“That’s the thing. I don’t know what happens next. I need a concussion so bad.”
“What happens next is you calm the F down and strategize. Start this right, Ade.”
Like most afternoons Jimi’s in the parking lot smoking.
Like most afternoons he’s got his sunglasses on, looking like he’s waiting for applause that will never come. Paige and I, we walk slowly over to Jimi. We take our time because both of us want to get our story straight. Both of us know Jimi well enough to know how well he can manipulate a situation. Turn it on its head.
“You talk to Belle yet?”
“Of course not.”
“She’s going to be pissed. This is totally why you two broke up. I certainly hope you’re not still following her around. That was creepy.”
“I was never—”
“Yeah. Right.”
With his back against Ben Kunis’s Lexus, ashing into the car’s hood intake filter.
We walk up to Jimi and he looks over his sunglasses at us and then looks around, over one shoulder. Then the other. Slowly. Wrapping it up, this scene, he stares at us hard and screws up his face like he’s confused. Like we’ve just come from outer space and landed in a shiny ship in front of him. This is Jimi being dramatic. It’s Jimi being a dick. He knows we’re there to talk.
“So?” I finally ask.
“Who is she?” Paige prods.
“You mean Vauxhall?”
Paige rolls her eyes.
Jimi coughs out a plume of smoke. Chuckles. “She’s quite a chick, right? We met in Melton’s driver ed class at triple A. I was hitting on her hard and ’course she rejected me at first, but we became fast friends. The two of us cracking up over how giant Mrs. Melton’s ass was. Platonic flirting really, but then you know how—”
“Yeah. You’re the stud,” Paige interrupts. “We get it.”
“Anyway,” Jimi huffs. “She transferred here for film. Believe it or not, Mr. McKellar is pretty highly regarded in the avant-garde film world. Who’d of thunk, right? To me he’s just this stuck-up art teacher. Anyway, Vaux doesn’t have many female friends. She’s more the lone cowboy type. You could say she’s one of the guys. Roughhousing and crazy. You know, kind of like…” He looks at Paige.
She crosses her arms and tilts her head. “Like a dyke?”
Jimi grins. “You said it, not me. Only she isn’t gay. She’s just what every guy dreams about: a hot girl who likes wrestling, loves collecting old comic books, and watches action movies. Hot bod too. Wild. Went swimming at Celebrity with her once and wow, what can I say. Given her tomboy behavior I was worried she’d come out of the locker room looking like that chick at the end of
Sleepaway Camp,
but she’s totally—”
“How about her name?” I interrupt.
“Weird, huh? She says her parents are stoners and they got the name after the neighborhood in London. Hippies come up with the darndest things. By the way, how’d you like the intro? Vaux planned it.”
I ask, “Why me?”
“—”
“Why’d she sing to me?”
Jimi shrugs. “I suggested that. Fun, right? Vaux is all about shaking things up. Making people feel uncomfortable or the opposite, totally loved. She’s right there on the edge. Did she make you feel totally loved, Ade? Did she get you all bothered?”
I don’t say anything. I know Vauxhall and I will be together, happy lovers, and so I don’t say anything.
Paige asks, “So it meant—”
Jimi claps, flicks his cigarette off like it’s a biting insect. “Nothing. Doesn’t mean anything.” Then he looks to me, eyes narrowed, “You don’t know her yet, Ade. There’s a lot going on. She’s complicated.”
“How’s that?”
Jimi grins and shakes his head. “Look, players, I really gotta roll to Mr. Russo’s. If I’m late one more time, he’ll burn my ass on that trig exam.”
He turns to go but then looks back, over his shoulder male model style, and says, “Oh, and she’s left school already. So don’t go trying to track her down. They say first day’s best for ditching.”
Paige spits onto the asphalt. First time I’ve seen her do that. “What a prick.”
FIVE
Today, at home, I use what I call the side entrance.
It consists of me jumping the fence by the junipers and coming into the house via the sliding door in the study. I jimmy it open with this little tool, kind of like a flattened crowbar, that I keep hidden under the coiled snake of hose by the shed.
I do this because today there are three of them on the porch.
Three freaks.
They’re on the porch for me. Each of them wants to hear a story. A story about how their life improves dramatically. About how in the future, they will find their lost loves or lost cats or missing charms or even their faith in the Lord Jesus. These people, I tend to find them in front of my house the way some people find strays.
Thing is, with the Internet, most anyone can find my mom’s accounts, other church members’ accounts, of my abilities. They type in stuff like “I need to know what will happen with my baby when she’s a grandmother” and “Oh God, will they evict me next month?” and somehow, by some weird quirk of electronic routing, they wind up here.
Mom’s at All Souls Chapel the whole night, so I eat leftover casserole in my bedroom.
The freaks, they leave around nine. Heads hung low, kicking at the lawn.
I settle in on my bed and replay the day’s events.
So far, so brilliant.
There’s a mirror on the back of my bedroom door and I prop myself up in bed and stare hard at myself. I see my mom. Only my hair isn’t thinning out. If anything it’s gotten bushier. But the perfect triangle nose is the same. The thin arched eyebrows. The full bottom lip. With Vauxhall’s sudden appearance, I’m tripped up a little thinking about how I must look, all battered and broken.
I don’t normally fix my hair or worry over zits, but I find myself looking in the mirror more and more often these days. Looking more and more closely at the scars. At the bruises. In mom’s makeup mirror, I find myself trying to find the sunken spots from the dents. Tracing the scar tissue. The healed-over gashes and fractures. My nose, it’s been busted more times than I can remember, and yet it’s still straight. Went right a year ago but then busted left a few months later. All the damage works itself out in the end.
My face comes back together no matter how I break it.
Looking through myself, back at myself on the bed, my mind drifts to my ex-girlfriend, Belle. This is probably because I’m tired and the last time Belle and I talked, really really talked, we were sitting on my bed looking into this same mirror and saying ridiculous things to each other. She was drunk or high. With her it’s always one or the other. I fall asleep hanging on that memory but I’m only under seconds before the phone rings.
“Hello, Ade.”
It’s a voice I don’t recognize. A voice filled with phlegm. A voice like a third-generation dupe of a badly recorded rock show. I yell to Mom that I’ve got the phone.
“Who is this?” I ask.
The voice rattles. “You’re in trouble.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m calling to help you.”
I snicker. Loudly. Push my ear down on the receiver hard. “Who the fuck is this?”
Just ratty breathing.
“Okay. I’m going to hang up now, freak.”
The voice on the other end, it laughs. The sound is nauseating. The voice ignores me, says, “So I had this woman come in to see me this afternoon. An old friend, but she’s never had much in terms of work. Trifles usually. Or truffles, as the case may be. Stuff like that, pedestrian courses, I maybe can give her a week at the most. But today she comes in with a big surprise: thousand-year eggs.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Getting angry, I say, “Is there a point to this phone call? You that creep across the street that the cops have been bugging—”
The voice interrupts, “Actually, they’re only a hundred days old. The eggs. They’re preserved in ash and salt and have a gray yolk. Very bitter, salty, but exquisite nonetheless. But only one hundred days.”
“This is really educational and all, but I think—”
The gargled voice, it gets louder. “Why I’m calling you, Ade, is because eating those eggs I had an superb vision. My client got what she wanted, and we’re talking months in advance, but I also saw you.”
“Me?” I laugh uncomfortably and know immediately that I shouldn’t. This freak on the phone could be sitting outside in a car. He could be watching me from a rooftop right now. He wants this. He wants me spooked.
“Odd, isn’t it.”
“That’s enough, I’m gone.”
But I don’t hang up. I can’t.
Ten seconds pass. They’re as long as visits with my brain-dead dad. And then the voice comes back in, swimming in through the static. “Here’s the deal: You’re at a reservoir. Maybe Cherry Creek. A few weeks from now. And something just terrible goes down. This is at night. This is really dangerous. You look frantic. Seriously, I’m worried—”
“Worried about what?”
“Just I wouldn’t plan on going to the park anytime soon.”
“Who is this? Tell me. Is this a joke?”
The sewer voice says, “This thing I saw, it’s just the setup for an adventure, Ade. What I saw today? Well, that’s the third act. Like a play, my friend. You know, first act introduces our hero, his or her situation, the usual background stuff. Second act is the longest, usually it’s like second act part one and part two where all the action happens, where our hero is put in a weird situation, or has a conflict to resolve. And third act is where the shit hits the proverbial fan.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re the lone cowboy, Ade. I like that you’re a fighter. You’re scrappy.”
I say nothing. Just breathe back slowly. Every heartbeat is cautious.
“I’ll be seeing you,” the voice says. And the line goes dead.
SIX
My mom is the reason that these nuts call me.
Why they appear on the porch.
What’s interesting is that this one, this old guy, seems a bit more confident. The way he talked it’s almost like he had abilities like mine. What makes me say almost is the fact that he’s surely a nut. I’m convinced of this because of his voice. His phlegmy rattle pretty much insures that he’s a freak.
I’m guessing he’s a freak from The Fairlight Hospital.
It’s this place my mom used to volunteer and they had a burn unit where she’d crouch down low with the third-degree guys, most of them bums who fell asleep downtown while drenched in alcohol and smoking and pretty much combusted themselves. These burned-up guys had the very same voice as the guy on the phone. My mom, sometimes she’d drag me along on her Fairlight Rounds (that’s what she called it), had me hold the hand of some still sizzling hobo while she told him about the joys of Christ and the promise of eternal life. The way those crispy guys said “Amen” sounded exactly the same as the way the dude who just called said my name.
I have no idea what he’s on about now, what this phone call meant, but I don’t really want to worry over it. My time for worrying about the here and now is over. Long gone. If it doesn’t have anything to do with Vauxhall and our future, than it’s just chatter in the wind.
Me, I’m over the nut jobs.
Me, I’m done with the bozos.
What I need is to seriously kiss Vauxhall and then knock myself out.
CHAPTER THREE
ONE
Professor David Gore, MD, PhD
Department of Medical Physics
University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA
Dear Dr. Gore,
Thank you for your short note. I appreciate your taking a few minutes to reply to my letter and I can understand your doubting me. Comes with the territory.
Fact is, Dr. Gore: When I get knocked out, I can see the future.
Maybe my last letter wasn’t clear but, really, the seeing the future thing is simple. Just a matter of complicated physics. It’s changing what I see that’s the tough one. I’m wondering (again) if you have any ideas on how I can change the future after I’ve seen it.
Like I mentioned in my last letter, I’ve tried it before. Maybe it’s better if I get specific: Last year I saw a guy I knew get killed in a car accident. I did everything I could to stop it from happening. I knew the rules, but this was life and death and I wasn’t just going to sit there and let it happen. I told this dude, told him everything I saw. He didn’t believe me. For like three days I hounded him, practically begging him. I mapped it out for him, gave him a description of the car, of the people at the scene. Still, he wouldn’t listen. Eventually, he showed up at my house, said he was going to get a restraining order if I didn’t leave him alone, told me he had some friends who would kick my ass. Still, I begged him. He ran out of my house, flicking me off. I heard the bang three and a half minutes later. Ran out to find him in the middle of the road a block away, run down by a red car. Vision came true and I made it happen.