Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (5 page)

“
No.”

“
Why not?” Julie asked. She was apparently still a little confused.

Carla smiled at her. “Because I wanted to find
you
. I wasn’t going to let this life be a total waste. I had to find you, Jules.”

“
Jules,” she echoed softly, trying out the nickname and smiling sadly through her tears for Carla.

Chapter Seven

Even with the power of the remote, Carla was indeed fading in and out now. Julie didn’t want her to leave.

“I won’t leave you, Jules,” Carla answered. “You just might not be able to see me sometimes, but I’ll stay with you as long as you want me to.”

Julie didn’t know what to say. She was torn between her own joy of finding Carla, and doing what would be best for the girl.

“I can stay for a while, anyways,” Carla said. “I can come to your house, if you want.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re not bound? Don’t you have to stay within certain perimeters?”

“Well, yes, and no,” Carla replied. “I know that some spirits have to stay inside a room or a building. But I don’t. Maybe because I moved around so much? And I was homeless, so where, you know? Where would I be bound to?”

I nodded, contemplating this. Why,
indeed
? Mack wasn’t bound by any building, either. As a matter of fact, I realized I’d recently come in contact with several ghosts along the streets, and though the question entered my mind, I hadn’t given it serious thought, until now.

I still didn’t know much of Mack’s history. He wouldn’t tell me, however much I entreated him to confide in me. Both his life and his death were still a mystery to me. He apparently wanted to keep it that way.

It was something to think about, but not now.

“
Would you like that, Julie?” I asked. “For Carla to come to your house and visit?”

Julie was a little flustered, what with speaking with ghosts and finding her soul mate. But the idea delighted her. “Sure!” she said enthusiastically. “But how will I know when you’re around, Carla?”

Carla’s solid image was shimmering now, a combination of blue and purple shimmers. “You’ll be able to feel me,” she answered. “Or just call my name, and I’ll be there.”

“
Can you really come to my house?”

“
Yeah, I don’t think you live far,” Carla answered, softly now. “I can hang around most of Echo Park.” The girl turned to me and added, “I think those are my boundaries. Just Echo Park. Don’t move out of the neighborhood.”

She was fading. Julie tried to hold her hand, but could not anymore. “Okay, even if I can’t see you…” Julie’s tone had hope, joy.
Love
. “You’ll be around, right?”

“
Right.” Carla reached up and gave Julie a final hug before she disappeared from Julie’s sight.

Julie looked like a lost puppy. Mack chuckled.

“It’s not funny,” I rebuffed him, and he fell silent, hovering, arms crossed.

I sat across from Julie, trying to think of something to say. This was my business, my lifework; I’d talked many people through all kinds of bizarre situations. For some reason, Carla was getting under my skin and I was losing my objectivity. She was still there, but Julie could no longer see her.

“Well.” Julie was overwhelmed. She couldn’t think of anything to say, either.

“
Maybe I should go, for a while,” Carla finally offered.

“
If you like,” I said. “Let her get used to all this.”

“
She’s leaving?” Julie was becoming more attuned to the spirit world, whether she knew it or not.

“
Just for a while,” I said. “Do you have anything to say to her?”

Julie fidgeted with the ring on her finger that Carla had moved. “I have tons to say,” she looked straight at where Carla was sitting. Floating, right above the couch. “Yes, tell her I want her…her company. Anytime she wants, she can come see me.”

“She can hear you, dear,” I reminded Julie.

Julie took a deep breath. “You can come over…I suppose you know where I live?”

“Tell her I don’t really need to know,” Carla said. “Now that I found her in this life, I can just think of her and be there. At least in Echo Park. I don’t know about elsewhere.”

I told Julie. We were all a little weary; it was now early afternoon. I wanted another beer, and perhaps a nap.

Julie seemed to pick up on this. “Pauline, I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, slowly gathering her cigarettes and purse. She rose and gave me a hug.

“
Please,” I said, waving a hand. “It’s what I do. I’m so glad to have brought you and Carla together.”

“
It’s going to be strange, being visited by a ghost.” She laughed a little nervously.

“
You get used to it.”

Then Mack touched the remote, and turned up the volume on the baseball game.

Julie jumped.

“
Stop scaring her, Mack!” I said to Mack. He had a gleam in his eye, though. He liked Julie, and was just playing with her.

“
Don’t mind Mack,” I told Julie. “He likes you. I can tell. He won’t hurt you.”

“
He does? How do you know?”

“
Because if he didn’t like you, he would have done something to scare the pants off you. You’d be flying out of here like a bat out of hell.”

Julie laughed again, and her eyes focused on his image near the television. “I better get going,” she managed.

I walked her to the door. “This isn’t over, you know.”

“
No, I didn’t think so. She’s got to go to the light, or whatever, right? I only have so much time before she leaves.”

“
That’s true,” I agreed. “But there’s something else. I can’t put my finger on it, but I can feel there is some unfinished business to attend to.”

“
Well, if you say so,” she managed. She was tired, too. But I knew she’d be calling me soon. After all, how many people could she talk to about this? And, while I didn’t have to, I liked to help the living understand the dead. I hoped I could be there when Carla went Home.

“
Call any time,” I said as she walked down the hall to the stairs.

I went into the kitchen and got myself another beer. And a small shot of vodka. I re-started Mack’s Red Sox game from the beginning for him, just to keep him from bugging me.

“Thank you,” he said. “I missed some of the game.”

“
I know. Now, through the magic of DVR, you can see it in its entirety.”

“
What a world, what a world,” he said, which made me smile. He loved TV and movies and we had a similar cultural vernacular.

I headed for my bedroom. Just a little nap, that’s all I needed. I’d earned my nap for the day, and that was good.

Chapter Eight

Mercifully, the third morning after the session with Julie and Carla was fairly cool. Equally refreshing was the fact that I was alone, blissfully alone, on my patio. No ghosts were around, especially not Mack, and no intuitions were bothering me. I sat in the patio chair that was shaded during the morning hours, smoking a cigarette and enjoying my coffee. I didn’t even feel the need for Captain Morgan to share my coffee.

“
Where is that mockingbird?” I asked aloud, as if I could make him appear.

Julie had called over the last three days, and more than once. She told me that she could feel Carla’s presence quite often. I suggested that she try some electricity to see if the girl could materialize. Carla had, and Julie was elated. The two were able to communicate in subtle ways at times now. Carla would often bring the scent of flowers when she arrived. Julie was no longer freaked out; in fact, she was a hundred times happier than when she’d first knocked at my door, plagued by the recurring nightmares that she hadn’t understood. I was happy for them that they were starting to find peace and understanding through their soul mate connection.

Mack, on the other hand, had been relentlessly bothering me about his promised poker party. “Pokah Pahty,” he pronounced it, and he went on and on about what he wanted, how I should prepare and how it would be the highlight of our friendship.

I laughed. “Fine.”

He warned me that he would have the “guys” over tonight. Clearly, I wasn’t as enthralled as he was. In fact, I was worried that a ghost poker party wasn’t among the wisest of festivities for an apartment like mine. Sure, nobody—at least, not the living—would hear them. Hopefully, they wouldn’t, if they
behaved
. But there was a possibility that other spirits would hear, and might be curious and flood my apartment with uninvited guests. I couldn’t imagine my place filled with so many spirits. Just Mack alone was a handful for me.

I pushed all of these thoughts, including those of Julie and Carla, out of my mind, determined to enjoy the morning.

I heard a welcome trill. My mockingbird was back in rare form. I tried to count his different and unique calls. At times, I thought I could discern a rhythm, a musical 4/4 or 3/4 beat, but his calls were usually too quick for me to keep track of. I sipped my coffee, and watched him flit from tree to tree, always making a big stand if any other birds got near
his
feeder.

Nearby were a couple of blue jays. I had a great respect for them as well; their raucous calls were more coarse and random, although they seemed so proud of themselves. Birds weren’t in the least inhibited by what they were or sounded like, or whether they were beautiful or ugly.

I tried to ignore my own getting-flabby body and the fact that birds didn’t need alcohol or anything else to sing their hearts out. I tried to push the question from my mind that if I was an intelligent human being, why couldn’t I obtain simple
joie de vivre
, like the birds?

I downed my second cup of coffee, leaving the birds to their ignorant bliss, and went inside to prepare for Mack’s damned poker party.

Mack, as I said, had specific requests—demands, really—for his party. Although I thought Mack was really going out on a limb here, he
had
brought Carla to me. We had developed a sort of mutual trade or barter relationship over the last year or so, and I figured that this poker party would earn me at least a few good favors in return.

Some of his requests, or demands, were fairly easy to meet. I already had my father’s old poker chips. I moved the kitchen table into the living room, and covered it with a decorative tablecloth. In fact, it was a kitschy green tablecloth I had found at a yard sale that was printed on the borders with the well-known picture of dogs playing poker. I hoped Mack would see the humor in it.

I also had cigars on hand to light, to help set the mood. I knew these spirits couldn’t actually drink, but I set up shot glasses and placed some liquor bottles on the table, too. And chips for everyone.

Those were the easy demands. Now, with Mack’s four “guests” arriving in less than an hour, I struggled to get the two small generators I’d rented up the main entry stairs and into my apartment, stealthy-like. I pulled one up the stairs, and paused. I didn’t want anyone, especially the apartment manager, to see it in the outside hall. But if I hauled the thing to my apartment, then I risked leaving the other one unguarded down at the bottom.

“You’d better appreciate this, damn you,” I muttered under my breath.

“
But I do, hon.” Mack was right next to me.

I jumped, in spite of myself. “Don’t
do
that!”

Mack just smiled and continued, “Go ahead, take this one in. I’ll gawd the one below.”

“What can you do if someone takes it?” I asked.

“
You know I can do plenty, luv,” he answered, and I knew it was true. Mack could scare the pants off anyone, day or night. I stifled a smile at the thought of having an even more reliable protection against burglars than a German Shepherd or a Dobie.

“
Thanks, you old salty dog,” I told him. He smiled and nodded as I pushed the thing into my apartment.

I went down the main steps again. By the time I got the second one, I was perspiring. I wanted a drink and a smoke. Mack followed me out to the patio. It was getting dark and the mockingbird had gone to roost in the tree just off the patio.

“All the easier to see me in the dark,” he mocked.

“
You’re pushing your luck, buddy,” I told him.

“
So are you.”

“
How so?” I asked. “I’m not the one with a body six feet under.”

Mack indicated my pre-made apple martini and cigarette. “You could be, too, sooner than you think,” he retorted, “if you keep all that up.”

“Listen, do you want this party? If so, you’d better back off.” I didn’t want to admit that he’d pushed one of my buttons. My bad habits were my crosses to bear.
Mine.