Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (40 page)

Madame Sophie is a joke,
thinks Gordon as he kicks off his tennis shoes.

He’s the first one inside. “
My, my, my
…” Madame Sophie says, taking Gordon’s hand. “Your father walked in right behind you. He’s here with us now. He wants you to keep an open mind, hon…. He says he died in a plane crash. And while he was with us–wait, it’s coming to me…. Oh, goodness! He’s telling me he had a tremendous whanger.”

Gordon is shocked, to say the least.
How could she know that?
There had been newspaper stories about the plane crash, of course, but to the best of his knowledge his own picture never accompanied them–and certainly none of them had mentioned the size of his father’s endowment. Is Madame Sophie somehow acquainted with a close family friend? What other possible explanation could there be?

“Gordon. Are you okay?” Twinker asks, coming up behind him.

“Um, yeah…” Gordon says, coming back to himself. He asks Madame Sophie, “How’d you know that?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute, love…. Gather around, children,” she says as Jimmy, Skip, and D.H. gingerly step across the maroon shag carpet, feeling meek in their stinky socks. Madame Sophie arranges everyone into a circle and stands in the center. She asks them all to join hands. “Let me explain something before we begin,” she says. “I’m a Spiritualist medium, as opposed to a plain old psychic. Basically, what that means is I don’t read minds or see into the past or future on my own. Well, not much, anyway…. Instead, what I do is talk to spirits. Now there are good spirits and bad spirits, just like there are good and bad people. I try to stick with the good ones. But I never know for sure who’ll be coming through, or what they’ll have to tell me. Just so you know, sometimes the messages can seem a little harsh, but whatever the spirits say almost always turns out to be true. For instance, I got a feeling I already rang
your
bells pretty loud,” Madame Sophie says, looking at Gordon. “Your father has passed over. Isn’t that right, hon?”

Gordon only nods his head. He has the queasy feeling that Madame Sophie can see straight through to his soul. He’s afraid of what she’ll find there. Her freaky turquoise eyebrows are twitching at him with compassion. To avoid her gaze, Gordon looks around at the room they’re standing in: seashell pink walls, lots of candles and crystals, statues of Saint Francis, Ganesh, and Buddha, a poster illustrating chakras in a rainbow of colors.
No sign of hookers….

“Okay!” Madame Sophie suddenly claps her doughy hands. “For fifty dollars I’ll contact the spirit world for you as a group. Because right now I’m getting the feeling that your group destiny is more important than your individual destinies–at least at this point in time. Okay? So do we have a deal?”

“Fifty bucks!” Jimmy says, as if outraged by the skyrocketing cost of spiritualists.

“It’s the price of admission,” Madame Sophie says with a wink. “Astral guidance isn’t cheap.” Emphasis on the
ass
in astral, just as Jimmy pronounced it. She shakes her enormous blubbery hips. Not much gets past Madame Sophie, literally or figuratively.

D.H. points out that it’s only ten bucks apiece–hardly more than the price of a ticket to a zombie movie–a relative bargain if they get to talk to actual dead people.

They all pony up. Madame Sophie stuffs the money into the pockets of her ugly turquoise dress and goes into a trance. “Okay, excuse me for what I’m about to say to you, but the spirits are telling me –” she cocks her ear as if listening, eyes closed–“they’re telling me a very big change is coming for all five of you. It’s happening in the next six months. For each of you, this is an event that will change the course of your whole life. Some of you may choose to pass over at this juncture. It’s very unusual. What I’m hearing is… no, it’s not clear. Six months. A secret will be revealed. The betrayer will betray himself. The outcome will depend on every one of you. I’m sorry, but nothing more can be said.”

“Well, that was vague…” D.H. complains.

“You want something more specific? You –” Madame Sophie says, turning to D.H., her eyes still closed–“you hurt yourself in a fall. They’re telling me it wasn’t an accident. You were meant to have empathy, to know what it’s like to be both man and woman in this life. Don’t laugh!” she says as Jimmy starts snickering. “That’s how the angels are sexed. I know it seems like a burden, but in truth, it’s a great compliment.”

“I’m sorry, lady,” Jimmy says, “but if a fiberglass pole got rammed through
my
penis, I sure as hell wouldn’t take it as a compliment.”

“Oh, you’re the devious one, aren’t you? Everyone here has a pure heart except for you,” Madame Sophie says, wheeling on Jimmy, her voice turning masculine. “You take pride in being the smirker. The mocking one. You’re the only one who seeks to do evil, but your evil almost always turns out for the good. Your lesson in life is to discover compassion. Right now you think every person on Earth is governed by selfishness. Not true, Little One, not true….”

“This is so bogus,” Jimmy says.

“Dude, she’s got you nailed,” says Skip.

“You’re the handsome one,” Madame Sophie says, stroking Skip’s biceps like a blind woman. Her voice is womanly again, almost purring. “Without knowing how, you make women lust after you–even the ones who are wrong for you. Wait… I take that back.
Especially
the ones who are wrong for you. You attract the kind of woman who can only give you… how can I put this delicately? Oh, I’ll just say it! She gives you a karmic shit-kicking–okay? Let me ask you something. Are you in a relationship right now?”

“Well, kind of…” Skip squirms.

“And do you find this relationship fulfilling?”

“It’s, um, a little complicated.”

“I’ll bet it is. The spirits are telling me you’re in grave danger. The person you’re with now has been with you in several lives before this one. In many of those past lives, you hated each other.”

“We did?”

“That’s why the sex is so great.”

“It is? I mean, yeah, it is, but –”

“She wasn’t always your mother.”

Skip, and everyone else, is blown away.

“Now…” Madame Sophie says, “they’re telling me you came here for a purpose that’s different than just me telling you what you already know. And I don’t want you to be disappointed. So what you can do is go down that hallway behind me. Back on the right, you’ll find a little red bedroom. Go in there and do whatever you need to do. And you, dear–” pointing to Twinker–“go with him. He can’t be expected to make the right decision on his own. But your mind is clear, love. You have the purest heart I’ve seen in ages. You’ll make the right choice. You always do.
Choose for him.
”

“Um, okay, I guess….” says Twinker. “But I have to say, this is pretty weird.”

“You’ll understand better once you get there.”

“She doesn’t, like, have to stay for the whole show, does she?” asks Skip, feeling a wave of performance anxiety.

“Only if she wants to. Now go.
Shoo!
Don’t think about mommy!”

Madame Sophie watches as Skip and Twinker disappear down the dark hallway. Then she turns to Gordon, Jimmy, and D.H. and says, “Sometimes we have a nemesis that follows us from one lifetime to the next. For some people, there can even be more than one. Their purpose is to keep banging up against us, in life after life, until we both get some spiritual sense knocked into us. A nemesis’ negativity can be a far more powerful tool for learning than the pussyfied sayings of some life-fearing good person.”

“Did you just say
pussyfied
?” Jimmy asks her.

“That’s one of his favorite words,” Gordon tells her.

“I used it for a reason,” Madame Sophie says. “Don’t think I don’t know about the two of you.”

“What’s that mean?” Jimmy asks, maintaining a look of innocence.

“You wouldn’t admit it even if I told you. You’re so contrary. But
you
–” she says, looking at Gordon–“you’re more of a psychic than I am. And the spirits would tell you secrets undreamed of, if you’d only pay attention.”

“How do I do that?” Gordon asks.

“Solitude and meditation. Engage the world, then retreat, like the beating of a heart. Find people to love, who love you. And stop drinking so much beer.”

“You
do
drink a lot of beer, Crash…” D.H. says.

“Gallons,” says Jimmy with mock-disapproval.

“Oh, and like you guys don’t?”

“Yeah, but we’re not natural-born holy monk Spiritualist dudes, like you. Did the spirits mention that he falls down a lot?” D.H. asks Madame Sophie.

“That’s just his way of going into a spiritual trance,” she says. “Until he learns to meditate, there’ll be a lot of that.”

“Great,” says Gordon. “Do you offer classes?”

“I could teach you, but I won’t be here long enough. I’m moving to Santa Barbara next week. I’ve had it with the damp cold and the tule fog every winter.”

“I guess with what you do, you can pretty much live anywhere.”

“That’s what I figured. So I’m taking my fat ass to the beach. Can’t you just see me in a bikini?” Madame Sophie strikes a pin-up pose–one hand on her hip, the other behind her head–and laughs as Jimmy and D.H. shudder.

She may be butt-ugly,
thinks Gordon,
but I like her
.

From down the hallway, they all suddenly hear the muffled sounds of bedsprings squeaking and a series of steady, rising moans. Skip has apparently made his selection. A woman’s voice begins to coo and gasp: “Oh, that’s it! God. Harder. Ooh. Unhhh.... Yes. God.
Yes! God! Harder!”
Flesh slaps against flesh. A rhythmic thumping is added to the chorus of sounds–the bed’s headboard pounding against a wall.

“Go, Skip!” D.H. says. Gordon and Jimmy laugh a little uneasily. They’re both sporting hard-ons. Madame Sophie blatantly checks out their packages.

“A young man’s lust can be such a good thing,” she says, sighing. “It gets you into all the right kinds of trouble. I don’t know why people insist on demonizing it.”

A low, throaty grunting joins the insistent squeaks and thumping. That would be Skip. It sounds like he’s close to coming. In the next instant there’s a huge crash and the woman’s voice yells,
“¡Ayeee! ¡Caramba!”
Then they hear Skip groan, “Oh, God!” as the woman laughs, shrieks, and keeps laughing.

“They broke the bed,” Madame Sophie declares. “Good for them!”

There’s more thumping and crashing. It sounds like something heavy is being scraped across a cement floor. Then after a brief interlude, Skip and Twinker emerge from the darkened hallway, looking a bit disheveled. They’re holding hands and shyly grinning.

“I don’t believe it…” D.H. says.

“Twinker, that was
you?”

Twinker approaches Madame Sophie, trying to look contrite. She whispers, “I’m so sorry, but we had a little accident back there. The bed somehow just…
collapsed
.”

“I know,” Madame Sophie says, patting her dimpled cheek. “You both fucked it to pieces. The spirits told me you would.”

“You’re not mad at us?”

“Mad? How could I be mad about something that was foretold in heaven?”

“We could pay you for it,” Skip offers.

“Don’t even think about it. That bed was never used. It was for overnight guests, but I don’t like having guests.”

“So wait…” Jimmy says, “this place isn’t really a whorehouse?”

“A whorehouse?” Madame Sophie laughs. “Young man, I’m the only one who lives here, and who would dare? I mean, really–
who would dare?”

Certainly not any of them.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

After they leave Madame Sophie’s, Hideous drives everyone home, dropping Gordon off last. Gordon thanks Hideous for the ride, then quietly unlocks his front door and tiptoes into the den, hoping to avoid waking his mother. He still feels like he’s drunk, or stoned, or accompanied by spirits.
(Hi, Dad!)
Whatever he’s under the influence of, he’s certainly in no condition to deal with another lecture from his mother–or worse, a tag-team nude reprimand from his mother and Uncle Gerald. It’s hard to say you’re sorry to a pair of outraged sagging tits and a disappointed penis bobbing up and down like a foreskin-covered Slinky. Gordon knows. He’s tried.

“Gordon?
Gordon!”

For a split-second Gordon thinks he’s busted, but then he realizes it’s only Derek crying out for him, waking from a bad dream. He lurches down the hallway into Derek’s room and closes the door behind him, hoping his mother will remain oblivious to his little brother’s cries. She usually does. Gordon has been the one to get up at all hours of the night with Derek, from the day he came home from the hospital–feeding him, changing him, rocking him back to sleep. Cynthia’s mothering instincts haven’t improved with a second child. If anything, she’s worse.

Gordon goes over to Derek’s crib, which stands out from the shadows like a circus cage in the dim illumination from a Winnie-the-Pooh nightlight. Derek is standing up inside it clutching the top rail, bawling. At three years old, he’s just about ready for the bunk beds that Gordon built for him against the far wall, but Derek claims he likes the crib better–because it protects him from nightmares.

Not tonight, apparently. “Derek, what’s wrong?” Gordon gently picks him up.

The crying subsides as Derek wraps his arms around Gordon’s neck and feels his big brother’s hand patting him on the back. Through jerky sobs and sniffles, Derek tells him, “F-F-Farmer–uh, F-Farmer François couldn’t stop farting!”

That statement provokes another burst of bawling.

Aside from looking like a werewolf for the first three months of his life, Derek has been a fairly normal child. But there
is
one glaring peculiarity: he’s terrified of his own farts. Every time a burst of flatulence catches him by surprise, Derek jerks his head around and starts like a gun has just gone off. Sometimes he drops things, or cries real tears. Gordon has often entered rooms and found Derek bent over looking between his legs, wild-eyed with horror, as if a thunderbolt had just discharged in his diaper.

“Who’s Farmer François, Derek?” Gordon asks him.