Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (13 page)

     "Cars are not allowed—"

     "Look, I know you're not supposed to give out that information. But it is really vital that I get to The Grove tonight."

     "I'm sorry, ma'am. We will be happy to put you up at a hotel here at the airport for the night and you can fly out first thing in the morning."

     The brochure that came with the ticket and letter of congratulations described the resort as being thirty miles northeast of Palm Springs. How hard could it be to find?

     By the time she was on the freeway heading east into the night, Ophelia's anger had not subsided. In fact, it grew with each mile. She had hated running out on David like that, hated to cut him out of her private fear. But she needed to be alone, to decide what to do. Her life was falling apart and she was helpless to pick up the pieces.

     She knew she had hit the desert when she started passing billboards that said
Play the Slots On the Morongo Indian Reservation
, and
Can't Get A Date? Try Us.
It was for a date farm.

     Her first two attempts led her nowhere so that she had to backtrack each time and start again from Palm Springs. Local inquiries produced no information, but at the gas station where she filled her tank, the proprietor said The Grove was off Indian Canyon road and about twenty miles beyond that. "In the middle of nowhere," he added as a warning. "Dirt track, very hard to follow. Especially at night."

     She drove like a maniac under the stars, swerving around potholes, jolting over rocks. If she had a tire blowout she would be in a jam. But she didn't care.

     And then she saw a chainlink fence ahead, and a padlocked gate with a sign that read PRIVATE ENTRANCE. As she inspected the lock, wondering if a hairpin would do the trick, she saw headlights in the distance, coming toward her.

     Two men in smart blazers and flannel slacks got out and met her at the gate. They knew who she was. The desk clerk at the airport had called ahead and warned them. "Follow us, please, Dr. Kaplan."

     At the resort, Ophelia was greeted by Vanessa Nichols, the manager, who said they were glad she had changed her mind. Nichols took her in a small golf cart to accommodations in the resort's main building. "Where the private suites are," Vanessa said.

     Ophelia marched wordlessly at her hostess's side, oblivious of the desert wind in her short black hair, oblivious, too, of the looks she got from passersby when they saw her T-shirt. A tight black top over faded denim jeans, the T was printed with white letters that read:
Homo erectus isn't funny.
Her assistant had given it to her one birthday, because it was the opening statement of Ophelia's lecture in her course, Introduction to Physical Anthropology.
Whenever she made her first mention of Homo erectus, a few students always giggled, and so she now opened the class with, "Homo erectus isn't funny." To show them she brooked no nonsense in her class.

     Ophelia's room was the Marie Antoinette Suite, a lavish boudoir of white and gold appointments and Louise IV furniture that conjured powdered wigs and masqued balls. When Ms Nichols drew the heavy drapes aside, Ophelia received a shock. The view was not of the resort nor the desert that surrounded it, but a lifelike vista of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the near distance.

     "Please feel free to enjoy our many services and amenities," the manager said as she said good-night and left.

     Briefly pondering the error of placing the Eiffel Tower in the wrong historical period—"Must you always be the academician, can't you ever relax?" her sister once asked—Ophelia turned away from the view and went to her overnight bag, removing a paper sack from an all-night drugstore in Palm Springs where she had made an impulsive purchase. She took the sack into the gold and marble bathroom, removed the box from the bag and set it, unopened, by the sink.

     She stared at it in icy fear. The box contained a pregnancy test kit. And herein lay her fears, the nightmares that had been hounding her, the secret she kept from David, the worry that had so preoccupied her that a fat talk show host had blindsided her.

     As she stared at the test kit, she thought:
I can't be pregnant.

     In fact, it was impossible.

C
OCO HAD SPENT THE AFTERNOON WITH THE CRYSTAL AND ALL SHE
had gotten from it was a headache. Daisy, her spirit guide, had not spoken.

     So it was time to take action. Since her dinner with Abby Tyler had been re-scheduled, it meant she was free for the evening. Dressing in stone-washed jeans and an oversized shirt, she decided to prowl the resort again in search of the man of her dreams. During her afternoon consultation with the crystal, she had tried not to think of "Mr. Memory" Kenny and his sweetness—"You're not here for beauty treatments. What's to improve?"—and tonight she would definitely
not
stop by the Java Club and catch his evening performance.

     But as she stepped outside her cottage and locked her door, Coco turned and saw the blond hair in the lamplight that illuminated the walkway.

     "Hi," Kenny said.

     Her traitorous heart skipped a beat. "How did you find me?"

     "Insider knowledge." Kenny grinned. He wasn't wearing his stage costume
but beige slacks and an Oxford shirt that made him look younger. Like a frat boy, Coco thought. She wondered how old he was. "My show doesn't start for an hour. I thought you might join me for a drink."

     When she hesitated, he added, "You left so quickly this afternoon, I thought maybe..."

     Was he trying to lay a guilt trip on her? But his eyes were open and direct. No games being played here. "I'm sorry about that," she said. "I just suddenly had to be somewhere."

     "I understand." He lifted a blond eyebrow. That drink?

     They found an outdoor bar built into the side of the resort's magnificent aviary. Couples sat at tables, minding their own business. The air was misty from a waterfall, it felt like the ocean, which was a hundred miles away.

     "So how did you become Mr. Memory?" she asked, wanting to be sitting there with him,
enjoying
it, but eager to be moving on as well.

     "The nightclub act isn't my real profession."

     It wasn't exactly a straight answer. "Then what is?"

     "I write code."

     "Secret codes! How fascinating. Navajo Wind Talkers. ULTRA in World War II. Hidden messages leading to the Holy Grail."

     He cleared his throat. "Actually, I write code for computer software."

     "I knew that." She sipped her Tequila Sunrise. "So how did you become Mr. Memory?"

     He shrugged. "It was something to do. My excellent memory and all. So how is it you can read people?"

     His evasive answers piqued her interest. So did the sprinkling of blond hairs on his forearms. He had nicely shaped hands. She wondered what Kenny was like in bed. "I have a spirit guide named Daisy," she said, watching him. This was when most guys said they needed to buy a pack of cigarettes and didn't come back. "She was sixteen and died in a house fire in London in 1868. She first spoke to me when I was eight."

     "That must have been weird. I'll bet your parents thought it was an invisible friend."

     "As a matter of fact, they did." She twirled the little paper umbrella between her fingers. She would rather have been touching something else, but
Kenny wasn't the one and she didn't want to get anything started. "If you write computer code, how did you wind up here? We're a long way from Silicon Valley."

     "I was recruited. Vanessa Nichols caught my night club act and invited me."

     "What do your folks think of your act?"

     "No problems there," he said vaguely, and Coco sensed deeper secrets, something that even she couldn't reach.

     "So you were born with a good memory," she said, feeling her heart tug in his direction. She sensed something vulnerable about him, even though he was about six feet tall and looked like he could handle himself in a fight.

     "A good memory?" he said. "I guess you could say that." He looked into his drink, an Irish coffee that he had yet to taste, and a dark look flew briefly across his face. "I remember everything, Coco. The bad things as well as the good. Most people can repress bad memories, not think about the terrible things in their past. I can't. Every moment of my life is recorded permanently up here." He tapped his temple. "I've tried everything—drugs, hypnosis, therapy. I spent six months at the Carl Jung Institute for Memory in Switzerland where they watched me, measured me, tested me. I was a lab rat and finally I had to escape."

     Coco didn't know what to say. She had never met anyone like him. "I would think having a memory like that would be a plus in relationships. You'd never forget birthdays or anniversaries."

     "That's the trouble. One woman I was seeing, I knew when her birthday was, and when the day came I knew it was her birthday, and I knew what she would like, remembering from birthdays past. The problem was, I was swamped at work, had to work overtime, barely got home in time for bed. I arrived with no gift. She knew I had remembered her birthday yet I had done nothing about it. Which is a bigger sin than forgetting altogether. Another lady I was seeing—we got into an argument over something and she called me a freak. We kissed and made up but the next morning she said, 'You're never going to forget that, are you?' She couldn't live with that, because with me there is no 'forgive and forget.' I can forgive, but I can never forget."

     It was the saddest thing Coco had ever heard. The sounds of the aviary and the other couples receded so that all she heard was Kenny's soft voice. "And then there was the performing. I worked at many jobs because I was always having to move on. Invariably my memory would be discovered, and the guys at the water cooler would challenge me, they'd place bets and see who could stump me. At parties people egged me on. 'Watch Kenny recite the Periodic Table backward!' They'd pile money on the table and cheer."

     Coco closed her eyes. Her sisters: "Come on, Coco, tell us when we'll get married. Who's taking us to the prom? Will I get into UCLA? Hey everybody, watch what Coco does with this crystal, it's uncanny." She knew exactly how Kenny felt.

     "So what about you?" he said, stirring his Irish coffee. "What is it like being a psychic?"

     "Someone convinced me years ago that I must share my gift with the world, that I was being selfish by not sharing it. So I hung out a shingle and gave psychic readings. Since my success rate was high, word of my so-called powers spread and I had more clients than I could handle. But what I really couldn't handle was everyone's neediness. Will I get the job? Will he ask me to marry him? Do I have cancer? People waiting to hear from bosses and boyfriends and doctors came to me because they couldn't stand the wait, the not-knowing. Instead of waiting for the phone call with the dreaded or desired news, they came to me, jumping the gun. I read many accurate prophecies, but no one was satisfied. If I said, 'No, you don't have cancer,' they would badger me: 'Are you sure?' Or if I said, 'You have cancer," they would shout, 'How do you know, you're not a doctor.' If I gave them bad news they hated me, if it was good news they were greedy for more. I ended up satisfying nobody so I took my shingle down and looked for a way to devote my gift to just one worthwhile endeavor."

     "Which is?"

     "I find missing people."

     "Sounds rewarding."

     "I also work homicide cases, to help the cops find the perpetrator."

     He fell silent, then he said, "I see."

     "I work in Manhattan. Sometimes I get requests from Jersey or as far
north as Boston. I don't like to go farther than that because they'd have me hopping night and day."

     "You must be good."

     "I am." She didn't say it in a prideful way. "And I wish I weren't."

     "Have you ever tried to get rid of it, your gift?"

     "Countless times. Shrinks, therapy, even drugs." She shook her head.

     "We have something in common," Kenny said. "You see things you don't want to see, and I remember things I don't want to remember."

     She stared at him. It had been a long time since she had had anything in common with a guy. Now that she thought about it, this was the
first
time.

     "Does anyone else in your family have this talent?" he asked.

     "No. When I was little, before I realized I had this skill, my mother was always telling me how special I was. I never knew why. Maybe she knew this was in me."

     "Do you take after her?"

     "I don't take after either of my parents. My sister looks like my mother and my brother looks like my father, but my genes got so scrambled I don't look like anyone."

     Kenny looked at his watch and said, "I have a show to do. Will you come and watch?"

     "Actually," she said as she slipped from the barstool, "there is somewhere I have to be."

     "You said that this afternoon. A woman of mystery." He put his hand on her arm. The touch was electric. It startled her.