| |
Kicking his shoes off, Jamie lay on the couch. His hair fell back, revealing distinct lumps on the sides of his neck. One swelling was disturbingly larger than the other, and the sight of it made Mae cringe. How could he have kept living with this untreated?
His eyes still had that closed-off, protected look, not the soft baby-seal expression Mae had come to expect from him at difficult times. “What is this?” he asked. “Official break-up?”
“I don’t know yet.” If they couldn’t work things out, would he get drawn further into Sierra’s circle? As Don had said, sick people were vulnerable, no matter what the illness. Mae pulled the dining chair close to the couch and sat. “How are you feeling?”
He arranged his hair over his swollen glands, wriggling his shoulders. “Mmm. Buggered. Not much sleep. Little feverish. S’posed to be the next one healed in the soul group thing. Or maybe Saturday. Dunno.”
“Sugar, you need to see your doctor, not listen to Sierra. You hate Sierra.”
“Yeah. Hate my doc, too. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t know anything, though. I’ll see her when I get back to Santa Fe. If I need to.”
“Did you talk with her at all?”
“Bloody hell.” Jamie sat up. “I have an appointment.” He slowed his words down, speaking loudly with crisp diction as if she were deaf. “I’ll see her when I get back. If I have to.”
“You do have to. Fiona and Mary Kay taught us we don’t heal physical illnesses, and we don’t diagnose. If Sierra thinks she can do that—”
“It’s not her. It’s the group. Jeezus, she’s pompous and she grates on my nerves, but something happened. All right? And I don’t want to fuck with it. So don’t ask, and don’t tell me it’s all crap. Maybe it is, but maybe it isn’t. Give the process a few days.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t okay at all. It didn’t even make sense. But Mae didn’t want to risk another fight by pressuring Jamie. “I came here to talk about us. About where we go from here.”
“Told you yesterday where I want us to go, and you said no. Now you’re all worried about my health. Don’t even think about staying together because I’m sick. I’m not taking the fucking consolation prize.”
He walked slowly to the kitchen and filled two glasses with water, bringing one to her. Gasser trailed him and rubbed at his ankles.
Mae took a sip. It was hard to swallow. Staying together because I’m sick. Cat scratch disease shouldn’t trigger that kind of drama. Did he know something he hadn’t told her? “Are you holding something back? How sick are you?”
He drained his glass, clunked it down next to Mae’s, then squatted and drew Gasser up onto his hind legs. Bursting into the old heavy metal song, “Cat Scratch Fever,” Jamie waggled his hips while pumping his pet’s front legs to make him dance. His abrupt swing from gloom into silliness was hard to resist, but Mae recognized his habit of dodging confrontation with a song and dance, and she couldn’t let it work.
“Jamie, how sick—”
“We’re not talking about that.” He carried his cat to the couch and sank down. “Don’t fuck with the process.”
Mae sighed. There was no getting through to him about his health, at least not yet. “We need to make some kind of peace. I can’t seem to say anything that doesn’t piss you off or that you don’t take wrong. So can we just hit pause? It’d hurt Brook and Stream if we broke up. You see how much they love you. And Hubert and Jen are having such a hard time, it’s been rough for the girls.”
“Jeezus. We’re not getting married, but we’re staying together for the kids? That’s fucked up.”
“We have to stay friends.”
Jamie lay back, and Gasser walked on him, pressing and punching and purring. “Being friends with your ex is like an alcoholic having ‘just one drink.’ ” He moved the cat to his side, wedging him between his body and the sofa back, then turned away from Mae and curled around him. “It’s torture, y’know? I’ll just want more.”
“You wouldn’t be my ex. I’m not trying to break up, exactly, just ... I don’t know what to call this.”
Jamie stroked Gasser in silence, then said, “Schrödinger’s cat.”
“What?”
“Physics thought experiment. Look it up.” His breathing grew labored. “Need to rest. Sorry. I’m buggered.”
Mae stood, uncertain whether to touch him or not.
He seemed to feel her hovering behind him. “Nah. Don’t open the box. You do, it could kill the cat. Or not. But you’d know. It’d be final.”
*****
The flashing lights of an emergency vehicle woke Jamie. Exhausted, he’d fallen asleep on the couch, and now the room was pitch dark aside from the red lights. He stumbled to the window. No sirens. A woman lay on the ground, a tall gray-haired woman in a bathrobe. Magda. An EMT was kneeling beside her. Jamie backed away, his heart pounding. What if she was dead?
Earlier in the day, in the soul group session, Sierra had insisted Magda receive the group’s healing. Whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t been healed, and yet Posey had been. Jamie dropped into the armchair. Had he missed something? Misunderstood? As tired, sad, scared, and confused as he’d been, it was possible.
They’d been seated in a circle in the Loft, Sierra on a corner of the bed, Leon, Magda, Jamie, Rex, and Posey in chairs drawn close to it. Sierra had welcomed Rex with a rare smile. “We can complete our healing now. All of us. Our bodies and our spirits.”
“I’m blown away,” Rex said. “Posey told me it could happen, if we were in the same soul group, but,” he glanced around, “are you sure we are? I’ve had some past life memories, but I don’t feel as if I’ve met any of you before.”
“Of course you don’t.” Sierra’s tone was condescending. “This is our first full reunion as a group. I’ve met you in other lives, though. You were in the dark when we were pre-contact Lakota. I was your shaman, and you were a reckless young warrior who wouldn’t listen. But you evolved. You’ve been a teacher in your most recent lives. A professor of philosophy in several of the great universities of Europe.”
“Me? Good Lord.” He smiled at Posey. “You had no idea of my pedigree, did you?” Turning back to Sierra, he asked, “Don’t you have to read my Akashic records? We haven’t done that yet.”
“I don’t need to for members of our soul group. I see your most important lives instantly in your aura.”
“But what about my Polynesian lives? I’ve always thought those had to be influential.” Rex made hula-like gestures with his arms and sang a line of a famous aloha song. Jamie laughed, grateful for the humor. Except for chanting, it was the first thing to make him feel good all morning.
Sierra cleared her throat, and Leona and Magda gave Rex disapproving looks. Posey made a tutting sound, patting Rex’s hand like a mother reprimanding a kid.
Jamie groused, “Let him be himself. Jeezus. You don’t have to be so bloody serious all the time. Sickness is dismal enough, and healing is hard. People ought to be able to lighten up.”
“Rex is overcompensating for the arrogance of his previous life. He was close to full healing, but pride in his intellect held him back.” Sierra gave Rex her pitying look. “That’s why you came back in a role that lowered you.”
“Lowered?” Rex protested. “I raised myself up. I went from salesman of the year to owning my own place to having five of the most reputable dealerships in the state of New York.”
“You’re a used car salesman,” Sierra said. “It’s a step down from being a teacher. Don’t be proud of it. Pride is your weakness.”
She’s mean. Maybe her meanness cracked people’s shells some way. Like pain did. Like fear of death did. Wasn’t there a better way to do it, though?
Posey patted Rex’s hand again.
“As I said, “Sierra continued, “You did evolve. Far more than most of the others did. Your illness could be cured in a day, if we can transcend the last of our old karma together. And when we’re all healed, we can begin to heal the world.”
“Are we bodhisattvas?” Posey asked breathlessly. “Is that what this is all about?”
Where in bloody hell did that come from? Even claiming to be a healer, let alone a bodhisattva, felt presumptuous to Jamie. The sense that he was part of some great chain of suffering beings, though, that much rang true. I am ill because all beings are ill.
“Posey.” Sierra beamed. “That was beautiful. I think you may be ready to go first.”
Posey clasped her hands at her heart, her shoulders bunching up around her ears. “First to be healed?”
“Yes.” Sierra sat taller and refolded her legs with the other ankle on top. “The work you’ve done alone has been difficult, but becoming a co-soul with Rex has moved you forward dramatically.” Sierra’s slightly unfocused gaze swept the group and then rested on Jamie. “Most of you have struggled on your own. You’ve clung to your old karma, your inner obstacles, your self-stories. Some have even made yourselves sicker with your selfish craving to be well.”
No fucking kidding. Jamie had failed on his own, gotten worse.
Sierra’s next words rang out like a politician’s campaign speech. “Our reunion will accelerate our liberation, though, and heal us to recreate the world.”
Though he was bewildered by this claim, Jamie didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant. William appeared in his lap. He started as a sensation, but then Jamie could see him. Almost a full-grown cat now, a slender gray tabby with a striped tail, William butted his head into the crook of Jamie’s elbow, then sprang over to Rex’s lap and sniffed him.
“So I could be breathing well in a day?” Rex asked.
Sierra stood abruptly and placed her hands on his ribcage and closed her eyes. “Healing emphysema could take longer. That disease isn’t a living process. What can be reversed rapidly, though, is cancer. It is a living process, and grows with karma. It feeds on negative energies. Its life interacts with our hearts and minds and memories. The tumor in your right lung is small, so small your doctor may not know it’s there. I can see the beginnings, though. And we can end it.”
Everyone fell still. Jamie held his breath, his world on hold. Yeshi had said the Medicine Buddha saw the nature of all things as change. Like quantum physics. Intention. Observation. Uncertainty. The healer could reach in and touch that changeableness. Jamie’s shaman teacher Gaia had healed one man of a cancerous tumor. Only one, but there were miracles, however rare. People were sometimes cured at places like Lourdes and Chimayó, and in Truth or Consequences, back when it was called Hot Springs in Magnolia Ellis’s times, and even earlier, in Apache times. The earth had healing energy centers, and this was one of them.
Jamie let out a sound with his breath, a kind of groan. He’d found Sierra so bullying and bizarre he hadn’t wanted to listen to her, but she’d been trying to tell him something. She’d seen his illness, his injuries, and his bad luck. The same day William had shown up, trying to tell him something.
William jumped to the floor and sniffed Leon, briefly rubbing on his ankles. The man had expensive-looking shoes and even his socks were classy, not old sagging nubby things like Jamie wore with his battered sandals. William moved to Magda, slinking along her polished boots and then springing into her lap. After treading and circling for a few turns, the spirit cat left her and came back to Jamie and nipped at his toe. As he had earlier in the day, William ignored Sierra and Posey. Did he pick up Jamie’s aversions? But William had ignored Bernadette, and Jamie admired her and was fond of her.
He lost William as Sierra stood and spoke. “We were high priests when we first met and formed our bond. We failed our people. We hoarded the wealth of the temple and made ourselves into gods instead of healers. Because of this, our culture fell. Our land vanished. A place that had been the pinnacle of enlightenment and creativity, the greatest center of love and light in history, sank away. We ruined it. Now we’re together and we begin again. Sit on the floor in the shape of a nautilus shell. Posey will be at the center, and I’ll be behind her. Then place your hands on each other’s backs and send the healing.”
The six of them made a tight spiral, not quite a nautilus, seated in the order Sierra directed. She told Jamie to take the next-to-last place, behind Leon and in front of Rex. Did this arrangement affect healing power? Jamie didn’t want to send healing the way he normally did. It was too intense and might overwhelm Leon and not reach Posey. He did his best to remember and follow Fiona’s directions for reaching a healing state, to ground his energy and quiet his mind and then get out of the way. Make sacred space. Sleep-deprived and emotionally raw, he couldn’t quite do it.
Sierra half-chanted, “I call on the spirits of the ocean and the sky, on the ancestors we left beneath the waves, come through us now and commence the soul circle healing. End the stories of selfishness and pride and make us whole. Single souls, co-souls, all.”
Her preachy manner jarred Jamie. Who said commence? And what ancestors was she talking about? Why hadn’t she explained more about their high priest life? He didn’t feel sacredness when she spoke. But he did feel something. Leon’s soul was ablaze, his energy hot and pulsing, more frantic than peaceful. Was this his attempt at healing? From behind, Jamie sensed a quality from Rex that crinkled and crunched like wrapping paper. What did that mean? Wasn’t Rex committed to healing Posey? Maybe he didn’t know how. Maybe none of them did.
Posey cried out. “Your hands. The pressure points. That hurts.”
Sierra was tapping on Posey’s back like a drum. “Soul group, keep sending the energy. Don’t fight it, Posey. That’s your transition. Now.”
The little woman wailed, then gasped. “Oh my god, the pain ... stopped. It stopped.” Her eyes grew round and her jaw dropped. She pressed her palms to her cheeks. “I feel new.”
Sierra pushed her hands into Posey’s back, then told the group to let go and face the other way, sending the energy to the other end of the spiral.
“Rex and Posey are co-souls. His healing has to follow.”
She called on the same spirits and on the group to raise their healing force higher. The force from Leon was hot, anxious, and urgent. That was the last thing Rex needed to receive. Jamie did his best to block the energy and shift to Reiki, making himself into a kind of shield between Leon and Rex and letting the healing go where it was needed.
After a while, Rex said, “I don’t think I’m going to have an event like Posey did. I felt something good, though. I don’t know what it was, but I think it’s finished.”
“Yes,” Sierra acknowledged, “you are more evolved. There was less struggle, less karma.” Sierra directed Posey to sit between herself and Leon, and told the group to reverse the facings in the spiral again. “Magda, come to the center next. The force and power are raised high in us. We need to reach you while it’s strong. Then we’ll rest and bring the others through tomorrow and Saturday.”
Leon slumped. Jamie, preparing with his hands on the older man’s back, sensed agitation in him, a tremor. He didn’t know if Leon was worn out from the healing effort, affected by his illness, or disappointed that Magda would go next and he would have to wait.
When Sierra invoked the spirits again, Leon’s fire rose once more, hungry and white hot. Sierra and Posey ululated, and Sierra began to tap on Magda.
“No.” Magda leaned away, her hand to her heart.
“It’s all right.” Sierra leaned with her and kept tapping. “Your heart chakra is opening.”
“I’m not ready.” Magda staggered to her feet. “Go with Leon instead.”
“I chose you. Will you hold us all back? Receive your healing now, while the force is strong.”
“It’s too strong for me. Give me time.”
Sierra studied her, then shook her head and let out a breath. “We’ll have to wait a day. The momentum is broken.”
“I’m sorry,” Magda murmured. “I’ll do some inner work tonight. I’ll be ready tomorrow.” She headed for the door.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Posey asked.
“No. I just need to lie down.” Magda left the room.
“We’ll continue tomorrow, when we’re all together again.” Sierra fixed her eyes on Jamie. “If your illness has been getting worse, you may be clinging to self-stories. Magda has a lot of karma still to move, but she knows it and she’s been trying. I’m sure she’ll make progress tonight.”
Jamie was jerked out of his reverie as the red lights moved in the alley, playing across the walls of his darkened suite. He went back to the window. Magda was gone, and the ambulance was driving out toward Pershing Street. Desolation seized him. Magda wouldn’t be ready tomorrow. She might never be. Had this happened because she’d run from the healing? Had she already been deteriorating and only thought the healing made her feel bad? Or had it harmed her?
Jamie had to get out. The room was haunted by his fights with Mae, and now Magda’s collapse. He woke Gasser and wrestled him into his walking harness. The cat’s fur was damp where Jamie had sweated on him. As soon as the leash was fastened, Gasser sat and complained. “Stop it, mate.” Jamie nudged him out the door. “You’re not sick. You need exercise.” And Jamie was too rattled to go out alone.
They took the same route the ambulance had taken. A dog rasped furiously from a house at the end of the alley. Grabbing Gasser, Jamie bolted into the middle of Pershing Street. The alarm and the burst of speed left him shaky. Gasser hissed, his leash tangled around his front legs in Jamie’s arms. “Sorry, mate.”
At a picnic table in front of Latitude 33, the Asian fusion restaurant next door to the main Pelican Spa building, Rex, Chuck, Daphne, and Don were drinking beer and eating chips, talking softly. The restaurant was dark, a closed sign in the window.
“Jamie,” Chuck called. “We wanted to invite you, but your lights were out.”
Lights out struck Jamie as an image of death. He carried Gasser to the sidewalk and put him down. “Fell asleep on the couch. Don’t normally go to bed this early. You know what happened to ... to the tall lady with gray hair?”
“Magda?” Rex looked worried. “That’s who was in the ambulance?”
Jamie described what he’d seen. “Dunno how long she’d been lying there. In case she’s gone, could you not say her name? I have a taboo on naming the dead.” He bent down to pet his cat for comfort. “Wonder who called 911.”
Daphne said, “We heard some kids skateboarding in the A&B parking lot. They might have seen her.”
“Jeezus. She’s lucky they were there. At least, I hope she’s lucky.”
“I wonder why she fell.” Rex watched his fingers breaking a chip into pieces. “It’s not like she soaked too long and got dizzy. If we didn’t see her, she hadn’t gotten to the baths yet.”
“What’s her health like?” Daphne asked.
Rex shrugged. “In the soul group introductions, she told us she has lupus. I thought that gave you a rash on your face, though. And she didn’t even have one.”
“There are different ways it manifests,” Don said. “Including heart problems.”
“Fuck.” Jamie recalled the ceremony and then Fiona’s warnings about not trying to heal people when you didn’t know what was wrong. I wouldn’t want to direct an accelerating type of energy at something that needed to be slowed down. Unless she’d been using her medical intuition, Sierra wouldn’t have known if Magda’s lupus affected her heart. Maybe even Magda hadn’t known. “Hope that ceremony didn’t kill her.”
Chuck reached to a six-pack under the table, drew out a brown bottle, and gestured to Jamie with it. “You look like you could use this.”
Jamie sat beside him. Chuck was right. He needed a drink.
Chuck and Daphne were so narrow-hipped and so close together they didn’t have to move over to make room. As Jamie took a swig of the beer, Don gave him a quizzical look. Yes, Jamie’s glands would hurt from the alcohol, but he didn’t care right now. He felt Rex’s gaze on him, and met the big man’s eyes. “What?” Jamie asked.
“Sierra didn’t want us to talk outside the group about what we did. But I don’t see how that could break any circle of healing at this point. It’s already broken.”
“Is it?” Jamie took another swallow of beer, belched, and mumbled an apology. “Wish I knew what really happened. I mean, Posey had a huge event. You felt better. Maybe we could do more if ... if the one who left in the ambulance makes it, y’know? But then I think, what if we fucked up and the ceremony hurt her? Is it like, I don’t know, karmic backlash now? Jeezus, that sounded stupid, but I’ve never thought about reincarnation or karma before.”
“I have, and Sierra got my past lives wrong.”
“And mine,” Don added. “She claimed she read my records, and she didn’t see the life that was so important I remember it. Granted, we’ve had thousands of lives, but she’s disagreed with two people who have past life recall.”
“And she was wrong about my health,” Rex said. “I may have felt better, but I never had lung cancer.”
Jamie doubted Rex could have known. “Sierra said your doctor couldn’t see it yet. She saw something in me before I had any symptoms. Intuitives can do that.”
“I went to another intuitive. Daphne recommended her. Mae Martin. I don’t know if she’s better than Sierra, but I thought she was good.”
Jamie remembered Mae’s scan of his pets’ health. Fascinated, she’d described the parrots’ wing joints, marveled at seeing their itty bitty hearts beating and wondered why Placido’s digestive tract was so different from Bouquet’s. She’d noticed how smooth Gasser’s brain was and worried about the strain his obesity was placing on his back. It hurts him to exercise, sugar, that’s why he acts lazy. Poor little fella. You have to feed him less. Jamie nearly got lost in the recollection, clinging to a time when they’d been happy together, and he had to haul himself back to the present. “Yeah, she’s better than Sierra. A lot better. Mae doesn’t just pick up energy, it’s like she travels right into you and sees everything. Like the way she goes into the past as a psychic.”
“She didn’t find lung cancer.”
“Bloody hell.” Jamie couldn’t doubt Mae. He turned his bottle back and forth. “Don? You can do this stuff. Is there something else Sierra could have seen that she took for cancer?”
Don’s fingers drummed the table and then fell still. “I don’t know what her inner vision is like. We all get different views. You remember what Mary Kay said. She hears voices like someone reading a medical textbook. I get a feeling of certainty with almost no imagery. Just a quality that’s hard to describe. You sensed me as music.”
“Your personality. I didn’t pick up your health. I don’t have medical intuition.”
“Do you want me to double-check Rex? Get a third opinion?”
Daphne cut in, pouring the last crumbs of chips from the bag into her cupped hand. “Why bother? I think we can all agree that Mae is good. And that Sierra is a first-class nut case. She has to be making things up. Chuck and I had our Akashic records read and she told him he’d been a fairy.”
“Jeezus,” Jamie said, “I knew she was rude, but no one says that anymore.”
Daphne tossed the chips into her mouth and crunched. “I don’t mean politically incorrect gay. I mean a fairy.”
Despite, or even because of the tension, Jamie snort-laughed. Rex hooted. Don shook his head and confirmed that he’d heard Sierra say it.
“It’s my sprightly manner.” Chuck grinned. “My twinkle-toes on the dance floor.”
Daphne said, “She’s never seen you twinkle your toes.”
Chuck put on a solemn expression. “I was a man of the Sidhe, the Irish fairy folk.”
“That what she said?” Jamie asked. “Hard to think you used to be one, but the Irish fairies aren’t Tinker Bell. They’re sort of mysterious and powerful. Practically immortal. And they steal humans off to dance with ’em.”
All four of his companions looked at him as if he’d gone off the deep end. Chuck said, “Pardon me, but did you just say you believe in fairies?”
“Nah, just know the myths about the Sidhe. But we could come and go out of spirit lives. I know ghosts are real. I’ve seen ’em. And spirit guides. Had one hanging around all morning.”
“Really?” Rex’s manner altered, becoming more respectful. “I’ve always wanted a spirit guide. Like that woman in the Seth books. What does yours do?”
Jamie drank. Did it matter if he shared this? He’d already been weird, admitting to seeing spirits. He explained William, who he was and what he did. “He just visits most people, except Chuck. He cuddles right up to you. You’re his favorite. And he’s not interested in Sierra or Posey or Bernadette.”
“Does he like Mae?” Rex asked.
Mae. It was so hard to talk about her as if they were a couple, but he had to. Staying together for the kids. “Nah. Never even shows up for her. Or her kids. It’s not as if he likes who I like or avoids people I don’t like.”
Don leaned forward. “What do the people he notices have in common? And the ones he ignores—are they alike?”
“Mmm. He ignored my therapist. Didn’t pay attention to other people at the workshop with Fiona and Mary Kay. It’s only here that he started circulating. What do you have in common?”
“Chronic illness, of course,” Rex said. “Isn’t that obvious?”
Daphne shook her head. “Chuck’s not sick. He’s been in remission from prostate cancer for three years. Not a thing wrong with him now except for being the laziest husband on earth.”
Chuck took her hand and laid it against his heart. “That’s why I’m so healthy. No stress.”
Jamie studied Chuck’s radiant, rosy face. “Jeezus. No wonder he loves you. William died of cancer.”
The group’s stares were different this time. Jamie sensed the same insight dawning in all of them. Rex was the one to put it into words. “This spirit guide is your medical intuition.”
“Yeah. And if Sierra was a member of the club with Chuck, William would love her, too. But he doesn’t.”
Don raised his bottle like he was making a toast. “Looks like I was right. I suspected she’d been lying.”
“And so was Posey. She was never sick, and she wasn’t healed. That was an act.” An act that had fooled Jamie—and Magda.