Freudian Slip

Gus smiled. “She knows what She’s doing. So no time to waste. Come along and meet your assignment. According to the Boss, your case is fairly desperate. She has had a terrible day of unseemly proportions. Simply ghastly.”

Gus took Julian by the elbow and led him out of the intensive care unit. As they walked past other comatose patients, machines whirring like whispering sentinels, Julian saw other Guides, and even a dog—a big old chocolate Lab—lying by the bed of what he presumed was its master. Deducing that no hospital allowed dogs in the ICU, he guessed the dog was a spirit, too.

As he walked through the lobby, Julian struggled to discern who was real—as in alive—and who were spirits. He quickly understood that anyone dressed anachronistically—like Gus with his monocle—was a spirit. And the ones who walked through things—well, they had to be spirits, too. He had a million questions as they left the hospital. So many questions that Julian felt dazed.

The two of them wandered Manhattan’s streets, unseen. Julian kept looking at people, stepping in front of them at times, but no one acknowledged him. Finally, he and Gus arrived at an apartment building in Greenwich Village, which they entered as a resident left, slipping through an open door, and then ascended a flight of stairs to an apartment door.

“Come along,” Gus said.

“What? Do we ring the doorbell?”

“No, we walk through. Just don’t hesitate—that can get messy.”

Gus took him more firmly by the hand and half pulled him through the door. The two of them were now invisible visitors in a small one-bedroom apartment near Washington Square Park. Two policemen in uniform stood in the middle of the messy living room.

“There she is,” Gus gestured toward a brunette with hair to the middle of her back, neither thin nor plump, with rosy apple cheeks and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She clutched a tissue and looked around her apartment as if in shock.

“Can you see anything immediately missing?” the female officer asked, a notebook open, pen poised.

The brunette shook her head. “The TV. But other than that…it’s just the mess. My jewelry box is gone, but my good jewelry I kept in the freezer—I saw it on a TV show once and always have done that. I just checked. It’s still there. They didn’t take much. My dog must have scared them.” Then she started crying. “And now she’s gone.”

“Your dog?” The second officer looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry. That’s difficult.”

“When they left, they must have…let her out. Will you guys look for her?”

“Realistically…this is New York City. We have hundreds of break-ins. Thousands. What kind of dog?”

“A little Yorkie. Just the kind of dog someone would scoop up and keep.” The woman sat down and started sobbing. The two officers shifted on their feet, looking uncomfortable.

Julian stared at Gus. “You’re telling me I have to solve a dognapping? Give me a break. This isn’t a crisis. You know how many people get robbed a day?”

Gus shook his head. “You need to pay attention. This is just the end of a very, very horrible day.”

Julian and his Guide watched as the officers handed the woman a form and a card with a number to call to follow up on her case. The cops let themselves out. Julian watched as the woman wandered into her bedroom and tried to fix her mattress, which had been tossed on the floor. She started crying harder, the sounds changing from sniffles to guttural sobs. She unbuttoned the back of her skirt to change out of her work clothes. While she was undressing, Gus tugged on Julian’s arm. “Give her some privacy.”

Disappointed at missing a free peep show, Julian followed Gus to the living room. The woman emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, in a black sports bra and gym shorts. She straightened up a bit, returning knocked-over lamps and a spilled basket of magazines to their rightful positions, then opened a bottle of white wine with a shaking hand. Soon, she was lying on the floor of her apartment, a box of tissues and a now half-empty bottle of white wine next to her.

“She’s beautiful,” Julian said, moving closer to her. “But she’s a mess. What’s wrong with her? Why is she crying? Besides the break-in? What happened to her today? This can’t all be over a Yorkie and a television set. So what is it?”

“That’s for you to find out, my boy. And solve. Julian Shaw, meet Kate Darby.”

CHAPTER THREE

KATE DARBY LISTENED to Stevie Nicks’s plaintive wailing on “Beautiful Child” for the hundredth time. This had to be the worst night of her life. Only, she knew it wasn’t. There had been worse nights. Worse weeks. Worse years. But this ranked up there with one of the most colossal bad days ever.

“Okay, God…what do you have against me?” she said aloud. “It wasn’t bad enough to walk in on them in bed together? Lose the love of my life. And my best friend. In one day.” She rolled over on her belly and flopped her face against her forearm and started crying all over again. “Apartment robbed. Place trashed. But the dog, God? My little Honey? Christ…this is the worst night of my life.” Then Stevie finished her ode, and Kate pressed the button on her remote control, starting the song all over again. A hundred and one and counting.

You’ll meet someone better.

“Ha!” she said to herself, shaking her head at the voice she heard in her mind. “Meet someone better.” She looked at her coffee table, staring at a picture of her and David on the ski trip they took to Aspen over New Year’s. He was like that, the king of grand gestures. He’d put plane tickets in her Christmas stocking. He gave her a pair of diamond earrings for her twenty-seventh birthday in May, in a blue box from Tiffany’s, which he’d presented her while they took a horse-and-carriage ride through Central Park. For God’s sake, they’d talked about getting engaged for Christmas this year. Just like the cabbie telling her his love story, his surprise of roses, Kate thought she and David were writing their own love story.

Kate sat up and blew her nose—loudly—in a tissue, which she then crumpled and threw on the floor next to the twenty or so other tissues. Next to the spilled contents of a box of old photos the robbers had upended.

“It just hurts,” she whispered aloud. The whisper turned to a prayer. “God…it just hurts, and I don’t know if I can take any more. My father died—well, you know that, God. I miss him so badly sometimes it’s an actual pain in my heart. And now this. Not to mention my mother remarrying to that investment guy with the comb-over. God…this just sucks. It sucks. And I can’t take it anymore.”

She stood up and walked to the maple bookshelves next to the tall windows that opened onto the fire escape. She picked up a photo of her and Leslie in a silver frame.

Kate had never felt beautiful her entire life, except maybe when she was with her father. But who believes their father? Aren’t all fathers supposed to say their daughters are beautiful? In a size-two world, she was built just a little large, and in a city of little-black-dress sophistication, she was always just ordinary. At least, that was what she told herself. She wasn’t beautiful, she was pretty. She was girl-next-door. Sweet faced, more than sexy. Until she met David, who swept her off her feet. He finally made her feel as if she belonged on the pedestal he placed her on, as if she were stunning. Not just girl-next-door but drop-dead gorgeous.

Leslie, on the other hand, had always been the eye-catching one. Sure, she’d told Kate she was “gangly” and had braces in seventh grade, but come off it. Leslie had been perfect her whole life. Tall, thin, high cheekbones, Southern drawl, long blond hair and she didn’t even need to exercise to maintain her perfect figure. It was positively sickening. Those perfect breasts and rock-hard abs—that she’d seen only too clearly tonight in David’s bedroom.

“So you had to have the one man I loved,” Kate said to the picture. “You could have had your pick of any man in Manhattan. Heck, in the whole tristate area, but you set your sights on David.”

At the thought, Kate felt like she was going to throw up again. She took the picture and frame and tossed them in the trash. Then she sat down on her couch. The apartment was decorated in shades of green—her favorite color—with touches of Boho and eclectic flea-market finds she and her father used to hunt down.

“Well, damn it—now what? My life is ruined.” Like she could show up at her job and work side by side with Leslie. Their offices were next door to each other at Washington Square Publishers. Kate picked up the bottle of wine and took a huge swig.

Maybe you should consider becoming a lesbian.

Kate shook her head at the voice. “I must be cracking up. Like that would ever be an option.” And then—despite the fact that she’d found her boyfriend with her best friend, that her dog had disappeared, her apartment was broken into—despite it all, Kate laughed to herself.

I’m not kidding. Lesbians have more fun.

CHAPTER FOUR

“SHE’S CUTE WHEN SHE smiles,” Julian said to Gus. He leaned closer, as if inspecting a specimen under glass. “She has dimples.”

“Hmm?” Gus was looking at a file that had materialized out of nowhere. They were still standing in her messy apartment, though they had moved to the small galley kitchen—typical by Manhattan standards with an Easy-Bake-size oven and a refrigerator shorter than Julian’s shoulder.

“I said she’s cute. What are you looking at?”

“This?” Gus waved the file folder, and it disappeared. “Nothing. Case files.”

“Shouldn’t I look them over or something, if I’m going to be some sort of celestial social worker?”

“Afraid not. The Boss believes in intuition. In the power of connection.”

“What kind of New Age bullshit is that?”

“She’s afraid of self-fulfilling prophesies. They’re the worst prophecies of all, you know.”

“Slow down, Gus. You may be used to this Neither Here Nor There lingo, but it’s all new to me. I’m still getting used to being…away from my body.”

“Well, the Boss has been frequently misquoted by prophets. A lot of them, I have to tell you, were cuckoo.” Gus twirled a finger round and round by his temple.

“And of all the crazy prophets,” Gus continued, “self-fulfilling ones drive Her the craziest. If you read Kate’s case…Let’s suppose it said she was depressed.”

“I’d get her to pop a Prozac.”