Too Near the Edge (21 page)

On the way home, I got to thinking about
whether Waycroft’s Mexico project could have anything to do with
Joel. After all, Joel had studied with Waycroft as a graduate
student, and after he left Boulder he lived in Mexico for a while.
Of course Joel also told Sharon he hadn’t talked to Waycroft in
years. But I had no way to know whether or not he was telling the
truth about that.

On Sunday, I spent some time at my office
writing a response to Waycroft’s complaint. I found it tough to
explain what I do in the Contact Project in a way that made it
clear I adhere to high professional standards. To make matters
worse, my father called. Wouldn’t you know, someone had sent him
the newspaper article. He was so disgusted that my work had led to
charges being brought against me by a distinguished professor that
he tried to convince me I should give up the Contact Project. This
was nothing new. My father is, to say the least, not pleased with
the direction my life has taken. In general, I want to get along
with my father—or at least I think I do. Every time I go back to
Kansas to visit, I promise myself I’ll be the person he wants me to
be so we can enjoy being together. But somehow I always slip up.
Like last summer, when he kept making cracks about my “special ties
with the supernatural.” I just couldn’t let it go by. So we were at
it again.

Today he started right in. “Cleo, you could
do some significant work, make a name for yourself. You’re wasting
your life on this ridiculous contacting dead people nonsense.”

Giving up, I snapped back. “People are
willing to pay me for this ridiculous nonsense.”

“People pay for all kinds of
things—pornography, junk food, illegal drugs. That doesn’t justify
the activity.”

“What difference does it make to you
anyway—it’s my life,” I replied somewhat petulantly. “Are you going
to give me a prize for doing it your way?”

“I already gave you a quality education. So
why are you wasting that expensive education on this
silliness?”

Over time, I have learned to stop when we get
to this point. My father doesn’t care how much we fight. In fact, I
think he argues just to keep me going. My mother sometimes says Dad
would call a dog a cat to get an argument going and by the time he
was done you’d trade that dog in for a cat just to shut him up. At
least my mother can sometimes laugh about it. I never did enjoy my
dad’s bickering. So I told him I had to go and hung up.

I sat there for a bit, staring off into space
and feeling sorry for myself that Grampa, who had really understood
me, was gone, while my father and Waycroft were very much here and
making my life more difficult. When I looked up, I saw Tyler
leaning on the edge of my desk.

“Yo Cleo. You feel like you been totally
axed?”

“Well, you could say not a lot is going my
way, Tyler. I’m feeling like I’m in over my head here. Maybe
drowning? Am I speaking your language enough that you can get a
clue and give me some help?”

“Don’t get all bent. It’s a little choppy,
but you can’t bail now.”

“You have a big stake in my staying with
this, but I’m the one getting all the flack from people. You’re
dead. You don’t have to deal with them!”

“Cleo, this isn’t about you. But you’re on to
something gnarly. Some dudes need serious help from you. They’re
going under fast, so you need to line up. Find your take-off point.
Then make the wave. Don’t get pounded. And remember to watch for
sharks.”

“TYLER! I need some specific advice. Who are
the sharks? What should I do about Dr. Ahmed? And what about Erik?”
But I didn’t get an answer, because Tyler had vanished. Arrrgh!

I glared at the corner of my desk where Tyler
had been, as if I could conjure him up—but of course nothing
happened. Except I noticed Erik’s business card lying there, where
I had dropped it almost two weeks ago. I realized I had never gone
to his website, so I decided to check it out.

The home page for Vaughn’s Holistic Healing
featured a lush mountain meadow dotted with colorful wildflowers
and surrounded by an aspen grove. A fit young woman in a purple
leotard sat in a yoga pose beside a meandering mountain stream.
New-age harp music played softly in the background. A floating
banner read, “Your life, your choice. Surprise yourself! Exceed
your personal best!”

Links on the left side of the page took
visitors to a company mission statement, staff biographies,
descriptions of innovative and affordable products for the journey
to optimal wellness, testimonials, and ordering instructions.
Vaughn’s mission statement was “To offer the very best natural
alternatives in weight-control, life-enhancement, and health
promotion so everyone can feel great about themselves.” In his
biographical statement, Erik described himself as a sports
nutritionist who had two science degrees and was widely recognized
as an expert in nutrition and human performance.

His products professed to help people reduce
stress, enhance energy production, maintain a positive outlook,
improve memory and focus, lose weight, improve immune system
functioning, protect against cell damage, and more. The various
capsules, tablets and tonics contained an assortment of herbs,
natural extracts and compounds, food concentrates, caffeine, green
tea, and other natural substances. One weight-loss supplement
claimed to be the most significant advancement in over a decade. A
medicinal mushroom extract was said to have been used successfully
for over fifteen years in hospitals worldwide to improve immune
system functioning. All the products were backed by testimonials
listing the dramatic benefits people experienced while taking them.
Most were touted as scientific breakthroughs. And most ran $100 or
so for a month’s supply.

In addition to offering the products for
retail sale, Erik gave people the opportunity to become associates
who could order products at a discount for resale. By “partnering”
with him, associates could not only make money, they could also
“bring the benefits of natural good health to others.” Overall, it
looked like a major money-maker. No wonder he was so
optimistic.

I called Elisa to tell her about Erik’s
website so she could check it out, and to tell her what Holly had
said about Waycroft and see what she had uncovered. I began with
Holly’s information.

“Right on,” she whooped. “It turns out our
boy Donald got in some trouble for misrepresenting a project to the
university’s institutional review board. From what I heard, he’s
obsessed with proving that behavioral principles work, but he can’t
get approval to do the studies he wants to do because they violate
ethical guidelines. So he lied in his application. He said he was
going to explore at what ages babies can learn to recognize
different animal puppets and pick out the ones they like. But what
he really planned to do was show that he could control the babies’
behavior by conditioning them with either cute or scary puppets.
When the board found out what his research was really about, they
withdrew approval and he was in big trouble. My source says it was
all hushed up at the university, but I’m thinking we could threaten
to expose it and maybe get Donald to back off.”

“Good idea, but we need to do it soon. I need
his complaint to go away before I lose any more business, or maybe
even my funding for the Contact Project.”

“I agree. I want him to back off well before
I put in my tenure application in the fall. Let me think about the
best way to put pressure on him in the department, and we can talk
about it in a few days.”

“Great. And if you have a few extra minutes,
check out Erik Vaughn’s website. I’m curious to see what you think
of it. I’m starting to wonder if he’s really a nutrition expert or
if he’s mostly a salesman. And there’s something about him
personally that I can’t quite figure out. I never know whether to
believe what he says. Sharon agrees he can be moody and odd, but
she still wants to keep him close.”

“I hardly know him, but I’ll look at the
website,” Elisa said. “Oh, and by the way, have you found out any
more about that doctor at Shady Terrace?”

I filled her in on my fruitless web searches,
and told her about Sharon’s contact with Jenny and the comment
Jenny made to Sharon about a scam. “I guess I am going to have to
talk to Pablo about him even though he’ll probably think it’s
another of my wacky issues,” I said. “I can’t take the chance that
a lot of people may get hurt just because I don’t want my boyfriend
to laugh at me.”

“Good thinking, Cleo. Anyway, who knows—the
last laugh may be yours.”

When I hung up with Elisa, it was
mid-afternoon. I decided to call Pablo. Sometimes when he gets
angry, he needs some cooling off time, so I usually don’t run right
after him and try to make up. But it had been a week since his
disastrous encounter with Erik at my house. I was ready to try to
make peace and I figured he was too.

I reached him on his cell phone. It turned
out he was at a family picnic at Eben Fine Park, which is only
about a block from where I live. He invited me to join them. I told
him I thought we needed to talk first, to try to get some stuff
figured out between us. He said let’s eat first and talk after. I
love his parents and the rest of his family—plus, they always have
terrific food—so I agreed.

Like most summer Sundays, Eben Fine Park was
jam-packed with family picnickers—mostly Latino. It was a hot
afternoon, and people of all ages were wading in the creek just
past the bridge in a somewhat level shallow area—sort of Colorado’s
version of the beach. Kids and teenagers climbed on rocks in a
deeper area and jumped off into the knee-deep water below,
shrieking and splashing each other. Others floated in inner tubes
or rubber boats over the shallow falls. Dogs chased tennis balls
thrown into the creek, then climbed out soaking wet and shook water
onto everyone nearby.

The grassy park area beside the creek
overflowed with barbeque grills, coolers, playpens, strollers, kids
and dogs. Multigenerational families sat on the picnic table
benches and lawn chairs—eating, chatting and watching kids play.
One family had even put up a small tent. It was almost as if the
population of a small south-of-the-border town had emigrated here
for the day.

Smoke billowing from grills mixed with strong
smells of roasting meat. Picnic tables were loaded with jars of
mayonnaise, mustard, catsup and pickles, bowls of salad, bags of
chips, paper plates and cups, cakes, cookies, and jugs of sun tea
and lemonade. Coolers below the tables held beer and soda. People
were here for the duration—to kick back, eat and play.

Pablo and his family had pulled two picnic
tables together near the bank of the creek. They were grilling
chicken breasts to cut into strips and roll up in the warm
foil-wrapped tortillas waiting beside the grill. Pablo’s mom,
Juanita, fixed one for me with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes,
onions, grated jack cheese and homemade salsa. A little bit of
heaven! I bit in, and forgot all my problems.

Pablo was in a laid-back mood, trying to
teach one of his young nephews to hula hoop. First he demonstrated
the technique. Then he carefully put the hoop over the toddler’s
head, and showed him how to put his hands in the air and shake his
body to rotate the hoop. The hoop hit the ground, the kid laughed,
jumped out of the middle of the hoop, and handed it back to Pablo.
They went on like that for a while, until a young woman came along
pushing a cart selling mangos on a stick. Pablo handed her some
money, she picked up a mango, stuck a stick in one end, then deftly
peeled off the green outside with a paring knife, exposing the
bright yellow fruit. After making cuts in the fruit every inch or
so, she handed it to Pablo, who sat the little boy down on the
grass and gave him the treat.

“Hey, Cleo, come sit over here with us,”
Pablo called. “I need to stay with Miguel so he doesn’t walk around
with this stick in his mouth.”

I grabbed a soda out of the cooler, and a
piece of chocolate cake and joined them on the grass. I switched
into holiday mode, letting myself relax into the leisurely
atmosphere. I absently watched a young woman on a nearby blanket
strewn with clothes and food spread mayonnaise from a gallon jar
onto split buns. She slapped meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato onto
each bun, topped it with pickled jalapeños from a half-opened
gallon can, put mayonnaise on the bun top, set the sandwich on a
paper napkin from a package of about a thousand napkins, and went
on to make another. I wondered whether she had stopped at Sam’s
Club on her way to the park or whether these huge jars of
condiments were her everyday supplies.

It was a relief to just sit quietly, listen
to the laughing, talking and shouting around me, and enjoy some
people-watching. A tiny dark-haired boy, dressed only in baggy
brown shorts that hung down to his ankles, slurped ice cream from a
styrofoam dish as he chased a slightly older girl in a bright pink
and yellow swim suit. A heavy man in long pink and blue shorts,
topped with a purple shirt too small to fit over his fat belly,
strolled hand-in-hand with a large woman in red shorts and a yellow
tank top stretched tight over massive breasts. A fleshy dark-haired
young woman walking a Chihuahua came by wearing a wet white tee
shirt that said “My Big Fat Greek 5K.” Close behind her came a boy
who looked to be about ten, wearing a backwards baseball cap and
speaking rapid Spanish into a cell phone as he checked his
man-sized wristwatch.

My eyes wandered to the creek. A teenage girl
in a skimpy two-piece blue swimsuit and a guy with dreadlocks
floated along in a large inner tube. They stopped in a shallow
area, and stood encircled in the tube for a long kiss. Nearby, I
noticed a young couple sitting on a large rock in the middle of the
creek holding hands and talking intently, as their feet dangled in
the rushing water. Just as I started thinking about how much fun it
can be to share a summer Sunday with someone you love, Pablo
suggested we go over to my place for a while to talk.