Thanks to a surprisingly lucrative morning, there is enough now in the coffers, that is Ruby’s cigar box, to afford a cheap motel. Ruby loves her van, but she has come to require the relative luxury of hot showers and standing upright, the mechanism for raising the pop-up roof long since failed. Of course, now she has the Hitchhiker and she may not be able to find a place willing to allow pets. Not that HH is a pet. A quick check on her smart phone suggests that Harmony Farms prides itself on keeping the long reach of Corporate America outside its boundaries, so the nearest chain hotel is ten miles away in another town. Ruby, having settled on making Harmony Farms her temporary destination, isn’t about to commute into it. That leaves a whitewashed motel, a vestige from the era of motoring vacations, when a family would pile into a Buick and go in search of fresh air. A circular drive curls around a garden that looks like it’s just been freshly mulched. Begonias and impatiens also look freshly planted, no blooms yet, with sufficient space between each plant to allow for a massive display in a few weeks. Standing tall in the center of the garden is a signboard: The Dew Drop Inn. It too looks freshened up, prepared for a new and hopeful season of lake visitors.
A tiny central office is flanked on each side by six rooms, each of them boasting a picture window offering a stunning view across the busy road of a freight company and a used car dealership. Ruby pulls the Westie into a parking spot. She’s a little encouraged; so far, she hasn’t seen a NO PETS sign. Just a VACANCY sign. “Okay, Hitch. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll do the talking?”
The Hitchhiker wags her tail.
A young brown-skinned man is sitting behind the reception desk and leaps to his feet as soon as Ruby pushes on the door.
“Welcome to the Dew Drop Inn.” His accent is east Asian, but Ruby can’t tell if it’s Indian or Sri Lankan or something else altogether.
“Do you have anything available for a few days?”
“Of course.” He smiles and clicks a computer key. “Double or queen?”
“Double will be fine. It’s just me.” Ruby toys with the idea to smuggle the dog into the room but thinks better of it. The young man’s aura is pure kindness and she would hate to take advantage of it. “What’s your policy on pets? Well-behaved small dogs?”
The aura deflates a tad, and Ruby senses that he’s balancing the equation of a paying guest in an empty motel versus a small dog.
“I could pay a little more.”
“As we do not have a pet policy, I think that there is nothing to say against having a pet. As long as it’s quiet, of course.” He smiles at his own cleverness.
“Perfect. She’s very quiet.” Ruby, of course, has only a couple of days’ experience with the dog, but so far she hasn’t been a barker. “She listens very well.” Speaks well too, she thinks with a smile.
“I will put you on the end, closer to the woods.”
“And I will clean up after her.”
The room is clean, and the taps don’t drip. Ruby puts underwear and pj’s into the drawers, hangs up her caftan, and aligns her toiletries on the shelf above the sink. The moisturizer promptly falls over, and the flat case holding her blush slides off and into the sink. She looks around and notes that the awful landscape over the bed is crooked. She taps it, and it tilts right back into its dejected slump. The Dew Drop seems to be built on an angle or maybe is sinking into the earth, giving in to gravity. Nothing is plumb, which kind of increases its charm in her eyes. Her life has been out of plumb recently and a crooked little motel is just the perfect place to sort it out.
The Hitchhiker has made herself comfortable on the double bed, nose between paws as if daring Ruby to scold her. The last couple of nights the dog has spooned herself against Ruby, a feeling not unlike having a toddler snuggled close. Ruby doesn’t make the dog get off the bed.
Ruby takes the ham and cheese sandwich she picked up at the local deli, a place called the Country Market, and goes outside to sit in the afternoon sun. Each room is provided with a plastic chair and round table outside the door, and that’s where she settles. She picked up a copy of the local free weekly. It’s always been one of the first things Ruby does when pausing in a new place, read the local rag. She has a wonderful memory for names, and an instinct for detail, so often when a client, as she likes to call them, visits, she has a little insight already into their lives. An engagement, a funeral, a scandal. She takes in the news about funding the elementary school, the repairs scheduled for the town athletic fields, and the ongoing debate about whether a Subway franchise is truly considered a chain or an asset for the harried, hurried soccer moms in town. It isn’t quite put that way, but it doesn’t take a psychic to read between the lines. Harmony Farms certainly styles itself as special. In Harmony Farms proper, the pretty little main street sports pennants remind the slow-witted that it’s now summer. This other end of town sports one of those hideous flopping men reminding people that Watkins Motors offers the best deals in pre-owned cars.
The Hitchhiker stares at Ruby, or more accurately, at the sandwich. Ruby makes her wait until the last bite, then “accidentally” drops a sliver of cheese. She’s pretty sure it’s a bad idea to encourage begging. She should make the dog work for the prize. Ruby folds up the paper, clears off the table, and checks her watch. There’s no Staples in town, so she’ll go visit the local print shop and get a few flyers made advertising her services. On her laptop is a template of her flyer, she just needs to add “animal communicator” to the list. Ruby isn’t sure that the term fits as, so far, it’s only dogs who have burrowed into her consciousness, but why be self-limiting?
After lunch Ruby spends an hour on the internet—thank you, Dew Drop Inn, for free Wi-Fi—just seeing what animal communicators offer as services, how they describe their skills. The first word that pops out is telepathic. Good word. Another is translator and this feels right to Ruby. One claims to hear actual words, and maybe, with practice, that’s what Ruby will be able to do. Some help owners through their animal’s death, connecting later with the animal’s afterlife. Behavioral problems. Tracking lost pets. It’s a bit surprising that so many of them, the telepaths, don’t need to be anywhere near the beast. That one is confusing, given that it’s in the touching of the dogs that Ruby has “heard” them. The websites are pretty sophisticated, and Ruby suffers a brief moment of doubt that she can pull this off. Then she looks at the fees. Oh, yeah, this she can do.
Ruby is suddenly aware that the Hitchhiker has her chin on Ruby’s knees. Ruby strokes the dog’s head, fingers her long ears, takes a slow cleansing breath and listens.
“I would really like a walk now. Can we walk now? Outside now?”
“Yes, we can.” Ruby closes the laptop. If she and this pup are going to be out and about, she definitely needs to get a proper leash and collar. Cynthia Mann’s rules notwithstanding, Ruby very much wants to keep this dog safe from harm.
I really enjoyed the trip to the place where the scent of toys and food and chews and toys and food and chews is so exciting, I almost forgot myself and pulled hard on the new leash and harness. Almost pulled my Ruby off her feet in a rush to find the right toy and chew and food. And treats! Life is good. I do not think anymore about what was. Only about what is.
A bright-as-dawn full moon lances through the space between the half-drawn curtains, waking Ruby. In the shadows she sees the shape of a woman. She knows that it’s a woman, and that it’s a phantom because Ruby also knows that she’s dreaming. The woman-shape rises, floats, reaches out and touches Ruby’s face. Leans down and kisses her. A mother’s kiss. Ruby sobs and wakes herself up. The dog is there, looking at the shadow space where the phantom woman had appeared in the dream. As loud as words, Ruby hears the Hitchhiker’s thoughts as the dog looks back at her. “Don’t fret. She’ll come again.”
The taste of the dream lingers into the morning. Ruby has never been an interpreter of dreams as much as of cards or palms, but she knows that some dreams are messages that should be heeded. The question, of course, is what that message might be. Was her absent mother trying to reach out from beyond? And another question would be, beyond what? Ruby really doesn’t know if her mother exists in this world or the next, except that Sabine has never suggested that the woman who would be her grandmother was anything but still in this world. Not once has she sensed a revenant shadowing Ruby. They talked about it, years ago. Ruby had asked if Sabine would consider reaching out and trying to contact the nameless, faceless woman. “What makes you think she’s passed?” Sabine had said. “If she has, she’s not hovering around you.” She was still young and had no idea how painful those words were. Ruby had never asked again.
It was more the kiss, the ultimate maternal gesture, that kept the sense of warmth, of safety, of a certain coziness, percolating through Ruby’s body all morning. Almost the same kind of coziness, security, and pleasure she finds herself enjoying when the Hitchhiker is settled on her lap. “You aren’t my mother, are you? Come back to life as a dog?”
“No. I am not a mother. I would like to know yours.”
“So would I. So would I.”
Cynthia Mann resembles nothing so much as a grasshopper as she strides across the grassy area toward Ruby who, on this second Saturday of the Farmers’ Market and Makers Faire, is standing patiently in line at the taco truck. Cynthia’s green Wellington Hunter boots, waxed jacket, and khaki pants scream out for a pith helmet to complete the look. Stress sometimes brings out the best in Ruby’s abilities and suddenly she is smitten with conflicting auras. She sees Cynthia’s lime green aura of an outsized self-importance and beneath it, the grayer, grimmer aura of insecurity and old rage.
Ruby has had a good morning, reading four humans and two dogs. Whereas she had fudged the human fortunes a bit, it was easy as pie to read the two dogs. One was willing to quit chewing on furniture if she understood better which things she was allowed to chew on (Ruby suggested more rubber toys), and the other, a sad little terrier, believed that his person was never going to come back every single time she went out the door. Ruby counseled finding a good trainer to help with that. Now she’s just looking for a good lunch.
Cynthia puts herself between Ruby and the person in front of her. “I thought that I had made it abundantly clear that you can’t rent space here.” There is nothing of the faux friendly look on her face this time, her upper lip is fighting against the dermo-filler and threatening to crumble into lines. Twin dots of red sit just above the hollows of her cheeks. “We’ll happily refund your money.”
“I think not.” Ruby steps around Cynthia, moves one step closer to the taco truck window. She’s not going to give in and she’s not going to miss out on a nice food truck lunch because this woman, who, yes, seems to have a little spittle in the corner of her mouth, wants her gone. Ruby is all too used to the prejudices of the skeptic against the psychic professional. “But I’m happy to do your cards next Saturday. Or, perhaps your dog’s.” Dang, now Ruby’s committed herself to another week in Harmony Farms.
“I would never!” Cynthia again puts herself between Ruby and the person next in line. “And I certainly do not have a dog.” She says this as if she’d been accused of a cardinal sin. As if the idea of having a dog is tantamount to admitting a drug habit. “You are a fraud and a charlatan.”
“So you say. I am a practitioner of the gentle art of reading cards and tea leaves. Not the Antichrist.” No, that was the accusation so many years ago. The one that set her on the road toward her own unknowable future.
“It’s the Devil in her.”
“Nonsense, Sister. It’s a teenage girl acting out.” The Monsignor set his teacup down on the polished surface of Mother Superior’s desk. He ignores the flash of annoyance in the older woman’s eye. She knows her place. He addresses the younger nun who has brought this complaint to them. “Little Mary Jones, rebelling against authority. She’s always been different.”
The younger nun, Sister Clothilde, closes her eyes, squeezing them shut so tightly that the priest thinks that she’s fighting a rebellious spirit of her own. “She divines, Father. She sees things that haven’t happened. She told her classmate Jeannie that she would soon hear from a distant family member. Things like that get a child’s hopes up.”
“And, indeed, Jeannie’s deceased mother’s sister did come.” Mother Superior slides a sheet of paper beneath the teacup. “She took her.”
The third nun in the room, Sister Margaret, chimes in, “Surely Mary Jones heard something; she’s a listener. You find her skulking in the hallway when she should be in class. She probably overheard Sister Nanette talking too loudly about Jeannie’s situation. Took it upon herself to tell the child.”
“Perhaps.” Sister Clothilde folds her arms across her midsection, tucks her hands into her sleeves. “But how do you explain Mary Jones predicting poor Sister Anne’s cancer?”
Mary Jones had touched the old nun’s face, an invasion and yet a tenderness the sister hadn’t ever experienced. A warmth had come to her cheeks and she couldn’t say if it had been the child’s hands or her own heat. “I’m sorry you’re sick,” Mary Jones had said.
“But I’m not.”
“You are.” The girl had burst into tears. Sister Anne was a favorite among the girls, known for fairness and generosity with sweets.
“Having a sensitivity isn’t the same as being in league with the Devil.” Monsignor LaPierre shrugs, reaches for another cookie from the plate on Mother Superior’s desk. “Send her to me.”