Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss

“Soapy,” she said slowly. “How adorable. Don’t you think it’s adorable, Kane?”

“We’d love it if you’d join us,” Kane said, directing his comments to Maria and ignoring Venus. “All that matters is belief.”

“And numbers,” Jason added, perhaps a bit sarcastically. “And candles and colors and fucking feng shui.”

“Feng shui has nothing to do with any of this!” Kane snapped.

“Hey, guys, remember Sophie got white candles so if this is going to work we’re all going to have to get in a peaceful state of mind!” Amelia chimed in. “At this rate we’re going to have to go out and buy some pink candles just so we can manage that, right, Sophie?”

“The pink candles are lame,” Zach sighed. “They never work.”

I raised my fingers to my temples. I had no idea what any of these people were talking about. Maria was Enrico’s ex, that much I understood. I also understood that Enrico had a parrot and Venus didn’t like me, but I was beginning to suspect that Venus disliked pretty much everybody. Other than that, I had no idea what was going on.

“I suggest we skip the meal and get right to the séance,” Venus said, staring at Scott. “Unless you would like some more time to chitchat with your Soapy.”

“I’m cool with skipping the meal,” he replied meekly. “It’s hard for me to think about food when I’m with you anyway, sweetie. All I can focus on is how flat-out gorgeous you are.”

Jason started to laugh, but managed to silence himself before Venus had a chance to whack him over the head with one of my candlesticks.

“Sophie,” Kane said, “you are the official host of this event and it sounds as if you bought the food yourself. Are you all right with our skipping the meal?”

“Absolutely, no problem at all.” I would have paid double the amount of the meal’s cost if it meant that I could have these people out of my house any more quickly.

“Well, I’m for it,” Zach said. “I think we’d all be better off talking to the dead than to each other.”

“Wise man,” Jason muttered, taking a seat next to the boy.

“I’m taking Enrico’s chair,” Maria declared.

We all took a seat and Venus announced that she was the medium. She looked at me, daring me to argue, but I didn’t. Let Venus call up her demons, I just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

Venus picked up one of the candles and held it up for everyone’s inspection. “As noted, all of the candles are white,” she said. “White symbolizes peace. Before I light them I will pass each candle around the table and when you hold it in your hands you must charge that candle. Visualize its power; visualize peaceful smoke curling from its wick, a warm peaceful glow emanating from it.”

She passed the first two candles to the left and one to the right. I shot Scott a look, but for once he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I had a feeling that he was suppressing a laugh.

Jason and Al looked equally skeptical. It was only Amelia, Lorna, Kane and Venus who appeared to be clearly enrapt. Zach’s expression remained unreadable under the white powder and Maria was still too angry to convey a different emotion. I let the first two candles pass from my hands without a second thought. But when my palms pressed against the third candle, thicker and heavier than its companions, I found myself wanting to follow Venus’s instructions. Not because I believed it would do any good, but because it was fun. I was hosting this damn thing so I might as well do it right. But the candle didn’t look like an instrument of peace. It was made of beeswax, for God’s sake. Bees are not peaceful. I passed the candle to Maria. Perhaps she would be able to charge it for both of us. Then again, when you consider her state of mind, I might have more luck finding peace in the Middle East.

When all the candles had been “charged” Venus lit each of them. She left the table long enough to turn off the other lights in the living room then returned to her seat.

“Join hands,” she instructed. “Now, breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Clear your mind of everything. Absorb the peace of the candles.”

I did as Venus asked and watched the shadows cast by the flames alter the appearance of my guests. Zach’s powdered white face, which only moments ago had seemed humorously overdone, now looked preternatural and shocking. Lorna’s dark circles disappeared and the light reflected in her eyes seemed to illuminate an emotion that I hadn’t noted before. Determination? Desperation? It was impossible to say. Kane, on the other hand, was easy to read. His breaths were deep and resonating, but he was not calm. No, Kane’s excitement was mounting with each second.

“Our beloved Andrea,” Venus began after several minutes had passed, “we ask that you commune with us and move among us.”

None of us said a word as we waited for some kind of response. I didn’t know who Andrea was. I had thought that we were going to try to call Oscar back, but the surprise didn’t bother me. She could have tried to call Elvis back for all the good it was going to do us.

Of course, Andrea didn’t make an appearance, so Venus repeated her request again and again. Eventually she rephrased the question, asking the spirit to rap once if she was among us. She was answered with silence. The wax from the candles dripped down in little molded teardrops, reminding all of us of the painfully slow movement of time. Kane’s mouth turned down with frustration. His eyes met mine and I realized that without speaking he was talking to me, trying to convey some kind of message that I could not decipher. An inexplicable chill ran up my spine and I felt an ache in my chest, dull and fleeting as it was. And then there was warmth, comfort and for a second I felt the peace that Venus had tried to get me to visualize.

“Say goodbye.”

My breath caught and I looked to Maria and then to Zach to see which of them had just spoken. But both of them were looking at the candles, distracted and oblivious to my change in mood.

“This isn’t working,” Venus said with a sigh. “Someone blow out the candles.”

“We’re giving up?” Lorna asked. “But we’ve only just begun! We could at least try to call Deb!”

“If this was going to work there would have been some kind of sign by now. Time is not the problem.” Venus looked pointedly at me as if to silently say that the problem lay with me, but I was too discombobulated to care about Venus’s deference of blame. I was still trying to figure out who had spoken before. Kane? Scott? Amelia? And then another disturbing realization hit me. I didn’t know if it had been a woman or a man who had spoken. The words had been completely clear, but the voice that said them had been completely abstract. What was that about? Fifty million questions were swirling around in my head and yet those questions didn’t make any sense even to me—and I was the one forming them! I gently touched my hand to my heart where I had felt that dull ache only moments before. The ache was gone, replaced with a rapid beating.

“Sophie, what is it?” Kane was leaning across the table, agitation gleaming in his eyes. “Did you feel something?”

The entire room fell silent as everyone focused on me, waiting for me to give them some kind of hope that their séance hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

“I didn’t feel anything,” I lied. “Just a little heartburn. I ate a lot of spicy food for lunch.”

A cloud of disappointment descended on the group, but I didn’t care. I had much bigger problems. After all, I was beginning to suspect that I might actually be losing my mind.

5

Life is like a box of chocolate, and I’m allergic.

—The Lighter Side of Death

I COULDN’T WAIT FOR EVERYONE TO LEAVE. FORTUNATELY I DIDN’T REALLY have to. Once it was decided that the séance was a failure everyone left with the speed and enthusiasm of an audience who had just sat through a bad three-hour movie. Jason took the time to give me his number so we could “get together for coffee sometime.” Kane was the only one who lingered. He kept pestering me with questions about why I thought the séance didn’t work and if I knew who the disbeliever in the group was. He even asked me if I thought it would have helped to have red candles since it was Andrea’s favorite color. Like I was some kind of expert on all this. I didn’t say so, but I was pretty sure that the séance failed because séances don’t work and ghosts don’t exist.

But what about those words:

Say goodbye.

But I didn’t tell Kane about that and eventually he left, too, leaving me alone in my new house. It was just as well, Anatoly was supposed to come over later. I hadn’t asked him to move in yet—I had decided to wait until after escrow closed, but still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t help me keep the bed warm. And he could also distract me from what had turned into a rather disturbing evening.

Now alone, I turned on all the lights in every room and tried to focus on the more mundane aspects of life. I desperately needed to do laundry, but in order to physically reach my washer I’d have to relocate several heavy boxes. Then there were the boxes in the garage. Normally I would just leave those there and park my car on the street until I had a little more energy, but now I had Venus to consider. I knew from experience that it was impossible to be with Scott and not see other women as threats, fidelity not being his strong suit. Now Venus knew that Scott had been with me, after dark, in a house that he had expected to be empty, and to make matters worse he had called me Soapy right in front of her. Add that to the fact that she was obviously completely out of her mind, and I had to conclude that parking my car on the street might lead to a few slashed tires.

So when Anatoly finally showed up at 10:30 p.m. with his sexy half smile and a bottle of Merlot I was sweaty, exhausted and doggedly filling my living room with all my packed-up odds and ends.

“Interesting decorating choice,” he said as he navigated through a field of brown boxes with cryptic labels such as “Knickknacks” and “Miscellaneous.”

“I don’t know how I managed to collect so much stuff,” I said, wiping my hands on my clothes before leaning in for my kiss.

“Why did you move everything all at once? You still have your apartment until the end of next month. Why didn’t you take a little at a time?”

“I don’t know, anxious to get started, I guess.”

“Yes, you were quick to pack,” Anatoly acknowledged, taking in the scene. “It’s the unpacking that seems to have slowed you down.” He threw his jacket over one of the boxes and then found his way to an empty chair. “Is that because this isn’t your place yet?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it’s my place. I signed the papers.”

“For an escrow that won’t go through for another week, if at all. If you ask me, $20,000 is worth showing your new residence a lot of disrespect.”