Earth Angel (24 page)

I laughed and poked his ribs. “Just tell the story, Obi-Wan.”

“Every day the monks would gather to look upon this naked beauty. But as each day progressed, the body decomposed. The flesh
was eaten away by insects and birds. The organs slid from the skeleton, the face was picked bare. The smell was a bit ripe,
too. And so it went until the monks could no longer stand the sight or smell of her body and begged the head of the monastery
to bury her.”

“He wanted them to learn that the flesh is temporary. Temptations of the temporal world offer brief pleasures, but at the
risk of the eternal soul. Something like that?”

He nodded. “You’re good at this.”

“It’s a dentist thing.”

We drove for a few minutes, then David looked over at me and said, “Is it just me, or did that story make you kind of horny?”

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” the psychic said to David. She struck an outrageous pose and laughed.

Heather came into the kitchen. She’d changed outfits three times since we’d been here. Now she was wearing a short yellow
shift that stopped high on her freckled thighs and scooped down low on her freckled chest. Her hair was pulled up on top of
her head. She looked like Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“Where do you want us?” Mrs. Hudson, the psychic, asked.

“Wherever you usually do this,” David said. “We’re just here to observe. I don’t want you to change anything.”

“Well, we usually do this in my study.”

“Fine,” David said.

“It’s too dark in there, Mom,” Heather said.

“Don’t worry,” David assured her, “I’ve got plenty of lighting. In fact, you’re going to look particularly fetching with more
focused lighting.”

Heather seemed appeased and we followed Mrs. Hudson’s wide lavender body down the hallway.

“Fetching?” I whispered to David.

He smiled, shouldered his camera, flicked on the light, and began filming Heather and Mrs. Hudson walking in front of us.

What most impressed me about the Hudson household was how completely average it was. There were no astrological charts on
the walls, no pewter statues of dragons. No crystals dangled in the windows, spraying the walls with colors. Wandering Jews
hung from gilded swag hooks in the living room. Boston ferns sat on wooden stools near the picture window. One of those painted
family photographs hung over the sofa. Mrs. Hudson, her husband Roy, and daughter Heather at about thirteen. Roy, we were
told, was at work. He serviced industrial air conditioners.

Mrs. Hudson’s study was also starkly average. A desk, a file cabinet, two chairs. In the corner were a sewing machine and
a basket of clothing, probably in need of repair. The desk was cluttered with papers and open file folders.

Mrs. Hudson went to the small window and opened the miniblinds. “Will this help?” she asked David.

“I’m fine,” he told her, squinting through the viewfinder. “Don’t worry about me.”

Mrs. Hudson looked over at her desk and suddenly jogged to it and began frantically scooping the papers into the folders,
shutting them as quickly as possible.

“Sometimes the police consult Mom,” Heather explained. “Very confidential stuff.”

“Confidential means we don’t tell,” Mrs. Hudson said, glaring at Heather.

Heather rolled her eyes and plopped into the chair beside the desk. It was then I noticed Heather’s extremely
long, spindly fingers. Could be Marfan’s syndrome, an inherited disorder of the connective tissue that affects the skeleton,
heart, and eyes. It’s rare, with only about two cases for every hundred thousand people, but there was a ninety percent chance
of heart or aorta problems. Those afflicted usually didn’t live past fifty due to heart failure or a rupture of the aorta.
Some beta-blockers might help with the heart, though sometimes surgery was necessary. Certainly her own pediatrician would
have told them by now.

“When did you first realize you were psychic?” David asked Heather.

“Right after my first period,” Heather said. “A couple of weeks later I started to sense things. Like I knew my history teacher
was going to be sick one day so I didn’t do my homework.”

“Did you tell your mother?”

Heather laughed.

Mrs. Hudson said, “I hadn’t come out yet as a psychic. I’d been repressing it. Afraid of it. I hadn’t even told Roy. He just
thought I was real good at finding misplaced keys and wallets.”

“When did you first know you were psychic?” David asked Mrs. Hudson.

“Right after my honeymoon. That was the first time I’d had sex. Within a few days I was starting to feel things, see things,
colors, shadows. I thought I needed glasses or had a brain tumor. I actually went to see a couple of doctors.” Apparently
not satisfied that the closed file folders were confidential enough, she slid them into a desk drawer. She looked over at
her daughter. “Then when Heather started acting, well, weird, I figured we should do something about all this. I took her
to see a psychic healer and he told us we both had the raw ability. He’s been teaching me ever since. Heather didn’t want
anything to do with it back then. She’s only lately been taking instruction from me.”

“I didn’t want people making fun of me. Calling me a witch or anything.”

I stopped listening. There were medical and psychological explanations for what they were describing, no mystery there. Still,
that they felt this onset of special abilities after having a period or first sex made my bodily functions seem so ordinary.
These women bled or screwed and received remarkable powers. I’ve bled, I’ve had sex, I was running out of rites of passage.
Perhaps giving birth would bring with it super strength or telekinesis. With menopause I would have the power to start fires.

Mrs. Hudson looked up at David, “This won’t take too long, will it? I have to pick up the dry cleaning.”

“Just a little while longer. How have your powers—”

“Not powers,” Mrs. Hudson corrected. “Abilities. Some use the word ‘gift,’ some prefer ‘talent.’ We think of it as just another
God-given ability, like being able to run fast, do complex math, play the piano, write poetry. But once you say ‘power,’ everybody
thinks we’re conjuring Satan in the den.”

“How does this ability affect your daily lives?” David asked. “At home or interacting with other people?”

Mrs. Hudson and Heather exchanged looks. “Not much, really,” Mrs. Hudson said. “We haven’t picked the winning lottery numbers,
if that’s what you mean. I haven’t predicted anybody dying.”

“What about Mrs. Culver?”

“Honey, she was ninety-two.”

Heather raised her hand. David shifted the camera toward her.

“I knew my boyfriend Mark had lied to me about going out with Marcia Heims when they were in Seattle at the debating finals.
I looked at him and saw the blue color around his face turn red and thicken like syrup. He kept denying it, even after I told
him I knew he was lying.”

“How could you be sure you were right?” David said.
“I mean, outside of your ability. Did anyone else see them together, anyone else confirm your suspicion?”

“No. But it’s not a suspicion. I know.” She smiled. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I forgave him and we’re still together. Now
he knows he can’t fool me. It’s made our relationship stronger.”

“What if you were wrong? What if Mark didn’t lie?”

Heather shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. Forgiveness is never wasted.”

“Hey, since you’ve got the camera running and all,” Mrs. Hudson said excitedly into the camera. “Heather does a real good
impression of Bette Midler. Wanna hear?”

O
N THE WAY BACK FROM THE PSYCHIC’S
, D
AVID ASKED TO SEE WHERE I
lived.

“Is this about sex?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you said you wanted to see where I live. What else could that mean but sex.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “It could mean I’m interested in where you live, how you live, whether you hang your bra from the
lampshade, leave microwaved pizza crust wedged between your sofa cushions. Will I find copies of
Cosmopolitan
or the
New Yorker
in the bathroom. Dried toothpaste in the sink. I don’t know, I just thought it would be nice.”

“I live in a motel, David. It looks like a motel room.”

“I’m sure you’ve impacted it somehow. You just can’t hide the magic that is you.” He smiled. “Plus, I have to take a leak
and your place is closer than mine. We can have sex afterward if it’s that important to you.”

I laughed. “You’re such a liar.”

He reached over and laid his hand on mine. “You young folk today. Got one thing on your minds.”

I let his hand rest there on mine, liking the cocoonish feeling it gave my skin. I closed my eyes and sunlight flickered through
the windshield and across my eyelids like a movie projector. His hand closed over mine, crowding my fingers together into
a fetal hunch. I imagined that when my hand eventually emerged from under his it would be hatched into something new, a better
hand somehow. The crook in my index finger—a childhood injury from when I broke it sledding into a tree, that left it thick
and stiff, my excuse for not becoming a surgeon—would be miraculously healed. The swollen joint gone, the finger straight
and flexible and ladylike.

“Fuck!” David snapped. His hand flew away from mine.

I opened my eyes as the car slowed and pulled into a strip-mall parking lot. Liquor store, laundromat, donut shop. “What?”
I said, disoriented. I sat up, looked at my hand. Lumpy joint still there.

“Cops. We’ve been busted. Quick, eat all the joints in the glove compartment!”

I instinctively reached for the glove compartment. In college, Tim had once eaten the nub of a lit joint when a highway patrol
car had pulled into the lane beside him for a few miles. Burned his tongue so bad he talked like Elmer Fudd for a week.

David laughed, reached over and stopped my hand from opening the glove compartment. “I’m kidding.”

The cop was leaning over David’s window. David rolled it down and said, “What’s up?”

“May I see your license, please. And the lady’s?” He was young, maybe twenty-five. He wasn’t wearing a hat and his short sandy
hair was pasted across his head like a little boy’s. He also had a little boy’s cowlick at the side of his head, sprouting
up like a desert bush. His huge, meaty hand rested against the gun in his holster. I opened my purse for my wallet.

David didn’t move. “Like I said, what’s going on?”

“I’d just like to see your ID, sir,” the cop said, his voice modulated, without anger or friendliness.

“Fine. But why were we stopped? I wasn’t speeding.”

“Just show him your license, David,” I said.

“I’d like to. But first I want to know why we were stopped.” David’s voice was as modulated as the cop’s. “I didn’t break
any laws. The registration is current. No broken taillights. Am I right, officer?”

“Sir, please show me your license or I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.” His hand tightened around the
gun.

“You’re not trying to bring back the sixties here, are you, David?” I asked, a little nervous. “You’re not going to start
shouting ‘Attica, Attica!’ ”

David looked at me, at my eyes. I don’t know what he saw, but he shut up and reached for his wallet in his back pocket.

The young officer relaxed a little and said, “We’ve had another note from the serial kidnapper. I saw you drive by, man and
a woman, the lady’s eyes were closed. The gentleman fits our psychologist’s profile of the age. I’m just being cautious.”

David handed the officer his license. So did I. He looked at David’s first, studying photo and face. I sat perfectly still
with thumping heart. What would he do when he saw my license? Would he recognize the name or face? Would he blurt it out to
David and blow everything?

The cop handed David’s license back to him. “Thank you, sir.” Then he looked at my license, at my face, back at the license.
His face changed slightly. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. He looked over at me quickly. He seemed confused, as if unsure
what to do. I wasn’t wanted for anything, but I was associated with a heinous crime. I was like Typhoid Mary, a carrier of
disease, if not myself affected by it. He pondered my face as if he was trying to figure out how I might be somehow involved
in the
kidnappings. Reluctantly, he handed the license through the window. David reached for it but I lunged across his lap and snatched
it from the cop’s fingers. I could tell the cop wanted to say something, if only to let me know he knew who I was. That he
was on to me. His lips opened.

“Anything else, officer?” I asked sharply.

He hesitated. “No, ma’am. Sorry for the inconvenience.” He backed away from the car, though he didn’t take his eyes off me.

David pulled back into traffic.

“Now I know how you got that limp,” I said. “Annie was right, you’re a born troublemaker.”

“Take me to your place and I’ll tell you how I got this limp.”

“My favors don’t come that cheaply,” I said, opening my wallet to replace my license. I was bantering with him, but my head
was in agony from the close call. My skin was chilly from the flash sweat that had popped out.

David reached for my license. “Let me see.”

I jerked away from him and barked, “No!”

“Jesus, the photo can’t be that bad.”

“It’s bad. From before the operation, when I was still a man.”

He laughed. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. With you anything’s possible.”

“What would you do if I showed you this license and I had been a man?”

“Well, you certainly aren’t one now.”

“Seriously. I’m curious. What if I told you I’d had an operation. My name used to be Bruno and I was a lumberjack?”

“Is this some sort of relationship quiz, something out of a women’s magazine? Ask your date this question and if he answers
this way he’s sensitive and caring, that way and he’s a latent wife-beater.”

I stuffed the license in my wallet, the wallet in my purse.
Zipped the purse closed. “It’s just a question, David. You don’t have to answer.”