could have warned me!
“This is for you,” I said, demonstrating the cactus, making it do a little dance. “Happy birthday.” She touched it uncertainly, as if it might bite her. “Oh, dear,” she said sadly, as recalling past distress, “I suppose I’m just like this plant. Prickly and ancient.”
Gift-giving is loaded with symbolism all right; we just forget that sometimes its unintended symbolism. Chase did try warning me about that, but I insisted on behaving as if we were in my world where uncertainty equals fun surprises.
“That’s not it at all,” said Chase-Whose-Real-Name-is-Steven, rescuing me from the suddenly unbearably heavy present, “You’re the lady who blooms even in winter. It’s going to have three blossoms, see? A Trinity, like a shamrock. That’s why we thought ofyou.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Stevie,” she patted his shoulder, so moved she could hardly speak. “Such a gift for words.”
A look flashed between us that spoke more than words, but Chase’s voice was robo-speak. “I’m called Chase now. Remember, Mom?”
Zoya said fiercely, “Chase is a disgusting name. It doesn’t mean anything! Steven was your great-grandfather’s name, and your great-great grandfather’s. “ Chase sighed, the put-upon son. “Primitive tribes give their children temporary names, until they are old enough to say who they are.”
I could certainly see the flaw in that reasoning. Why should we emulate primitive tribes? Zoya darted forward to grab Chase’s hand. “Oh, what have you donetoyourpoorwrist?” Shefeltaroundherbosomforapairofglasses, tried dragging him beneath the chandelier, but effortlessly he pulled away. Probably he had been too big for her since toddlerdom. “I was tied up to something,” said Chase. “Jazz got me loose.” Another look. I may have blushed.
His mother glanced back and forth between us, trying to smile but making disbelieving throat clicks. “Oh, sweetie,” she sighed at length, “I never can tell when you’re teasing.” Like many tiny women, she scurried when she walked; and like many thin women, she kept her shoulders hunched protectively forward against a permanent chill. She lectured the plant as Chase unloaded it on the hall table; “You behave now.” I stole an opportunity to look around.
On either side of the staircase stood two life-size white plaster statues like a pair of sleep-struck guests. This could only be Chase and his sister on the cusp of puberty. Some people have their baby’s shoes bronzed; this family was more ambitious. They apparently subjected their offspring to full body-casts. Untouched by time or fate, with clear eyes and perfect skin, they lent a scary threat to the entryway, as if anyone stepping beyond this point risked ossification. Behind me I heard Zoya whisper intimately to her son, “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s the best birthday present I could ever have.”
But Chase wouldn’t let his mother forget about me. He propelled me forward. “Meet Jasmyn Suzino,” he said.
“Jazz.” I tried hard to look nice and unthreatening, as opposed to, say, psychic and weird. But honestly I wished myself elsewhere. How did I become captive in Chase’s life story exactly? This dream felt very unlucid. Is there opaque dreaming? I once asked for a cloak of invisibility in my Christmas stocking. Oh, to be a fly on the wall, and figure out the dance before you’re asked to join in!
Zoya gave me the once over, then she gave me the twice-over. She walked around me like I was the Statue of Liberty. A full seven-twenty. Was it the name? Make up or lack thereof? Filthy clothing? Because I seemed to be wearing unprepossessing black jeggings and a weightlifter’s sweatshirt. Was I just too “ethnically diverse?” I felt crazy unprepared, just like Soliz in her naked dream. Now she peered beyond me as if questing for my retinue. “Aren’t you staying the night? I don’t see any luggage.”
“No luggage,” said Chase. “We had kind of an incident at school. A woman jumped out of Jasmyn’s window, so the police won’t let her into her room. I thought she could borrow from Cyanne.”
Another flashed exchange of looks – challenging from him, warning from me. This was only going to get more difficult if Chase insisted on being one of this dream’s unmanageable elements. “Oh, my goodness,” said Zoya, “How terrible. Was it your roommate? Was she badly hurt?”
I had to let Chase answer for me.“It was a school nurse, actually, and we barely knew her. She was killed.” He seemed to take malicious pleasure in this recitation.
“Oh, my God!” Zoya’s hands flew up to her heavily powdered cheeks. “Why would anyone do such a thing? Why couldn’t you stop her?”
“Don’t you think some people are better off dead?” Chase queried lightly. “We weren’t there, Mom. I swear we had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Zoya glanced uncertainly from one of us to the other. “You’re joking with me, aren’t you?” she queried. “You know I hate it when you tease about serious things.”
“Well, I do need fresh clothes,” I croaked, the cat-got-my-tongue turning frog. Frogs need water, and I needed a bath. “I hate showing up at your house looking like this.” In our next OBE I’m doing all the steering.
“Well, you’re welcome to borrow anything of Cyanne’s,” said Zoya. “She’s at school in Tennessee anyway, and she’s got way too many clothes. I’m always telling her. Think of the starving Africans! She buys things and then decides she doesn’t like them! What a flibbertigibbet! It’s like she’s a different person every morning!“
She chased us up the stairs shaking a dust cloth, “I hope you won’t go back to that university, Stevie. It sounds most unsafe. Or will they give you both an automatic A?“ “Urban legend, Mom.”
“At the very least they should give you the rest of the semester off. Give Jazzelle the tour, Steven. I’m working on dinner. It’s going to be fabulous.”
On the stairs I muttered bitingly, “Trouble-maker.”
“I’m more of a rabble-rouser really,” said Chase. “So much rabble. So little time.”
So that’s where we went. The twilight had thickened into darkness so Chase turned on all the auto lights. We were cosmonauts, safe inside our personal re-entry machine that could take us anywhere. Red and the yellow flickers lent Chase’s face an unearthly glow. Outside the car windows a fine drizzle was getting underway, obscuring the names and dates on the tombs and markers of Chase’s “shortcut”. We were back in the graveyard! Isn’t that where they put the bodies? Could they fit an extra one?
Then suddenly we spilled out on an unfamiliar road. The bodies were behind us now, consigned to the earth we flew above… Why was riding in this car so much like flying? Was it the hush, the lack of noise? Or was it my passenger status; that I had no idea where I was going but was ready for anything?
“We need to stop and get a card,” said Chase.
“Remind me. What’s the occasion?” Was this lucid dreaming? Where could we possibly be going? All I knew was that Chase wanted to steer. So let him steer.
“My mom’s birthday.” He smiled at me.
“How about a present?” I asked, fighting for time. “Shouldn’t we bring a gift?” He shook his head. “She says she never wants anything.”
“That’s just something mothers say. It’s never really true.” I knew I had forgotten something, but all the forgotten things seemed so unimportant. The “now” was perfect. Me and Chase. Wanting it to last forever…
Chase’s face too wore a dreamy, happy expression. “I don’t recognize this road,” he said. “The GPS went black. It’s been proved that we’re born with innate tracking ability but if you don’t use it, you lose it. Maybe we’re lost. We took a strange turn out of the cemetery.”
“Doesn’t Shelby know where to go?” “Sure. Let’s let her drive.”Lights ahead.
“Pull in here, “ I said, grabbing Chase’s arm. It was a Farmer’s Market, deserted looking but sporting Christmas lights. Chase obeyed but parked unwillingly. “I thought you were letting Shelby drive.”
“I will. But we can get a present here. It’s my first time meeting you mother. I want her to like me.” “They won’t have anything,” Chase disparaged.
“Let’s just look.” Can’t I steer a little too? I took his hand. “ Walk with me.” He smiled. “How can I ever say no to you? This is why men fear women,” he grumbled. “Everything turns into shopping.”
Do men fear women? First I’d heard of it but I suppose everyone fears everything at one time or another. Chase was reluctant to step out of Shelby, his transitional object. She had assumed the job of body armor.
The Christmas-lit stalls were empty, shabby, silent. Had I been here before? Weren’t we supposed to be looking for a body? No, that couldn’t be, we were on a nice date. A visit to the country. I was going to meet his mother. Besides, you’d never hide a body on a farm where earth turns every season. No more corpses. I must start thinking pleasant thoughts or his mother wouldn’t like me. But we stepped through sheets of torn plastic fluttering like ghosts, the ghosts of poor Mrs. Corso’s damaged dreams. Mrs. Corso had once been, if not young, at least an excited, hopeful bride… The greenhouse was well-lit, looking warm and jolly. Had Corso fed Miss Howk to the flowers?
Would we recognize her burial spot from the flowers she had nourished? In my imagination little Christmas roses pursed their floral lips to perfectly reproduce poor lost Howk’s insolent expression. Chase put my cold hand underneath his coat. He was dressed for this weather; I wasn’t.
Inside the greenhouse the air was putrid with canned “Ho-ho-hos.” The curse of Tiny Tim, arriving two months early. The woman huddled over the cashbox didn’t look up from her celebrity magazine to greet her only customers. Was it my imagination that she resembled Nurse Howk, as the senior citizen she was never allowed to be? Sometimes surviving winners are not a pretty picture. Tattoos and piercings don’t age well. Did Howk regret that she died in all her beauty?
As we walked through the rows of wreaths and poinsettias I could feel Chase wishing himself elsewhere. Too bad about flying. It can be scary as well as pleasurable. It always shows us something we don’t want to see.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Christmas was always miserable in my family. Never could live up to its advance billing.”
I picked up a poinsettia with greeny-white flowers. Had Howk’s corpus sucked the red away? “Those things are poisonous, ” said Chase.
“Thanks for the instruction,” I murmured. Wouldn’t want to give Chase’s mother poison as a present. Even though, if you think about it, everything can be poisonous if you don’t use-as-recommended.
“Christmas is what you make of it,” I mildly suggested.
Annika and I give each other Dollar Store presents only. That’s where Annika got the mismatched yarn to knit my color-block scarf. The scarf back Corso still has. Speaking of poisons.
“All this stuff is hopeless,” Chase said in his self-flagellating way.
“Here’s something perfect.” I offered him a plant. “It’s a cactus!” he sneered. “Worst present ever.”
“It’s a Christmas cactus,” I countered. “Blooms only once a year. Blooming thorns, get it? Just like your tattoo.” “But it’s not blooming now. Thing looks dead.”
“But it’s going to bloom.” I shook the tag at him. “It says here. Christmas is about hope.” It was the biggest Christmas cactus they had. It promised three flowers, if it ever got going.
“I hope we can get out of here,” said Chase, grinning. “I hope you let me buy this plant.” “Sold.” He pulled out his wallet. “I yield to your touching faith in the future.”
This is a collecting expedition, I realized. Every time we’ve soul- traveled together, we collected something. It’s really about figuring out what you’ve got.
Behind our silent cashier a rack of cards. Chase picked up a few to read the insides while Senior Citizen Howk scrabbled for his change.
“So what will you do when you run out of faith?” he asked me. “Get more. People run out of faith, like you run out of dinner. That’s no reason to starve.” He wouldn’t allow me to chip in even a dollar. Competitive bastard. It had been my idea, and he was stealing it.
“You’re an idea-jacker. Let me buy a card.” “Here,” he said. “This one.”
A picture of a blazing fireside with a dog and a cat sleeping on the hearthrug. “Powerful juju,” Chase said, “Looks just like my dog Honey. She’d eat that cat for Christmas dinner.”
We both signed the card.Chase sighed with relief to be back in the car. “I know where I’m going, now,” he said.
We were as nervous as two kids contemplating an adult-sized prank. In his room he paced while I made tea and turned the lava lamp to low.
I said, “Corso gave us some kind of drug. What do you think it was?”
Chase said, “I’m pretty sure the drugs had nothing to do with it. It probably was an amnesiac of some kind. Twilight sleep.”
“Miss Howk said it was a sedative.”
“Twilight sleep’s scopolamine. Locoweed. It has hallucinogenic properties.”
“But our experience couldn’t have been a shared hallucination. Hallucinations don’t find bodies.” “Well, it could have been some form of mental telepathy.”
“You mean, like, we already know everything, and we just picked each other’s brains?” He threw himself on the bed, arms behind his head. “Or we picked Corso’s brain.”
I shivered so violently I huddled by the radiator. “I’d rather fly into hell itself than into Corso’s brain,” I said.
“I’m not afraid,” said Chase. “I’ve been there.” The tea kettle whistled. He launched himself forwards.“Sleepytime OK?”
“Seems appropriate.” I looked outside before fixing the blinds. It was a drab, drear winter day, utterly lacking promise. A good day to take the kind of nap where you don’t wake up till spring. “We need ocean sounds,” Chase called from the kitchen. “Google them on my laptop.”
But if the dream lab experience left something to be desired; why recreate it?
Chase appeared in the doorway with steaming mugs. “It’s only a tiny monster. Shouldn’t we stare it down?”
I certainly agreed in principle. All the monsters of memory have to be stared down. Could Chase teach me how to do it?
Presto. Ocean sounds filtered through the laptop speakers.
We took a couple sips of bitter tea. It triggered memories all right. Corso’s stained glass window crazy-quilting in front of my eyes; my broken window at Hadleigh looking back at me; pink dust sifting through the air at Howk’s place.
“I’m scared,” I said.“Stay close to me.”We lay back, mugs of tea forgotten on a packing crate. “Let’s match our breathing,” he suggested.
I had need of his body heat. Deep breath in, deep breath out. A little ripple of pleasure ran through me.
“This is like a really fun date where I don’t know where I’m going,” I said. Bex was never the ringmaster of such things; he wanted me to make the responsibility of choice so he could yell at me later.
“You’re right,” said Chase. “It might be wonderful. We shouldn’t go in scared.” It’s true. Back at dream lab I had wished I’d fly.
“Mmmm,” Chase murmured. “Feels good.”
“Where are you?” I demanded. “Don’t leave me behind!”
He embraced me harder. “Imagining I’m in Shelby. If Shelby had wings we could really leave all those other idiots behind.”
Using a dishcloth he knocked the wall phone off the hook and dialed 911. A dispatcher’s voice squawked at the other end. Chase dropped the receiver, and raced me out beneath the useless plastic wall.
“Aren’t we going to talk to them?” “Hells, no! We are officially not here. They’ll send someone out to check. Especially given the restraining order.”
I fretted pointlessly. “We should have put her wig back on.” Haunted by the fear that I’m the one that took it off.
Said Chase, “Sorry. That’s not on The Crime Scene Tour. No handling the corpses. Less is more.” “They’ll know we called,” I argued as we climbed into Shelby.
“They know someone called. If we don’t give them us to chase, who do you think they’ll look for? Corso! Which is as it should be.”
As we drove down the insufferably long avenue I imagined tree after tree turning its mutilated head to stare after us imploringly. At the intersection of Mad Bear and Route 108, Shelby turned left instead of right. On the corner of the four-way stop was a waffle place. Chase insisted on a booth by the window. “We can see all the action from here,” he said. “Plus I love waffles.”
And I love blintzes exploding with blueberries. A police car – no lights, no sirens, no speeding – moseyed past our vantage point long before our order arrived. It turned in at Mad Bear Road. “There they go,” said Chase. “Let’s hope leaving the basement door open was enough to send them down there. Since psychic powers aren’t taught at police academy.” He sounded glum and deflated, as if the party was over and only cleanup loomed. Personally, I don’t enjoy feeling on the wrong side of the law.
Under this aggressive artificial light Chase looked younger; like me he’d skipped the makeup and paler, reddish hair threatened to overtake his dye job. I asked Chase, “Got a light?”
I knew for certain that I was in love with him when he handed over a lighter without even asking me why I wanted it. Around us the tables were empty; it was not a busy morning. From their bald surfaces I gathered six candles and built a little circle. The waitress watching from the corner of her eye was bemused, but voiceless. Maybe even crazy customers are always right. I sparked Chase’s curiosity.
“What are you doing?” “Building a circle of safety,” I said. “So they can’t come after us.” A circle of trust, so we spoke only truth to one another.
Candlelight flickered off his martyr’s cheekbones. His heart attack special arrived and he poked at it like a child whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. Something had killed his appetite. He reached out with his wounded wrist and took my hand. “Thank you for taking over my head,” he said. “I didn’t like what was there before.”
Feeling every beat of my own sore heart, I released the breath I’d held since I was five. “Maybe we’re soulmates,” I suggested. “Two halves of a whole.” I couldn’t forget our magically rhythmic walk. It was like we were one creature. Maybe we were always meant to help each other.” “Makes sense to me,” he said, leaning way forward, as if longing to be on my side of the table. It was time for him to expel that pain. “So, share.” I suggested. “What happened? Why not tell me what Corso did to you?”
“If I tell you,” he warned me. “You won’t love me any more. You’re going to want to back out. You won’t have anything more to do with me.” He flipped the lighter up and down.
I touched his healing wrist. “I doubt it. But that’s the thing everyone forgets, isn’t it? People are always free to do pretty much anything they want.”
He shivered in his seat. “I’ll never be free. No one’s done the terrible things I’ve done.” How could I manage this central intimacy? Kisses, fire circles, crime scenes, out of body experiences and a fireman’s carry rescue can carry a couple just so far. I moved into his side of the booth and put my arms around him, rubbed my cheek against his, close as I dared.
In his ear I whispered, “Shouldn’t we share our nightmares, now that our universes are perpendicular?”
That made him laugh. “Perpendicular like bumper cars,” he said. The analogy was inspired, because I could visualize it. “So get in my car. Let’s steer together.”
He looked at me like he really wanted to believe me. “I won’t blame you for walking away,” he said. “I want you to know that’s OK.”
I nodded, as if agreeing, but feeling certain nothing he could say would turn me away. “Corso was my teacher at the Cathedral School,” he said. “He was still pretending to be a priest back then. He molested me.”
He pulled ice out of my water glass and ran it over his face as if to reassure himself he still existed. “Wow,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone young before. Even the lawyers – didn’t want to know everything.”
I hadn’t expected it, but as I turned the idea around I could see it was the only thing. I kissed the side of his face before whispering, “How old were you?”
“I was seven, eight years old when it started,” said Chase. His blue eyes glazed over, focusing on the horror within. “It went till I was thirteen. He taught catechism and theology.” He snorted. “You better believe he had his own version of the Ten Commandments. He always tried to make it seem like it was all my idea, like he was answering some call I’d made.Like he was recognizing me as already lost.”
I stroked his face, drinking in his clover scent. “You have to know that isn’t true. You were just a little kid.”
“My higher brain might know it. But my heart feels – I can’t explain. Co-opted. Stolen. It’s like he ruined me. It’s like he stole my soul and he won’t give it back.”
“We’re taking it back.” Slid my hands inside his jacket and laid my head on his shoulder. “And your heart is fine. It’s mine.”
“I’m happy for you to have it.” His breath along my neck. “Take it. Please. Corso had secret hand signals he used to use, fingers on my palm, telling me what he wanted. It gets worse. I brought him others,” he hissed. I could feel his stomach writhing against me. “That made it easier on me. We were Corso’s little club. They always tell you if you bring them someone else, they’ll let you go. It’s a lie. News flash: absolute suffering corrupts absolutely.
And once you give in you’re gone forever. Fatally, fatally lost. See? Now I’m a monster as well as a victim. Monsters aren’t gay or straight or anything, they’re just rapacious. Monsters can’t have girlfriends because they’d crush them. “ He laughed hollowly. “He broke me. Don’t you see he’s holding my past hostage? He captures you with this big pretense that time is meaningless, that we’re somehow outside of consequences, but don’t you see, time is the only thing. Because it’s the theft that can never be made right.”
“Yes, it can,” I insisted. “I know because we stepped outside time,” I sounded more confident than I felt. “I think our souls are separate. Pristine. My half waiting for your half.”
I felt him withdraw from me, so I spat out my “secret”. Such as it was. A pathetic little one-celled monster, compared to his. “When I was a little baby, my mother thought I was molested at my daycare center, because some other kids were. But I didn’t remember anything. I was just too little. You can call it a block. But the only thing I know is soaring. I learned how to leave my body, then, I thought everyone did that. In dream lab my fear was, if I ever did it again, I wouldn’t come back. And that scared me so much I was afraid even to sleep.” I squeezed his arm. “Until I found my flying partner.”
“Dissociation!” he exclaimed, meeting my eyes for the first time. I saw the lawyer, the thinker, the scientist awaken within him. The monster – a nightmare construct anyway – was banished forever. Chase clutched me hard. “You’re so right. I thought separating body from spirit–flying away–was such a terrible thing. Asignofweakness, the mark of a slave. I wanted to be Corso, always in control. Power seemed like plundering people and using them for fuel. But now that we know – can we ever do it again?“
“You mean because we looked down?” My turn to tease him. “I think we can only grow stronger. It’s just an ability; like, say, running. Takes practice. And commitment. You can be running to something or from something, or you can get into running as a discipline. Maybe we learned it first to defend ourselves, but now we know how. Did you read that Cadwallader book? This is the central skill, the art people have yearned for throughout the centuries. It’s both the ultimate union and the ultimate freedom. It separates the mortal from the immortal. It’s what we’re counting on at death.”
“But what if we’re frozen in our bodies? Trapped?’ He chewed his lip angrily. “Like, over-identified with our bodies?”
I touched my mouth to the shell of his ear. “You’ve proved that you can break free, ” I whispered. “So come with me.”
His eyes lit with excitement. “I thought it was escape. But what if it’s presence, not absence? You know how they say when you’re lost; climb the tallest thing you can find? Well, I feel like that’s what we’re doing. We’re overseeing the universe; so we can sort the puzzle pieces. Thank you, Jazz.“ I looked up to see a line of breathless wait staff watching us as if we exotic birds perched briefly on their floating wreck. Just made us sit closer together, whispering more intimately.
“You’re more than just my lucky charm,” said Chase, “more than someone sharing an amazing
gift–”
“Don’t forget your gifts,” I insisted. “Inquisitiveness. Determination. Courage. Tenacity. Intelligence. You must have seen the future while you surveyed the puzzle, because you recognized me. Let’s just get away from him. Isn’t happiness the best revenge?”
There it was, the dragon in the room. The subject we had to discuss. The fire dampened and went out of him.
“Don’t you see I tried that already? Corso’s horror never ends. Back at choir school, when he met my sister he decided he wanted her. Part of his growth plan, he told me, like he uses people for vitamins. That’s when I realized you can’t placate the monster; you have to destroy it. Otherwise you‘re only feeding it and making it bigger. I refused to go back to that school. I finally told my parents.”
“What did they do?”
The words were so painful his lips cracked and peeled before my eyes. “Actually, they did everything wrong. First they didn’t believe me. Then they talked to Corso, who as you know is a plausible bastard. Shock therapy was his recommendation, like he hadn’t been shocking enough. He encouraged them to blame me. But I knew too much. There were too many others involved, and that’s where he overstepped. Some of them denied it, but not all. One kid hanged himself. Corso should have killed me before making me his lieutenant. He learned never to make that mistake again.
The diocese got lawyers. They kicked Corso out. Then he got lawyers. Then all the other kids’ parents got lawyers. “ He drummed his fingers restlessly on the greasy, gummy table. “My dad saw a payday. He had dreams of power, too. A chance to build his dream house, to buy all the toys he’d ever wanted, to become his own man.
The one thing he had always hated was taking orders. His idea of freedom is the freedom to kick other people around. Naturally he couldn’t let our lawyers run things. If they didn’t act like servants they made him feel small. So while he hired and fired, time went by. All the other families settled. Everyone hated us. After three years, the diocese caved. But at that point I was old enough to emancipate. You better believe I just wanted to get the hell out of there. My father has a knack for making people hate him, plus I could prove abuse, so the judge wouldn’t give my dad any of my money. My father declared bankruptcy. He said our family was ruined–my fault, of course. But I did escape. I got the hell out of there. ”
I struggled to comprehend the runaway train of damage. “But if you’d escaped Corso once, why did you come back to him?“
“Because nothing bad happened to him! All he got was his freedom – which he’d been wanting anyway. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that he wasn’t hurting! The police never got involved, so he never spent a night in jail where he belonged. Every night I tried to sleep, that’s what was racing through my head. I finished high school out of state, but I kept track of him, going from strength to strength. The big bequest he got from some old lady bought his way into Cadensis. Then when I enrolled here, I discovered he’d married some other elderly rich woman nobody had ever had time for – like he was opening up a new specialty.
I had my name legally changed and I disguised myself…but he recognized me right away. He was flattered that I’d come here! Took it for granted that I couldn’t live without him.”
“But did he — “ “Thank God I was no longer his type. He’d had my vitamin, absorbed me, the way a cannibal absorbs his enemy. Don’t you see I’ve got to make hi spit me out?”
“But how could he never apologize?”
“By insisting he’d “recovered”. Bullshitter!” Chase growled like an animal. “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger! He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He thinks he did me a favor.”
“He doesn’t think sex with children is wrong?”
“His mind changes everything that happened. His goal is to destroy your memory. Says I’ve got him all mixed up with Dad. Who knew settling out of court record could prove so devastating? It means there’s no official record; everyone signed confidentiality agreements. But I’m never forgetting what I know. Corso hates the truth, I’m telling you. It’s like he’s allergic to it. He has rafts of excuses. Believe me, you don’t want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“How about, that I’m an old soul who never really was a kid! How about that! He recognized me, is all. It’s like the opposite of a soulmate. Fellow demons, I don’t know. He says celibacy is perverse and wrong ‘cause it’s inhuman. He’s the victimized one. I was special. I was magic. And look how great everything turned out! I’m about to graduate; he’s a big time professor! No harm, no foul. If I’m having problems they are caused by my lack of freedom. Or my unwillingness to let go of the past. Corso tells everyone he’s a healer. “
“A healer who needs to murder people.” The man I’d trusted. Had to trust, because he was the dealer and the dealer holds the cards.
Chase went on, “He’s just a polyamorous, polymorphous genius placed on earth to cure us of whatever ails us. And you know what ails us? Having any independence apart from him. Don’t you see I’ve got to destroy him? I let the monster out of his cage. In some horrible way, I feel like I created him.”
It was a thicket all right, but if we tackled it together we could find our way through. “He’s trying to make you feel responsible,” I said, “So it lets him off the hook. You are not responsible. It’s time for you to forgive yourself.”
“Maybe he didn’t kill his wife; maybe he got too clever and had Howk do it,” Chase continued, ignoring what I said. “It would be just like Howk to think she could hold back a piece of evidence that made her safe.“
“Forgive yourself,” I interrupted. “It’s the first thing you have to do. Until you do that your eyes won’t clear and neither of us can see.”
“It’s just words,” said Chase. I can’t eat, can you?” He signaled the waitress for the check. Of course I couldn’t eat, the blintzes were too sweet, I didn’t know they’d arrive smothered in sickening mounds of whipped cream.
In the car I returned to the attack. “Everything’s just words. This conversation we’re having now. You telling me you love me.”
“No,” he insisted really wounded, “Don’t say that. Some things are so real they cross the bounds of time and space.”
I felt safer locked in Shelby than under the eyes of lip-reading wait staff. “Forgive your child self,” I repeated. “He’s just a little boy.”
“Oh, I can forgive him,” said Chase, starting the engine. “He definitely didn’t know what he was doing. But I can’t forgive myself now unless I stop him. You’ve got to help me. Do you think Howk could be buried at Hadleigh? Somehow?”
“He wouldn’t be so stupid.” I realized Chase was telling me he couldn’t forgive himself as long as that self belonged to Corso. And as long as it did, how could it ever be mine? “He can’t afford two corpses turning up at once. He needs a place where she disappears forever. He wouldn’t want her ever to be found and if she is, it has to look like an accident. You know he thinks he’s smarter than anybody. So my Hadleigh vision must mean something different.”
At the crossroads a police forensics van turned into Mad Bear Road. Chase angled the car out onto Route 108. “Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end.”
“What’s the end? What end are you expecting?” Resolutely he refused to meet my gaze.
I said, “We need to fly again to find Howk’s body. You know it and I know it. And we can’t do it as long as you make space between us.
“If I take him out, my family gets the money. Everybody gets what they want.” “Except me of course. Don’t you see if you offed yourself, you’d be killing me?”
He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. This fantasy had supported him for so long and I was asking him to live without it.”
“But what do we do? How can we make sure he’s rendered harmless?”
I imagined Corso ruling Super-Max. “I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Don’t you see we can’t guess?
The universe is trying to tell us but for some reason we can’t listen. We need to fly.” “All right,” said Chase. “I surrender. “Let’s fly.”
I woke in Chase’s bed, thrashing helplessly among the Spiderman sheets, trying to remember how I had gotten there. He loomed over me with a mug of steamy, cinnamon-scented coffee. “You’re psychic,” I muttered, making an ineffective grab. He sat down beside me, the better to ratchet me from horizontal to the vertical. As he did the goddam migraine swarmed through me. Out-of-body- hangover. But why? Putting my arms around his hard shoulders I reveled in his all-embracing aura of helpfulness. But why was I in his bed? Should I be happy? Sad? All I could I remember was that I didn’t remember.
“Feeling better?”I looked around. What do they call the opposite of déjà vu? Neva vu? Because I should remember something. Nothing.Sipped the coffee thankfully. Restorative. He’d paid attention at Joe’s to the way I take it. Aaah.“My head hurts like we soared somewhere. What happened?”
“We were walking back from Howk’s place – do you recall that much? You were stricken by such a bad migraine you couldn’t walk. You moaned something about blue light cutting into your head. After that I wasn’t letting you go. I carried you back here.“ Accusingly. “Did you soar someplace without me?”
“So we didn’t discover Howk’s body?” I should have known I was OBE. That rhythmical walking…that magical running…it was so much like flying. But it had seemed so real. And Chase had been right beside with me!
“No. We didn’t. You thought it was around every corner but we never did find it. I say if she’s running scared she’s running smart. Did you find her body? You seem to be a cadaver magnet.” “All I know for sure is she’s dead.” Every sip of caffeine was rebuilding courage. I threw the covers back to go pee, and there I was in my underwear.
“Where did you go without me?” I demanded. I mean, really! Chase blushed! A pink spread of butterfly wings across his cheekbones. “I have a twin sister, so I’m not completely ignorant. I washed your face, gave you aspirin, put your clothes through the washer and dryer. They’re probably done.” Then, nodding, meeting my eyes, “You are so beautiful but…no sex, I swear.” Shook his head. “All that stuff has been ruined for me. ”
Meaning what? I lay there in my underwear, easily able to tell from the way that he looked at me that it was not ruined for him. Whatever bad thing that happened was like his Bex — BHMM – “before he met me”. I’ve learned to fight for what’s mine. I’ve got the best coach. “That’s not what you claimed back in dream lab.”
He rose up, restlessly. ““I’m a poser, God help me. I told you before, you can’t ever tell Corso the truth. If you tell him the truth you’re giving him a weapon. It’s scary he knows we’re together at all. I’m warning you, he’ll do anything he can to split us up.”
“Won’t happen,” I asserted confidently. Something about Chase made me so confident! “You’re not a poser, you’re a ringer,” I said smiling. Stroking his shoulders. It seemed to relax him. I wanted to talk more but he stood up restlessly, as if fearing he’d said too much. “I’ll go get your clothes,” he said. “Bathroom is through there.”
I was kind of grateful for implied permission to look around. On the ceiling over the bed was a Jenna Jameson poster – How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Untruths weren’t confined to Corso. But at our age, aren’t we guessing what we’ll be? We’re casting around, maybe sinking. We’ll grab anything – look at Bex. I can’t have any false pride about that. Take poor Miss Howk, for example.
She went directly from the role of Naughty Nurse to Missing Corpse. She couldn’t really be crushed in the autumn bulbs at Hadleigh, or Chase – who kept the news channel on his TV permanently crawling – would know all about it. I hadn’t really sleep- soared, but my experience in dream lab had somehow opened me to psychic visions. What it didn’t do was interpret them for me. That was up to me – and Chase.
Chase’s walls were cluttered with the stuck-on piles of paper that usually sift to a dorm room’s floor; lists, photos, cards, newsprint and bumper stickers applied in a jigsaw effect that told a careful researcher the identity of Corso’s “anonymous” correspondent. “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead” was Chase’s wish; a mantra gathering power through repetition. Hard to see clearly with only lava-lamp lighting and dusty Venetian blinds in a permanent “down” position, so I slatted them to take a look at the day.
The usual gelid pre-winter sky; the sun had not yet broken through. The bathroom was tiny, made tinier by a “bulky waste only” stolen landfill sign occupying the shower. Fearing I looked like melted makeup hell I peered shyly in the mirror only to see a little kid – my sister Annika maybe – looking back. So Chase had done a good job on my face and then – seeing what I really look like – hadn’t run away. But who could handle my unprotected mien on a daily basis? I feared I couldn’t. When I came out Chase was holding out my – now impossibly teeny – black sweater in apology. “Uh oh.” The twin sister hadn’t taught him everything, like don’t put sweaters in the drier. He offered instead a wrestling sweatshirt which I would have sacrificed twelve sweaters to get. Precious prize, in fact; a tender Chase substitute. A transitional object, like Annika’s teddy bear.
As Chase offered the shirt I noticed he had removed yesterday’s bandage. The sore on his wrist was healing beautifully. As I dressed he backed politely away from the bed to sit in a butterfly chair. “I sure wish you remembered finding Howk’s body. You were right there.” He shook his head. “You went without me. Remember how I asked you back to my place? I saw you pull away from me, right into your own space.”
True. I said defensively, “I didn’t want you seeing me like this.” He gestured around him. “Now you’re seeing me like this.”
Guilty! I was judging people’s outsides by my insides again. It’s s hard making yourself vulnerable to someone, and the more you like – and love – and respect them, the harder it is. Chase seemed so confident, so combative; I forgot he might need self-protection too. Sharing can be fearsome. I’d so wanted him to see my polished organized self and never the real me. In fact I’d wanted to change so all the worst parts of myself would get left behind. Too late now. I collapsed on the bed like a ragdoll and he sat right down beside me.
“We’re powerful if we stay together,” he said. “Don’t you get that? We did something I would have sworn was impossible. Together.” I clutched his hand, agreeing. Put my head on his shoulder while he stroked my hair. His voice throbbed with confidence. “Tell me what you saw. We’ll figure it out.”
“The “blue light” breaking my head turned out to be police cars. Miss Howk had jumped – or fallen – right through my eighth floor window – those windows don’t open — and gone splat. They asked us to identify her. What do you think it means?“ Silence as we both reflected. “I mean, it couldn’t have really happened. Could it? Did she fall off something else?”
We both looked at the talking heads on his TV, yelling about the Middle East. The crawl was all tornados, blizzards and freeway pileups. “Falling off her second floor balcony wouldn’t have killed her,” said Chase, offering, “I could look up unidentified bodies,” but making no move to pull out his phone.
I fell back on the bed, but refused to meet Jenna Jameson’s eyes. “You’re going to have to get rid of your girlfriend,” I said pointing.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he flushed, leaping to pull down the poster. “More of a timeshare.” I smiled as he balled it up and tossed it in general direction of his overflowing trashbin. Score. Then he challenged me, “You’re the dreamer. Dreams can be garbage, like chewed-up thoughts. Can we be so sure it has a meaning?”
I was sure. Why? “Is there any more of that coffee?”He went to check. I called after him, “Dreams in general might be meaningless. This wasn’t.“ He appeared with glorious caffeine. Devil’s advocate. “Tell me why?”
I knew all about his optimism of the will. I had to do something about the pessimism of his intelligence. “When forced to choose between meaning and meaninglessness we have to choose meaning. We’re supposed to.”
“Because…?” He threw himself down crossways to me, lifting my legs across his. I tapped his skull. “Because we were born with decoders. Duh.” He shrugged, ceding me the mastery. “So decode.”
“I think it means if Howk is dead, we can find her body. It means it has something to do with us.” I rubbed his furry head. “That’s as far as I can get. Now we need your half or we’ll never figure it out.”
“I think we should stay away from Hadleigh,” said Chase. Self- interest? But I loved that he wanted me to stay with him. And with Bex rampaging through the world declaring war, I should give Hadleigh a wide berth. Bex couldn’t find me if he didn’t know who Chase was! “Maybe the police in your vision mean they are involved.”
“Or they should be,” I pointed out. Chase launched to his feet. “How about that breakfast that I promised you?” “Sure,” I said, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Here it comes. “Maybe a little sleuthing first.”
“A little sleuthing?” “Call it fact gathering. Care to help me gather some facts?” I couldn’t help smiling. Chase really was like a bulldog. Once he got a taste– “Sleuthing Corso, I imagine?”
“In his absence. I’m eighty percent certain he won’t be there; a hundred percent if he pays attention to the restraining order. Are you in? You get to meet Mrs. Corso,” he tantalized. Now that was just plain irresistible. “I’m in,” I said. His front door had six locks and a police lock so I had plenty of time to read aloud the quote pasted to the door.
“What if you slept and what if in your sleep you dreamed And what if in your dream You went to heavenAnd there plucked a strangeAnd beautiful flowerAnd what if when you awoke You had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“What then?” he echoed. “I put it up at the lab but Corso made me take it down. Maybe Miss Howk’s the flower we brought back.” “I’d rather have a flower than a cadaver,” I shuddered. People always assume the hidden world is lilies and roses. That’s not what Hieronymus Bosch assumed.
As Chase relocked the locks on the outside, I saw more reading matter. The slogan painted above his shabby wooden door was a crossed- out “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” with a superimposed “Know Your Enemy Better Than You Know Yourself.” “Green Day?” I asked. “Sun Tzu.” Should I warn Chase about leaning too far over to look into the abyss?
I always say anyone can get psychic if they get rid of blocks. It’s simply using all our senses. Maybe Chase’s private war with Corso was itself a block. Think of all the locks each assembled just to keep the other out! It was funny in a way. But it stopped being funny when I found myself wondering if Chase could ever belong to me while Corso wielded power. You don’t grow up without encountering at least one monster. Chase stood bravely up to mine. My turn.
We hiked to a shabby wooden garage halfway out of town. More locks. The car inside was sheathed in plastic, warmed by trouble-lights, a baby in an incubator. Chase unwrapped it to my audible gasp. Gorgeous acid-green and poison-black Shelby Cobra. “My baby,” he patted it fondly. “Isn’t she beautiful? Step aside; I’ll back her out.” “You could feed Namibia for a year on the price of this thing,” I said. Stupidly. We poor people are touchy.
“Poor Namibia,” he agreed. “But aren’t there different kinds of hunger? And if someone gave you blood money, wouldn’t you need to spend it on something absolutely beautiful?” More clues! Wake up, Jazz. “Blood money?” I questioned. “Who died?” “I did. Behold my animated corpse.” He opened the passenger door for me. “You have to be nice to her.”
“If this car’s a girl, she’s a bodybuilder,” I said. Jealousy is a plague! But how could I help myself when he loved her too obviously and too much?
“Shelby’s very feminine,” he argued. “She even has an English accent.” Turns out he meant the GPS, which commenced ordering us about in snooty tones. “Shut her off,” I demanded, classic Bossy Girlfriend. “She’s interrupting our conversation.” “We’re not talking,” he defended. “Because she’s preventing.”
“Jea-lous,” he taunted. “But your conversation is more important to me. Besides, I know where I’m going. I even know a shortcut.” He whispered conspiratorially as he turned her off, “Night, night, Shelby.” “See you later.”
Shelby’s insides were cockpit-like. Easy to imagine that once again, we flew. Together. If I owned a little jet, I’d love her too. I began to relax. Bex couldn’t catch us and Corso was busy elsewhere, kicking down a line of helpless dummies. I could play the passive passenger; all I had to do was think up things to say to keep the driver entertained. Outside our rounded, tinted windows the faux crenellations of the university town gave way to miles and miles of sad necropolis. Shelby turned in between the floodlit obelisks and the shrouded angels. Was the re-animated corpse widow-shopping?
“Shortcut,” said Chase. I really wasn’t in a graveyard mood so we rode in silence for a while. “So where are all the wonderful things you wanted to say?” He teased. Like Shelby was such a scintillating conversationalist!
He wants backchat; I’ll give him deep-diving backchat. “Do you believe in parallel universes?” See what I produce when challenged? He chuckled softy to himself. “I guess we have to, don’t we? I mean, if the universe is infinite it must be multi.”
“So everything still happens, but with slightly different modifications, in each one.” “And some things don’t happen at all,” agreed Chase. “That’s where I get my comfort.” If he was ever going to reveal his secrets wouldn’t it be in darkened car where we sat comfortably side by side, staring straight ahead. Closeness without challenge. I could see it relaxed him to drive. Was there any way to get him started? While I was feeling stupid, necropolis gave way to farmland. Shelby bumped along the rutted roads.
I said, ‘Gee, this place sure is far out.” Chase said, “That’s the perfect description.” Turning left on Mad Bear Road. I made a special note of the name. You never know when you might have to prove that you weren’t locked in dreamland…or passing through a parallel universe. We flew down a lengthy avenue of strangely charmless trees.
“Something attacked these trees,” I commented. “They’re stunted.” He laughed. “Called pollarding. Arborists do it on purpose.” But they were ugly. Why mangle something living, altering its freewheeling, unique growth pattern to rigid uniformity? Just because you can? The tickle of dread down my back was like a cat stepping over my grave.
At the end of the drive was a farmhouse. Or maybe it was a barn that went to rehab. Getting closer I saw evidence of two warring tastes; somebody fussy about historical preservation and somebody with a mania for the new; either harboring a fondness for the stark and the contemporary or a determination to be oppositional. I thought I could guess who was who.
One big structure and several outbuildings provided lots of room for disagreement. Someone had attempted to create lawn sculptures out of huge pieces of wrecked-looking farm equipment, or maybe they ran a part- time demolition derby. The bear had gone mad indeed! A vision exploded in my mind; Corso on a tractor deliberately chasing an elderly woman in heels across the furrows …She falls down, stands up, kicks off her shoes…No, he wouldn’t. Would he? There was the restraining order Chase had mentioned; you need a reason to get those things.
No visible automobiles made me hope no one was home. So much for standing up to anybody! Maybe I wasn’t even up to meeting Mrs. Corso if she was in Teflon-songbird mode. Would she cling to us for help? Do the drowning save the drowned? If there were enough of us we could form a human chain. This compound was deserted. But I was determined not to let Chase down, or at the very least never let him know how lily-livered I really was.
“Wow,” I said, stepping bravely out of our safe car. “I know what this estate should be named. Grounds for divorce.” “Har, har,” said Chase. Hands in pockets looking up at the tall black windows. “Looks like no one’s home.”
The stone terrace fronting the house was covered with fallen leaves; maybe that’s what gave the place its abandoned appearance. Did I hope Mrs. Corso was long gone? Or did I fear it? Chase opened the storm door to knock and a bunch of notes thrust beneath the knocker fluttered away, forcing me to secure them and attempt to place them back in order. Sleuthing, Chase called it; but I do like reading other people’s letters, if they force themselves beneath my eyes. Sleuthing’s a more dignified term than snooping but it comes to the same thing. I love anything personal not intended for my eyes. But the childish scrawl was difficult to make out.
“Judging from the sentence construction I don’t think English is this lady’s first language,” I said. Chase peered over my shoulder. “How do you even know it’s a lady?”
“Because they are all signed Borea.” He studied the scraps. “Maybe English is not even her second language.”
We puzzled over the messages. I arranged the notes on a bench between gaudy majolica jardinières that showcased the corpses of long dead chrysanthemums. Since Borea did not date or time her messages, the only way to put them in order was to follow the arc of increasing distress. Borea’s basic plaint seemed to be, why she was no longer needed to clean and why was she not being paid? Whom had she displeased and how? It was difficult for her to come all the way out here because she needed a ride and she needed a job in order to get a ride.
I empathized with her written woe, feeling vulnerable and exposed just standing here while the house stared me down with it terrible dark eyes. Was I comforted that we’d see anybody approach a mile away, or was it like being trapped at the bottom of a well watching help – or hurt – coming at you oh so slowly?
Made me wish we’d parked around the back. Chase rested from his assault on door and bell. We both listened as the echoes of hammering and ringing slowly died away. “Walking around back is a good idea,” he said as if I’d spoken my thought. “You can follow me or you can wait here and I’ll let you in.”
I grabbed him in a panic. He enfolded me in his arms. “There’s obviously no one here,” He murmured. “Don’t be so jumpy.”
“This place is Bad Vibe Manor,” I told him. “Like it was built on a slaughtered baby burial ground.” “We’re not finished sleuthing yet,” said Chase. “Once again I guarantee you: no breaking in.” Kissing my neck with those soft lips. “What can I do to help you feel more safe?”
This was working. Also making me dizzy. “Here we go,” I agreed. The back of the house was a sea of mud. The building lacked its whole back wall. In its place, plastic fluttered. “See?” Chase grinned. “They could never agree on windows or doors.” “Poor Borea could have come right on in!” I argued. “Maybe for her it was more about the paycheck.”
The inside of the house was dark. All curtains and blinds were drawn and closed. How could anybody stand to live like this, especially someone in need of restraining orders? My trickle of dread widened to a rushing stream. Something terrible had happened here. Unwilling to touch anything or even let Chase go, I waited for our eyes to adjust to the dim light. “Looks like it’s already been ransacked,” said Chase, and called, “Mrs. Corso!”
“Looks more like packing to me,” I suggested. Several U-Haul boxes stood around half-filled. But Chase had a point. Several pieces of furniture were overturned and the rug was disarranged. We both shouted together, “Mrs. Corso!” Even an echo would have reassured. But there was nothing. This house absorbed distress, giving nothing back. I prodded a box loaded with wrapped china labeled “Butler’s pantry.”
“Maybe the butler did it,” I suggested. Humorlessly. Chase didn’t laugh. Instead, he seemed visibly discouraged. “Any evidence Mrs. Corso had is long gone.” “Maybe Mrs. Corso herself is the evidence,” I said, thinking of the lady trying to outrun the tractor. I almost jumped out of my skin at an animalistic scrabbling noise. A ball of gray fur shot across the floor.
“Cat,” I said relieved, and Chase admitted, “I do recall they had a bunch of cats. Pollarded cats.” I stared uncomprehendingly and he explained, “Clawless. Because of the songbirds.” Clawless and clueless and therefore defenseless…At least someone had left an enormous bag of cat chow open and spewing across the kitchen floor. “Thoughtful for the kitties,” I said. “Not so thoughtful for Borea.” He asked me, “Should I check upstairs?”
I grabbed him. “No. New rule, no sleuthing without me. I have a really bad feeling about this.” He alerted. “And I have good feelings about your bad feelings. Be more specific.” I pointed to the basement door, invitingly open a crack. Whatever waited below was calling to me. “We should look down there.”
As he pushed the creaky door aside I heard the water dripping, smelled the dank earthen disinterment smell of an open crypt. It was like coming to a point in a movie you suddenly recognize. You tell yourself, “This is where I came in” and you know what’s going to happen because you’ve seen it all before. Mrs. Corso was the corpse at the bottom of the stairs. “This is what we saw in the dream lab,” I said. “Don’t you remember? Where you took my hand at the bottom of the stairs? We stepped out into the quad like we’d been in the psychology building but really we’d been here. ” I pointed. “She’s down there with her head bashed in. She’s dressed in a skirt and wearing a wig.”
“I sort of remember.” Chase scratched his head. “I recall thinking it was a mannequin, wanting to get you out of there.” He stepped past me; I clenched my teeth as his feet pounded down the stairs. Braced for the inevitable gasp, “Oh, my God!” Back upstairs; he feverishly washed his hands at the sink. We crowded together for warmth and comfort.
“Could she possibly have fallen?” I asked, answering my own question by shaking my head hopelessly.
“That might be what it’s supposed to look like, but people don’t hit the top of their heads falling down the stairs.” He shook in his excitement. “This could be it. We could have him with this one. But we have to get the police here before any more time goes by. She’s been dead for days.” Would Officer Blofil answer our distress call? Would our parallel universes crash together? “We can’t stay,” said Chase. “So get ready to run.”
Suddenly I was able to run like the wind; my hair flying out pennant-like.
Police cars and campus security cars blocked the entrance to my dorm. I swear it looked just like a movie set. An ambulance and fire truck parked right in a flowerbed, grinding down the autumn bulbs. That will piss off Miss Corinne Myers, the house manager, I thought. Getting rejected from vet school already had her panties in a twist; all residents feared to cross her. Crime scene tape fluttered in the wind; the very tape I’d imagined in Miss Howk’s apartment mystically transferred to my own residence, like I possessed the power to bring such things to being.
Chase might think – for the moment – that I was his “lucky charm” but there was plenty of proof of the opposite. If cops were turning away people at the door, how would we get in? What the hell could have happened? If it was crazy Bex, how could he have created such mayhem in the moments since we’d last seen him? Chase – my lucky charm — strode purposefully forward like the law school wannabe he claimed he was.
Corinne Myers disputed heatedly with a policeman. Upset, just as I’d predicted. Chase barged into her colloquy, asked, “What’s going on?” But Corinne’s eyes lit on me. She literally collared the cop and dragged him over in my direction, mouthing the heart-sickening phrase, “There she is.”
Once again everybody was looking at me and I was not fit to be looked at. I panicked and unbuttoned the top button of my coat, trying to get more of that oxygen suddenly in such short, short supply.
Was I captured now? What could I confess to? A disturbance throbbed between Chase and me, negative currents in our symbiosis. How many revelations could he take about me before he would bail? And who would blame him? I had to pray the police would give plenty of hints about what they expected me to say because my memory of the past was a thrift- shop jumble sale. Who can tell the past, if it is not even past.
“Are you the resident of 824?” asked the cop. Finally, a question I could answer!
“Yes. Me and Aleksa Curtis.” Horrid thought. Had Aleksa…? My peacoat was no match for the deep freeze falling from the sky and so my jaw began to clatter. Life had become a polygraph test I was obstinately failing. Chase put both his arms around me as if they’d have to drag him away too. Aww.
“Somebody fell from your window,” said the cop. But those windows don’t open. “Is it Aleksa?” I managed to ask.
Corinne said, “Honey, Aleksa is gone.” Then, seeing my face, she said, “No, Aleksa withdrew from college this morning. She’s not here.” She shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “ The usual. Man trouble.”
Creepy! Coincidence that Corso’d said he’d see what he could do about my inconvenient roommate? As my brain ticked over like a balky engine, I realized everyone was still looking at me: me, the only tenant of The Death Room.
“She’s been out all day,” defended Chase. So cute! Lawyer slash bodyguard slash interpreter. My knight. When I thought like that my migraine got better and I could see again.
“Who fell?” I asked the cop, my eyes reading his nameplate, searching for anything to make him real. There it was. “Blofil.” A goony name for a goony guy; he looked too young to shave. More like a choirboy than a policeman. But it sure enough was a memorable name and we must clung ferociously to precious, precious memory. Because what other guideposts are there in this dark forest?
Choirboy said, “We don’t know. Maybe you can tell us.” I clutched Chase’s arm and hissed at him, “What if it’s Soliz? Her dream was falling off Hadleigh!” “It’s no one that I recognize,” said Corinne, and since she spends all her time trolling social networking sites it was quite a statement. Not a student then?
Blofil ticked through the possibilities. “Miss Myers says nobody’s signed the guest book. Did you have anyone staying with you on the down low? Just tell the truth; you won’t be in trouble.” They always say that, and it always sounds just that unbelievable. I had a feeling this guy enrolled at the police academy before he really knew what trouble was.
“Nobody.” I insisted. But a tremor ran through me – visibly, I’m afraid. I would have failed that polygraph again because I was thinking of Bex. Could he have weaseled his way in? If he was dead – here’s a poser — would I be glad?
The policeman and Corinne exchanged disbelieving glances. I tried exploring Officer Blofil’s brain, but his oily skin repelled my psychic efforts. All I could see was my own fear reflected in his dark, dark eyes. Why was he sweating when I was in the “hot seat”? If it was his first death, it was mine too. Stress wreaks hell with the thermostat; I’m here to testify. Some freeze; some leak.
My prince asked them flat out, “What the hell happened?” Corinne Myers moved her eyebrows and twitched her lips as if robbed of the power of speech. “A young lady seems to have killed herself,” said the officer.
Not Bex. Am I a bad person for feeling a flicker of disappointment? Just a flicker, mind you. Officer Blofil made a battlefield decision. He led us around the side of the building and lifted the tape. A group of policemen and campus security guards kept watch over a crumpled blue tarp. They looked at us suspiciously, as if we were after party wannabes jumping the velvet rope.
I looked up and saw the broken window. I had that weird rollercoaster sensation, as if I was falling. As if I was the broken one and the window looked pityingly down at me. What had Corso said about the shame of attempted flight? I castigated myself for venturing so high. Maybe I would always sign up for missions I couldn’t accomplish, tackle feats I could never complete. Chase pushed close up against me, lending me his power. He has a lovely hayfield smell. Like clover. Soothes me instantly. Like the weather turned bad so we took refuge in a nice warm barn. We’ll stay here together until the storm has passed.
Blofil lifted the tarp. It was not Soliz.“Miss Howk,” said Chase and I at exactly the same moment.
More than ready. Even though Cuppa Joe’s has none of the ”higher functions” Chase mentioned, it was just like a date for me because I had never been there. Unlike the slimy self-service cafeterias on my Starvation Level Meal Plan, Cuppa Joe’s is an outsider’s emporium. Not run by students. Did “Joe” even exist? The little shrunken man at the cash register wore no nameplate – but I was innocent enough to believe that a sandwich paid for with cash money had to be better than cafeteria slop.
We chose the darkest booth at the back. I was thinking it would be a great place to study if the light weren’t so dim – I swear they fitted those fake Tiffany lamps with 30-watt bulbs. You could maybe wear a miner’s helmet. But then I’ve always wanted to be wherever won’t let me in. An inability to see into the darkness outside our own circle of weak light made it feel downright intimate. I gnawed on my roast beef and sprout sandwich – would have been good if the bread was fresh — and summoned up the Big Question.
“Why are you so mad at Corso?“
He drummed his fingers on the greasy Formica. “He took something from me.” My mind returned to my Christmas scarf. He took something from everyone. “Was it when you worked for him?“
“I knew him from before.” More astutely than I ever could, Chase changed the subject. Lawyer. I’m telling you. “Do you think we really soul- traveled?” The key to subject changing is to introduce a subject the other person is dying to talk about.
I perked up. “Unless it was “astral projection” or something.” Referencing Cadwallader’s book. But could anything coming from Corso be trusted? “We obviously saw stuff in Corso’s place that was real. Or he wouldn’t have gotten so upset. It’s like…have you ever done that before?” Chase shook his head. “I’ve felt like I was outside myself plenty of times. And I’ve dreamed. But I haven’t actually projected. Wild isn’t it?”
We touched hands across the table. Looking at his bandaged wrist made me wince; when we touched I felt the “missing piece” lock into place. We were stronger. My migraine was dissipating. With Chase around, I had courage even I could recognize.
I said, “You know what was strange? That after you left, Corso really didn’t act interested in our stories. I mean, I thought that was the whole point, but he acted like he didn’t care what happened to us when we were unconscious. Even though it actually worked – we achieved what he said he was trying to achieve. But he rushed us through our stories! Can you figure that out?”
“I told you,” Chase asserted, “This experiment isn’t about what he says it’s about. He never tells the truth. I’ll bet he thinks sleep-soaring is actually not possible, just a plausible carrot to will keep us jumping forever. He’s really good at figuring out what story someone will buy.”
He sure was. Kind of shaming that he dangled a scholarship over me at the college fair and I bit bit bit. Was I easy? But what else could I have done? I needed to be here. Wrong things and right things were inextricably mixed together. Was this what adulthood was like? “You know…at my first conference with him…I think he hypnotized me,” I confessed.
“Of course he did. He’s a past master of abusive hypnosis.” “Abusive hypnosis? What’s that?”
“He tampers with the will. We can fight him by subverting him, and we can fight him by resisting him. But most of all we need to fight him by exposing him. Sunlight is just what these guys can’t stand.”
People had been tampering with my will as long as I could remember. It’s the definition of “education” to some people. All I could hear was Corso’s voice saying, “everything you fear has already happened.”
Unsettling phrase! What did it mean? At the time I took it for granted that he referred to the horrible daycare imbroglio, that somehow I had been exposed. But Corso seemed like the type who would always want you to think he knew more than he did. My manager at Fluffernutter’s was like that; wanting me to think she was omnipotent. Corso intended to scare me because terrified people just can’t think straight.
The music changed. The robotic synthesizer slap-fight pileup of the Killers’ Heaven Ain’t Close In A Place Like This, gave way to R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion. I like a bistro that plays the classics. Forever after that, it was our song. The music embraced us like a ritual.
The music ebbed and flowed around us, forming a tent of extra privacy, helping me and Chase relax and move together. We were alone, but not alone in a place ofsafety. Trust is key, but faith too plays a part.
“I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you singI think I thought I saw you try..” It was like the music whispered secrets we feared to tell. I could feel Chase wanting to kiss me again, and I wanted to kiss him, too. We were emerging from each other’s shadows and becoming real. Now we were much farther along on our journey to…somewhere. But where were we going? Heads together, we whispered.
“You told he sold Corso soul to the Devil,” I reminded him.
“Did I?” Chase smiled faintly. “It sounds like me. Corso may like buddying up to power, but believe me, he’s always plotting a takeover.”
“I’ve heard the Devil doesn’t keep the deals the makes,” I said. Chase chewed around the edges of his sandwich. “Overreaching is always the end. Maybe Corso’s met his match.”
“Maybe he’s the Devil, “ I speculated.
“Maybe every bully is,” said Chase, his lips touching first my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. “I hate him messing with our heads when our heads are all we have,” I murmured. “And the worst part is we gave him permission to do it.”
“We couldn’t know what we were agreeing to,” said Chase, framing my face with both his hands. “And now we’re taking it back.”
“You know what I didn’t like about our out of body experience?” “How obnoxious I turned out to be?”
“No, no and no. The fact that – This is hard to say without sounding lame – but that I was still me. I thought I would be all soul. Just my spirit – you know. Free from self.” Free to be anybody and everybody.
“But how would I have recognized you?” asked Chase. He had me there. And I got it. I absolutely got it. Our experience wasn’t about leaving the planet; it was about seeing earthly things with fresher eyes. Freshest eyes.
Chase kissed a line along the edge of my lips. “Your body is important to me. I wish –“ I knew what he was about to say, psychically or with the knowledge of love. He wanted me to care for the shell he lived in the way he cared for mine. His body was important to me because it was him. The way he carried his shoulders, the spark of intelligence in his eyes, his battle- scarred, rescuing hands were as important to me as the gleam in his eye. His physicality centered mine; centered my world.
“Your body is very important to me,” I said. And the world slowed down so we could kiss. That’s what made it extra horrible when out of the darkness a body reared up. I swear my heart almost stopped.
“Is this the guy?” asked Bex.
There was Bex, larger than life and a little the worse for wear; wearing his holey Conformity is a Social Disease t-shirt and his skunk- oiled motorcycle jacket. The uncertain lighting lent fearful hollows to his features. You could see what he would look like as an old man, as a corpse, as a skeleton. Maybe he was all those things already. He puffed out his cheeks as if his lungs had constricted and he couldn’t get air.
“Is this the guy?” he demanded again. “Or is it the geezer who looks like your granddad?” Why did this have to happen around Chase? Wouldn’t he disrespect me forever for having even a momentary association with this guy? How could I recover from this humiliation? I wanted to say, “I didn’t choose him – he chose me” but it wasn’t the complete truth. I had to face the horrible responsibility of my lazy choice. It seems you can’t summon up an out-of- body experience, just because you need one to escape from awkward social situations. Drat. I would have to settle for sinking through the floor.
“Bex,” I said with every ounce of my tampered will, “Get out of here. Scram. We agreed it’s over. You don’t belong here.”
Chase’s face was a study. He was taking it all in. He said very calmly to Bex, “Just what part of “Scram” don’t you understand?”
Bex ignored Chase like he was invisible. Chase’s body was not important to him. Not to Bex, the big guy, who’s mean and strong and walks like a swagger coach. Cutting Chase completely out, he planted his hands on the table and loomed in, right up in my face. Destroyed our circle of trust and set the Tiffany lamp to bouncing its weak light in crazy circles.
“What is this about really? Are you angling for, like, a ring?Because that is bogus. Sue me for thinking you were something better than that. Are we talking white picket fence here?” He almost spat.
I was mortified. If I was so terrible why was he pursuing me? I think in some strange way his battle was with himself. Leave me out of it! Seeing the way his mind operates I knew I had escaped in the nick of time. I tried pushing the table back so I could stand up but those tables don’t move. I was trapped.
Chase was closer to the target; he rose up in a leisurely way. Shorter than Bex by a good four inches.
“You’ve hit your due date, buddy,” he said. “You’ve expired.”Bex still seemed to think he could drag me out of there. He reached out to touch my coat but I smacked his hand away.
“Come outside and say it to my face,” he demanded as the light rhythmically exposed his hollow core and bloodshot eyes. “From your own mouth. I deserve to hear it from you.”
Not on his life — or in this case, my life. I was actually afraid of him. “I said goodbye months ago,” I told him in a voice so loud people turned to stare. “It’s over. Respect that I know when I’ve had enough. You said you have too! You don’t even like me! Go away.”
“I deserve respect,” shouted Bex, spreading his shoulders and shaking his arms. His face darkened. That five o’clock shadow was ten after midnight. A sour animal stink poured off him. I could tell escalation was what he’d come in for; that he didn’t really care about anything else and it was pure myth that I had any choice in the matter. Bex was acting in his own drama all by himself.
Chase stepped out ofthe booth in a relaxed way, grabbed Bex by bicep and ankle, and folded him like a pocket comb.
At exactly that moment the wizened little cashier in the long apron shuffled into the fray. Had Joe, unlike God, decided to prove his existence for once and for all? “Joe says keep it down,” he contributed; shifting a wad of what I hoped was gum from one side of his toothless mouth to the other. “You can’t hang out here without you order something.” I was crestfallen. No miracles here.
Chase hauled Bex to his feet, dusted him off, and sent him spinning into Joe’s arms. “This guy’s from out of town,” said Chase over Bex’s head. “He’s not even a student. He just came here to start a fight.”
My fallen chest expanded. Chase was miracle enough for me. “He attacked me,” complained Bex in an infantile whine.
“He’s got a sandwich,” said Joe’s minion, pulling on Bex’s elbow, seemingly unintimidated by superior size. “You got nothing. You can take it from me or you can take it from the cops.” “I’ll order, I’ll order,” protested Bex, with his fatally flawed timing. Said mini-Joe, “You get yours to go.”
Bex allowed himself to be led away, shouting over-the-shoulder threats. “Full on war!” and the perennial classic, “You’ll be sorry!”
I put my head down on the table and moaned. Chase sat beside me and patted my shoulder. “Can I say how much more I appreciate your body now?” I writhed. “Or is it too late now that you’ve seen him? What did you just do?”
Chase laughed. “It’s never too late for body praise,” he said and “Cross-face cradle. Always catches ‘em unawares.”
Trying to wipe Bex’s slime from my face I realized I was trembling. Allergic to brutality. And now violence. I swear.
“Nice guy,” teased Chase. “I can see what you liked about him.” I was fated to be tortured by both of them apparently.
“I can’t even begin to apologize,” I groveled. “He’s so awful. He’s from my hometown. We dated really casually, we weren’t even exclusive. I broke up with him months ago. I never thought he’d take it like this. He makes such a big deal about not caring about anything. Now he’s hanging out around the campus taking pictures of me! I’m scared to go out.”
“Probably realized he was stupid to let you go,” shrugged Chase. “Watch how horrible I am when you try getting rid of me. “
“That’s not even funny,” I said, and he said, “You still have feelings for him?”
“Sure,” I said. “Rage and revulsion.” And now fear, although I hated admitting it. Fear is like that houseplant from outer space; if you so much acknowledge its existence it takes over everything. Like the Chinese fortune cookies say; Fear: down payment on a debt you might not even owe. “Let’s report him,” said Chase. “Swear out a peace bond against him. Let the rent-a-cops toss him every time they see him. Come on, I’ll walk with you.”
I tried to imagine raging Bex constrained by anything called a “peace bond.” It was laughable. “I tried that already,” I argued. “Argumentative me” is all Chase’s doing; when hanging with Bex I was go-along, get-along. “They gave me a list of phone numbers you know, like Make A Wish Foundation and Dial A Prayer. I’m hoping maybe now he’s seen you that you scared him away. Maybe he’ll just go. ” Ever hopeful Jazz.
“You got a make-a-wish thing going on all by yourself,“ said Chase, “Although sometimes bullies are scared straight when anyone stands up to them.“
I wrung my hands. “I mean, what about his job? He has to work – he’s always complaining about money – his boss never gives him time off. I don’t know what story he told them, but he has to go back eventually.”
“Let him worry about his own problems,” said Chase. “They’re not your problems any more. Ready to go? There’s a back way out.”
Bex wasn’t waiting for us outside. Visibly. As one who had explored it, now I had to worry about the immaterial world.
“Could you just walk me to Hadleigh? I’ll talk to security again tomorrow.” Iwasfeelingsortlight-headed.Sick,asifthatsandwichhad done me no good. The migraine generated by poor Howk’s shattered world was back with reinforcements.
“Promise?” “I promise.”
“If that’s what you want,” said Chase. “Remember, I’m always available for guard duty. Day or night.” He stopped to put both his hands on my shoulders. “Why don’t you come back to my place? I shouldn’t let my lucky charm out of my sight.”
Tempting offer but I wasn’t ready. He had idealized me. In spite of soul-travel we still didn’t know each other well enough. He had fantasies about me that he would definitely stop having if I didn’t clean myself up and change my clothes. Koo was right to complain, “sleep research” left us tireder than ever. I needed to close my eyes and sleep as long as I possibly could. I pulled away from his safety. “I think I need to be alone tonight.” “Whatever you say.”
We resumed walking, hips and thighs touching, our special rhythm thankfully asserting itself. Or did I just need him to hold me up?
Chase continued, “Would I be a stalker if I suggested breakfast tomorrow? We can strategize our next Corso invasion. Sunday is his kickboxing class so the possibilities are endless.”
The thought of arranging my life around Corso’s schedule made my migraine kick like a mule. I had to cover my brain with my hands, as if my skull wasn’t doing a very good job.
“I need to sleep,” I moaned. “Do you see all that blue light, too? Am I hallucinating? Am I having a stroke?”
Chase gasped as if someone slapped him into life. “There’s blue light all right,” he said, “Police cars. Over by Hadleigh.”
Bex, if it was Bex, turned and ran. It sure looked like Bex, with the messy long hair and the studded motorcycle jacket glittering in the drizzle. I staggered backward but Jolonda had closed the door. Forcefully.
Chase asked, “Do you know that guy?”
“I hope not.” It’s like Bex was a demon I kept summoning up. And it had happened so fast I wanted to be wrong about it. “My ex lives miles away but lately he’s been emailing me pictures of the campus. So I knew he must be loitering around someplace. I keep telling him to go.” I heard Koo’s whine coming into my voice, but it was impossible not to imagine a photo of me and Chase coming out of the student health center plastered all over everybody’s Facebook pages.
“Well, he’s scared of you anyway,” said Chase. “Or he has a devil after him.”
I’m voting for the devil. Let’s talk about other people’s embarrassments. “So, weird about Howk,” I suggested awkwardly. “Disappearing. What happened to her? Where did she go? Isn’t it super creepy that she has our files?”
“Was she the body at the bottom of the stairs?”
“Definitely not. That was some old lady.” Once you persuaded me to open my eyes… “Remember their sex tape?” Chase suggested, almost hopefully, I thought. “Maybe it’s some kind of sextortion.“
Yeah, but who’s sextorting who?
I joked, “Maybe she and Corso went to Viagra Falls.”
“Well, if you remember everything, you remember my passion for evidence,” said Chase. “Can’t bring the big man down without it.” He consulted his Smartphone. “Let’s ask Howk.” Looking up her address. No lunch for Jazz.
“Can’t remember the address of your old girlfriend?” I teased. Emphasis on old. “The thing I love about you, Jazz, is that you know when I’m lying,” said Chase. That shut me up. But once you’ve raced through universes together, it does get you closer. So fast I had to ask myself, was this where I wanted to be? Wasn’t this man still a stranger?
Punch Brook Apartments had probably been a chic singles place to live – once. Now the cedar shingles were stained or missing, revealing health-problem asphalt horror; the too-small swimming pool was grimy with green gunk and the patched cement entryways wore the look of a prison yard. Nomenclature was no help, either. Poor Miss Howk was in “Building F.” Who wouldn’t escape that grading system just as fast as she could?
At least her apartment was on the second floor, which meant that, instead of a cement dog urinal, she had a balcony. She also had a fake door, unlike the one guarding her office. I could hear it echoing hollowly as we knocked.
“Look at this,” said Chase, stepping aside to move his shadow. Footprints on the door. Someone had tried kicking it in. Fake door, I’m telling you. They had certainly managed to dent it. Poor Miss Howk. That person was angry, whoever he was. Big footprint. I shivered for her.
“Maybe she just forgot her key and happened to be wearing Doc Martens,” Chase teased. “You should go to law school. A mind like yours is wasted on psychology. Size twelve?” “She looked very riot girl to me. And I’d like to go to law school someday… If I get out of this alive.”
“We will,” I insisted. Solidarity. “Death is not an option.”Chase gave the door a fingertip push. The distorted latch could no longer catch, and the door swung obediently open.
“See?” said Chase. “No breaking in this time either.”
My flood of déjà vu felt like a panic attack. We were no longer sleep- soaring. We were flat-footed mouth-breathers trapped in time and place; inhaling the stink of death. A miasma of violence reached out to suck me in.
“This needs gloves,” said Chase, but he was talking to himself. It was cold. I was already wearing gloves.
“Omigod,” I choked, braced in the doorway, refusing to move. “She’s dead. We’re going to find a body.”
“You’ve got quite the little psychic thing going there, haven’t you?” asked Chase, “It was a good guess about law school. Are you just trying to scare me?”
But I felt the reverse of psychic, whatever that is. Clueless. If I was psychic I would have known enough to stay away. Just Say No to everything; Bex, Fluffernutter, Corso. A real psychic would have stayed in bed. “He killed her,” I whined. “I can’t go in.”
But Chase could. He patted my shoulder and left me there, counting the seconds. His face, when it stuck it out the broken door, looked relieved.
“She’s not here,” he said. “This time you were wrong.” I uncovered my eyes. “Not even pieces of her?” “Not a spot of blood, not even a fingernail. On the other hand, there’s a hell of story of some kind. I think you’d want to see.”
I stepped inside. To say the apartment was in “disarray” would be putting it mildly. A migraine of epic proportions threatened to boil across my vision. I was majorly allergic to something dug up here. Insulation? Or brutality?
Every chair was upturned, every piece of upholstery slashed. A swinging metal cage-chair had been ripped right out of the ceiling. This had given the perpetrator the idea to further rip out ceiling tiles and scatter them around wholesale. We were getting pink insulation dust all over us just by standing there. A broken computer monitor and keyboard were spewed across the floor; hard drive wrenched away and missing. Every plant had been brought in from the tiny balcony and potting soil strewn around.
The kitchenette was a mass of broken glassware. Maybe Howk had defended herself by crouching behind the counter lobbing wineglasses like grenades.
“Look for a tall man covered in flour, coffee, potting soil and pink insulation dust,” said Chase. “See? He didn’t need to stand on anything to touch the ceiling.” He picked up an antique-looking canister marked “Flour.” Had Miss Howk planned to bake? Atavistic urges kicking in? One again I felt reality loosen.
“Someone must have seen him,” I offered faintly.“Maybe it was the middle of the night,” Chase suggested.
“But it must have made a racket.”
Chase shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe these neighbors were used to noises coming from this apartment. Maybe they make plenty of noise themselves. Maybe they did call the police and the police dropped by and things were quiet. On the other hand, maybe everyone just turned up the TV. See? He must have found what he was looking for.”
I thought Chase had some psychic abilities of his own. “How do you know that?”
“Because all the action’s out here.” He stepped inside the other room. “The bedroom hasn’t been touched. The bed is even made.” A beat before he hissed a final verdict, “Hospital corners.” Well, it wasn’t sex the invader wanted.
“The hard drive,” I suggested, looking at the disemboweled computer. He objected. “Everyone knows where to find a hard drive.” Something small enough to be in the soil of a potted plant.
“Flash drive? For backup?” All of us have to back things up. Forgetting that simple step invites centuries of bad karma. Especially if what you’ve got is irreplaceable… Blizzards have been known to occur…even in cloud computing.
Chase, always braved for expected opposition, caved for my idea. “It’s as good a theory as any.” Poor Miss Howk! She liked stirring up strong feelings…too much. Was sextortion ever worth it? Somebody hated her. Somebody powerful. And no one else cared. At the same moment we said to each other, “Corso poisoning.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I begged Chase. “We’re stepping all over a crime scene.” “You sure?” asked Chase. “Think about it. There’s no blood, no body. Just a broken door and some really, really bad housekeeping, which was legal last time I checked. Maybe she was redecorating. Maybe she’s moving out and she had a dispute with the management.”
“You know it wasn’t that.” My migraine cloud expanded, threatened to engulf my reasoning powers. “Well it’s going to be a crime scene if my head explodes.” A horrible thought occurred to me. “Did you look under the bed?”
He grinned. “Flip you for it.”I fled. He caught up with me outside. He sounded contrite. “Only joking. Of course I looked under the bed. She’s not there.”
“I’m sure she’s dead,” I said with finality. “I can feel it.” “Maybe she came home, saw the mess and took off running.” He shuddered. “I would. She should change her name while she’s at it.”
“I like that idea,” I said, rubbing my forehead. But didn’t having all those distinctive tattoos and piercings make it harder to disappear? I wanted to imagine Miss Howk free somewhere, waitressing in a diner, selling tickets at a rodeo, hawking Star Maps on the Sunset Strip. But she’d always look just like herself… How I wished there was a pill you could take to rid yourself of certain thoughts and memories, the way you rid yourself of headache. Maybe memories themselves cause inflammation of the brain…
The best thing would be something like a computer’s “undo” key, which is my favorite thing on it, if you care at all for my opinion. I press undo, undo, undo…Go back just as far as you needed to; six years, five years…just start over. Deleting is so much easier than creating, don’t you think? Delete. Delete, delete. But my two voices intervened. Arguing. Don’t want to lose any of the stuff that makes you you.
At the foot of the outside stairs we stomped and wiped dirt and dust off our feet and off each other’s clothes. Hadn’t seen a soul. I’m telling you this place was creepily deserted. “You know something else interesting,” said Chase. “He took the answering machine but he didn’t unplug the landline. What does that tell you?”
It told me that the person who broke into this apartment was cool headed enough to leave behind a situation where no one calling in could tell anything was amiss. In other words, someone familiar enough with university procedures to know the health center was obliged to phone but not visit.
“Howk seemed a bit of a rough chick,” I suggested. Was my “reptile brain” playing devil’s advocate, or was hanging around with Chase a contagion situation? “She might know some guys more dangerous than Corso.”
Chase shook his head. “No one’s more dangerous than Corso.”
“A kick boxer could have kicked in that door.” Mentally picturing Corso in full-on karate ghee sparked an idea. A suit. “Follow me.” I walked straight to the rusty dumpsters obstructing the narrow alley between the buildings. I knew they’d be in the only logical place — and they were. I saw a couple of weak floodlights — one burned out — but no visible security cameras.
I closed my eyes imagining I was the guy who just left Howk’s apartment. What would I do? I’d pick that last one, the dumpster deep in shadow. “Bet you’ll find a pair of coveralls in there,” I said authoritatively. “You know, workmen’s onesies.”
“A jumpsuit,” said Chase. “I know what you mean. I keep one in the garage for working on the car.” He eyed me speculatively. “Still being psychic? Or was that deductive or inductive reasoning?” “I don’t know the difference.”
“Deductive is going from the general to the specific. Induction is the other way around.” So what do you call imagining yourself as a criminal? Aw, let him have it. “Maybe I was psychic then.” “That’s good enough for me.”
He hoisted himself up, tossing around boxes and bags. He hauled up a sleeve of dark green cloth spattered with pink insulation dust and what looked to be potting soil. “Should we call the police?”
He jumped down beside me, dusting his hands. “How do we keep them from jumping to the conclusion that we’re in this up to our eyeballs?”
That sent a chill up my spine. I had already complained about Bex so I found myself all-too-able to imagine a phalanx of unsympathetic cops. “What motive would we have?”
Chase shrugged his shoulders. “Same as Corso. She has the files, we have the secrets. Plus, cops see college students and they always think drugs. They’re willing to give faculty members a pass, but kids they’ll hassle. Believe me, I’ve tried rousing them to their higher functions. Since it can’t be done, I’m thinking we’re going to have to produce actual, incontrovertible evidence.” Is there any such thing? And how did I get so cynical?
Chase shook his head like a dog throwing water. “I can’t really think uncaffeinated. Ready for that sandwich at Cuppa Joe’s?”
Men clustered impatient just outside the door; the way men wait, knocking against each other’s shoulders and pretending to consult their watches. Corso saw me and tried ridding himself of G-Rad and Zane. “Out, out, damned spots. I’ve got places to go and people” — heavy emphasis, actually leering at me – “ to see.” They scuttled away, the scuttlefish. Uh oh. I should have waited for the girl-pack.
Corso pinned me to the wall with his big shoulder, saying, “I think we have something to discuss. No?” He played his game of smiling at me so intensely I would blush. But somehow I felt past it now. Is it official? What quid pro quo-less universe did I visit to make me so brave?
“You’ve got my scarf,” I said. “And I want it back.” “Of course.” He played with a lock of my hair. “It’s at my place.”
I knew it wasn’t but I couldn’t tell him that. The thought of revisiting the master’s hellhole made my heart sink lower than my stilettos. I felt his mind boring into me, like the Bo we’d just talked about, like Bex, recognizing my resistance, trying to master me, countering my objections.
He looked down at me sleepily, eyelids drooping, as if it was naptime, as if he had hypnotized himself. “I love it when your nostrils flare.”
At that precious, precious moment the men’s locker room opened and Chase, who should have been long-gone, emerged. Maybe the word should be “sashayed”. He timed it perfectly. “No can do,” said Chase, inserting himself gracefully between us and prying me out of my corner, “We’re late already.” He locked his arm around me so we stood together.
“I advising my advisee on her dream-sickness problem,” said Corso. “And you need to leave the premises before I call security.”
”Call insecurity for all we care,” said Chase. “We’re outta here. Jazz needs my help in chemistry, She has a chemical imbalance.”
“Chemistry is not one of Miss Suzino’s classes,” said Mr. Know-It- All; but I interrupted, “Marketing. Chase is helping me with my marketing class. The chemical imbalance is that I’m starving. We’re getting lunch.”
“Mr. Quinn knows nothing about marketing,” Corso blathered. “If you wish to know about effective presentation and artful design you should come to me.” Impotently he snapped his jaws. It was as good as giving up.
“Marketing’s just about representing, right?” queried Chase, pulling me smoothly away. Bemused, I allowed myself to relax into him. Even when he’s all over the place it’s so much fun watching him fight my battles for me. “And imposture. I rule at that.”
Arm in arm, Koo and Soliz crashed into Corso as they stepped out of the ladies’, embroiling him in their discussion about the impossibility of boyfriends. But if looks could kill.
We left Corso staring over their heads, after us, as if he could send his thoughts outside his body. I shivered.
But we were hardly to the stairs before I boiled over from the effort of trying to keep our universes straight. “Marketing is not about imposture,” I snapped.
“And your dream-sickness problem,” he challenged, but still pulling me down the stairs. Away from danger. “What’s that about?”
Both our boilers blew. “You know an awful lot about lying,” I accused. “You lied about Nurse Howk.”
Outside the icy drizzle continued; sparkling sleet sharpened to points when struck by light. I welcomed the sting on skin. This is real. In soul travel you step between the sleet. It doesn’t sting. We sheltered temporarily under the portico, mistrustful but yearning, trying to come together. He was looking at me with a funny expression.
“How would you know?” “Because I was there.”
His eyes pulled down with sadness and he pushed his face so close I thought he might kiss me again. “Was it really you? You know when you’re dying your wishes become so powerful…you heard what Corso said about the oxygen-starved brain.”
“I was there. You chose me. You took my hand and said, “We’ve got to get out of here.” Why did you tell Corso that lie? Why choose me?” What I really wanted to know was, who kidnapped who? Chase backed away again. Somehow I was losing him. I saw him consider bluffing his way out.
“You can’t ever tell Corso the truth because he’ll mind-trick. Hit’s like you’re a mountain and he’s climbing you, if you tell him the truth you’re giving him footholds. Handholds. Lying’s a vital life skill. I’ll teach you if you’re willing to learn.“
“I’m not willing to learn,” I said huffily, unwilling to accept the imposture of his player self, unwilling to let him go. I was holding both his hands so tightly my fingers twined around the leather band. Worked free the snap. Gasped when I saw what I’d exposed.
“There’s a sore under here! It’s bad.” I felt he knew something I didn’t; that the game was much more dangerous. Didn’t the swamis cultivate sores so they could tell the difference between spirit and flesh?
He tried pulling his hands away. “It’s to keep me awake. To remind me of all my bad choices.” To punish him, more like. I saw my turn to rescue him. “We’re getting antibiotic cream on this right now.” I pushed the leather strap into my peacoat pocket and dragged him towards the student health center. He didn’t resist.
“At least now it’s clear,” he said. “You’re kidnapping me.”
I know I didn’t say my kidnapping thing out loud. Coincidence? A psychic moment? Or…and this is the answer I wanted to believe, once we had been inside each other’s minds we could do it again. I nudged him excitedly. “Corso’s experiment worked. We were really there! Don’t you remember?” He tried stopping me in our flight. I saw him want to kiss me then decide against it. “Don’t you have to have a soul to soul travel?” he asked me.
Out here on the quad I felt Bex’s eyes everywhere. I couldn’t tell whether I was psychic or paranoid but I was not free of Bex. I knew Bex was determined to make me feel that way; well, he was succeeding.
“Do you remember the basement?” I hissed at Chase as we lumped along, unable to catch the rhythm we’d mastered in soul travel, “At the foot of the stairs I fell over a body. I think it was the psychology building. We need to go look and see if it’ s there.”
“That wasn’t the psychology building,” he said. He did remember. “Well then, where were we?” He shrugged. “Some between world. The place where the soul-less grab the incoming souls.” My map calls that “purgatory”.
We had arrived at the student health center. Braced myself for running into Howk. I hadn’t believed her when she said “a mañana”. Who was psychic there? But guess what? Not only was her door closed, it was padlocked.
“That’s different,” I said out loud. Staring.A short, round-faced black woman in the colorful smock bustled into the hall and followed the direction of my gaze.
“Oh, that’s common procedure when we lose a key. We have a locksmith on call for Monday.” She looked us up and down with ripe and somewhat prurient contempt, like couples are the worst. God knows what she thought we wanted. “Now what can I do for the two of you?” “Where’s Miss Howk?” asked Chase.
Her face got worse, if anything. Hardened. “That’s what everyone wants to know,” she spat. “She’s AWOL. Missed two shifts and can consider her ass fired. How come you need to see her specially?” Her shoulder badge identified her as M. Jolonda, RN and she was gazing at us as if Howk was our drug dealer. I thought it politic to backtrack.
“It just that…um…we’re in Dr. Corso’s research project and we were told to ask for her. Billing, or something.”
Jolonda snorted as if watching a particularly unlikely movie.
“I can’t help you with that. She took all her files.” Corso’s very name was like an evil incantation. Better start at the beginning. “We’re only looking for antibiotic cream.” I offered up Chase’s wrist.
Jolonda seemed like someone with an innate distaste for flesh, which was certainly not Howk’s problem. It was a disgusting sore, but I would expect a nurse to keep some cool. I could feel Chase’s urgency to get out of there so I helped Jolonda bandage it to hustle her along. “If you see Nurse Howk, tell her to get in touch,” Jolonda hollered after us. “Remind her; we’ve got something of hers and she’s got something of ours.”
Isn’t that always true? It’s like the basis of every bad relationship, a sort of blackmail. But what could I possibly have that was Bex’s? What could I give back to make him go? Feeling my mind close to him, on the steps of the health center, Chase eyed me speculatively.
At that exact moment Bex stepped out from behind a tree and snapped our picture.
Except now it was worse. It felt like a forcing house. Yet still I somehow clutched at Chase’s hand; fearing I dislocated his arm while rocketing through space. I opened my eyes to see him leaning over me where I lay on the padded floor, trying to get his arm beneath so he could lift me up. In his ear I hissed, “I’ve seen the face of evil.”Chase, the arguer, didn’t argue. “Me, too,” he said.For a non-couple, we had so much in common it was eerie.
“You fell,” Corso accused from his lofty height. The exit sign reflected red off his cats’ eyes. “Miss Suzino, You’ve given yourself a bloody nose.” “Well, I died,” I said. “I forgot the safe word.”
“There is no safe word,” he said. “You must choose one for yourself. Silly girl.” But when I sat up I was streaming blood, even Chase was getting it on him; it was everywhere. Too late for safe words now. Poetry warns us there are no safe words, anyway. What possible incantation would have changed what just happened? And would I want it changed? Chase had singled me out. Those unforgettable kisses were doors to another universe. But when I tried to stand I fell back. Corso says everything we fear has already happened and my head sure felt like it. Out of body hangovers are the worst.
“It’s a gusher,” proclaimed G-Rad, lobbing me a paper towel roll. Chase helped me up to my launching pad. Corso tossed us water bottles. “So,” he said, “Did anybody fly?”
I tried figuring out how to explain what had just happened to me but first I had to figure out what was real. I’d been embarrassed before by assuming my visions were something common. If I confessed my brain turned inside out, check, that I had achieved lift-off, check – then wouldn’t I also have to admit to Corso: I saw through you? I couldn’t do it without Chase yet didn’t have the right to speak his part and – here’s what really hurt – it could all be imagination anyway. Especially tough since Chase was withdrawing from me now, climbing atop his own tomb to stretch out like a fallen soldier. Pulling away from me the center of his strength. I needed to get him alone to find out what he knew, thought, felt. Had I dragged him into my dreams or had he dragged me into his? Would he think I was attempting a takeover his mind and body, now my own were compromised? It’s more than mere embarrassment; call it the problem of belief. Or is it the problem of blame and the problem of forgiveness? I feared we were already too far ahead of ourselves in our mysterious non- relationship ever to catch up. But Chase, the starfish rescuer, rescued me. Again.
“I flew,” said Chase. Corso shook his head with a tight little smile. “Oh, Mr. Quinn,” he murmured, quite unpleased, “You are so predictable.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” said Chase. “I don’t want you to give me what I want, I want the truth,” said Corso and Chase rejoined, “That’ll be the day.”
Someone else was moaning. Thankful it was not me, I felt a twinge of shame for her, whoever she was, because it was a low, animal moan; a sow about to deliver. Then I heard Koo’s voice say, “I’m going to throw up” and Corso said, “Here’s a pail, Sleeping Beauty.” Retching sounds. I kept moping my face and closed my eyes.
“Any more foreheads require mopping?” asked Dr. Corso, handing out more water bottles. “I’m rather enjoying this Florence Nightingale routine. I’m often complimented on my bedside manner. I think I have the temperament for it. Only here to help, as they say.”
“You didn’t tell us we were going to get sick,” said Koo accusingly. Corso remained imperturbably cheerful. I guess from his point of view it was a successful experiment if none of us was dead.
“Nobody knew what would happen, Miss Loflin,” he told her. “You didn’t nauseate in Nurse Howk’s office. This is an experiment. Your nausea has been duly noted. Nothing a good dinner won’t fix — though that, I realize, would mark a break from your usual routine.”
Corso turned the lights up all the way and we blinked at each other. That moment was really horrible. We looked like people who don’t know when they’ve had enough; bloated and queasy, people who stuff and stuff. threatening projectile vomiting. I could only hope our mutual humiliation would bond us in silence forever like victims of a particularly bad party where none of the guests has the sense to go home.
Judging only by the gray skins and the baggy eyelids of the others, I could imagine how appalling I must look in my caked, streaked and bloodied makeup; a corpse unearthed. In some weird way, although our chain of hands had been severed we still felt joined; dizzy spirits who’d collided–hard—in an untried world of freedom. Could Bosch the monster-builder have grasped it all and reflected back his unwelcome knowledge? Art can be poetry too.
We were good subjects; it was like hell’s waiting room after some air disaster or freeway collision. Excuse me, isn’t that my arm you’re holding? Gee, miss your exit and wake to find yourself stuck for eternity to the very people you never want to see again. I looked up at the “black disco ball” staring impassively back at me. What had it seen? Whatever I had done failed utterly to impress it. Yet somewhere there was a record. That was what Chase and I should steal. “Anyone need a potty break?” asked our facilitator.“I’d better,” said Koo, staggering a little as she picked up her basin.
“At least you can walk,” I thought enviously. Maybe I said it out loud, because Corso came over and gazed at me with almost prurient interest, the way scientists study the set of the guinea pig’s electrodes. A hands-free headphone clipped to one ear gave him the look of a space alien in constant concourse with the mother ship. An alien rubbernecker.
“You had the farthest distance to travel, Miss Suzino,” announced Corso in his stagy way. “We are all dying to hear what non-dreamers dream.” Chase reared up as if to block him. Corso said, “Down, Mr. Quinn. Back to your corner.”
But I had figured out a way to answer. Slowly I managed to sit up. My throat was so dry it actually hurt. I drank from the water bottle and said aloud, ”That settles one question anyway. I want to die all at once, in a cataclysm. No stages of increasing horror for me. No thank you.”
“So, death,” Corso pooh-poohed. “Unconsciousness. Is that your safe word? Miss Suzino, we are interested in freedom. We are interested in eternity.” Horrible retching sounds from the ladies’ room. Corso padded over and cracked the door. “Hmm,” he murmured. “At least she made it to the stall.”
“You don’t look so bad,” I accused Chase when Corso’s back was turned. He grinned a lopsided lip-lift revealing one gold tooth. I thought, I kissed that tooth. “I come from very tough stock,” Chase said smugly. “My people survived for generations on nothing but whisky-soaked potatoes packed in snow.”
“Potatoes are vodka,” said Zane, weaving past us like a disoriented boxer. Definitely the guys recovered faster. Why weren’t we medicated proportionate to weight? Poor Koo got a double dose. “It was whisky,” corrected Chase, who could never let Zane be right about anything. “Potatoes are grown in manure. You have to disinfect them somehow.” “Eeeew,” said Soliz. “Are you trying to make us throw up?”
“All right, then,” Corso announced to the room in general. “We have one self-announced flier, anyway. I warn you his reliability track record is not good. Miss D’Accosta, how are you feeling?” Out of the corner of his mouth, so that only I could hear, Chase sang, “Annie are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?”
“Horrible, thank you,” said Soliz. “No one would do this except for money .” “Surprising how tastes can change,” laughed Corso. G-Rad spoke up. “I don’t feel very rested,” he said, working his jaw with his hand as if it had been dislocated.
“So sorry that redressing your deficits couldn’t be the focus of this experiment,” Corso said mildly. “Tell me, did you fly? Perchance to dream?” “I think I’m dreaming now,” said Soliz, yawning widely. “I dreamed I took part in a research experiment.”
“How deep,” remarked Corso but with that edge of sarcasm he brought to everything he said, as if he actually believed the opposite. ”The Kalahari Bushmen thought their waking life was the dream and their dreams were the reality.”
“That would be awful,” said Zane. More than the rest of us, he adored actual existence. It had been so kind to him. “If life was only a dream, nothing would matter.”
“Only a dream?” Our professor demanded rhetorically, striding about the room, waving his arms as if orchestrating the hounds he had released. “What is a dream? Hallucination? Vision? Perhaps a tear in the fabric of memory or a prophecy of future events? Might I modestly suggest a dream is the work of art by your subconscious? Visions credited to the dying seem to promise after worlds. Is that the last resort of the oxygen- starved brain or a check we can cash? These raptures are achievable without going to the trouble of actually dying. Autoerotic asphyxiation makes time-space adventurers of us all. When choosing between two evils, always select the one you haven’t tried.” “I said I flew,” repeated Chase impatiently.“We’ll get to you, Mr. Ringer,” said Corso, “Mr. Pettigrew is trying to speak. Surely a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
“I think I was trying to fly,” said Zane, unaware that Corso was making fun of him. “But I couldn’t get up. I was, like, being dragged down by something. So instead I just took off running. Running and running. Then I realized, something was chasing me.” “Flight creates pursuit,” posited Corso. Another mind trick. That can’t be true.
Zane massaged his legs. “My abductor muscles are killing me.” “Abductors…such a charming name. The Greeks had such a sense of humor. Perhaps language creates boogeymen as flight tempts pursuit.”
Corso’s pupils glittered as he swept his lashless eyes across our guinea pig sports hero. Curiosity caught the cat. “Running where? And how much of this was visual? Or was all of it sensory?” Zane rubbed his forehead as if chasing a headache. ““I’m trying to remember. Part of it was like a movie I was forced to watch, you know, like that guy who had his eyelids propped open. A movie with really bad sound.”
“Mine was like that too,” volunteered Soliz.“You were watching yourself?” Corso queried alertly. “Yes. I was both inside and outside of me.”
That was a fair description of my sensations before Chase showed up. But as I’ve said before, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. If you can’t handle the heat, you’ve got to keep out of the spotlight. Corso raised his eyebrows while Zane – accustomed to quarterbacking without much help — struggled on. “I could hear my footfalls making a slapping noise, banging, echoing away like they do on concrete. I think I was in a tunnel.”
“A tunnel?” Corso barked sharply. “Don’t make things up.” Zane flushed at the insult but refused to drop the ball. You’ve got to hand it to team sports. They make the brave guys brave and the rest of us persistent. We learn to ignore coaches like Corso who dismiss and deflect.
“A concrete ribbed tunnel with rain – water anyway – dripping down the sides. Kind of like being in a tin can” He considered. “I think it was a walkway into a creepy pair of abandoned buildings.” Corso yawned widely as if this was all quite uninteresting.
“Birth metaphor!” G-Rad crowed, like an aggressive contestant punching a buzzer. Zane’s face crumpled, taking on a vulnerable, wounded look. Heroism gone. G-Rad had the intuitive button-finding quality. This whole experiment was a birth metaphor, if you ask me, and Zane looked as confused and disoriented as the recently born.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! No interpretations of each other’s experiences,” Corso admonished repressively but I could see his chest expand with relief over the clash. He enjoyed negative energy more than hearing our experiences. “Don’t force me to debrief each of you privately. That would be an enormous waste of everyone’s time. Also, no interruptions. Anything else, Mr. Pettigrew? Any view of your attacker?”
First I heard of an attacker. But negative energy had succeeded. Zane shook his head in bewilderment. “It’s all gone, now.”
“Oh, well,” said Corso plummily, “So difficult to separate what we really remember from what we think we remember, what other people remember, what other people want us to remember and what we want to remember. Isn’t it?”
“I’ll say,” said Zane, confused by a pro. De-briefing with the emphasis on dis-information. Corso was dissing us.
Corso confronted the rest of wearing the same facial expression my sister had when she tried bossing me into giving her a better bedtime story. “Why couldn’t Cinderella win American Idol?” She had me there. Why settle for Prince Charming when you can have everybody? “Fear of flying!” Corso grumped. “Dismissed! Who’s next?” “Me, me me!” Chase waved his entire arm like a five year old.
Corso sighed exasperatedly, and poured his angry ooze upon the moment. “I suppose I must allow you, Mr. Quinn, but I am warning you do not conduct one of your capers. You pollute the fount from which we drink. And let me remind everyone – this was in the relevant documents, but it certainly bears repeating – everything said in this room is to be kept absolutely confidential. It will not leave this room. There are no exceptions. Just like a jury, you are not even allowed to discuss it outside this room, not even among yourselves. I warn you, I am a jealous God. If I find out this rule has been broken, steps will be taken resulting in banishment and regret.” He glared at each of us in turn.
“What happens in Dream Group stays in Dream Group,” joked G- Rad. He subsided when Corso peered at him threateningly. I don’t know what it is about Chase that makes me feel so brave. These threats didn’t bother me at all. But Corso couldn’t see inside me. He seemed satisfied. “Word to the wise. All right, Mr. Quinn. Go for it.”
“That hot nurse – Miss Howk, I think she’s called — and I broke into your apartment and made out on your bed. Best sex I ever had.”
This I was not expecting. My face burned, burned. Fortunately no one was looking at me. Rage poured off Corso like smoke off his magnet thingy. He was a jealous – and a terrible – god. “My bed?” gasped Corso. Chase had achieved something I considered impossible. He had floored Mr. Know-It-All.
“Yup,” said Chase. “The place was a mess, too. Melted candles everywhere. And the smell! Pee-yew!”
I think if we hadn’t been watching, Corso would have slugged him. You could see the itch travel from his red face right down his arm. Was Corso blushing? No, no, it can’t be. Purely a rage reaction. Pity there’s only one color most of us can turn.
Chase had to be lying of course. Could we have had different experiences? I pushed away Corso’s insidious little “People remember what they want to remember” mind-worm. Chase’s complete refusal to look at me made me think our experience had been shared. Because previously he had performed for me, and taken close note of my reactions. My headache lightened. I began to feel a lot better.
With a visible effort Corso mastered himself and began applauding loudly. Sarcasm again. Note to self: Don’t. Ever. Makes you look weak.
“Cleverly done, Mr. Quinn! You’ve achieved the highly desirable trifecta of Freud, Oedipus and Jung with this tasteless story. Took an out- of-body jaunt to my apartment, did you?” “Hey, it wasn’t my choice,” said Chase. “I had plenty of other places I wanted to go.” He shook his head. “I think it was something about you. Something you wanted me to see. What did you say before about dreaming other people’s dreams?”
“Well, if it was a true out-of-body experience,” Corso asserted silkily, “You would have seen things you could not otherwise know. Something you didn’t see while moving me into my apartment for example. “ He sat down as if he didn’t trust himself to stand and the collapse to our level marked an astonishing shift of power, like a cobra sinking back in its hood.
“Well, let’s see,” said Chase. “I don’t like telling you all about it but I guess I have to, what with the public debriefing and all. It sure seemed real. Nurse Howk had a piercing in her hoo-ha. You know, where the sun don’t shine. Is that the kind of detail you are looking for?” All I can say is, Chase looked a lot closer at the TV than I did. Zane whistled appreciatively.
Corso’s eyes bugged and he ground his teeth, but he kept his temper. “That hardly links you to my room. Describe the room. Tell me something you couldn’t have seen the day we moved in.” “Hmm,” said Chase, making a show of recollecting. “Well, your bed had black sheets. None too clean. You had a cute picture of Jazz in a leopardskin bra. That was new.” Chase winked at me.
“And I seem to recall that on your desk I saw a lot of papers about bankruptcy and divorce .” He thought while Corso tried to close his outraged mouth. “Oh, yeah, and a restraining order.” Corso launched to his feet, bubbling with rage. “I warned you about your antics, Mr. Quinn! Why on earth would you go through my private papers?”
“You know why,” said Chase. “I didn’t find them either. Sloppy. I was forced to go commando.” “You are fired again,” shouted Corso angrily. “Terminated with extreme prejudice. Please leave now. Class, Mr. Quinn is obviously lying. He broke into my apartment on some earlier occasion simply to construct this little prank. You are outrageous, Mr. Quinn, and you are unforgiven. Your grade is F. Your alternate will assume your position next week.”
I wanted to say we hadn’t broken in but I couldn’t give myself away. I looked studiously down so as not to send signals that Corso’s bat senses might pick up.
Chase rose up slowly and unzipped his suit. The tattoo on his chest showed a tangled crown of thorns. “Gee,” he said, “I thought we were going to be so free. What’s with all these rules?” “There always laws, Mr. Quinn!”
“Gee, that’s right,” agreed Chase. “Laws. Justice. Cops. I had forgotten all about it.” “To the locker room with you!” barked Corso. Muttering under his breath, “I knew he was a mistake.” He glanced pointedly at his watch. “We’re out of time. Now where were we?’ Chase wandered unwillingly towards the men’s room.
“I tried to fly,” Soliz volunteered, as if embarrassed, “But I fell.”
Corso studied her with a total lack of interest. Soliz stumbled on earnestly, trying to earn her pay, “It was one of those naked dreams. I had no clothes on.” Corso drummed his fingers on his clipboard, but G-Rad, more than willing to take over, said, “Humptious! Loves me my nudie dreams.”
Corso sighed and looked at the clock. I was kind of surprised naked dreams were not a bigger hit with him.
Soliz continued, “I stepped out of the elevator at Hadleigh on the top floor and I realized I didn’t have any clothes on. I couldn’t get back in the elevator – the doors had closed – and people were staring at me so – I jumped out of the window.” She shuddered. “I fell all the way. I felt myself die.” Pinpoints of sweat glistened on her face. “It must have been a dream. It couldn’t have been an out of body experience. But I really felt myself in the air.”
“You flew, you looked down and then you tumbled,” said Corso. “Shame. That’s a shame dream. Loss of confidence as personified by the myth of Icarus. Miss D’Accosta felt diminished by revealing her essential self.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to interpret each other’s dreams,” I said before I could stop myself. “Besides, our naked self isn’t our essential self.”
Corso swiveled his laser beams in my direction. Uh Oh. I braced myself. When would I ever learn? I had always had this problem. Never argue with bullies. Am I going to lose my freakin’ scholarship?
“The rules obviously don’t apply to me,” said Corso suavely. “Please explain your thought.” I swallowed. Now all of them were looking at me. I wear makeup – choose my clothes – wear my hair – to disguise me. But Chase had been so brave. I couldn’t let him down.
“Well, nakedness is just bodies. Everyone has one. I mean, nakedness makes people ordinary. Choice – makes people special because it’s individual. Your choices are your essential self.” “You mean like fashion?” asked Koo.
Thank God for that girl! “Sure, if it’s a choice,” I said, “And not something that’s forced on you.” “Like a uniform or like designer clothes everybody has to wear,” agreed Soliz. You go, sister! “That would be true if everyone looked the same naked,” chortled Zane. “They don’t. Some people should be ashamed.”
My patience for Zane came to a screeching halt. “We weren’t all put on this earth to thrill you,” snapped Soliz.
“People should work out. And watch what they eat. Just for health,” Zane finished smugly. Corso’s eyes were changeable as water, just like my mother’s old mood ring. I had seen them sheet over like ice; now they glowed. How he adored our disagreements!
“Perhaps Miss Suzino will become a fashion major after all,” he sneered dismissively. “I admit I had hoped for better things from you. Tell us about your experience this morning, please, and cut the crap. This is not one of your feel-good-everyone-participates-and-gets-an-A seminars.”
“I didn’t know we got a grade for this,” said G-Rad nervously and Soliz reassured him, “We don’t.” “I want to go next,” said Koo. “It was…terrible. I need to get rid of it so I can forget. I think I was working in a, like, mortuary.” Her voice slurred and slowed as if the drug still held her. She pressed her water bottle to her eyes. Catching the light, it shot shimmery reflections against the ceiling, plunging us underwater. Once again I felt our linkage so strongly. Could it have been the others crashing into me as I crouched, frightened and blindfolded, on the basement stairs?
“These body bags were coming at me down a runway belt and I had to unzip them and take the bodies out. I was unzipping, zipping and unzipping, but the bodies were so smashed I couldn’t look at them. I like threw up on them instead.” She choked at the memory. “Wrecked bodies beyond help. Nothing I could do. Then I found…” She gulped painfully. “In one bag and found my boyfriend Bo. He was all smashed up with his guts hanging out but somehow his eyes were open and he was staring at me like I did it. Like I was responsible, like I had destroyed all these people.” She broke down and began to cry. I gave her my paper towels and tried to pat her on the back, but Corso pushed me away and stood between us. He stared down at Koo as if she was a specimen fixed between glass slides.
Koo literally pulled on Corso’s shirttails for attention. “I couldn’t help them and they blamed me.” Obviously he wasn’t going to comfort her, so I slid around him to give Koo a hug. “Class dismissed?” Koo asked hopefully.
“See what happens when you break the mood?” Corso snapped at me. “Now Miss Loflin has forgotten what she was going to say. We will arrange all this very differently next week.” He patted Koo’s shoulder, but dismissively, like a sports coach who suspects malingering. “Toughen up, Miss Loflin. 80% of dream material is negative emotion. ”
“Now he tells us,” said Soliz aloud to no one in particular. “Now I do tell you,” repeated the professor. “Is that it, Miss Loflin?”
“I was looking forward to flying,” sniffed Koo, obviously used to people making a bigger fuss over her. “To be light like that. Weighing nothing. I could have used the sleep, too. As it is, all I can say is thank God it’s over.”
Any lighter and Koo Loflin would actually be a bird, I thought.“At this stage I would settle for lucid dreaming,” said Corso. “Were you aware of being in an altered state?”
“It was like a movie. Watching myself.”
“Perfect description of lucid dreaming. Success! So you’re not ready to pass off to an alternate?” coaxed Corso.
“Not hardly,” said Koo. “That Visa bill won’t pay itself.”“Now that was just a nightmare, plain and simple,” said G-Rad sounding almost relieved. “I’m glad nothing like that happened to me.” “What did happen?” asked Corso with his eery smile.
G-Rad shook his shoulders, as if fending us all off. “Nothing happened. I don’t remember. I got nothing.” He gulped noisily. I didn’t believe him for a minute. Visibly he braced himself. “It’s OK if you want to fire me and bring in an alternate.” “Do you want to be fired?” asked Corso.
“No.” G-Rad shook his head. “Please no. I just guess I don’t –“ “I don’t want people making things up for my gratification,” Corso told him, almost tenderly. “That’s what Mr. Quinn didn’t understand.”
“There’s just one person we’re forgetting.” Corso rapped me flirtatiously with his clipboard. “Miss Suzino? I believe you had something to say? Or did you once again fail to dream?” Darn, darn darn! I almost got away clean, too. I didn’t dare tell a lie. I’m a horrible liar. “I started out blindfolded,” I said unwillingly. “I could feel but I couldn’t see.”
“Ah, Miss Suzino, you interest me so extremely. Just when I had given up on you. Blindfold games.” He relished the words, rolling them on his tongue. “Who among us hasn’t played them?” On this command, we all chattered at once.
“At Quinceanera we played Pin the tail on the donkey,” said Soliz. “And in high school we had to spend an entire day pretending we were blind for a diversity exercise.” “Blind Man’s Bluff,” said G-Rad. “It’s Buff, dude,” said Zane.
“Well, well, Jazz,” said Corso indulgently. Did he sound relieved? Had I scared him a little with my psychic moment about Emily Fortunatus- Falcones, our benefactor? I’d love to think I had that kind of power. Corso pattered on smoothly, “Next time we’ll have to see what we can do to open your eyes.”
I shouldn’t have worried! He didn’t even care what I had to say! What any of us had to say, really. Koo alone wanted to know, “So what happened?”
I could safely give a little more. “ I felt people were rushing past me. I was in a basement. Then at the bottom of the steps… I fell over a body.”
“We have a Halloween funhouse every year that’s just like that,” said Soliz. Was there no death in her world? “One year the stairs turned into a slide.”
Obviously I shouldn’t feel annoyed. Did I want to relive that part? Maybe. Because of the kiss …“It was a real body,” I insisted. Maybe Koo’s gory tale derailed them into a world of safe thrills. Predictable unreality. “With real blood.”
“It tastes good and it’s so good for you!” said G-Rad in his network announcer voice. He capped it with a ghoulish laugh, “Bre-augh-ha-ha-ha! That’s because it’s ketchup and corn syrup. Protein, vegetables and dessert. At our Halloween funfair we couldn’t stop eating it.” Then he yawned, as if tired of his own subject.
“No protein in ketchup, bro,” said Zane. “Or corn syrup either. I’m just saying.” “Yeah, but it attracts bugs…” G-Rad smacked his lips voraciously while we all wailed, “Eeeewww!” Corso slammed his notebook shut. “Checks will be in your mailboxes the first of the week! See you all next Saturday!”
“I’m so glad I’m not fired,” G-Rad sighed.“Certainly not,” said Dr. Corso, suddenly all hale and friendly. “You were very cooperative, Mr. Bliven. That’s all we can ask.” “It’s Borden,” said G-Rad. “Maybe next time-““I’ll get it right on the check,” Corso assured him. Stampede for the locker room.
The door swinging shut behind us, Koo announced, “Well, my relationship is as good as over.” “Why’s that?” I asked. God I was so happy to get out of that disgusting suit. The crotch was way too invasive. One size does NOT fit all.
Koo throbbed visibly like tiny animal in big, big headlights. “I can’t tell Bo about this! I’m going to have to lie to him!”
“So lie to him,” said Soliz, bored and irritated at the same time. “I bet he doesn’t tell you everything.”
I had a suggestion too. Don’t we all love other people’s problems? “Remember the confidentiality rules? The forms we had to sign? Tell him you can’t talk. It’s true, after all.”
“Like that would work,” sighed Koo. “He’d get it out of me. He hates it when he thinks I’m hiding something.” I actually remembered what that was like; not taking no for an answer. Uncomfortable Bex flashbacks made me shiver and turn away, but Koo nattered on as if we were besties, “I need to think up a good lie.” She looked at us hopefully. In Koo’s life, sisterhood solidarity apparently meant, take responsibility for thinking up a whopper my boyfriend will believe. “I can’t do it,” she admitted in her complainy “here’s another thing” voice. Koo was her own worst enemy. “My brain is fried. Dr. Corso fried my brain.”
“He fried all our brains,” I said. “And now it’s time to get out of the fryer.” I was not going to spend my Saturday hanging around dream lab spit-balling lies Koo’s sometime-boyfriend might believe. As I dressed I swear I greeted every article of clothing like an old, old friend or a member of my family. For sheer “me”-ness. Beloved body armor.
Underpants (they’re marked Wednesday: you can’t tell time using my underpants), my skinny, skinny tight black pants that fit me like I was born in them, my soft-soft black sweater, my glittery Christmas present short kimono, my lucky dragon pin. I was beginning to feel like myself again after my otherworld flirtation. Woolly navy-blue big-flapped peacoat, that navy that looks so dark it might as well be black. Ninjawear. So dark people might not see me at first because Absence is just as powerful as Presence, my art teacher used to say.
Absence…something was certainly missing. I still felt tense and worried and yet my biggest weekly challenge was certainly over. Outside the long dark winter was settling in early. Where was the lucky Christmas scarf Annika knitted me, to prove to the world that I was loved? That bastard Corso stole it for his sick voodoo practices. Was that why I still felt so vulnerable? I’d have to get it back. “You don’t owe Bo your dreams,” Soliz was lecturing. “They’re thoughts, not events. You can’t cheat in your thoughts.”
“Who said anything about cheating?” panicked Koo, her heart beating visibly out of her chest. “Nobody,” I comforted, trying to give Soliz the “don’t scare the children” stink-eye.
But Soliz had to be right. She was one of those; more in tune with her own psychic abilities than most. Takes one to know one. Whereas Koo was afraid of her own thoughts, trying to keep them rigidly unimaginative, for Bo’s sake. Soliz, worthy adversary, continued to argue. “All I’m saying is cheating’s the only thing he can get upset about, not anything that went on in dream-lab.” “What he should do and what he does do might be two different things,” I tried warning her. Me, the Bex-scarred.
Koo perked up about being fought over; instructed and defended. “Yeah,” she said, looking at me now. “That’s why I need a good lie.” Anguish rippled across her face. “He won’t even believe the things that are true. Paid to sleep! See, that’s a lie right there. I’m exhausted.” “You should dump him,” concluded Soliz. “Way too controlling.”
Koo burst into tears. Soliz patted her shoulder and Koo fell into her arms. Instead of telling her to take her advice and shove it. If I said anything more I’d be interrupting their beautiful dance; Koo the lost, Soliz the finder. In her own weird way Koo had bonded with both of us. And I was – out of there.
“Bye ladies.” I blew out bravely as I knew how through the swing door. “See you next week,” called Soliz. Barring a miracle.
Alysse Aallyn 