Sinjin (19 page)

“I’d like to come see you for the next three Tuesdays at 4:00 p.m. Please don’t schedule anyone after me. I’ll compensate you for the entire afternoon.”

I was shocked—what in the world would he want to come back for?

“Jolie, it was a pleasure meeting
you, and I look forward to our next session.” He turned to walk out of the room when I remembered myself.

“Wait, what name should I put in the appointment book?”

He turned and faced me. “Rand.”

Then he walked out of the shop.

~

By the time Tuesday rolled around, I hadn’t had much of a busy week. No more visits from ghosts, spirits, or whatever the PC term is for them. I’d had a few walk-ins, but that was about it. It was strange. October in Los Angeles was normally a busy time.

“Ten minutes to four,” Christa said with a smile, leaning against the front desk and looking up from a stack of photos—her latest bout into photography.

“I wonder if he’ll come,” I mumbled.

Taking the top four photos off the stack, she arranged them against the desk as if they were puzzle pieces. I walked up behind her, only too pleased to find an outlet for my anxiety, my nerves skittish with the pending arrival of one very handsome man.

The photo in the middle caught my attention first. It was a landscape of the Malibu coastline, the intense blue of the ocean mirrored by the sky and interrupted only by the green of the hillside.

“Wow, that’s a great one, Chris.” I picked the photo up. “Can you frame it? I’d love to hang it in the store.”

“Sure.” She nodded and continued inspecting her photos, as if trying to find a fault in the angle or maybe the subject. Christa had aspirations of being a photographer and she had the eye for it. I admired her artistic ability—I, myself, hadn’t been in line when God was handing out creativity.

She glanced at the clock again. “Five minutes to four.”

I shrugged, feigning an indifference I didn’t feel. “I’m just glad you’re here. Rand strikes me as weird. Something’s off …”

She laughed. “Oh, Jules, you don’t trust your own mother.”

I snorted at the comment and collapsed into the chair behind her, propping my feet on the corner of our mesh waste bin. So I didn’t trust people—I think I had a better understanding of the human condition than most people did. That reminded me, I hadn’t called my mom in at least a week. Note to self: be a better daughter.

The cuckoo clock on the wall announced it was 4:00 p.m. with a tinny rendition of Edelweiss while the two resident wooden figures did a polka. I’d never much liked the clock, but Christa wouldn’t let me get rid of it.

The door opened, and I jumped to my feet, my heart jack hammering. I wasn’t sure why I was so flustered, but as soon as I met the heat of Rand’s dark eyes, it all made sense. He was here again even though I couldn’t tell him anything important last time, and did I fail to mention he was gorgeous? His looks were enough to play with any girl’s heartstrings.

“Good afternoon,” he said, giving me a brisk nod.

He was dressed in black—black slacks, black collared shirt, and a black suit jacket. He looked like he’d just come from a funeral, but somehow I didn’t think such was the case.

“Hi, Rand,” Christa said, her gaze raking his statuesque body.

“How has your day been?” he answered as his eyes rested on me. 

“Sorta slow,” Christa responded before I could. He didn’t even turn to notice her, and she frowned, obviously miffed. I smiled to myself and headed for the reading room, Rand on my heels.

I closed the door, and by the time I turned around, he’d already seated himself at the table. As I took my seat across from him, a heady scent of something unfamiliar hit me. It had notes of mint and cinnamon or maybe cardamom. The foreign scent was so
captivating, I fought to refocus my attention.

“You fixed the light,” he said with a smirk.
“Much better.”

I nodded and focused on my lap. “I didn’t get a chance last time to ask you why you wanted to come back.” I figured it was best to get it out in the open. I didn’t think I’d do any better reading him this time.

“Well, I’m here for the same reason anyone else is.”

I lifted my gaze and watched him lean back in the chair. He regarded me with amusement—raised eyebrows and a slight smirk pulling at his full lips.

I shook my head. “You aren’t interested in a card reading, and I couldn’t tell you anything … substantial in our last meeting …”

His throaty chuckle interrupted me. “You aren’t much of a businesswoman, Jolie; it sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me and my cold, hard cash.”

Enough was enough. I’m not the type of person to beat around the bush, and he owed me an explanation. “So are you here to get a date with Christa?” I forced my gaze to hold his. He seemed taken aback, cocking his head while his shoulders bounced with surprise.

“Lovely though you both are
, I’m afraid my visit leans more toward business than pleasure.”

“I don’t understand.” I hoped my cheeks weren’t as red as I imagined them. I guess I deserved it for being so bold.

He leaned forward, and I pulled back. “All in good time. Now, why don’t you try to read me again?”

I motioned for his hands—sometimes touching the person in question helps generate my visions. As it had last time, his touch sent a jolt of electricity through me, and I had to fight not to lose my composure. There was something odd about this man.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, trying to focus while millions of bees warred with each other in my stomach. After driving my thoughts from all the questions I had regarding Rand, I was more comfortable.

At first nothing came.

I opened my eyes to find Rand staring at me. Just as I closed them again, a vision came—one that was piecemeal and none too clear.

“A man,” I said, and my voice sounded like a foghorn in the quiet room. “He has dark hair and blue eyes, and there’s something different about him. I can’t quite pinpoint it … it seems he’s hired you for something …”

My voice started to trail as the vision grew blurry. I tried to weave through the images, but they were too inconsistent. Once I got a hold of one, it wafted out of my grasp, and another indistinct one took its place.

“Go on,” Rand prodded.

The vision was gone at this point, but I was still receiving emotional feedback. Sometimes I’ll just get a vision and other times a vision with feelings. “The job’s dangerous. I don’t think you should take it.”

And just like that, the feeling disappeared. I knew it was all I was going to get and I was frustrated, as it hadn’t been my best work. Most of the time my feelings and visions are much clearer, but these were more like fragments—almost like short dream vignettes you can’t interpret.

I let go of Rand’s hands, and my own felt cold. I put them in my lap, hoping to warm them up again, but somehow my warmth didn’t quite compare to his.

Rand seemed to be weighing what I’d told him—he strummed his fingers against his chin and chewed on his lip. “Can you tell me more about this man?”

“I couldn’t see him in comparison to anyone else, so as far as height goes, I don’t know. Dark hair and blue eyes, the hair was a little bit longish, maybe not a stylish haircut. He’s white with no facial hair. That’s about all I could see. He had something otherworldly about him. Maybe he was a psychic? I’m not sure.”

“Dark hair and blue eyes you say?”

“Yes. He’s a handsome man. I feel as if he’s very old though he looked young. Maybe in his early thirties.” I shrugged. “Sometimes my visions don’t make much sense.” Hey, I was just the middleman. It was up to him to interpret the message.

“You like the tall, dark, and handsome types then?”

Taken aback, I didn’t know how to respond. “He had a nice face.”

“You aren’t receiving anything else?”

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not.”

He stood.
“Very good. I’m content with our meeting today. Do you have me scheduled for next week?”

I nodded and stood. The silence in the room pounded against me, and I fought to find something to say, but Rand beat me to it.

“Jolie, you need to have more confidence.”

The closeness of the comment irritated me—who was this man who thought he could waltz into my shop and tell me I needed more confidence? Granted, he had a point, but damn it all if I were to tell him that!

Now, I was even more embarrassed, and I’m sure my face was the color of a bad sunburn. “I don’t think you’re here to discuss me.”

“As a matter of fact, that’s precisely the reason I’m …”

Rand didn’t get a chance to finish when Christa came bounding through the door.

Christa hasn’t quite grasped the whole customer service thing.

“Sorry to interrupt, but there was a car accident right outside the shop! This one car totally just plowed into the other one. I think everyone’s alright, but how crazy is that?”

My attention found Rand’s as Christa continued to describe the accident in minute detail. I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been about to say. It had sounded like he was here to discuss me … something that settled in my stomach like a big rock.

When Christa finished her accident report, Rand made his way to the door. I was on the verge of demanding he finish what he’d been about to say, but I couldn’t summon the nerve.

“Cheers,” he said and walked out.

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“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, For the straight foreward pathway had been lost.” --Dante’s Inferno

ONE

The rain pelted the windshield relentlessly. Drops like little daggers assaulted the glass, only to be swept away by the frantic motion of the wipers. The scenery outside my window melted into dripping blobs of color through a screen of gray. I took my foot off the accelerator and slowed to forty miles an hour, focusing on the blurry yellow lines in the road.

Lightning stabbed the gray skies. A roar of thunder followed and the rain came down heavier, as if having been reprimanded for not falling hard enough.

“This rain is gonna keep on comin’, folks,” the radio meteorologist announced.  Annoyed, I changed the station and resettled myself into my seat to the sound of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons, Summer.”
Ha, Summer…

The rain morphed into hail. The visibility was slightly better, but now I was under a barrage of machine-gunned ice. I took a deep breath and tried to imagine myself on a sunny beach, sipping a strawberry margarita with a well-endowed man wearing nothing but a banana hammock and a smile.

In reality, I was as far from a cocktail on a sunny beach with Sven, the lust god, as possible. Nope, I was trapped in Colorado Springs in the middle of winter. If that weren’t bad enough, I was late to work. Today was not only my yearly review but I also had to give a presentation to the CEO, defending my decision to move forward with a risky and expensive marketing campaign. So, yes, being late didn’t exactly figure into my plans.

With a sigh, I turned on my seat
heater and tried to enact the presentation in my head, tried to remember the slides from my PowerPoint and each of the points I needed to make. I held my chin up high and cleared my throat, reminding myself to look the CEO and the board of directors in the eyes and not to say “um.”

“Choc-o-late cake,” I said out loud, opening my mouth wide and then bringing my teeth together again in an exaggerated way.
“Choc-o-late cake.” It was a good way to warm up my voice and to remind myself to pronounce every syllable of every word. And, perhaps the most important point to keep in mind—not to rush.

This whole being late thing wasn’t exactly good timing, considering I was going to ask for a raise. With my heart rate increasing, I remembered the words of Jack Canfield, one of the many motivational speakers whose advice I followed like the Bible.

“’When you've figured out what you want to ask for’, Lily, ‘do it with certainty, boldness and confidence’,” I quoted, taking a deep breath and holding it for a count of three before I released it for another count of three. “Certainty, boldness and confidence,” I repeated to myself. “Choc-o-late cake.”

Feeling my heart rate decreasing, I focused on counting the stacks of chicken coops in the truck ahead of me—five up and four across. Each coop was maybe a foot by a foot, barely enough room for the chickens to breathe. White feathers decorated the wire and contrasted against the bright blue of a plastic tarp that covered the top layer of coops. The tarp was held in place by a brown rope that wove in and around the coops like spaghetti. I couldn’t help but feel guilty about the chicken salad sandwich currently residing in my lunch sack but then I remembered I had more important things to think about.

“Choc-o-late cake.”

The truck’s brake lights suddenly flashed red. The coops rattled against one another as the truck lurched to a stop. A vindictive gust of wind caught the edge of the blue tarp and tore it halfway off the coops. As if heading for certain slaughter wasn’t bad enough, the chickens now had to freeze en route. My concern for the birds was suddenly interrupted by another flash of the truck’s brake lights.

Then I heard the sound of my cell phone ringing from my purse, which happened to be behind my seat. I reached behind myself, while still trying to pay attention to the road, and felt around for my purse. I only ended up ramming my hand into the cardboard box which held my velvet and brocade gown. The dress had taken me two months to make and was as historically accurate to the gothic period of the middle ages as was possible.

I finally reached my purse and then fingered my cell phone, pulling it out as I noticed Miranda’s name on the caller ID.

“Hi,” I said.

“I’m just calling to make sure you didn’t forget your dress,” Miranda said in her high pitch, nasally voice which sounded like a five year old girl with a cold.

“Forget it?” I scoffed, shaking my head at the very idea. “Are you kidding? This is only one of the most important evenings of our lives!” Yes, tonight would mark the night that, if successful, Miranda and I would be allowed to move up the hierarchical chain of our medieval reenactment club. We’d started as lowly peasants and had worked our way up to the merchant class and now we sought to be allowed entrance into the world of the knights.

“Can you imagine us finally being able to enter the class of the knights?” Miranda continued. Even though I obviously couldn’t see her, I could just imagine her pushing her coke bottle glasses back up to the bridge of her nose as she gazed longingly at the empire-
waisted, fur trimmed gown (also historically accurate!) that I’d made for her birthday present.

“Yeah, instead of burlap, we can wear silk!” I said as I nodded and thought about how expensive it was going to be to costume ourselves if we actually did get admitted into the class of the knights.

“And maybe Albert will finally want to talk to me,” Miranda continued, again in that dreamy voice.

I didn’t think becoming a knight’s lady would make Albert any more likely to talk to Miranda but I didn’t say anything. If the truth be told, Albert was far more interested in the knights than he ever was in their ladies.

“Okay, Miranda, I gotta go. I’m almost at work,” I said and then heard the beep on the other line which meant someone else was trying to call me. I pulled the phone away from my ear and after quickly glancing at the road, I tried to answer my other call. That was when I heard the sound of brakes screeching.

I felt like I was swimming through the images that met me next—my phone landing on my lap as I dropped it, my hands gripping the wheel until my knuckles turned white, the pull of the car skidding on the slick asphalt, and the tail end of the truck in front of me, up close and personal. I braced myself for the inevitable impact.

Even though I had my seatbelt on, the jolt was immense. I was suddenly thrown forward only to be wrenched backwards again, as if by the invisible hands of some monstrous Titan. Tiny threads of anguish weaved up my spine until they became an aching symphony that spanned the back of my neck.

The sound of my windshield shattering pulled my thoughts from the pain. I opened my right eye—since the left appeared to be sealed shut—to find my face buried against the steering wheel.

I couldn’t feel anything. The searing pain in my neck was soon a fading memory and nothing, but the void of numbness reigned over the rest of my body. As if someone had turned on a switch in my ears, a sudden screeching met me like an enemy. The more I listened, the louder it got—a high-pitched wailing. It took me a second to realize it was the horn of my car.

My vision grew cloudy as I focused on the white of the feathers that danced through the air like winter fairies, only to land against the shattered windshield and drown in a deluge of red. Sunlight suddenly filtered through the car until it was so bright, I had to close my good eye.

And then there was nothing at all.

~

“Number three million, seven hundred fifty thousand and forty-five.”

I shook my head as I opened my eyes, blinking a few times as the scratchy voice droned in my ears. Not knowing where I was, or what was happening, I glanced around nervously, absorbing the nondescript beige of the walls. Plastic, multicolored chairs littered the room like discarded toys. What seemed like hundreds of people dotted the landscape of chairs in the stadium sized room. Next to me, though, was only an old man. Glancing at me, he frowned. I fixed my attention on the snarly looking employees trapped inside multiple rows of cubicles. Choosing not to focus on them, I honed in on an electric board above me that read:
Number 3,750,045.

The fluorescent green of the board flashed and twittered as if it had just zapped an unfortunate insect. I shook my head again, hoping to remember how the heck I’d gotten here.  My last memory was in my car, driving in the rain as I chatted with Miranda. Then there was that truck with all the chickens.
An accident—I’d gotten into an accident
. After that, my thoughts blurred into each other. But nothing could explain why I was suddenly at the DMV.

Maybe I was dreaming. And it just happened to be the most lucid, real dream I’d ever had and the only time I’d ever realized I was dreaming while dreaming.
Hey, stranger things have happened, right?

I glanced around again, taking in the low ceiling. There weren’t any windows in the dreary room. Instead, posters with vibrant colors decorated the walls, looking like circus banners. The one closest to me read:
Smoking kills
. A picture of a skeleton in cowboy gear, atop an Appaloosa further emphasized the point. Someone had scribbled “ha ha” in the lower corner.

“Three million, seven hundred fifty thousand and forty-five!”

Turning toward the voice, I realized it belonged to an old woman with orange
hair, and 1950’s style rhinestone glasses on a string.  A line of twelve or so porcelain cat statues, playing various instruments, decorated the ledge of her cubicle. What was it about old women and cats?

The cat lady scanned the room, peering over the ridiculous glasses and tapping her outlandishly long, red fingernails against the ledge. Her mouth was so tight, it swallowed her lips. As her narrowed gaze met mine, I flushed and averted my eyes to my lap, where I noticed a white piece of paper clutched in my right hand. I stared at the black numbers before the realization dawned on me.

3,750,045
. She was calling my number! Without hesitation, I jumped up.

“That’s me!” I announced
, feeling embarrassed as the old man glared at me. “Sorry.”

“Come on then,” the woman interrupted. “I don’t have all day.”

Approaching her desk, I thought this dream couldn’t get much weirder—I mean, I was number three million or something and yet there were only a few hundred people in the room? I handed the woman my ticket. She scowled at me, her scarlet lips so raw and wet that her mouth looked like a piece of talking sushi. She rolled the ticket into a little ball and flung it behind her. It landed squarely in her wastebasket, vanishing amid a sea of other white, scrunched paper balls.

“Name?” she asked as she worked a huge wad of pink gum between her clicking jaws.

“Um, Lily,” I said with a pause, feigning interest in a cat playing a violin. It wore an obscene smile and appeared to be dancing, one chubby little leg lifted in the semblance of a jig. I touched the cold statue and ran the pad of my index finger along the ridges of his fur. I was beginning to think this might not be a dream, because I could clearly touch and feel things. But if this weren’t a dream, how did I get here? It was like I’d just popped up out of nowhere.

“Last name?”

I faced the woman again.
“Um, Harper.”

The woman simply nodded, continuing to chomp on her gum like a cow chewing its cud. “Harper… Harper… Harper,” she said as she stared at the computer screen in front of her.

“Um, could you, uh, tell me why I’m here?” My voice sounded weak and thin. I had to remind myself that I was the master of my own destiny and needed to act like it. And that was when I remembered my presentation. A feeling of complete panic overwhelmed me as I searched the wall for a clock so I could figure out how much time remained before I was due to sway a panel of mostly unenlightened penny-pinchers on why we needed to invest nearly a quarter of a million in advertising. “What time is it?” I demanded.

“Time?” the woman repeated and then frowned at me. “Not my concern.”

I felt my eyebrows knot in the middle as I glanced behind me, wondering if there was a clock to be found anywhere. The blank of the walls was answer enough. I faced forward again, now more nervous than before and still at a complete loss as to where I was or why. “Um, what am I doing here?” I repeated, not meaning to sound so…stupid.