Harbinger (12 page)

“Naturally.”

“Liar.”

“I almost never lie.”

“Are you going to eat all those fries?”

“Yes!”

She made a grab but I slid my cardboard tray out of her reach. So she went for the ribs, but in a tickle fight I would murder her, and she knew it and backed off, laughing. One of those seagulls that has learned the trick of hovering arrived above our table. I flipped a yellow fry with a red tip into the air. The bird caught it and immediately broadcast a telepathic message of feast to the rest of the local bird population. We left them the remains of our dinner and went home.

In bed our love-making was a blender, turning us into something like Nicholellis. At such moments we required only one soul between us. That was the meaning of the original Oz bubble dreams, I think. Afterwards we held each other like children.

I awoke alone in the dark. Hearing whispery voices and music, I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of boxers and a sweatshirt. Nichole had rolled my old television set out of the closet and plugged it in. She was curled up on the sofa with a glass of white wine, watching an old movie. Judy Garland in soft focus, the volume almost inaudible. The phone was on the cushion next to Nichole’s foot.

“Oh, hi,” she said. Her voice sounded a little choked.

“Sad movie?”

“Sappy.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Please.”

I got a glass, moved the phone, and sat beside her.

“I was going to call my mother,” she said, “but it seemed too late.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah.” Nichole shrugged. “I had a bad dream. Probably I’m as kooky as she is.”

“You’re not that kooky.”

She looked at me seriously. “Ellis, I love you.”

“And I love you.”

“I don’t want to leave you again.”

“I didn’t know you were planning to.”

“It’s not up to me, is it?”

I caressed her cheek, but she just looked at me. After a moment she turned back to the movie and sipped her wine. It was very quiet in the house, and Judy Garland sounded a long way off, and Time was not obliterated.

One day Ron Stone paid us a visit. Nichole had moved right in. It was a natural inevitability. I quickly grew accustomed to finding her installed in my favorite chair with a book whenever I returned home from my espresso gig. She loved my chaotic library, otherwise known as the house. Books occupied every available space. I believed in the salubrious proximity of books. And even though I was a slow reader, I was one guy who would probably get to read everything.

I’d kept working at Starbucks because I enjoyed it and also because Nichole came to our soul-blender without many funds.

“No alimony?” I’d stupidly said.

“I never wanted his money.” Curtly. And I apologized for asking and she forgave me.

Anyway I arrived home after working the morning shift and heard shouting while I was still on the sidewalk. I got through the front door fast, and the shouting ceased, like a switch thrown.

Ron Stone loomed over Nichole, his head turned in my direction. He was big and a pretty good loomer. He didn’t look angry, though. It was more like anguish pulling his face down. I immediately recognized his torment, being well familiar with its source. He was in love with Nichole, and she was telling him to forget it.

Seeing me, his face underwent a rapid transformation. The slack went out of his jaw (it looked like he hadn’t shaved in two days), his eyes narrowed, and he squared his shoulders and pointed at me.

“This is who you want? He’s a freak, Nichole. What’s he going to be to you in ten years? Twenty years?”

“Hey lighten up with that freak stuff,” I said.

He ignored me.

“I’m sorry, Ron,” Nichole said. “I really am.”

“I’m saying think about what you’re doing, that’s all. Think about it.”

“I have thought about it. You better go now.”

The starch went out of him and he sagged again. A big man in his late forties with too many cheeseburgers haunting his gut and a ridiculous, wispy brush of stranded hair above his forehead. I felt for him but also experienced a zap of male dominance at his defeat. When he shouldered past me on his way out, shoving me a little, I said, unkindly:

“Better luck next time.”

His head came around like a lion’s, ferocious, closely followed by his fist. It was a fist in proportion to the rest of him: Big. It connected with my jaw, snapping me around and off my feet. Stars clouded up in my vision as I fell. A great many stars. And a rushing wind.

I opened my eyes, flat on my back on the faux Persian rug. My jaw hurt. My head throbbed dully. Some punch. The room was dim. Weird sunset light gilded the half-tilted Levelor blinds on the big living room window. Which was wrong, somehow. Where had the rest of the afternoon gone? Stone had clobbered me, and Nichole—

Nichole.

I sat up suddenly — which was a mistake. My head throbbed dreadfully. I groaned, cradled my forehead. Nichole was sitting on the sofa, shadowy, in the kind of light cooling embers produce.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m wonderful.”

“Where’s Stone?”

“Wherever Stones go, I suppose.”

“I feel wonky.”

“That’s a funny word,” she said.

“I just made it up, I think.”

“What’s it mean?” Nichole’s voice sounded different, pitched too low. Everything felt off-pitch.

“It means the woozy feeling you get after a private detective conks you on the head. Wonky.”

She laughed. “That’s so
good
, Ellis!”

“Thanks.”

I started to get up then had a better idea and remained on the rug. For the moment I was far too wonked to stand.

“Your boyfriend packs a hell of a wallop,” I said.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Sorry, I mean your detective.”

“Not my detective, either. Ellis, I’m not Nichole. I’m Adriel.”

“What?” I rubbed my temples, which did nothing to alleviate the throbbing. “I’m not really tracking you,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“First it might help if we clarify where ‘here’ is,” she said.

“Here in my living room,” I said. “Jesus I feel strange. What’s going on?”

“I want you to remember a couple of things, Ellis.”

“All right.”

“Everything is simultaneous.”

“What?”

“Everything is simultaneous.”

The sunset light was extremely weird. Deep burnt orange with a smoky quality. Pumpkin light. I didn’t like it one bit. It reminded me in an unpleasant way of Halloween.

I got up on my feet. It wasn’t easy. I felt heavy. My legs were shaky. Adriel stood up from the sofa. She was beautiful. She looked about twenty-two years old, though I knew for a fact that she was past seventy and the matriarch of EC: Evolution Consciousness, a world-wide movement of those who believed the human race was on the brink of an evolutionary leap.
And she was at least seventy
. Oh, what the hell. Everything was simultaneous, right?

I felt drawn to the window. With the blinds tilted I couldn’t see what lay outside in the pumpkin light, but I had a feeling it wasn’t 22nd Place North East.

Adriel took my hand. “Let’s have a look,” she said, reading my thoughts.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to.

“No,” I said.

“It’s all right if you don’t want to.”

“Good. Because I don’t.” I was afraid. “What’s out there?”

“It’s up to you, Ellis.”

“That’s a wonky thing to say.”

“Just remember,” she said and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Everything is simultaneous, and it’s up to me,” I said.

“Right.”

“My head really hurts.”

“Baby, I’ll get you some ice.”

I made a kind of strangled cry. Because it was Nichole who had spoken. And I was sitting on the rug again, and the room was filled with ordinary afternoon light.

A half hour later the phone rang. We were sitting at the kitchen table and I was holding a cold pack against my bruised jaw. She picked up the receiver, said hello, listened a moment, and started crying. I put the cold pack down and reached for her.

“What’s wrong?”

“My mommy died.”

Twenty-six years later I was sitting by myself in a Zingbar
, looking out the window at the reflective copper towers of Bellevue, Washington. The bartender, a stunning redhead with fashionably flayed earlobes and the latest “mood irises,” handed me a Zingcup with a sanitary disposable inhaler attached. I thanked her and held my left hand up so she could scan my debit nail.

“You’re welcome,” she said, her eyes coloring speculatively toward carmine.

The cup was cool in my hand. I fitted the inhaler over my nose and breathed deep. It was Taiwanese Zing and the real deal, no Republic of China adulterations. A junk wind blew through my head, clearing out the detritus of stress and fear.

A hand touched lightly on my shoulder. “Mr. Herrick?”

I turned. A woman of about fifty years with short razored iron gray hair and—believe it or not—glasses.

“I’m Herrick,” I said.

“I’m Dale Posenjak.”

We shook hands.

“You’re the second private detective I’ve ever talked to.”

She sat on a stool next to me. “Did the first one give you good results?”

“Depends on how you define results. He slugged me on the jaw and knocked me cold. That was a long time ago, however, and you don’t look like much of a slugger.”

She smiled. “You might be surprised.”

“Can I buy you a Zing?”

“No thanks. How can I help you, Mr. Herrick?”

“I want you to find someone for me.”

“Who and why?”

“My wife, Nichole. She’s seventy-four years old. Until a month ago she was living here in Bellevue with me, in a condo we shared.”

“And where do you think she might be now?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t need you, would I?”

The bartender touched my hand. “Another of the same?”

“Yes.”

She brought me another Taiwan Zing. I inhaled and the junk wind blew. I felt
clear
.

Dale Posenjak said, “Aren’t you supposed to wait a few minutes between those things?”

“I rarely do what I’m supposed to do,” I said. “Besides it’s non-addictive.”

“That’s what they say. Does Nichole want to be found?”

“Not by me.”

“Why not?”

“She’s being a martyr.”

My detective nodded. She retrieved a stick of gum out of her breast pocket, stripped the foil off with her thumbnail, pushed the gum into her mouth and started chewing, thoughtfully.

“I don’t think there’s much time,” I said. “Will you take the job?”

“What’s the time factor?”

“She’s dying.”

Posenjak chewed her gum. She had very steady eyes and they never left my face. I wanted another Zing. My head kept filling with junk.

“You haven’t said why you want to find her.”

“I just want to talk to her again. She didn’t say good-bye.”

“She sounds old enough to do as she pleases.”

“Jesus, do you always try this hard to avoid gainful employment?”

She chewed and smiled. “Not always.”

“Then why now?”

“Just curious. According to EC lore you two are halves of a bifurcated soul.”

I stared at her. Junk clattered in my head. “Oh, Christ, don’t tell me you’re an Evolution Consciousness type! You could have saved us both some trouble by—”

“I’m not an EC-er. I had a brief flirtation with the movement ten years ago, that’s all. I’m a sensitive. I was one before it was acceptable to be one, so naturally I sought the like-minded wherever I could find them, even among the ranks of the Evolutionaries.”

“How many Harbingers does it take to make a forest?” I asked.

She stopped chewing and grinned. “You can save the Harbinger jokes. I’ve never seen one and I don’t believe anyone else has either. I told you: I’m not an EC-er.”

“Okay. Will you help me find Nichole?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“It is funny, though, when you think about it.”

“What is?” I asked.

“We live in a world Adriel Roberts predicted with fair accuracy. Look at us. The Regeneration Man and a psychic detective sitting here talking, and not too many folks would find that weird. The weird is
accepted
, it’s as acknowledged as the periodic terrorist bombings and Quantum computer technology. People believe in things their parents would have scoffed at and their grandparents would have laughed at outright and maybe even had you locked up for espousing. The world has moved toward some kind of heightened consciousness.”

I really wanted another Zing.

“Look, I thought you said you weren’t an EC-er.”

“I’m not. But I’m not blind, either. Everyone accepts my psychic abilities and I can even advertise them in the Yellow Pages. I’ve read all about you, Herrick. When you first made the national scene you were like some kind of miracle boy wonder. A lot of people flat out denied you were real. When the proof was produced it was like a
boost
or something. Some folks moved ahead and accepted a new paradigm, others closed themselves off. You were impossible. Now you could approach anybody in this bar and identify yourself and no one would doubt you for what you are. One generation back and that wouldn’t have been the case, no matter how many fingers you hacked off. The terminator line for the impossible has moved.”

“Ms. Posenjak, maybe this isn’t going to work out.”

I singled the bartender and pointed at my Zing cup. She nodded and brought me a fresh one, picked up my empty, detached the disposable inhaler from it and plugged the cup into a refill slot behind the bar. Above the slot were a few yellow slashes: a kanji character.

“I’m your best chance of finding Nichole,” my detective said. “That’s why you called me, right?”

I picked up the fresh Zingcup but didn’t inhale it yet. “Listen,” I said. “Whatever you believe, I don’t care. I used to think all that stuff was true, about two souls in one. I never bought into the Harbingers, but I believed in Nichole and me. All I want to do now is find her and be with her, because I think she’s dying and is trying to spare me that. I don’t want to be spared. I don’t need it. All right? So if you can do your job and find her, that’s great. But there’s nothing else here for you. Consciousness evolution is bullshit. Okay?”