Ashley Bell

“Good. It doesn’t work that way with me, either.” Taking off her rings and bracelets, she said, “Now you lie down and be a good girl.”

Holding a towel across her breasts, wearing only panties, Bibi had done as she was told. Her embarrassment passed quickly because of Calida’s brusque yet reassuring manner. An uneasiness remained, but she couldn’t identify a cause; maybe it was a lingering effect of the cancer scare, the residue of concerns that need no longer worry her.

The table had a cutout for her face, so that she was looking at her living-room carpet, where reflections of candlelight flowed and wimpled almost like water. “Did you bring all the candles and roses?” Bibi asked as she waited for the massage to begin.

“Heavens, no. Your parents asked me to have them delivered at the last minute. I can get anything done on a two-hour notice.”

“How do you manage that?”

“I have sources. Proprietary information. Now shush.”

Calida switched on an iPod. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, whose voice was one of the warmest ever recorded, began to sing a soothing medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Your mom has a spare key, right? She put it in an envelope and left it with the hostess at the restaurant. I picked it up.”

About five seconds after the first touch, Bibi realized that Calida Butterfly had magic hands. “Where did you learn this?”

“Do you ever shut up, girl? You be quiet and just float.”

“Float where?”

“Anywhere, nowhere. Quiet now, or I’ll tape your mouth shut.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t test me. I’m not your ordinary masseuse.”

In spite of the faintest uneasiness, Bibi got with the program. The candlelight purling and undulating on the carpet proved hypnotic.

Just as she began to float, she wondered if the woman massaging her was in fact Calida Butterfly. Someone could have disabled the real Calida, or even killed her, taking her place in order to …

To what? No. Such a twist was a novelist’s conceit, and not a good one. Bad thriller plotting. Or a movie with shrieking violins and the latest scream queen channeling a young Jamie Lee Curtis.

The rippling, curling candlelight. The music. Calida’s magic hands. Soon Bibi was floating again, floating anywhere, nowhere.

Somewhere. Gelson’s supermarket. An express checkout lane. Seven months after she had dropped out of the university.

Bibi was puzzled that memories involving Dr. Solange St. Croix—such old news, after all—should trouble her twice in two days.

That afternoon three years earlier, she stopped at the market for a head of lettuce, a few ripe but firm tomatoes, radishes, and celery. Carrying everything in a handbasket, she recognized her former professor standing last in line for the express checkout.

Her first inclination was to retreat, explore a few aisles even though she needed nothing more, waste enough time for the holy mother of the university writing program to make her purchases and leave. The encounter she’d had with the woman in that minimalist office with the half-empty bookshelves had left, however, an enduring sore spot on Bibi’s ego. She always stood up for herself, never pigheadedly, never without good reason; but on that occasion, she had backed down with uncharacteristic wimpiness, shocked and confused and unsettled by the professor’s inexplicable fury. If she withdrew now, hiding out in the bakery department, she would suffer a second blow to her self-respect, this one more deserved than the first.

To be honest, there was another consideration. In the seven months since leaving the university, living with her parents, she’d written six short stories. Three had been accepted for publication: by The Antioch Review, by Granta, and by Prairie Schooner. Such prolific production and acceptance were remarkable for a writer not yet nineteen. In one of the smaller rooms of her heart, Bibi harbored the unworthy desire to share her success with her former professor.

She stood in line behind her target, telling herself not to force the moment, to wait for the woman to notice her. She wouldn’t take a snarky tone when disclosing her good fortune. Striving to sound sincere, she would thank the professor for all she had learned in those three months, as if being harried out of the university had been a valuable service, had awakened her to her faults, and had brought her to her literary senses. She would be so convincingly humble and ingenuous that Solange St. Croix would be left speechless.

The professor’s handbasket contained nine items, and when her turn came at the checkout conveyor belt, she turned to her left to unload her purchases. She saw Bibi from the corner of her eye and turned to face her with an almost comical expression of astonishment.

The woman seemed to be wearing the same outfit as on the day in her office when she’d breathed fire, a tailored but drab pantsuit and a blouse the gray-green of dead seaweed. Her graying hair was still in a bun, her face without makeup, and her blue eyes were cold enough to freeze her opponent in a smackdown with the mythical Medusa.

Before Bibi could get out a word, the professor said, “You bold little bitch,” spraying spittle with the B’s, and her face contorted with what seemed to be both anger and fear. “Following me, stalking me.” Before Bibi could deny the charge, the woman rushed on: “I’ll call the police on you, don’t think I won’t, I’ll get a restraining order, you crazy c—!” In the river of invective that followed, she used the c-word, the t-word, the f-word more than once, and it was impossible to tell whether rage or genuine terror scored higher on her emotional Richter scale. “Get this girl away from me, someone help me, get her away from me.”

Three shoppers had stepped into line behind Bibi, making retreat a clumsier bit of business than she would have liked. Maybe they knew who the esteemed professor was or maybe she looked so unthreatening and widowlike that, in spite of her foul language, they were inclined to sympathize with her. On the other hand, customers and clerks and aproned bagboys stared at Bibi, gaped at her, as if she’d committed an offense against the helpless older lady that, although witnessed by none of them, must have been malicious in the extreme. With St. Croix still asking for help and warning everyone about her dangerous assailant, Bibi made her way among the shoppers in line behind her and turned left, crossing the front of the store. Rattled as she rarely was, mortified, she didn’t know where she was going—that is until she put down her handbasket of vegetables on a display of Coca-Cola, said “Excuse me” to a young mother and child with whom she collided, and headed for the nearest exit.

So much for floating.

“You tensed up all of a sudden,” said Calida Butterfly.

“Just a bad memory.”

“Men,” said the masseuse, making a wrong assumption. “Nothing we can do about them except shoot them, if it was legal.”

Bibi hadn’t gone back to Gelson’s for a year, although it was her favorite market. Even to this day, she imagined an employee now and then recognized her and, to be safe, kept out of her way.

She hadn’t seen Dr. Solange St. Croix since. Hoped never to see her again. With no slightest clue to puzzle out the reason for the professor’s bizarre behavior, Bibi had decided it must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.

A draft stirred the candle flames for a while, and fluttering cascades of soft amber light spilled across the room, which smelled sweetly of roses. Bibi took slow, deep breaths and exhaled through the face hole in the massage table.

“That’s better,” Calida said, “much better.” A few minutes later, she said, “We’re done with this part, kid. Now let’s find out why you were spared from brain cancer.”

33 (#ulink_a813f874-aaf4-5ea9-b1d5-08d2426c9609)

Waiting for the Wrong People to Show Up (#ulink_a813f874-aaf4-5ea9-b1d5-08d2426c9609)

FULLY DRESSED, FEELING PLEASANTLY WRUNG-OUT, Bibi opened a chilled bottle of chardonnay, poured two servings, and brought the glasses to the chrome dinette table with the red Formica top.

Calida Butterfly had moved some of the candles from the living room and distributed them on the table and countertops to provide the proper mood for the second thing that she had been hired to do.

Laying her ostrich-skin suitcase on one of the chrome-and-black-vinyl chairs, Calida said, “Do you know what divination is?”

“Predicting the future,” Bibi said.

“Not entirely. It’s also a tool for uncovering hidden knowledge by supernatural means.”

“What hidden knowledge?”

“Any hidden knowledge,” Calida said, as she opened the half of her suitcase that didn’t contain items related to massage therapy.

“I don’t believe in prognostication, all that stuff.”

Calida wasn’t offended. She said cheerily, “Well, the way it works is, you don’t have to believe in it for it to be true.”

Bibi saw, among other things in the bag, a Sig Sauer P220 or maybe a P226. She recognized the weapon because the P226, chambered for nine-millimeter ammunition, was the standard pistol issued to SEALs. Paxton had purchased his own P220, because it was chambered for .45 caliber and more likely to knock a bad guy down hard in close combat. The two guns looked all but identical.

Bibi had her own P226, which Paxton had taught her to use. An engagement gift.