The Astral (6 page)

Rose looked at her curiously when she came back in, the bell over the door jingling. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“That woman. She just disappeared. I wanted to talk to her. Did you know her?”

Rose looked around the shop, confused. “Woman?”

“She was just there, by the window, she was talking to me when you came through the doorway.”

Rose looked in the direction of the window. “Oh, I suppose she was just a looky-loo, we get lots of them this time of year.” She dismissed the subject with a shrug and turned her friendly smile back to Catherine. “Let me guess, you've come for a Hanukah bush?”

CHAPTER SIX

At home, Catherine poured herself a glass of wine and, kicking off her shoes, curled up on the sofa in the den.

She could no longer ignore the fact that something peculiar, something downright weird, was happening to her. But what, exactly? What had that woman at the flower shop meant, about traveling? Hadn't someone said the very same thing to her previously?

She tried to think back over all of it. The nightmare. On the face of it, there was nothing peculiar about that. Why wouldn't she have a nightmare about the men who had kidnapped her daughter?

It had been so real, though: the shaved-off beard, the face. Had the mole been removed? She wanted so desperately to tell Agent Chang about those changes in his appearance, because she wanted so desperately to see those men caught—but how could she tell Chang what she had seen in a dream without sounding like a madwoman?

What if it was
all
just a nightmare? What if she had in fact died when she was shot, and all the rest, everything that she had experienced since, was just some epic, drawn-out dream?

She tried to place things in some logical sequence. There had been that moment in the hospital when she had imagined herself in the hallway outside her room, and that had seemed real also. And it must have seemed real to Millie, too, because remembering now that moment when the nurse burst into the room, recalling her expression, she realized that Millie had fully expected to see an empty bed. So Millie must have seen her in the corridor as well. Surely two people couldn't share the same delusion.

She thought about the woman doctor. Like the woman today at Rose's shop—they could have been the same person, she realized suddenly—the doctor too had mentioned travel. Had she been only a dream, too, or had she been real? Yes, of course, she was real. She and Millie had exchanged words.

Or had they? The doctor had spoken, and Millie had spoken, but had they actually spoken to one another? She couldn't remember their exact words, but now she didn't think that they had. For that matter, had Millie even seen the doctor? And if not, did it mean she wasn't real?

Even that hadn't been the beginning, though. There was that eerie experience when she had been, if not dead, certainly dying. It had gotten blurry in her memory, like a faded photograph and she had deliberately pushed that memory away. There had been light, she remembered that much, blinding light, and someone had spoken to her about a job to do. Something only she could do.

So many questions, to which she could think of no answers. What had the woman in the shop said today: “You must practice. You mustn't let the pain hold you back from traveling.”

Okay, then, say that she had been “traveling,” in some sense. Was she having, what-did-they-call-them, out of body experiences?

Dean and Summers had published a book on paranormal experiences a few years back. She went to the bookshelves lining the wall, and found it,
An Almanac of the Paranormal
, and looked through the table of contents until she found a heading for “astral projection.” Yes, she thought, skimming through that chapter, it sounded like what had been happening to her.

There was a lengthy discussion of what the author described as a spiritual double, what the ancient Egyptians had called the Ka, which could sometimes leave the body during sleep or during a trance and return to it, so that individuals might seem to be in two places at once. According to the author, this “travel” often began as a spontaneous thing. Which, if you thought about it, was certainly what had happened with her.

She put the book aside for a moment. It sounded to her like a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Yet she couldn't deny that something had happened to her, that unless she had simply had the most bizarre dreams, she had traveled in some spirit fashion to other locations.

She had a chilling thought: if that nightmare of her daughter's murderers was not a nightmare, then she had actually, spontaneously, traveled to where they were. Was that what she was meant to do, why she had been given this bizarre “gift?” Because, if so, God in Heaven, she didn't want it. She did not want ever again to have an experience like that.

Except, she hadn't been given any choice, had she? It
had
been spontaneous. But surely, she was not simply at the mercy of some extraterrestrial force. There must be some way to prevent that from happening again. She went back to the book. Yes, astral travelers generally learned with practice to control their projections, to choose where and when they will travel.

Well, then, there was the answer. She must practice, learn how to control what had been happening to her. Only, how was she supposed to practice something that occurred on its own? She didn't have any idea what she had done on any of those occasions, didn't in fact think that she had done anything to bring those weird experiences about.

“All right,” she said aloud, “let's suppose I can travel, to borrow a word, and I just need to practice it. Let's pop in on Mom, why don't we?”

That was certainly something non-threatening, and if she startled her mother, it would be a good intro to telling her all about it. It was assuredly difficult to think of any better way of broaching the subject.

She made herself comfortable on the sofa, closed her eyes and concentrated hard, screwing up her face. Were there some magic words she was supposed to use? The book hadn't said. Abracadabra maybe? Open Sesame? Knock, knock?

After a while, feeling foolish, she opened her eyes. If she were supposed to practice this, they would have to give her some sort of hint as to how. Whoever, she amended,
they
were. And it would help if they explained why she was supposed to practice it. Other than avoiding the hassle of commuting in Los Angeles, she didn't quite see the point. Much as she wanted to see them caught and put away, she did not want, ever, to pay any more visits to those two men, and if that was their idea, they could simply think again. If, that was, that had not been a dream. And there she was, back full circle where she had started, and none the wiser.

The hall clock announced four. She remembered all at once what Jack had said: channel three at four. Putting the book aside, she found the remote and flipped on the television to channel three, and there he was, talking about some problem with the Koreas. She watched him, paying no attention to his words, free now to study him without awkwardness.

He still had that odd mix of vulnerability and independence—the result, no doubt, of being orphaned young, of having to make his own way—that had always been so attractive and, in a way, frightening. Even as a young girl, she had wondered what lay within the still depths of those gray-blue eyes, keen eyes that seemed to look out from the screen straight into hers. The movement of his lips once again sent sensual shivers coursing through her.

She was surprised when a woman with stiff black hair appeared on the screen beside him. “Oh, go away,” Catherine ordered the brunette, “I want Jack.”

The brunette asked Jack a question and again the camera zoomed in on him. And again, he seemed to look straight into Catherine's eyes, she could almost feel herself falling into gray-blue pools. The light around him appeared golden, like a gilding fog....

Just like that, she was standing in an unfamiliar office, beside a desk.

* * * *

“See if you can get me a ticket for the symphony for tonight,” Jack told his secretary as he passed her desk, barely slowing his brisk pace.

“The Chopin? Lang Lang? I've heard it's sold out.”

“The peanut gallery will do. There's usually something up top.”

“One?” she asked after his rapidly vanishing back. Always in such a hurry, she thought regretfully. She had hoped, when she got the job, that he might pay a bit more attention to her. She might as well have been a doorstopper for all he noticed the pains she had taken with her clothes and her makeup, and hadn't she just spent one hundred dollars on a new hair stylist?

“One will be plenty.” He pushed open the door to his office, stepped through—and saw Catherine standing in front of his desk.

He caught his breath and blinked, and she was gone. Hadn't really been there at all, of course, or if she had, it had only been a ghost, because he had seen the desk right through her, logic told him that even as his heart insisted she
had
been there.

Great, he thought, I'm going bats.

* * * *

Back in her den, Catherine looked for the daily newspaper and checked the concert listings. Yes, there it was, The Chopin “First Piano Concerto,” Lang Lang with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, tonight, at Disney Hall. That part, certainly, had not been a dream.

She smiled broadly. The Chopin first was the most romantic piece of music she knew. It was also, for her, intensely erotic. Jack had played it for her the night he first made love to her.

What did it say about him, that he was going tonight to listen to that very music? And what an uncanny coincidence it was that she had traveled to him at the very moment he told his secretary to find him a ticket.

Uncanny, indeed. Maybe there was an upside to this travel business. She lifted her eyes heavenward and whispered “Thanks,” half expecting to hear an answering, “You're welcome.”

Smiling, she dialed her mother's telephone number. “Mom,” she said, “Do you still have your symphony subscription?”

“Yes, although I hardly ever go. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it, I have tickets for tonight.”

“The Chopin? Two tickets?”

“Yes. And I can't make it. It's bridge night. Did you want them?”

Catherine's smile grew wider. “I'd love to have them. I'll stop on my way. Oh, and Mom, if Walter should ask, we went together.”

* * * *

She promised herself that she wouldn't actually speak to him, wouldn't even meet up with him. He needn't know she was there. She only wanted to see him, at a distance, to know that she was under the same roof with him, sharing the same musical experience.

Nonetheless, here she was, standing in the lobby near the main entrance, waiting to see him arrive. As usual, he was late. The lobby began to empty as people ascended the stairs on their way to the auditorium. She shifted her weight from one foot to another and gingerly sipped a glass of wine.

What if he didn't come? He might have changed his mind. Or his secretary might have been unable to find a ticket. Or he could have come up the escalator from the parking garage. She had made a guess that, only recently returned to the city, he would park at the Chandler, across the street, where he had always parked in the past. That would bring him in this way. It was only a guess, though.

He had never liked “flashy” women and she had dressed carefully: an eggshell silk skirt and blouse, the skirt falling to mid-calf—fashion trends notwithstanding, she had always worn her skirts that length, for the most vain of reasons: it was a hemline flattering to her legs. She had tried on her only good jewelry, a single strand of pearls—real oyster, as her mother liked to say—and had swapped them at the last moment for a simple jade pendant that set off her complexion and lent her eyes an arresting topaz glint. A white cashmere trench coat was flung casually over her shoulders. She wore little makeup and didn't need it—some lipstick, peach blush, a little eye shadow—and she had left her hair down, the way he liked it, though it was shorter than it had been when they were younger. One carefully arranged curl hid the scar at her temple.

He wasn't coming, she thought with a sudden burst of impatience. How utterly silly of her to be here like this, waiting for certain disappointment. It was like lifting your glass to drink and finding it empty. She set her wine aside on the bar being carefully wiped clean by an impatient bartender, who snatched it up at once.

She started toward the escalator—and stopped dead as Jack dashed in, at the last minute, just as always in the past—she ought to have remembered that. Windblown and coatless, a man who couldn't deign to notice the weather, he hurried into the lobby.

Her promises to herself went out the door as he came in. At the sight of him, her heart jumped into her throat. She took a deep breath and put her head down and moved in a path that would intercept his, walking quickly because in another few feet his hurried steps would carry him to the escalators. Already the smartly uniformed usher was holding out her hand to scan his ticket.

“Jack.” She looked up and directly at him at the last minute. “This is a surprise.”

“Catherine.” He stopped in his tracks and gave her a measuring look, as if he were not altogether as surprised as she professed to be.

She ignored the look and the pounding of her heart and managed a warm smile. “The Chopin,” was all she could think to say.

“Yes. It's one of my favorites.”

“I remember.”

He looked down at his watch. “We'd better get inside.”

The usher scanned their tickets, and realized belatedly that there were three tickets and only two people, but Catherine was past her and already moving up the escalator before she could say anything. She shrugged, and turned instead to another late arrival.

The escalator seemed to move at a snail's pace. Catherine waited until they had almost reached the next level before she asked, “Where are you sitting?” She tried to make the question innocent. If only he didn't look too carefully at her....

He grimaced and nodded his head upward. “The top. Nosebleed country.”

“But, no, I have an extra seat right beside me, mother was supposed to come and changed her mind at the last minute. Orchestra. Why don't you join me?”

They had reached the orchestra level. He looked toward the escalator that continued upward, and hesitated. “That's very kind of you, but....”

“Please,” she interrupted him. “You did say we were going to be friends, didn't you? And I really hate going in by myself. That's why I waited till the last minute, so all those people wouldn't have time to think, ‘that poor wretch, she couldn't get a date'.”