Dead Lines

‘No, his question,’ Sandaji said.

‘It can wait,’ Baslan said. Peter nodded, eager to get out of the house, away from this nonsense. He wondered how much was being staged. It would not have taken much digging to find out about his children. A good conjuror or medium was always prepared

‘No, it’s a good question. I should answer.’ Sandaji sat upright on the couch and took a deep breath. She lifted her shoulders and arched her neck, then slowly let out her breath. She looked at them with renewed deliberation and her voice resumed its rich cello intonation. ‘Many live on without souls,’ she said. ‘They are intense in a way most cannot understand. They are driven and hungry, but they are empty. There is nothing you or I can do for them. Even should they try for enlightenment, they are like anchorless ships in a storm.’ Her lips moved without sound for a moment, as if practicing a line, then she concluded, ‘A curious question, but strangely important. My beloved guru once spoke long on the subject, but you’re the first who has ever asked me. And now I wonder why.’

‘It was the wrong question.’ Baslan glared at Peter.

‘I am feeling much better,’ Sandaji said, attempting to stand. She fell back again with an expression of mild disgust. ‘I am so sorry, Mr Russell.’

‘You have your answer,’ Baslan insisted.

‘We are polite, Jean,’ Sandaji remonstrated softly. ‘But I am tired. And the evening started so well. I think I should go to bed.’

Baslan brusquely escorted Peter to the front door. ‘The gate will open automatically,’ she said, her face still tight and eyes narrowed, like a mother cat protecting kittens.

Peter walked onto the porch and down the steps, then turned and looked back as the door closed. He stood there for a moment, the anxiety returning, and the shortness of breath. For an instant, he thought he saw something dark in the bamboo, like an undulating serpent. Then it was gone; a trick of light.

He reached into his pocket and felt the smooth plastic phone – Trans, he corrected – and the roll of hundred-dollar bills.

The donation.

For a moment, he thought of just walking on and pocketing the money. Otherwise, what a waste. He could pay a lot of bills with ten grand, Helen’s bills in particular. Lindsey was starting school soon. She needed clothes. He would tell Joseph and Michelle that Sandaji’s people were lying, that he had given Baslan the money.

But he had never stolen money in his life. Not since he had been a little boy, at any rate, lifting coins from his mother’s change bowl. And he was not a good liar. Perhaps for that reason, he had always hated liars and thieves.

His feet again made soft cupping noises on the porch’s solid wood. He knocked.

Baslan swiftly opened the door.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘Some better,’ she said tersely. ‘She’s gone upstairs to rest.’

‘I asked her a question on behalf of Mr Benoliel. I got an answer. That’s why I came here. No other reason. Anything like a personal reading was uncalled for. You do her research, no doubt. I resent you telling her about Daniella. I just wanted you to know.’

He held out the roll of money. Baslan, her face coloring to a pale grape, took it with an instinctive dip of her hand. ‘I do not do research,’ she snapped. ‘I told her nothing. Sandaji does not do readings or communicate with spirits. We don’t even know you, Mr Russell.’ She bobbed left to put the money aside. He heard the clinking of a jar or ceramic pot. ‘We are not charlatans. You can leave now.’

With Baslan out of the doorway, Peter had a clear view through an arch to the dining room, about thirty feet from the porch. A little boy in a frilled shirt and knee stockings stood there. He looked sick; not sick, dead; worse than dead, unreal, unraveling. His face turned in Peter’s direction, skin as pale and cold as skim milk. The head seemed jointed like a doll’s. The grayish eyes saw right through him, and suddenly the outline blurred, precisely as if the boy had fallen out of focus in a camera viewfinder.

Peter’s eyes burned.

Baslan straightened. She gripped the edge of the door and asked sharply, ‘Do you need a receipt?’

Peter’s neck hair was bristling. He shook his head and removed his glasses as if to clean them.

‘Then good night.’

When he did not move, Baslan looked on with agitated concern and added, ‘We’re done, aren’t we?’ She prepared to close the door. Her motion again revealed the arch and the dining room. The boy was no longer visible. He couldn’t have moved out of the way, not without being seen.

He simply wasn’t there. Perhaps he had never been there at all.

Baslan closed the door in Peter’s face with a solid clunk.

Peter stood on the porch, dazed, face hot, like a kid reacting to an unkind trick. He slowly forced his fists to open. ‘This is crap,’ he murmured, replacing his glasses. He had not wanted to come here in the first place. He walked quickly down the steps and along the winding stone path between the bamboo to the gate. The scuff of his shoes echoed from the stone wall to his left. The gate whirred open, expelling him from the house, the grounds: an unwanted disturber of the peace.

On the street, he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, then opened the car door and sat. He started the car, listening to the soothing, familiar whine, and tried to recall the answer Sandaji had given to Joseph’s question; despite everything, it remained clear in his head. He repeated her words several times, committing them to memory before putting the Porsche in gear.

Slowly his breath returned and the muscle binding in his chest smoothed. The back of his eyes still felt tropical, however, as if they were discharging a moist heat into his skull.

They were charlatans after all. Why go through that awful charade in the back room, then trot out a little boy in a Buster Brown outfit? Both had been stunts to gull the shills, trick the unwary into asking more questions, paying more money. That was as reasonable an explanation as any.

Peter was happy to leave Pasadena. His thick, powerful hands clasped the wheel so tightly that he had to flex his fingers. ‘Ah, Christ!’ he shouted in disgust once again at all things. New Age and mystical. There was life and this Earth and all the sensual pleasures you could reasonably grab, and then there was nothing. Live and get out of it what you could. Leave the rest alone. That other sort of madness could kill you.

Then why did I reach out for Phil?

Driving alone, his work done, the traffic on the 210 blessedly easy for this time of night, going back to his home in the hills, he pictured Phil’s rueful, ingratiating smile. On the highway, his tears flowed. His shoulders shook.

And a pretty little girl in a blue sweater, pink shorts and a tank top. Don’t forget her. Ever.

The loss and the old, much-hated self-pity just piled up and spilled. It was all he could do not to break into a mourning howl.

All he could do, almost, not to spin the wheel and drive right off the freeway.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_99e1dc1b-2ff2-5db1-a97f-9e5655b22c20)

Peter rolled over in the tangled sheets and opened his eyes to an out-of-focus bedscape. He blinked at a blur of satin trim coming loose from his brown wool blanket, then rubbed his eyes and closely observed another blur spotted with white: a rumpled pillow leaking feathers through its seams. He was still half asleep.

His hand fumbled on the bed stand for his glasses.

A shaft of sun fell across one corner of the room from the skylight, reflected from the full-length mirror, and beamed over the space beside his bed. He made out dust motes in the beam. The motes danced with a puff of his breath.

Nice to just sink, let sleep win. His head fell back onto the pillow.

Eyes closed. Delicious blankness. Birds sang in the back yard.

He opened his eyes again, arm twitching. The beam had shifted and the dust motes were swirling like spoiled cream in coffee. As he watched, bleary, they took a sort of elongated shape. He thought he could make out two legs and an arm. Small. The arm lengthened, adding a hand-shaped eddy. A face was about to form when he opened his eyes wide and said, bemused, ‘All right. I’m waking up now.’ He leaned over and waved his arms through the sunbeam. The motes dissipated wildly.

His jaw hurt. He was a mess and he stank. He got out of bed and straightened, hooking a temple piece around one ear.

The night had been disjointed, filled with scattered flakes of dream, memories drawn up from a deep sea like fish in a net. The dreams had all possessed a jagged, surreal quality, as if scripted by restless demons, pent up for too long.

‘Art, sperm, and sanity don’t keep,’ Peter said to the face in the mirror.

He thought about that for a moment, then padded into the bathroom to turn the hot-water tap for a shower. The old white tile in the stall was cracked and creased with mildew. The room smelled of moisture. It was a good thing the air up in the hills was dry or the floor would have rotted out a long time ago.

As he dressed, his clothes became a kind of armor, like blankets wrapped tight around a child’s eyes. The waking world was filled with traps designed to make him feel bad and he did not want to feel bad any more.

He stepped into old slippers and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee in a French press, the only way he liked it. As he pushed the red plastic plunger down through the grounds, a bell-like tone came from the living room, not his house phone and certainly not his cell phone, both of which sounded like amorous insects. He finished the plunger push and went to look. Big throw pillows in Persian patterns covered an old beige couch. Two graceful sixties chairs made of parabolas of steel wire and slung with purple canvas supported massive green pillows, like alien hands offering mints. The big front window looked out over a garden left to itself the last nine months, and doing fairly well without Peter’s attention. Jasmine and honeysuckle vied with Helen’s old rose bushes to scent the air, and the splashes of red and yellow and pink in the late-morning sun were cheerful enough.