Where There's Smoke Read online

  It’s true that when it’s time to go, someone will be waiting for you. It might be a relative or a loved one, but not always. It could be a dog, hanging out with a tennis ball and ready to play again. Sometimes, when children die, they don’t know any of their relatives who are on the other side, so they’ll have an angel or even maybe a cartoon character or Santa Claus waiting to pull them across that bridge. It’s just a manifestation of energy saying, “Come on, baby, it’s okay.”

  I try to determine if Henry might have transitioned that way. Then I ask, silently, for Henry to come talk to his mother. Usually, I don’t have to try too hard to connect with child spirits—they’ve been looking all over the place for their parents and are thrilled to step up to the metaphorical microphone. They are desperate to say, I chose you to be my mom, and I couldn’t have made a better decision. Or I’m sorry I had to leave the way I did. Or I died, and you didn’t, so you have to go on living.

  I’ll tell you, those kinds of readings are the ones that break my heart.

  But I do not hear a peep from Henry on the other side, and I do not hear anything from Desmond or Lucinda suggesting his whereabouts.

  I have prided myself all my life on not being a swamp witch—the kind of faux psychic who does cold readings not through any paranormal connection but by reading the expressions and body language of her client. There’s the Barnum effect—where you say something that would apply to everyone on the planet: You suffered a great loss as a child. Or You’re conflicted about an important decision in your life. Most of the time, the client will hurry to explain what you’ve said. Give them the rope, and let them hang themselves. There’s shotgunning, where you just spit out a stream of things and see what resonates with the client: I’m getting a B, maybe an H, I think it’s a man, someone in your family who died of cancer? Again, people who come to psychics are desperate. They’ll hang meaning on a statement if you give them the tiniest hook on which to do it. There’s what I call the flimflam, where you make a statement with the opposite included: You’re usually a very confident person, but something has you rattled. Either way, then, you’re right.

  I take a deep breath and look at Ginny McCoy. “You and your son were especially close.”

  She nods, teary, and immediately I feel like a charlatan. I mean, what mother of a missing child would admit to anything less?

  “I’m getting a C, or an S—it’s the name of someone close to Henry. A playmate, maybe, or a teacher?”

  “Could it be a G?” she asks. “His teacher is Mrs. Gottfried.”

  And the poor woman is probably now under investigation by the FBI, thanks to me. I shift in my seat.

  Then suddenly I hear Lucinda whisper, Ocala. Bus—

  Shut up, Desmond reprimands her. She told us to get lost.

  But you can’t unring a bell. I turn to the McCoys with a dazzling smile. “Senator McCoy,” I say, “I have had a vision.”

  The Psy-Chicks sing the word with a hundred extra syllables, a gospel hallelujah.

  Ginny’s face has gone white as paper. “Is he—”

  “A vision of your little boy … alive and well,” I tell her. “He’s in Ocala.”

  She collapses into her husband’s arms and starts to cry so hard she cannot catch her breath.

  Senator McCoy looks absolutely stunned. “What—what happens now?”

  “We go to Florida,” I say.

  “That’s a wrap,” my director says, and I stand up.

  Marcy comes over, clapping, drawing me away from the McCoys. “Amazing. This is going to be incredible.”

  I hesitate, wondering if I should tell her that things were not calibrated the way they usually are when I have a paranormal experience. The energy was off, because of the substances the McCoys were taking. Hell’s bells, the energy was off because my spirit guides were madder than a wet cat. At the very least, I should let her know that calling my vision a vision is a stretch of the word. But Marcy is a model of efficiency, barking orders and directives. She has already arranged for a skeleton crew to follow us, reality-TV style, to Florida. McCoy has called over his chief of staff and is telling him to get the private jet ready. (Of course he has a private jet. But then, maybe after this airs, I’ll have one, too.)

  “When do we leave?” I ask Marcy.

  “Now,” she says. “Go get what you need.”

  All I need is Desmond and Lucinda, but if they don’t want to join me on this journey, there’s nothing I can do to make them. I can only hope that’s not the case.

  So I walk down the hall to pick up my purse and my coat, Felix stalking me like a shadow, and when I’m in the dressing room wiping the stage makeup off my face, I say, “I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean it. I need you two.”

  Before they can answer, however, my cell phone rings with a call from a blocked number. “This is Serenity,” I say.

  “I know.” There’s a beat of silence. “Why didn’t you take my calls?”

  “Betsey?” I guess correctly. “Where did you get this number?”

  “It’s not important,” she replies. “What you said the other day, about Jason and how he died—”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “But I gave you the message. That’s my job. I’m not supposed to go burn a flag in front of the White House or force the military to look into what happened—”

  “That’s just it,” Betsey says. “The army, they keep calling me. They want to sit down and just have a little chat.”

  “Well, that seems to be what Jason wanted.”

  “What about what I want?” she cries. “I came to you because I needed to know that he loved me. That he was with me the day I gave birth to JJ. That he died thinking of my face. That he died a hero, not because of some accident.” She spits out that last word like it is poison. “I lost my husband. I should get to hold on to my memories of him, don’t you think?”

  I am taken aback. “I … I don’t know what you want me to say.” I’d just told her what her husband wanted her to know.

  “How about that you’re sorry,” Betsey says. “For ruining my life.”

  I hang up the phone, my hand shaking. I don’t have to turn around to know that behind me, the wastebasket full of tissues I’d used when I was taking off my makeup has caught on fire.

  I take a vase full of lilies, yank out the flowers, and pour the water into the trash receptacle just as Felix knocks. I open the door to find him sniffing at the smoke and hand him my cell phone. “Get me a new unlisted number,” I say, and I walk down the hallway to the limo that will take me to Senator McCoy’s plane.

  The number one question I’m asked is if a person will reunite with a loved one, after death.

  Well, I hate to pee in your Cheerios, but it doesn’t work that way. The afterlife is all about overlapping planes. We all live in the same physical space, but on different metaphysical levels, and someone who’s passed before you might have reached a consciousness you haven’t yet. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. The sad truth is, they’re probably not together in the afterlife. Romeo dies because of someone else’s initial mistake—Friar Lawrence relying on the Verona postal service, when we all know they’re freaking government employees and delivery’s not guaranteed. Juliet, though, stabs herself, in the hope that she can be with Romeo again. Clearly, she messed up in this life. She’s going to have to deal with that in the soul world, and because of this, she is far more likely to bump into Friar Lawrence—who’s got his own mess to atone for—than into Romeo.

  Trust me. Before that big sweeping romantic reunion, Juliet has to figure out what she did wrong.

  Dealing with the paranormal is like wading into a dark, murky swamp. You may get bit in the ass by an alligator. But you’re going to go in there like you’re a crocodile hunter and do it anyway.

  That’s what I’m thinking as I sweat through my pantsuit in the bus terminal in Ocala, Florida, hoping that Desmond or Lucinda will offer me a morsel of direction.

  I begin to ma
ke bargains.

  If you let me find Henry, I will never think of anyone but my clients again.

  If you let me find Henry, I will never disrespect you.

  If you let me find Henry, I will let any spirit who has a message speak through me without setting any parameters. Any time of day or night.

  All this time I’d bitched and moaned about setting limits so that the paranormal chatter didn’t overtake my life, and it turns out that the only thing more terrifying than endless cacophony is absolute and utter silence from the other side.

  The cameras are rolling. Later, we would find out that we’d had over a 7.6 Nielsen syndicated rating—higher than Cleo!, higher even than Wheel of Fortune—more than twenty million people had gathered to watch this episode’s live feed. Also, because this is an open police case, we are accompanied by some of Ocala’s finest and a police dog. “He’s here,” I say, when we reach the bus station. “I can feel it.”

  This is a bald lie.

  With the McCoys in tow, I start walking, my hand held out before me like a divining rod. But really, I’m just doing that so that the police dog sniffs at my fingers, and maybe tracks a scent I can then follow. I turn a corner, and then another and another, until we are standing right back where we started.

  Please, I beg silently. Let me find the boy.

  I start out again tentatively, turning down a hallway I haven’t yet treaded. The cameras, and the McCoys, follow.

  At the end of the hallway is the men’s room. Beside me, the dog pulls on its leash. “This way,” I cry.

  I cannot believe I’m doing cold readings on a dog.

  “The bathroom?” Ginny cries. “Is he in there? Henry?”

  She starts to run, but before she can, the dog breaks free on its leash. It runs to the entrance of the bathroom and feints to the left, sniffing at a bank of lockers.

  The first one the dog touched was number 341. I point to it and turn to a cop. “Break the lock,” I say, and as soon as they do we all fall back from the stink of decaying flesh.

  My field of vision narrows, and stars burst at the edges. Everything is going black as I lean down, brace my hands on my knees, and vomit.

  What happens next explodes like fireworks before my eyes: The locker door opens. The stained suitcase is revealed, still seeping blood. The police dog’s tail is wagging madly. The way Ginny slumps to the ground and no one notices; the cameraman stumbling forward; the senator screaming in slow motion for him to turn the fucking camera off and the brawl that ensues.

  I walk away from the fray, from the body of that poor boy and his grieving parents. People grab at my sleeve as I go, and I hear Felix call out my name, but I move blindly through the crowd searching for air. I find it by ducking into a stairwell and running up to the roof of the building, where I stand under the splintered sun and sob.

  I am crying so hard I almost don’t hear it.

  Desmond’s voice, a whisper.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  My show is put on hiatus, but I am not the only one in free fall. Senator McCoy gets pulled over for drunk driving and assaults a cop. Ginny is found unconscious in the bathtub, and although everything is hush-hush, Page Six reports a whopping combo of sedatives and alcohol in her system. I am a punch line on Letterman’s top ten list, when, just a year ago, I told him he needed to beef up his security and a week later two men were arrested trying to break into his house.

  I ask Felix to drive me in to the studio to get something in my dressing room, but in reality, I am going to clear it out. I don’t have to talk to Marcy to know that my show—and my career—is over.

  I take a box, and I am in the process of stuffing all my personal items into it when Bethany comes in. “I’m not here,” I tell her. “You never saw me.”

  She is beaming. “I just had to tell you. Last week? When … everything … happened and Marcy sent us all home early, my car died. It was, like, the worst day of my life. I had to take the bus home … and this lady bumped into me with her kid’s stroller and she knocked my computer bag over and all my stuff fell out. And I was trying to keep all my stuff from rolling down the aisle and I was really pissed off at that lady, who didn’t even say I’m sorry, when this guy started gathering my pens and my sunglasses and everything. I was mortified.” She hesitates. “His name is Charles. He wasn’t from Finland or Norway. But he was eating a cheese Danish, and we talked the whole way home.”

  I force a smile. “I’m happy for you.” I pick up the box and walk around her.

  “I just wanted you to know that,” Bethany says, to my back. “I wanted you to know I totally believe in you.”

  I don’t turn around. “That means a lot to me,” I murmur, and I wonder how long it will be before the world is divided into those who remember when I had a Gift, and those who know categorically that I don’t.

  When I get home the fire department is in front of my house, hosing down the bushes that line my driveway, which are blazing. Felix shakes his head. “Miz S,” he says. “The Big Guy up there needs to cut you a break.”

  At this point, I’m practically expecting things to burst into flame around me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the irony, either, of a psychic who’s lost her mojo yet is haunted by a poltergeist. I get out of the car and talk to one of the firemen. He’s old, older than me, with weathered brown skin that looks like he’s spent too much time being toasted by blazes like this one. “It’s the drought,” he tells me, as his colleagues spray a wall of water, destroying the landscaping that cost as much as a sedan. “Your lawn isn’t the first to go up in flames.”

  He tells me that I really shouldn’t go into the house until it’s been cleared as safe. Felix asks me if I’d like to drive around the block a few times or go out to dinner, but I shake my head. Instead, I wander through the gate to the backyard, where I have a little tranquillity pool and a rock garden that are meant to be all Buddhist and soothing but that, in reality, I am way too busy to enjoy. In the middle of it, on an expanse of smooth white pebbles, is the charred kitchen table that Felix removed last week.

  I sit down on a wrought-iron chair and stare at it.

  It’s funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of it.

  I might as well be a ghost.

  Last week, I was famous.

  This week, if I speak, no one will listen.

  Last week, I was rich.

  This week, I’d trade everything I own for one genuine psychic thought.

  I have spent a lifetime telling the living to appreciate the people you love, because you run out of time sooner than you think. I have made a career, in fact, out of providing five more minutes for those who didn’t listen to me. And now, I understand intimately how you don’t realize what you have until you lose it. Maybe holding something precious at a distance is the only way to measure its value.

  The fireman I have been speaking to opens the gate and takes a seat beside me. He smells of creosote and char. When he smiles, his face pleats over and over, laugh lines like origami. “Miz Jones,” he says. “Could I ask you a few questions?”

  “So you know who I am,” I murmur.

  “Right now everyone knows who you are,” he says bluntly. “But I knew before. I used to watch your show when I was on disability for a bad back last year.” He clasps his hands between his knees. “Twenty-something years ago I got a phone call one night from my son. We’d been estranged for a while—he’d gotten messed up with a bad gang in L.A. The line was scratchy, I could barely hear him. He said he wanted me to know he loved me, and he was sorry for screwing up his life.”

  “That’s considerate.”

  “No, it was terrifying. Because my son had been murdered three days earlier in a drug deal gone bad. We’d buried him that afternoon.”

  “You sure it w
as your son?”

  He gives me a look. “I don’t have to convince you, do I?”

  Do you? I wonder.

  “I’m just saying, if you’ve had contact with a spirit, you believe. If you don’t, one day you will. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes. Skeptics keep the rest of us honest.”

  The fireman nods, considering this. “You smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Any of your household staff smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone got a grudge against you?”

  “Um,” I say. “The entire Democratic Party?”

  He laughs. “I don’t know if they’d try to burn your house down.”

  “You think this was arson?”

  He shakes his head. “I think it was bad luck, and dry conditions. But I have to do my due diligence and ask.” The fireman notices the kitchen table, its blackened legs and scarred top. “What happened there?”

  I smile faintly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I think I have a poltergeist in my house. A really angry ghost who likes to make his presence known by burning things. He used to be a lieutenant in the army, and he was killed by friendly fire, but the story was changed to make him look like a hero rather than give another soldier a bad rap.”

  The fireman looks up at the sky, which is the color of a bruise, with stars just beginning to wink back at us. “Hey, listen,” he says, and I realize he is addressing my poltergeist. “I’m a vet, too. Nam. So I get it. The things that happen over there are things that don’t belong in this world or the next. Sometimes life isn’t fair. And I guess sometimes the afterlife isn’t, either. But don’t blame this nice lady.”

  We both sit for a moment. I don’t know what we’re waiting for. A sign, maybe? A hint that those words might make the difference mine couldn’t. “Well,” the fireman says. “I don’t know if that helped.”