MY BODY IS VIBRATING, LIKE some string has been plucked inside and my nerves won’t calm down. I jump at loud noises and flinch at loud voices. If the wind blows too sharp I freeze, absolutely sure I’m being followed by someone dangerous. I stop into a restaurant bathroom and sob for ten minutes, a loud ugly cry that I can’t explain.
Trauma. This feels like what Dr. Gupta prepared me for when we had our first meeting, except the paranoia, unexplained tremors and nervousness she said would come never happened. I don’t know why it’s suddenly hitting me now, but it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with the blast. This isn’t a body hurt. It’s deeper. Although, I could definitely be wrong. What I do know is that somebody, somewhere has it out for me.
I know because I’ve tried everything to unload this stupid ring at the museum and I just can’t make it happen. The first ride-share driver was fine until he got lost. I got out and ate lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Why did I run? I wasn’t sure. So I didn’t say anything. Then I tried the bus, but the crowds got too thick for the bus to cut through, and then there was that sinkhole. When has there ever been a sinkhole in Washington, DC?
There are Crayola men running everywhere. I’ve called Fayard ten times, but he’s never picked up. Dread curdles in my stomach, and I have to use the paper bag from my lunch leftovers to throw up.
“You okay back there?”
I nod to one of the ladies on the bus, an older woman in bright pink scrubs and rubber shoes. I wipe my mouth with a ketchup- stained napkin and ask her how to navigate my way to the hotel where Fay made reservations ahead of time. I’m almost out of the cash I borrowed from him, so I don’t have much choice.
The hotel is on a quiet street, but it’s clean when I roll in. Unfortunately, the room isn’t ready, so the desk agent suggests the diner next door. She recommends I have the soup, and if I can’t keep that down, they’ve got ginger ale.
The bell dings overhead and my gut roils. I feel lost, like there’s something I’m supposed to know or perhaps do. A song, mournful and soul-stirring, plays on the jukebox; then the smell of incense in the air, thick and out of place, wakes me out of my daze. Odd choice for an air freshener. It’s like an Old West disco inside: polished wagon wheels sit alongside pictures of a family of Black cowboys that spans decades, maybe a century. Each face appears, ages, and then disappears, only to pop up farther down the wall with a slight change here and there. A larger nose added to the mix, or a pair of dimples.
A boy in a red hat waves at me as he dips a paintbrush into a cup of dark liquid. He’s painting the front window. My arms feel heavy as I roll down the aisle, and every eye is on me, but not with the usual furtive look people give folks who use mobility devices; it’s something else. A set of twin brothers sitting on slim wooden barrels at the bar unnerves me the most. They don’t speak, just stare, and I don’t have the energy to teach them manners, so I roll on.
“No one wants to hear any more of that old stuff, Mr. Lucky. Play something else,” the boy calls over his shoulder.
“This right here is your musical education, Ralphie. Listen up! The closer I get to yooooou,” he croons, and snaps his fingers to the beat.
A waitress bursts through the kitchen doors to sing along with him. “The more you make me seeeeee,” she trills with her eyes closed, both hands and arms covered with plates full of food. She nearly crashes into me before she opens her eyes and stops short. “It’s your last chance, traveler!” she says, and winks. “It’s our tagline,” she adds after I give her a look. “Says so right on the window.”
I turn around to see the sun setting just behind the mural on the front window. “Uh… okay,” I say.
“Go on and take a seat. I’ll get right to you, sweetheart.”
I settle into a booth and try to shake off the nausea I’ve had since I left Fay on the train. I just needed time to think. I can’t get my thoughts straight when I’m around Fay. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’m not scared. I’m not. I just want to figure some things out on my own.
The waitress comes back and sets a glass of ginger ale on the table.
“But I didn’t order anything,” I tell her.
“Oh, I know, honey. It’ll help settle your stomach. Want anything to go with that? You should eat. How about some chicken soup? Ooooh, or some of our Tennessee hot chicken. It’s my grandma’s recipe. I guarantee you’ll love it,” she gushes.
I grip the table as the nausea grabs me.
“What did you say?” I eke out.
“I’ll bring you the pie,” she says, and taps the table, singing as she makes her way back into the kitchen, “Your love has captured meeee. Over and over agaiiiiin…”
“Patience, will you stop that noise,” a man bellows as he passes her. He must be the manager. There’s a little placard next to the kitchen door with his unsmiling face on it. Joseph Williams.
“Are you gonna sit there all night?” he barks at me. “We close soon.”
“Daddy!” I clap my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. Why did I call this complete stranger Daddy? “I’m sorry. Um, sir. I… uh… I just sat down,” I protest. “And it’s only six o’clock.”
I point to the clock on the wall with the over-easy egg in the center. I noticed the butt-ugly thing when I first rolled in, but what I didn’t notice is that it’s moving much faster than it should be, and backward. I blink and realize the sun has set so fast it’s pitch-dark outside. My heartbeat quickens with worry. I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. I look down at the table and have to cover my hand with my mouth so as not to scream.
It’s filled with plate after plate of half-eaten cherry pie.
“Oh, hey!” a voice calls over to me.
I look up and see a familiar face, but it’s a memory from a life that doesn’t feel like mine. Her life. “Rose?” I say, and the woman shakes her head.
“No. I’m Iris. Though I do have a cousin named Rose. A sister named Clover, too. Nana loved her flowers.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought… Never mind,” I say like a confused fan who just approached the wrong celebrity for an autograph, but then I catch myself. Iris spoke to me.
She’s copper-haired, with dimples, wicked eyeliner, and a kind of old Hollywood glamour about her. Beautiful iris tattoos bloom from her forearm to her shoulder.
“Mind if I sit with you until my date shows? Those stools at the bar just won’t do.”
“No, please,” I say, because she’s right. The seating options for bigger people aren’t really that great here.
“You okay, hon? You look a bit squeamish.”
“I think I might have a bit of motion sickness. I’ll be fine,” I say quickly. She doesn’t need to hear about my PTSD.
“You know what you need? Some tea.”
She raises her arm to call the waitress over, and before I can object, the pie plates are gone and there’s a steaming cup of hot water in front of me. I stare at her as she tells me all about this band she’s supposed to go see tonight and watch as she takes a small tin filled with pouches of loose tea and a strainer spoon from her purse.
“Loose tea is always better than prepackaged. Half of what you get is no better than the stuff that comes out of a lawn mower.”
She’s about to dump the tea into the strainer when I put my hand over my cup. Our eyes connect and she smiles warmly, too warmly. She’s got an ease about her that you just don’t have with a stranger.
“I think you’re lying,” I say.
“About the lawn cuttings?” she says coyly.
“No, about the tea and about not being Rose. You know me.”
The entire diner becomes eerily quiet. The hiss from the dishwasher stops; no one tinkles the edge of their coffee mug with a spoon; there’s no laughter, no chatter, just the pop of the speakers from the jukebox, amplifying nothing. I can feel everyone’s eyes back on me, but I don’t take my gaze off Rose. I think she’s going to protest, but she winks and settles herself back into the seat, completely letting her guard down and her posture with it. The track changes on the jukebox again.
“ ‘Les Fleur.’ Minnie Riperton. 1970! She that SNL girl’s Mama. Uh, what’s her name? Maya,” music-historian guy yells, and his party bursts into conversation again.
“You are smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Rose tells me.
“What is going on here?” I ask; nothing is making sense anymore.
“Well, you’re right that something is going on here, and wrong that I’m Rose. I look like her, but I’m not her, not in this timeline anyway. It can get real complicated,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Am I Tamar?” I ask.
She laughs and pours herself a cup of hot water from the pot the waitress left on the table. “You’re always Tamar. That’s the cool thing about people like you.”
“People like me? What am I?” I ask, officially frightened.
“I’m not sure. All I know is that most of us live just one life and that’s it, but there are people like you who live over and over again. And there are people like me who kind of hop around.”
“I want to stop it. I need to stop it,” I beg.
“There are worse things than being a perpetual teenager,” she says.
“I’m not a vampire. I don’t get to live forever. I get to live and… die,” I whisper. Involuntarily, I rub my hand over my belly, gingerly pressing my fingers against a mortal wound that isn’t there. I take a deep breath. We’re not seeing ourselves get older for a reason. “I die, over and over again, or he does. That’s a form of hell. Fay thinks that we’re caught in some eternal love story, but he’s wrong. This life is wrong,” I say bitterly.
“Well, then, obviously, there’s something you’re not learning, and the universe is sending you back for a do-over. Over and over again.”
“You’re a psychic. I mean, you are a psychic, right?”
She blows on her tea and gives me a small smile. “I am.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to learn, then?”
“It doesn’t work that way. The most I can do is guide you. We’re like the church, or more like angels and demons in that movie with Keanu Reeves. I can’t remember the name. Jesus, that’s gonna bother me.” She frowns. “Anyway, we can encourage or discourage, but we can’t make things happen or stop them from happening. We don’t have that kind of power.”
“Then why are you here?” I ask. I grip the cup so hard and long that it starts to burn.
“The same reason you are. The universe has led me here. I really am meeting a date tonight. I can’t see everything, and even if I could, you still have to make a choice. You have to turn left or right, and they both lead to infinite possibilities, infinite realities. Maybe I’m here to help you see that you actually have a choice,” she says. “Think hard. Is there something you haven’t done, or something you keep doing that maybe you shouldn’t? Where are the forks in the road that you keep turning down that lead you into a ditch?”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, Iris bobbing her head to the music and me trying to think of the right questions to ask her and coming up empty. The bell dings over the door, and her smile brightens. Even knowing what I do about each life I’ve lived, even with the coincidence of meeting a psychic from one of my previous lives hundreds of miles from home, I still have a sliver of doubt about destiny and fate in this world.
Until Dr. Carl Little Feather walks into the diner and right over to our table.