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Too fatigued to stay at the dinner table, Jamie lay on the couch in Mae’s living room, listening to the voices from the kitchen. It kept him from listening to his thoughts, a dark whirlpool that could have dragged him under. He felt like the sick member of a family, half-forgotten and invisible. The twins were rowdy as usual, and Ezra virtually silent, while Mae did her best to get him to talk, asking about his family and his schoolwork.
The conversation moved on to the retreat, and Jamie sensed strands of worry directed his way by people he had insisted stop worrying about him. The twins claimed Mrs. Moo was mean and crazy, and Ezra wondered how she could be teaching at a healing retreat if she was.
“I reckon some people don’t have good judgment,” Mae said. “I don’t mean they’re stupid, but they just don’t see through her for some reason.”
Jamie mustered the energy to speak. “She tells sick people what they want to hear. ‘You can heal yourself. You made yourself sick so you can make yourself well. You don’t have to deal with scary, painful crap like surgery and drugs and chemo because you can do it all yourself. And you’re never really going to die, because you just keep coming back.’ ”
Silence except for the sounds of utensils on plates. Had he said too much? Bared his idiotic soul?
“How many people believe her?” Ezra asked.
“Kate met ten people in the support group in Santa Fe,” Mae said, “and a few were missing that day. So that’s not many, but she may not need a lot of people. It depends what she wants from them. She thinks she’s got more believers at this retreat than she does. Some of them are just playing the part. But three people from her Santa Fe group are so devoted they came here to be with her.”
“Then Magda Stein is one of the believers?”
“I don’t know. Jamie?”
“Yeah. How come you know her last name, mate?”
Ezra explained about the science fiction series he liked. “I’ve read the first two Preworld and now I’m two books into Afterworld.”
“Fuck.” Jamie sat up. “She could write about Mu in the Preworld books.”
“They’re about Atlantis.”
“But what if Mu was next? Sierra would be famous.” He got up and went into the kitchen. There weren’t enough seats and Mae stood to give Jamie a chair. Exhausted, he didn’t fight the kindness. “She probably wanted me to write music about it.”
Mae took her salad plate to the counter and stood there to eat. Brook and Stream looked at each other and mooed in unison. “Moooo-sic.”
Uncontrollable laughter seized Jamie, the way it sometimes did when he was tired and stressed. As he roared and snorted, tears flowing down his cheeks, the others began to laugh with him, but then he kept on long after they had ceased. Only when his abdominal muscles ached painfully could he pull himself together.
Brook poked at her salad and ate a bite. “It wasn’t that funny.”
“Yeah. I just needed to laugh.” He felt better for it. A lot better. “Should do that more often. Be like that bloke who healed himself by laughing.”
“I heard of him.” Mae beamed, pleased and a little excited the way the children were when they knew something. “It was in my health psychology textbook. Norman Cousins. He wrote about laughing himself well.” She brought Jamie a bowl of soup. “You feel good enough to eat?”
He angled his body toward her and winked. “Feel me and find out.”
The twins sputtered, and Ezra ducked his head, perhaps hiding a smile. Mae’s eyes were sad. The joke made Jamie sad, too. He’d been flirting, and they were past flirting.
He took a taste of the lentils and carrots, but his body seemed to be telling him not to eat, and he put his spoon down. “What if I did write Sierra some music?”
Ezra frowned over a forkful of salad. “Why would you do that?”
“Dunno. Just wonder where she’d run with it. See if it’s what she wanted from me, y’know? Doesn’t have to be any good. Could be a joke. She wouldn’t be able to tell. She has no sense of humor.”
Jamie began to improvise, drumming on the table, singing to the tune of his nonsense song,
“I logged into my past life to see what I could see
And wooden ya know it, I used to be a tree.
I put down roots but I still branched out.
Birds sat on me and they’d sing and shout.”
Mae said, “I like it, but even she would know you were making fun of her.”
“Yeah. Guess she would. Wood.” Not funny, but Jamie was still in a state that tilted to laughter and let out a single blast of hah-snort-hah. “Doesn’t matter, though. She wouldn’t know it was going to be a joke until she heard it. Make it tomorrow’s concert, y’know? Invite the public.”
“Sugar, this isn’t exactly a plan. You’re just winging it.”
“I know. I want to do something, but I can’t figure out how to nail her.”
“The best way would be to get me something of hers for psychic work. I could learn more than I did with Posey.”
“Great. I’ll steal something tomorrow morning.”
“Steal? Maybe Kate or Bernadette can ask to borrow a sweater.”
“Because Sierra is so fucking generous, right?”
Mae gave him a warning look when the f-word came out. “Do you feel up to that early morning session?”
“Have to. I’m not done yet. And anyway, I come and go. Like, right now, I feel better. Up to making cookies.” He made himself slurp up the rest of his soup in a few noisy gulps and offered Mae her seat. The twins were staring at him. “Sorry. Manners.”
“And you said a bad word.” Brook held out her hand.
“Can’t give you money while I’m cooking. It’s filthy.” He grinned at her. “Worse than my language.”
Jamie washed his hands and set out the ingredients along with the cookie sheets he’d bought Mae that summer. She resumed her place at the table.
Stream asked, “Why didn’t Mrs. Moo want you to buy the honey? She said sugar was bad for cancer. Didn’t you get the cat scratch disease?”
“Yeah. Same symptoms as one kind of cancer.” Jamie kept his back to her. “But Sierra can’t diagnose. She only sees energy, y’know? And she has no bloody idea what it means.”
As he sang “Cat Scratch Fever,” wagging his bum to the beat, he felt them all staring at his back. Jeezus. How long could he keep this up? By now, even Sierra had figured it out.
––––––––
Jamie awakened soaked in sweat, struggling for air, emerging from a nightmare. By the light beaming from the bathroom doorway, the light he’d left on for comfort in the night, he read one in the morning on the bedside clock. Ezra padded in, wearing blue-and-white striped pajamas, and went to the sink and brought Jamie a glass of water.
“Thanks, mate.” Jamie sat halfway up, peeling away from his cat. Gasser’s fur was damp from snuggling next to him and orange hairs stuck to Jamie’s side and right arm. “Sorry I woke you. Whimpered, didn’t I?” He drained the glass.
Ezra took it to refill. “I guess. And your cat started talking.”
“He what?”
The boy delivered the fresh glass of water and solemnly watched Jamie drink. “He made noises like he wanted to say words.”
“Oh, yeah.” The warbling Gasser did when he was upset or confused. “That’s his freaked-out noise.” Jamie petted Gasser, flattening his ears back. “You’re a good bloke. You care.”
“So do a lot of people. How come you’re lying to us?”
Jamie lay down. He was so hot he had to pull his hair away from his neck, revealing the glands. “I’ll be honest when I’m done here.”
“Mae is worried. You should have seen her face when you said it was cat scratch fever. I don’t think she believes you. Why wait?”
“Because she’d want to marry me out of pity, that’s why.”
Ezra drew his head back and narrowed his eyes as if looking at some strange creature he couldn’t identify.
“She would,” Jamie insisted. “Guilt and pity. I asked her to marry me and she turned me down. We fought about it. And we fought about my trying not to be sick, too. If she knew how bad it was, she’d want to rescue me.”
“How were you ‘trying not to be sick?’ ”
“I ... I sort of believed Sierra. Thought I could heal myself. And that marrying Mae would be like—I’d be like the bloke who laughed himself well. Or something. You get magical thinking when you’re scared, y’know? And I was fucking terrified.”
Ezra leaned against the wall and took his time before he spoke. His brows drew into an anxious peak. “Could you die?”
“Nah. Well, ten percent chance. So I guess I could. Doc I went to in Maine called. He said it’s Hodgkin lymphoma. Ninety percent cure rate. And that I have cat scratch disease at the same time. So I’m not technically lying.” A weak laugh. “Lucky I got it, actually. Immune system couldn’t clear it with all that going on. Made my symptoms so bad I got checked for everything. Some people with Hodgkin lymphoma just feel tired. Run around with it for a long time.”
The boy looked at the floor.
Jamie rambled on, guilty. He’d frightened Ezra. Or disappointed him. Something wasn’t right. “Dr. Don—friend who’s at the retreat—he wrote me a prescription for antibiotics for the cat scratch fever. I started taking ’em. I’ll get better. Y’know? Feel well in time to get sick on chemo.”
Ezra remained quiet, unmoving.
“Bloody hell. Say something.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t understand my dream. Seeing you thinner.”
“Not your fault, mate. Neither did I.” Jamie described his hotel yoga moment. “I didn’t understand it until I saw myself in the mirror.”
“That was a while ago. Does that mean you knew you had cancer when you believed Sierra?”
Jamie turned Gasser so his damp side was away from him and rested his right arm on the cat’s soft back. Gasser purred and farted. “Not officially.” William appeared on Jamie’s other side and nudged him. “Not that I admitted. But yeah ... That was why I was terrified. Why I started believing Sierra. It’s actually a little less frightening now that I know for certain. Really.”
Ezra held unusually long eye contact, then fetched one of the pink-seated aluminum chairs and sat near the bed. “I’m sad that you’re sick.”
“Me too, mate.” Jamie reached for Ezra’s hand and held it, then let go, seeing the boy start to shrink in on himself.
Ezra squirmed. “What kind of sickness does Ms. Stein have? Does she have cancer, too?”
“Nah. Lupus.”
“What’s that?”
“Autoimmune disorder. Immune system attacks parts of your body. Think you have to take immune-suppressing drugs. Which would be hard, y’know? ’Cause then you could get other diseases.”
“Was she trying to heal herself like you were?”
“Reckon. Sierra told us we were going to heal each other yesterday, but Magda said she felt bad and needed to leave and do more work on her own.”
“If my parents and my sisters go even a day without their diabetes medicines, they get sicker. Do you think she stopped taking her medicines?”
“Jeezus. I hope not.”
In the pause that followed, Jamie heard the dog at the end of the alley to Pershing Street barking. It did that whenever anyone went back and forth from the other Pelican buildings to the main spa to use the hot springs. It hadn’t barked for a while, so someone was probably on their way to the spa, not coming back. His first night there, Sierra and Yeshi had gone to the baths late.
“Y’know, mate,” Jamie said, “I think you deserve a hot spring soak, after putting up with my whimpering and hand-holding and all that crap. Help you get back to sleep. There’s a piece of paper on the coffee table, has the combination to the gate of the main spa.”
“Cool. I’d like to soak in a hot spring. This was where my ancestors did that. It was our healing place. Down by the river.”
“Yeah, well, this won’t be outdoors or anything, but at least it’s the same hot water.” Aware of Ezra’s extreme modesty and shyness, Jamie added, “You can borrow my swim trunks if you want. I’m not getting in, not with this fever. Just going with you.”
“Shouldn’t you rest?”
“Nah. Need to go steal Sierra’s clothes.”
Ezra’s jaw dropped.
“I’m not making her walk back naked. Yeshi can bring her something else to put on. But Mae needs Sierra’s stuff to work with, and this’ll be easier than stealing something from the Loft with everybody there, or hoping she’d loan Kate a sweater.”
“Easier? That sounds easy.”
“Nah. Sierra’s mean. Anyway, you don’t need a sweater here after eight in the morning. Even if Kate could borrow one, Sierra would expect it back. Stealing’s better.”
The dog growled as they passed through the alley. Jamie had worked hard on his dog phobia in therapy, and could tolerate Lobo and other very good dogs, but this deep bass growling was too much. He ran ahead into the middle of Pershing Street while Ezra followed the sidewalk to the main spa. The night air was crisp, the stars glittering, and the street empty. At the massive gate, Ezra punched in the code on the lock. The courtyard, containing café tables, Fu dog sculptures and large decoratively placed rocks, was deserted, and the windows of the spa were dark. Ezra punched in the code again, this time on the door to the building. Once they were inside, the dim glow from the streetlights revealed washing machines and dryers, a laundry hamper, and a long hallway with a number of doors opening off it.
They checked the first room. It had a massage table, green walls, and a room adjoining it with a deep, cement-and-tile tub. The next room was blue, with wildly colored fish art on the wall, and a supply of brightly hued towels on a shelf near the tub. Jamie flipped the light on and silently indicated to Ezra to stay in the blue room and enjoy a soak, pointing at the giant faucet that released the underground hot spring water. Then he tapped the hook-and-eye latch. Ezra nodded, and Jamie slipped out soundlessly. When he heard the latch click and water running, and to his surprise, Ezra singing in Apache, he glided down the long hallway. The doors to a pink room and a yellow room were open, and the final door was closed. It would be latched, of course. He had to figure out a way to get them to open it.
How? This was what came of acting on impulse. He had no clue what to do next. Or if Yeshi and Sierra were even behind that door.
Jamie went into the yellow room and sat on the edge of the tub, gazing up at the tiny window. It was open a crack and a purple trailing plant perched on the high, deep sill. A painting on the wall showed the desert with little stubby juniper shrub spheres. How could he get them to open the door?
Sneaking in would be easy once they opened it. He walked so silently, he routinely startled people by appearing in a room unheard. Of course, he had to do more than walk silently. He would have to crawl, staying below sight of the people in the tub, then snatch some clothing, and somehow get back to the yellow room undetected. Assuming the door opened and stayed open.
Ezra’s singing soared. The melody was plaintive with a kind of wailing quality, and his boyish tenor had piercing power. Jamie suspected the song must relate to being in Ezra’s ancestral healing place, even if this version was enclosed. The Apache hot springs.
“What is that?” Sierra’s voice came from inside the room next to Jamie’s.
Yeshi’s reply was almost drowned out by sloshing water. “Singing. What else?”
“But the language. Is it ...? Do you recognize it?”
Silence. Yeshi must have replied with a nod or shake of his head.
“I do,” Sierra half-whispered. “It’s the language of Mu.”
“Really? Does anyone beside you speak it?”
“Not until now. Someone remembered.”
“Who? It’s not Jamie. His voice is more classical. And not Rex or Leon. They are lower-pitched.”
Was Yeshi humoring her or discouraging her? Or did he accept what she was saying? He was always so calm, it was hard to grasp his subtext.
“It could be that boy,” Sierra replied. “Or maybe one of the women. They could be channeling. Or it could be a spirit.”
“Is that possible?”
“Yes. I think it is.”
Water sloshed again and Jamie hastily closed the door of the yellow room. The latch of Yeshi and Sierra’s room clicked. Jamie waited as slow, slipper-shod steps shuffled past, then peeked into the hall to see Yeshi’s bathrobed back disappearing around the slight corner past the bathroom toward the blue room. Low to the ground, Jamie reminded himself of a centipede as he crept out and into the edge of the next room, and then wished he hadn’t thought about bugs. Cat. I’m prowling like a cat.
Afraid of getting caught doing something so bizarre, he grabbed the nearest thing he could, a small black canvas sneaker, and backed out with it, not daring to even breathe. He edged into the yellow room, closed and latched the door, and turned on the hot spring. In case they had heard him, it was better to be doing something normal. And he might as well at least soak his feet.
The slipper steps passed. The door to Yeshi and Sierra’s room latched again. “It is a person,” Yeshi said. “Or a spirit who values its privacy and closes its door. And who needs to use lights. There was light under the door of one of the far rooms. There is a person in the room next to ours, too. Someone who came in very quietly.”
“I didn’t hear anyone.”
“Jamie is very quiet.”
“Jamie, quiet?”
Yeshi chuckled. “His walking, not his talking.”
Sierra was unobservant. But still, she would notice she’d lost a shoe. Jamie put it on the windowsill under the strands of the plant, undressed, and lay in a few inches of hot water, the back of his body relaxing in the heat, the front feeling the breeze from the window. A few minutes of peace, and then he could sneak out with the shoe.
Outside, a group of skateboarders were talking, their boards rolling in the lot between the A&B Diner and the back of the spa. Probably the same people who’d seen Magda fall. Something landed on the roof with a thud and a clatter, then directly behind the spa a man grunted while a girl laughed somewhere above his head. Feet landed on the roof and the girl began skateboarding on it, wheels rumbling like thunder. So much for peace.
Jamie clambered out of the tub, shoved the window open wider and shouted, “You bloody fool. Get off the fucking roof. People are relaxing in here.”
The skaters guffawed, and the girl jumped down. “Sorry, Jamie,” she sing-songed, more amused than apologetic.
Ezra stopped singing. Yeshi and Sierra conferred in low tones, their words lost to Jamie. Fuck. They know I’m here. They’ll know who took her shoe. Now what?
He shoved the shoe out the window and got back in the tub with his phone.
––––––––
Misty Chino, her skateboard at her feet, her new boyfriend Refugio Baca at her side, was waiting on the blue bench outside Jamie’s motel room. The other skateboarders lingered in the A&B parking lot, the sound of their wheels and their voices drifting over the fence. The slim Apache girl, her hair styled in an uneven bob that tolerated occasional fire dancing accidents, had snuggled up and was kissing her companion, stopping only when Jamie and Ezra drew near. Not long ago, she’d ended a long-term relationship with another young man, and Jamie marveled at her resilience in her rebound. He wouldn’t bounce back like that if he and Mae split up.
Misty broke her lip lock with Refugio and grinned. “That was so funny, hearing your voice come out of the spa.”
“Figures that it was you on the roof.”
“Yep. I’m going back up when we’re done here.” She looked him over. “Wow, you really lost some weight.”
Refugio smiled. He was wiry, small, and sweet-faced, young-looking for his eighteen years, a similar type to Misty’s ex but with shorter hair. “Mae working you out?” There was teasing innuendo in his tone.
Jamie answered by juggling imaginary balls and leaving them suspended in midair. “Got something for me?”
Misty took the folded canvas shoe from the pocket of her denim jacket. “What’s this about? This is way too small to be Mae’s shoe. Her feet are huge.”
“Need it for ... never mind.”
In July, Misty had asked Mae to do some psychic work Jamie hadn’t liked. It had been intrusive, in his opinion. And then Misty had been so upset about the results she might still be angry with Mae. The Apache girl raised her chin, her long narrow face hardening. “Psychic stuff?”
“Don’t be mad about that.” Refugio jostled her in his embrace. “It all turned out okay. For us.”
Misty looked down, and he rubbed her neck.
Jamie and Ezra sat on the other bench, closer to the uneven sticks of the coyote fence and to the A&B’s dumpsters in the alley. Jamie asked, “You see a lady fall in the alley the other night?”
Misty nodded. “I called 911.”
“It was Magda Stein,” Ezra said.
Misty and Refugio, apparently fellow fans, exchanged worried looks. “Is she okay?” Refugio asked.
“She’s alive. But she’s in bad shape.” Jamie explained about Sierra as best he could, and how she could be exploiting people like Magda. “Thanks for getting her help. Glad you were there. You still work mornings at Passion Pie?”
“Yep. And then I go home for my second sleep.”
“Still go running with Mae, too?”
“Not lately.” Misty avoided Jamie’s eyes.
“Talk to her. We’re in a weird place right now. Not exactly split up, but ... she could use a friend.”
After a whisper in her ear from Refugio, Misty surrendered with, “I guess.”
The barking dog announced Sierra and Yeshi’s entrance to the alley. Jamie wanted to see her limping along with her bare foot on the gravel, but he couldn’t afford to draw her attention to him and Ezra. Sierra knew they’d been at the spa. He handed the shoe back to Misty.
“Do me a favor. Drop this off at Mae’s place. Don’t want to have it around, y’know?”
Agreeing to the errand, Misty jammed the shoe in her pocket. The young couple vaulted a low stretch of the fence, landing in front of Sierra and Yeshi with quiet, understated war whoops, and rejoined the other skaters.
Jamie and Ezra went inside and turned off all the lights.
To Jamie’s surprise, the darkness didn’t bother him. He lay in bed, exhilarated despite the weakness in his body. Not only had he stolen Sierra’s shoe, but he’d enlisted allies. Been strategic. He pictured Sierra coming after him in the morning, whining and pitying at the same time, warning him of impending bad karma, asking to search his room, asking him why he’d done it, and he began to laugh. He put a pillow over his face to stifle the sound so Ezra, on the living room couch, could sleep. Then the knocking came.
“Go away.” Jamie projected his voice, making sure she couldn’t fail to hear him. “We’re sleeping.”
The gentle tapping persisted. “Please,” Yeshi said, “let me in. We must talk.”