Incubus Moon (3 page)

I wanted to, but instead focused on the busy but moving 110 Freeway.

My head, my everything, felt as though the British National Rugby Team had used and abused it all night long. Also, my injured palm was itching something wicked beneath the gauze bandage. I’d invented a lame but effective story about cutting it on broken picture frame glass in the basement, because the truth was entirely more bizarre and unsettling than the fiction.

The other major aspect of last night’s drama I’d intentionally left out over breakfast with Mark that morning? My hook-up-gone-wrong with the Texan. He wouldn’t understand.

Let’s face it, I could scarcely wrap my mind around taking a guy home for sex!

However, fear of a homophobic reaction from Mark played no part whatsoever in my omission of the truth. His West Hollywood design firm employed gay men and women and, to my knowledge, he interacted with them just fine. He was traditional, though. It was easier to be accepting of how others lived when they weren’t family members or your best friend.

In any event, why stick my neck out to reveal something about myself that in all likelihood would never happen again?

Besides, I’d made it this far without having contemplated sex with another man. I was fairly confident that I could get through the next thirty years in a similar vein.

Be that as it may, it felt weird to be keeping such a big secret from him.

“I mean it, Austin. Pull this jalopy over, pound the goddamned steering wheel, and scream your fuckin’ head off. Trust me, you’ll feel a lot better afterwards.”

“Then what? Hate her forever for lying to me?”

“Maybe,” he responded evenly. “Or at least until the day you realize that Laura was the best mom in the whole world—next to mine, of course—and choose to forgive her.”

On a rational level I knew he was right. I’d been determined to use booze and slut-avoidance as a means to escape my grief over her death. Laura and I’d had a great life together. She’d loved and supported me unconditionally, and her memory deserved nothing less than my loving gratitude in return. On an emotional level, though, all I could feel was that a big, fat rug had been pulled out from under me, which it had!

Our exit, Avenue 52, was coming up fast. “Almost there,” I said.

Now it was Mark’s turn to look tentative. Reaching into the scuffed cup holder in the console separating us, he plucked out the business card I’d slotted there and read aloud the swirly print on the front of it. “Psychic Joy, your Mystic Rose. Seriously? This is how you wanna spend your thirtieth birthday?”

Joy Ebersole (a/k/a Psychic Joy) and I had met by sheer coincidence shortly after Laura’s passing. Not surprisingly, Joy didn’t believe in chance encounters. I needed her guidance and, as a result, the Universe made certain our paths intersected. Truth was, for the past few
weeks Joy Ebersole had been serving more as therapist to me than actual clairvoyant.

“It is.” I downshifted and braked to a shuddering stop at the end of the short off ramp. My poor Jeep really had seen better days. “And as my best friend I expect your full cooperation. I just wish Christie were here.”

“So my gorgeous
shiksa
of a wife could watch my
mashugana
best bud squander his inheritance on a con artist?” Mark used his hands a lot to talk, not unlike every other loveable member of his Brooklyn-based, Italo-Jewish family. He was the Scully to my Mulder. If he couldn’t touch something, it wasn’t real.

“You’ll just have to see for yourself,” I told him. “Joy’s the real deal.”

Mark sighed, tossed the card onto the rear seat, and then rested his hand against the back of my headrest. “Seems to me you’d be better off blowing some dough on a power wash and some car deodorizer. When did you become such a slob?”

He was referring to the increasingly ripe smell coming from my open gym bag in the back seat. In addition to this, a dozen or so empty, plastic water bottles littered the rear floorboard, where the remnants of several fast food bags also lived, a fact about which I
never
planned to tell my personal trainer.

“I’ve been sublimating,” I admitted. “And yes, it’s probably time to start thinking about trading the Jeep in on something newer.”

“And safer,” he said with an anxious laugh. “I keep waiting for bottom to drop out.”

Mark had pretty much summed up the way I felt about my life of late, which further served to underscore how much I needed his support, along with this distraction today.

I rocked my head in a slow, side-to-side motion to work out some of the tension I hadn’t realized had settled there. A few minutes later,
we were winding our way up a steep, narrow street in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, before coming to a stop in front of a California bungalow with peeling white paint and faded purple trim. The house slouched more than stood in a yard overgrown with bougainvillea and yellowing grass.

Once I’d killed the engine, Mark exited the Jeep with a resigned sigh. He leaned against the passenger door with folded arms and waited for me.

I got out, too, and moved around to the front of the vehicle. “Look at it this way. You’re here strictly for moral support and as a thirtieth birthday gesture to your best friend. Think you can handle that?” I said it with a wink.

Despite his skepticism, the warm Los Angeles sunshine was doing much to buoy my spirits. I craved sunlight, always had. Mark was my polar opposite, which made our first-year, college dorm living situation quite a challenge.

He nodded and pushed off the Jeep’s dusty door. “Lead the way.”

Last night’s dream made an impromptu push at my consciousness, so I pushed it right back. This was
my
day. Weirdness was not invited to the party. “After you...”

Mark opened the rusted chain-link gate and moved along the uneven concrete path leading to the front porch. I couldn’t help admiring his athletic frame as he walked ahead of me, his deep olive skin a complement to the peach Polo shirt he was wearing, his unruly mop of dark brown curls catching in the light breeze. The man was not only handsome but looked every inch his Southern Italian ancestry.

Weird. I’d never given much consideration to his physical appearance before now.

“Behold, the Great and Powerful Oz.” He indicated the plump tabby cat curled up in a patch of sunlight on the porch swing. “Sure I can’t talk you into doing something else?”

“Welcome,” a female voice announced from within.

The screen door sagged open with a creak to reveal a large, middle-aged woman with long, chestnut hair, smiling eyes, and dressed in a multi-color Hawaiian muumuu. She greeted me with outstretched arms and I let myself sink into a warm, invisible cloud of (what else?) rose-scented perfume. On anyone else the fragrance might have smelled cheap. To me, it added to her off-beat charm and the utter sense of calm I experienced whenever I was in her presence.

“Joy, this is Mark.”

She gave me a final squeeze and stood back to assess him, a little coolly, I thought. I’d never seen Joy anything other than cheerful. “Nice to meet you.”

Mark offered her a circumspect nod. “Likewise.”

“C’mon in boys and make yourselves at home. Just gimmie a minute or two to finish setting up the reading room. My client before you ran a little over.” At which point she turned and hurried down the narrow hallway to the rear of the small house.

Once Joy was out of earshot, Mark whispered, “Laura wouldn’t approve of this.”

The Godzilla-sized headache that wasn’t going away any time soon mule-kicked me.

“But keeping adoption secrets from me all these years is completely acceptable?” Mark had told me to take off the Happy Mask. Wish granted.

“Okay. She messed up.” He said it with upturned palms. “I’m in your corner on this one. She also adored you. Doesn’t that make you feel, I dunno, like you’re disrespecting her memory by paying some charlatan to find out who your real folks are?”

I loved Mark Gold a lot. On rare occasions, like this one, I didn’t like him very much. I’d been sucker-punched and needed his support. Why didn’t he get that?

Images of last night’s debacle with the Texan dropped in uninvited again. My mother’s room—Laura’s room—flashed behind my eyes. In it, I saw myself lunge for that shard of mirror, recalled the unbelievable speed with which I’d done it and the cold intent behind what I’d planned to do with that sliver of glass.

Had I acted on what instinct demanded of me in that moment, the explosive rage driving me, Mark and I would be standing in a very different place right now.

“I miss her, too, Buddy.”

The sensation of strong arms wrapping around me re-anchored me in the present.

It was a rare gesture for Mark, and one I sorely needed. So I stood there and let him hold me, breathing in the fresh, clean scent of him.

And just like that, I felt centered again.

Mark Gold certainly ticked me off from time to time, but he could just as easily calm me down. I guess that was what true friendship was all about. The good, the bad, and the everything in between.

He broke the hug to retrieve a buzzing cell phone from his front jeans’ pocket. “Hey, babe.” After a brief pause, I watched his brown eyes grow large and bright. “That’s awesome!” When he looked over at me and some of that light faded. “Yeah, I’ll tell him. See ya soon.”

“You’re bailing, aren’t you?”

He nodded with a not-so-convincing grimace. “Chris says happy birthday, by the way. And yes, I feel like a complete shithead.” I wasn’t inclined to disagree but waited for an explanation. “A potential client needs to see us right away. We’re in the running to design and build a five-star restaurant for him in Santa Monica. Getting this job would put us on the map.”

Selfish me wanted to guilt him into staying. Best friend me shoved his metaphoric violin back in its case. “You need the Jeep?”

He leaned in to wrap big hands around either side of my head and kissed my forehead. “Thanks for the offer, Buddy, but Chris is in Silver-lake. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Psychic Joy’s ready now,” she called out from down the hall. “And Mark? You’re gonna knock it out of the park at your meeting.”

We both exchanged quizzical glances.

“Told you she’s the real deal.”

“Yeah, and totally eavesdropping in on our conversation.” Gold skepticism was firmly in place once more. “I’m gonna wait outside. See you tonight at dinner?”

“Tell that client he’s an idiot if he doesn’t hire the two of you.”

“From your lips!” he called out over his shoulder on his way to the front door.

“Don’t let it get to you. It wasn’t meant to be, dear,” Joy said upon my entrance into the small bedroom she used as a spiritual reading room.

A cluster of white candles burned at the center of a small, square table and an old light fixture above added extra illumination. Drawn blinds concealed two casement windows and spicy incense hung thick in the air, tickling the back of my throat.

“He’s a non-believer. Right now we need all the positive energy we can muster to lift the veil of mystery surrounding your adoption.”

Understandably disappointed, I settled onto a wooden folding chair opposite her and awaited instruction, taking in the familiar paintings of Joy’s spirit guide, an imposing white wolf that graced the tan, stucco walls, along with half a dozen fanciful dream catchers and
a couple of framed, autographed photos of cast members from the original
Star Trek
television series. Evidently, Psychic Joy was a die-hard Trekker.

“Before we get started, please go ahead and make your donation.” She pointed to a narrow, silver box also positioned on the tabletop.

For an instant, doubt reared its ugly head. Could Mark be right? Was Joy just a shrewd woman who knew how to read unhappy people and tell them what they wanted to hear?

I let the reservation come and go. It might be irrational, but instinct told me to trust Joy Ebersole. So I placed sixty dollars into the little tin, and then watched her retrieve a pen and pad of paper from a drawer on her side of the table.

“I’ve been meditating on this all week.” Her silver bracelets chinked down her arm as she pushed aside the stack of Tarot cards to make room for these other items. “Each time I make a little progress, the shroud thickens and I get booted from Spirit Land. Which is why I think we’d be better served today by doing some automatic writing.”

On previous visits, I’d learned that automatic writing allowed disembodied entities to access a medium’s body. The departed conveyed messages to the living who, in turn, benefited from these otherworldly communications. Joy told me to think of it as the written version of a divine speaker box.

I smiled inwardly, knowing that Mark would’ve kicked me under the table after hearing that particular explanation.

She reached over to give my hand a reassuring pat, and then recited a cleansing prayer. She claimed that this ensured that all energy coming through for us would be of the
White Light
variety—the light of Jesus Christ. Joy Ebersole granted contact only to those messengers who walked in His Light.