The Love Sucks Club (8 page)

“You’re insane. I’ll call the police.”

“Really?”
She moves closer, menacing me.
I’m half-afraid of what she might do. Just because she’s never hit me before
doesn’t mean it can’t happen now. And she has a wild-eyed look on her face. I’m
tempted to ask her if she’s replaced drinking with crack, but under the
circumstances, it might not be the best idea.

Sliding her hand down the side of my face, she leans in close,
putting her mouth on my ear. “Maybe you don’t realize what you lost, Dana.
Maybe you’re starting to regret ever letting me go.”

I open my mouth to respond, but I’m interrupted by my neighbor.
“Oh, hello.”

Voldemort takes a quick step back and glances around wildly at the
sound. She takes in Shovel Guy, wearing what looks like a pair of expensive
men’s dress pants that are now completely covered with dirt, ripped in several
places, and hanging off his hips, showing equally dirty boxer shorts. The fact
that he’s not wearing a shirt and appears to have not shaved or showered in a
couple of weeks completes the outfit. Glancing down, I confirm my suspicions
that he’s wearing Crocs, but I’m happy to note that they aren’t covered with
blood. Making a mental note to tell Sam about this, I smile sincerely at my
neighbor.

“Hello...um...friend.”
Smiling brightly, I raise a
hand and wave to avoid the possibility of having to touch him.

He grins widely. “Hi neighbor. I picked these.”

Holding out his hand, he shows me a couple of nice size mangoes.

“Hey, awesome...dude.
Those are nice looking
mangoes.”

“Yeah,” he says, staring over my left shoulder. “I like mangoes.”

Voldemort shuffles her feet. “Well, if that’s all...”

Shovel Guy goes on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I have a mango tree
in my backyard.”

“Do you?” My smile is fixed on my face now.

“But these came from further up in the woods.”

“Ah.”

“I can get more if you want some.”

Voldemort clears her throat several times, but Shovel Guy and I
both ignore her.

“Well, thanks, but see
,
I actually have a
mango tree in my yard.”

“It’s just that these are a different kind than the ones in your
yard. I’ll leave these with you and you can let me know how you liked them.”

“That’s nice.” Smiling, I reach out for the mangoes.

He holds on to them, pulling them back toward himself. “Maybe you
could try one now,” he says.

My ex loses her cool. “Oh for Christ’s sake, just leave the
fucking mangoes and go. We’re in the middle of a conversation.” She pushes on
his arm to prod him along.

“
Ahh
!
Ah! Ah!” The man starts
yelling. Dropping the mangoes, he jerks away from my ex and brushes at his arm.

“What the fuck?” she yells.

Turning on her, I grit my teeth and snarl. “Get out of here. Just
get the hell out of here.”

Shovel guy keeps screaming and jumping around. “She touched me,
she touched me!”

Voldemort backs away from him, horrified. She takes off toward her
car and I turn back to my neighbor, holding my hands up in a conciliatory
manner. He’s staring at the ground, breathing heavily through his teeth. I talk
calmly to him as I hear my ex get in her car, turn it around and screech down
the dirt road. As she passes through the tree line, I turn to watch her go.
Turning back around to my neighbor, I’m astonished to see him laughing.

“What the?”

He grabs his sides, laughing hysterically. “Did you see her face?”

It’s suddenly dawning on me. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding
me.”

Still laughing, he gasps for air. “I couldn’t think of what else
to do. I knew she could kick my ass if it came to a fight.”

Slowly, I get it and the laughter wells up from a deep place.
Shovel Guy and I sit down on my front step, laughing until tears stream down
our faces. Every time I think I have myself under control, he snorts and I
start again.

Finally, we gather ourselves and I apologize. “I don’t even know
your name.”

He smiles. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t know yours,
either.”

“I’m Dana.”

“I’m George.”

“George, it’s nice to meet you. I have a confession to make.”

He raises his eyebrow and waits.

“My friend and I call you ‘Shovel Guy.’”

He laughs. “Well, I have a confession to make, too.”

I deserve it. “Let me have it.”

“I secretly call you ‘The L Word.’”

Letting out another long peal of laughter, I lean back against my
front door. Basking in the sunlight and the release of a hard laugh, my body
suddenly feels light. “George, I promise to call you by your rightful name from
now on.”

He nods and stands. Getting to my feet, I offer him my hand and we
shake firmly. “It really is nice to meet you, Dana.”

“Likewise.
And thank you.”

He turns to head back to his yard. At the edge of my lawn, he
looks over his shoulder and smiles. “You’re going to need to watch out for that
one.”

“Yeah.
She’s my ex. She’s scary.”

“Scarier than you think.”
On that ominous note, he stalks
off toward his house.

His departure is so theatrical, I almost want to laugh. Yet,
despite the hot sun, I’m struck with a chill. The swirling vision is creeping
back to the sides of my vision, too. Walking back into the house, I lock the
front door for the first time in months. A headache starts pounding in my left
temple, so I down a glass of water along with a few Excedrin. The roaring is
starting in my ears. It sounds as if I’m holding a supercharged shell up to my
ear in some surreal game of listen to the ocean.

Frank,
curled up on the kitchen table
in a patch of sunlight, looks completely oblivious to the machinations in my
head. The juxtaposition between the normalcy of the scene and the craziness in
my head is making me feel stoned. Carefully placing one foot in front of the
other, I pad toward the living room with every intention of curling into my
favorite chair and sleeping for a few more hours. When I come around the wall,
I stop short, clutching my chest with my hand. My favorite chair is no longer
empty. Collapsing back against the wall, I flap my mouth open and shut, trying
for sound. Finally, I clear my throat and look at the woman in my chair.

“Hello,
Esmé
.”

Chapter Seven

Swinging her legs around, she stands and walks toward me. “I
wanted to talk to you about Fran.”

Oh Jesus. Why now? A sweat is breaking out on my forehead.
Collapsing onto the nearest chair, I tug at the collar of my shirt, breathing
in hard. “I just had a particularly bad run in with my ex and I’d like to be
alone.”

“I saw it,”
Esmé
says. “I didn’t want to
interrupt, but if she had gotten violent, I would have nailed her with one of
your cast iron pans.”

“Well, I’m so glad you have my back. What the fuck are you doing
in my house?”

“You said my car wouldn’t make it up the hill,” she says. “So I
walked.”

“And got in here without me or
my ex or my neighbor noticing.”

“Your neighbor noticed, but he just waved at me as I came around
to your deck. He was more concerned about...”

She mentions my ex by name and I shake my head. “We call her
Voldemort around here.
Or-she-who-shall-not-be-named.”

Esmé
laughs.

My head is killing me and this conversation is making it worse.
Holding my chest, I breathe in and out several times. Blinking and panting, I
try to bring myself out of the darkness. I can’t get a deep enough breath.
Esmé
is staring at me. “Just fall into it.”

“What?”

She pulls up a chair and sits knee to knee with me. “Let the
vision come. Fighting it is the root of the problem. If you let it come, you’ll
feel better.”

Her voice is vaguely soothing and listening to it feels like
riding on a wave. My eyes are closing involuntarily and a deep sense of
exhaustion sweeps over my head.

She continues to speak in a soft voice. “Just relax and breathe.
Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

Peace settles over me, though my head is still swimming.
Esmé’s
voice is coming from far away. Even with my eyes
closed, I can see wavy lines in the sides of my vision. When I try to focus on
them, they move away.

“Fran,”
Esmé
whispers. My head recoils
at the mention of her name, but my eyes are so heavy, I can’t open them.
“You’re looking at Fran.”

The darkness is complete. “I’m in the tunnel,” I manage to mutter.

“Walk down it,”
Esmé
commands. “Walk
down it and find Fran at the end.”

“I can’t,” I murmur. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Breathe in through your nose.
Out through your
mouth.
Let the darkness come down over your eyes. Breathe in, breathe
out. Relax into it.”

The ringing in my ears has gotten so loud that it seems to be pulsating
with my heartbeat. I open my mouth to tell
Esmé
that
I can’t take it anymore and suddenly, I’m enclosed in darkness.

I’m walking down a long tunnel. There’s a figure at the end of it.
She’s beckoning toward me. As I get closer, I’m sure it’s Fran. She smiles when
she sees me and my heart skips a beat. When I reach her, I reach up my hand.
She puts her hand up and we stand face to face, one hand up in the air, just
touching. I’m marveling at her touch, at the freshness of her face. She smiles
at me. I want to talk, but I can’t make myself speak. When I move to hold her,
I’m swept back down the hall.
Being ripped away from Fran
feels like I’m having my arms torn off.
I’m screaming, but it doesn’t
help. The blackness comes over my vision and all I can do is scream.

Blinking, I look up to see Roxanne’s face hovering over mine. She
smiles as I open my eyes. Passing a cold rag over my forehead, she wipes the
sweat from my face and neck.

“Don’t talk until you’re ready,” she says.

“Where’s
Esmé
?”

“I’m here,” she calls from a chair across the room. “Your friend
thought I was killing you or something.”

Struggling to sit up, I glare at her across the room. “Well, what
the hell were you doing?”

Roxanne presses down on my shoulder, pushing me back down into my
chair. She twirls the wet cloth in the air for a few seconds before putting it
back on my head. The coolness feels amazing. “You’re fine,” she says, ignoring
the exchange with
Esmé
. “I came over to bring you the
book we talked about yesterday, and I found you having a seizure of some sort.
This one was just watching you, doing nothing.”

“She wasn’t having a seizure,”
Esmé
explained quietly. “She was in a deep meditative trance where she was
communicating with my lover.”

“My lover,” I said.

“She was
mine
first,”
Esmé
insisted.

“You two broke up.”

“Only because she thought her crazy was too much for me to
handle,” she retorted.

Roxanne held up a hand and cleared her throat. “It doesn’t matter
now. The young lady is dead. The respectful thing to do would be to let her
rest.”

Esmé
shook her head. “I know Dana
had visions of her before she died. I want to talk to her.”

“It isn’t like that,
Esmé
. I can’t talk
to dead people. The Fran I’m seeing is the Fran in my mind.”

“Then how do you explain seeing her death?”

“I had a premonition of something that was coming for a live
person. I can’t explain it, but I know that whatever I see in my visions isn’t
the real Fran.”

We all look up as Sam comes slamming into the room. “Do we need to
go to the hospital?”

“What the hell?” I glare at her. “No, we don’t need a hospital.”

Roxanne shrugs. “I texted her while you were having your fit. I
thought she might have an idea of what to do.”