The Alone Time, page 15
But I do know that feeling—the state of war. All veterans who have been in combat zones are acquainted with the ticklish occipital lobe, on nonstop alert and ready to fight or fly from a scene. A wry smile stretches my mouth. I would have made a pretty good marmot.
I take a step forward. My feet find the space between a log and a soft patch of grass that cushions my weight. The marmot continues cleaning his paws, clicking his claws against his teeth. Moonlight seems to spotlight my quarry, the stars in the cheap seats eager to see how this will go.
The ground shifts. Then the knife vibrates in my hand, becoming the weapon I need for this exact moment, elongating another six inches. With the added reach, I part the tall grass that separates me from the animal, giving myself the perfect avenue to dinner. The branches sway in a new breeze, then lift their leaves to remove any visual obstacle. I crouch, not six feet from where my adversary licks his claws—blades unto themselves.
My grasp becomes slippery. I reposition my fingers tighter around the leather handle as the dry scent of desert stings my nostrils. I close my eyes. Raise my hand. Then flex my quads and leap forward through the brush.
I stumble as a piercing war cry rips overhead. Feathers erupt, flapping wildly as the marmot grunts, howls, and shrieks, and I startle backward into the grass. The marmot whirls to the owl, biting, snapping at the white-gray tufts, but massive talons clamp down on the animal’s fatty coat. More cries of pain and fear ricochet off the mountainside as the owl flaps its imposing wingspan, lifting the weaker fighter to its nest.
I fall onto my back. My heart beats a drummer’s solo, adrenaline pulsing in my limbs. Blades of grass make tiny cuts on my skin where my jacket folded up beneath me. They struggle to resume their original positions, bending and straightening to stasis. Images of ants crawling across my skin, of the scorpions I encountered over a decade ago, march across my mind.
Stars twinkle overhead in laughter, having watched my attempted attack before a stronger, more strategic predator took action. A reminder that in war, often the first strike is best, when the prey is still unaware of the imminent danger. Sharp grunting echoes from the owl’s nest, where the marmot continues to struggle. Then the owl screams again, and all goes silent in the forest.
Little by little, insects begin to buzz. Other animals move about, resuming nighttime routines.
I lift my palm. Twist my hand this way and that in the moonlight. Red drops of marmot blood spatter my skin, confirming this wasn’t another mirage.
Laughter slices against the rock face of the next incline. Fiona and Violet. They’re feeling better at least.
But the noise changes, shifting as it does to reach my ears. The sound of their giggles reaches a new pitch and stretches into a long moaning howl. In a snap of clarity, I remember what I first noticed from this vantage point, down by the river: the pack of wolves. They’re getting closer. Judging from the increase in yips, barks, and howls, they are closing in fast on some unsuspecting victim.
24
VIOLET
The Wild
Dear Mommy—
Fi Fi said I shuld write you a leter. I wrote one to Daddy to.
How are you? I am good.
Sorry. That’s not tru. I’m very tired.
I’m sorry I didint lissen more to you. I love you.
The wuman is back again. I don no how she got here. But I don like her. She is mean mean mean. More mean than Felix-kitty after forth of july. She stares at me.
I love you and miss you.
Your mini,
Violet Esther Seng.
25
VIOLET
Rustle hustle muscle
The wind urges sleet
Cold clear care
Merging in the peat
Bodies mounting slowly
Never what it seems
Over under blunders
Heavy hindered dreams
Alongside the curb, bar patrons emerge from the restaurants and patios that populate Pacific Beach. Neon lights illuminate the neighborhood’s banner overhead, ready to welcome Thursday night revelers.
I sit quietly in my car, not yet ready to join the fun. After I got home from visiting Geri Vega’s old client, I knocked out another chapter of my memoirs. Though I’ve only tackled a few, the experience has been like opening a faucet—memories gush forward, along with new creativity that has probably lain dormant for some time, probably suppressed by substances I was taking. Poetry comes with ease and in ways I haven’t attempted since high school, and I’ve been cooking more—like, actual meals. Instead of settling for a packet of Top Ramen like I do so many weeknights, I managed to make my own shoyu recipe, using pork belly from Costco and hard-boiled eggs I bought from a farmer I passed in the Walmart parking lot, and then I topped it all off with everything bagel seasoning. The result was better than any food wars photo on social media.
Despite what Fiona insists, that writing any of it down is a mistake, I feel a shuddering certainty that the opposite is true. Collecting the fragments of memories that still remain to me is all I have. And each fleck of dirt that I brush away from the covered mound results in more clumps of earth falling away, revealing distinct details that should have been clear to me all along. The same details that I’m beginning to suspect Fiona has always retained, since the day we were rescued. My sister doesn’t want me to recall them for some reason, telling me to shut them down and push them away whenever the memories begin to take shape. It’s time I did more to counteract her efforts.
My phone hums in the center console. A text from Fiona reads:
We have a problem. A new one. She just posted this.
“What now?” I push through my teeth. Sadly, I already know who “she” is without Fiona saying so. In a video featured on Geri Vega’s stories, she sits with her back to the camera, facing a man whose eye color only makes sense on a bag of polluting chip packaging. Daley Kelly. Geri Vega is having or just had a meeting with the documentary filmmaker who suspects our version of the truth isn’t as accurate as we’ve claimed. A self-described truth devotee.
I stare at the frame, pressing my thumb to the screen to hold the image in place. Geri wears a kind of suit jacket—light blue—that complements the gold highlights in her dark-brown hair. Her shoulders are rounded, and then they taper to a small waist where she sits on a wooden stool.
“You’re not the only one who can dig up the past, Geri.”
I exit the car. Walk the half block to a small shop on the corner of Garnet and Ingraham. College kids scream laughter from the adjacent open-air patios. But I’m only focused on one kid in their twenties. Wes. I spot him lingering beneath the awning of the corner shop. My stomach tightens with first-date jitters, and I recall it’s been years since I went out with someone sober. Maybe never.
After our last interaction, when we ate our salty snack together outside the Quick Shop, I was annoyed that Wes suggested I wasn’t prioritizing myself. Who did this guy think he was? Some Freud acolyte? Then Fiona made it clear how against my memoirs she is, and his suggestions started to make more sense. It’s not that I’ve been submitting to all Fiona’s wants and needs. It’s that I’ve been doubting my instincts—my thoughts, my actions—since I reconnected with my sister out of fear of losing her again. With that fresh, enlightened lens, Wes seemed the right choice to invite along on tonight’s task.
Strange that I’m still thinking about him. On the surface, he seems like every other man I’ve casually dated until I abruptly end things: attractive, and perhaps attracted to me the more aloof I am. The guys who approach me always seem to enjoy the chase—something I offer in spades.
With Wes, though, when he first spoke to me, something felt different. Magnetic. As if an invisible tether connected us and was pulling me toward him then, to that teasing smile and his flop of dark hair. He’s quirky in a way that sets me at ease. Blunt but not awkward. Reassuring, that he doesn’t want anything more from me than to chat about school and GMOs in Twinkies. Refreshing, in that I can be my naturally direct self without offending him.
“Hey, stranger.” Wes removes his hands from deep in his jeans pockets. “Ready to see the future?”
“Only if it’s the good kind.”
He holds the glass door open for us, and then we pass through a beaded curtain that announces our arrival. Clairvoyant chic.
“Welcome in, you guys. Looking for a couples reading?” A woman with tight curls and deep lines around her mouth offers up two seats in the tiny one-room shop. She steps behind us to the door and flips around a sign with a clock that reads, BACK IN 10 MINUTES.
Wes shrugs, throwing me a smile. “Your call.”
I told him I was looking for information on a friend and that the psychic shop was one of the last places I remembered her frequenting. A total lie for my part, but true for Phuong Nguyen.
The pads of my fingertips itch. I pinch the skin of my other hand to resist the gesture. “Yeah. That would be great. Let’s do it.”
We settle into two chairs opposite a small table covered in a knit shawl. The psychic sits behind the shawl and a deck of tarot cards.
“On y va,” the woman says, cracking her knuckles. “The rate is twenty-five dollars for a ten-minute reading. Does that suit you?”
I nod. “I’m looking for—”
“No, no. Don’t tell me.” The woman lifts the first card, then places it on the table. “You and this man met recently.”
Ah, the couples reading. “Yes. That’s true.” Obviously. We can’t stop grinning at each other, and Wes has almost put his arm around my chair twice before removing it each time.
“Good. Good.” The woman hums, then removes another card from the pile. Two people entwined in each other’s arms, facing away from where I sit. “You each have things you don’t share with the other.”
I almost roll my eyes and get up to leave, and then she clears her throat. “And yet, you have those same secretive things in common.”
She peers at us, narrowing brown eyes heavily rimmed with liner. The woman plucks another card, then lays it face up on the table. A man hanging upside down on a tree. “You will each stubbornly refuse to tell the other until the time is right.”
Another platitude. Great. I’m back to stifling an eye roll, but Wes doesn’t seem to mind. He leans forward, as if eating up each empty phrase. Give me a break.
The woman slides a new card face up before us. Two people holding goblets, again facing away from us. “That’s interesting. I haven’t gotten the two of cups in a while.”
“What does that mean?” Wes asks. The rips in his jeans hit just above his knees, and scratches on his skin are evident.
The woman taps the deck of cards but doesn’t withdraw another. Not yet. “You’re experiencing a lack of communication. An unwillingness to share between you. It also means you two were destined for one another but you may be experiencing some difficulty.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Really? We just met. You don’t want to start small and suggest we might have a second date but we’ll need to return to your shop to find out what happens three months from now?”
The woman scowls. She’s no better at hiding her emotions than I am, apparently. “I said you were destined for one another, meaning you were meant to meet at this point in time. Twin flames collide in life because there is something to be learned from the relationship. Oftentimes the fire dies out. But there is always, always an explosion.”
Cold air sends the hairs on my neck upright. As if the spirits of the room agree with this woman’s prediction. The memory of first seeing Wes slouching through the Quick Shop returns to mind, tightening my stomach into a ball. Without even speaking to him, I felt the tension coiling in my core as if already in tune with the words this psychic would speak weeks later.
Wes clears his throat, shifting in the barely cushioned chair beside me. “Violet, did you—uh—want to ask about your friend too?”
He wants to leave. The novelty of this outing has worn off for him, and as soon as we cross the threshold to the sidewalk, he’ll be gone from my life faster than a package of Corn Nuts.
“Yeah, thanks. I’m also looking for someone. Geri Vega. Does the name sound familiar to you?”
The woman fixes her gaze on the ceiling, which is decorated in paper fans that I recognize from Chinatown celebrations. “Lunar New Year” is written across several in both Chinese characters and English. “Geri Vega . . . you know, it doesn’t.”
I unlock my phone, scroll to a screenshot I took from a recent live stream. “What about this woman?”
The psychic leans forward. “Geraldine. That’s a longtime customer from years ago. What is she up to?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you, actually. Do you keep in touch with her? Does Geri still visit you?”
She folds her arms, sitting back in her wicker chair. The tarot cards are forgotten for the moment. “Gosh, I haven’t thought about her in . . . five or so years maybe. She was an amazing client. Consistent, and so sweet.”
“Yeah. Look, I’m considering . . . hiring her for a job.” I try to appear relaxed, like I’m not retooling the same story from the paper supply store.
“What kind?”
“As a psychic,” I blurt out. Both Wes and the woman turn to me. “Yeah. She’s . . . Geraldine comes highly recommended, but she said you were a mentor. I wanted to confirm for myself.”
Both penciled-in eyebrows lift sky-high. “That’s interesting. But the Geraldine I remember was no mystic. I’ve kept this sweet corner spot in the middle of one of the busiest beaches in the world because I am, and I know the difference between a fake and the real deal.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I hope not. “So you’re saying Geraldine can’t divine the future . . . or whatever?”
The woman taps the discarded cards already on the table, face up. “When she was visiting me regularly, about once a month, she was always asking the same questions that everyone asks: What do I do to kick-start my career to the next level? And how do I solve such and such romantic issue? Geraldine’s career, I could talk about for days, but her love-life problems—those weren’t going away. I’m surprised she would suggest she’s clairvoyant now.”
“What kind of love problems? Did she have a boyfriend? Two boyfriends?” If this woman, Geri Vega’s secret confidante, spills the dirty details that contradict Vega’s innocent image in the limelight, Fiona and I could use them to our advantage. We could discredit her grabs for attention and put this chapter of public excitement behind us.
“Only one.” The psychic shakes her head. “The same one, over and over. She would always ask me to contact him and see if he was okay. If he still loved her. If Alicia was okay.”
I still. Someone runs past the shop outside, footsteps and music passing in a blur. Voices argue in a huff, and then laughter follows. “Alicia?”
The psychic waves her hand, a set of rings across long fingers. “I think, someone younger than Geraldine. Someone she felt protective over.”
Wes’s sneaker touches mine, but I don’t move away. I can’t. My heart tightens in my chest, as sweat forms along my hairline. “And who was the dead boyfriend that Geraldine kept asking you to contact? His name.”
She stares at the ceiling again, as if listening or searching the paper fans for a clue. “It starts with an H . . .”
“Harold?” Wes volunteers.
“No, not that.”
“Hector,” he tries again.
“No.”
“Horatio?”
The psychic smiles this time. “No, not Horatio.” She snaps her fingers. “Henry. Geraldine’s boyfriend’s name was Henry. And without fail, each time she came to visit, she would ask about him.”
My mouth is dry as I reach for the words. “And what did you tell her about him?”
“The truth.”
Car doors slam along the curb. Feminine voices rise in a drinking song. “Which is?”
The psychic drops her eyes from the ceiling. She places both hands on the shawl tablecloth, bookending the discarded tarot cards. “That there are many spirits I am in touch with and they help me to seek out the answers my clients want. But this boyfriend never came to me. Not in the dozens of times I called out to him and asked other spirits to seek him for answers. I told her what she didn’t want to hear, sadly. And I always wondered if that’s why she stopped coming back.”
“Tell us.”
Brown eyes pinch at the edges. “The boyfriend didn’t desire to connect with Geraldine. If he ever loved her on Earth, he certainly didn’t in the afterlife.”
A lamp fixture covered by a red scarf glows in the cramped space, adding to the eeriness of the psychic’s revelations. I pause, absorbing her words. The petty, smug part of me that doesn’t get to play in the sandbox very often is eating this conversation up. My dad—even in the great beyond—wanted nothing to do with Geri in a public setting. Serves her right, disrupting our home.
“What about you? Is there someone you wish to speak with?” Wary yet compassionate eyes lock on me from across the table. “I’m sensing there’s something missing for you. Whether it’s a person or something else. It’s a lack of . . . purpose. Does that sound right?”
I glance at Wes, embarrassment replacing the smugness from seconds earlier. “No. I’m fine exactly where I am.”
“Are you?” he picks up. “We talked about you doing more things for yourself, instead of prioritizing your sister.”
“Nice to know everyone cares so much.” I shift in my seat, creaking the legs.
“I’m serious.” Wes nods to our spiritual tour guide. “She can sense it after only a few minutes with you.”
“Well, what about him?” I throw a thumb at Wes. Adopt an awkward smile. “Doesn’t he have some void that needs filling?”
The psychic takes him in a moment, scanning his face. His aura? “No. He’s fine. He’s fulfilled in whatever his life’s vocation is. Very at home in his bones.”
