Psychic Junkie (19 page)

On the other hand, it could be nothing. Most likely, I tried telling myself, it was nothing. She’s probably just saying hi again, talking about shoes and cupboards, in which case I’d be needlessly torturing myself with the idea that it was
something
. Whatever. There was no way around it. I had to open the damn thing. So I did.

Of course it was in German. Irritated that the Aryan Goddess couldn’t at least write in English and hence make my job just a touch easier, I went to the site that offered translations, cut and pasted, and sat back. Bam, there it was. I started reading. All pretty much harmless drunken Shakespearean chitchat: A mutual friend of theirs was “a mountain without a tree,” for everything “stout ales dilemma fixed,” she also was quite sorry because she’d had no idea his “treasure was over thirty, quite a burden doubled,” how to deal with such “an old basket of eggs,” and “niceness was seeing him day other.”

Oh, no. No, she didn’t. An “old basket of eggs”? She called my eggs old? My eggs might have been aging, but they weren’t old! They still worked, I was pretty sure.
And I am not over thirty! I am thirty!
I wanted to kill her. She must be a
baby
to view thirty as ancient. A baby with no wrinkles, no cellulite, and no flippin’ clue. This was what I got for getting involved with a twenty-five-year-old. Of course his recent past involved
children
. Wait. I read that last part again. Niceness was seeing him day other?

Amid my confusion (What day other? How had she seen him if she lived in Germany? What was she doing here? Could he have gone to Germany? Why hadn’t he told me he’d seen her? Why in secret? What had happened?), I felt the overwhelming urge to puke. Puking is my natural response to any kind of anxiety or emotional turmoil and, in addition to my neurotic need to act, was one of the main reasons I could never be a paramedic or a cop or in any other profession that deals with stress. While others valiantly step up to the plate and perform heroic rescues and feats, I would arrive on scene, promptly keel over, puke, and for the rest of the day need to be fed saltines and ginger ale at hourly intervals. And now, having just read that my boyfriend had seen the Aryan Goddess the other day, keel over was exactly what I did—just as soon as I’d hurled myself into the bathroom. Congratulating myself for having bought such a soft bathroom rug—my best and most appreciated purchase—I stared at the water in the bowl and cursed myself, Wilhelm, the Aryan Goddess, spyware in general, and, for good measure, Hugo Boss.

After a while I regained my composure. I had to deal with this. I couldn’t curl into the fetal position, play dead, and later awake to find none of this had happened. No, this involved action. Unfortunately, Wilhelm had said he might return that night, once he’d saved the day at work, so there was no telling how much time I had.
Lord, give me strength,
I implored.
Give me the strength I need to read the rest of his e-mails.

I took a few severely deep breaths, almost passed out, and then returned to the computer. Heart racing, I searched through more of his recent e-mails, but found nothing that would explain the Aryan Slut’s existence or intentions. This situation, I knew, was why one should never snoop. No matter how I spun it, I was pretty much guilty. I couldn’t exactly phone him at work and say, “Hi, honey. So, with the best of intentions I managed to get your e-mail password and was checking your e-mails to, uh, see if I could get any hints for what to buy you for your birthday in eight months, when I came across an e-mail from some sweet girl in Germany who mentioned she saw you the other day, and I just wanted to know WHO THE FUCK SHE IS AND WHY YOU FUCKING KEPT HER A SECRET.” Nope. I could safely rule out that approach.

Naturally this was a job for psychics. I had to hand this over to the professionals. So I called Erlin, who smoothly told me not to worry, she was just a friend. At first I felt better, but then something inside me clued in to the fact that “Don’t worry” was all he ever said. In order to believe someone when they say you shouldn’t worry, they sometimes need to tell you that you
should
worry. At the very least you need to know they’re
capable
of telling you to worry. Was “Don’t worry” what he told everyone? A stock response? Was he not paying attention here?
My boyfriend’s got an Aryan mistress!

After spending almost forty bucks to learn that Erlin would most likely tell me not to worry even if I were sobbing about a man in my living room with a maniacal glint in his eye and an AK-47 in his arms, I knew I needed a second opinion. My trusty “Psychics I Like and Why” document in hand, I scanned my options and picked two more. Of course, both had vastly different takes on my future. This, I noticed, tended to be a trend when I was freaking out: Every answer was maddeningly different. It was almost as if the universe couldn’t concentrate with me down here on earth being such an entertaining mess, perhaps couldn’t come up with a straight answer because my moaning or crying or wailing was just too flipping funny. And alas, if there weren’t a psychic consensus, I was pretty much on my own. I had to think of something.

And that, of course, was right when Wilhelm called to tell me he was on his way back. I surveyed the living room; the couch’s pillows haphazard and flung around, tissues crumpled and scattered, my list of psychics spread out on the floor to allow for easy viewing. Everything was a mess. I didn’t want him to come over. I was nowhere near done freaking out. I had at least another two or three hours left in me.

And then inspiration struck. “Hey, Wilhelm,” I said casually. “I was just on the phone with Gina, and she mentioned she saw you driving the other day.”

He laughed, oblivious. “Really? It’s amazing what a small town L.A. is.”

“Yeah, totally. Anyhow. She said you were in the car with some girl.”

“What? What girl?”

I must say, he sounded genuinely surprised.
Shit.
“I don’t know. That’s what I was wondering. You know, I was just curious. It’s not a big deal. It’s just funny.”

“I have no idea. I wasn’t in the car with anyone. Are you sure it was me she saw? Or was it someone like me? What was I wearing?”

Oh, for crying out loud.
“Never mind. I’m sure she was confused. She gets like that. What with being
in love
and
so happy
.”

He told me he needed to stop at the store for some baby potatoes, and that was it. He was on his way, and I was at a loss. For damage control I called Gina and brought her up to speed. “I saw him driving with another girl?” she asked.

“Yes, you did.”

“Okay. Just in case he wonders, what’d she look like?”

“Like your typical Aryan whore.”

“And that would be six feet tall, blond, and gorgeous?”

“That would be it.”

“Got it. Hey, know what you need to do?”

I said nothing, since I did know what I needed to do. I needed to fly to Germany, find this girl, kidnap her, and enlist some CIA-type tactics—no, scratch that;
Republican Guard
-type tactics—to figure out exactly what she was up to with my boyfriend. That and I needed to hook Wilhelm up to a lie detector and start the inquisition. Oh, and while I was at it, I needed to forever ban him from the Internet, the postal service, and the telephone.

“You play psychic.”

“Excuse me?”

“You guys have talked about this stuff; he believes in it. So you pretend like you had a dream about him, about him and some other girl. You tell him all about it. Pretend you’re really upset—”

“I
am
upset.”

“Fine, so be upset and make him think you psychically knew of Nadja’s—”

“Don’t say her name.”

“Of
the Aryan Goddess’s
existence—”

“No. She’s no longer the Aryan Goddess. She’s the Aryan Whore.”

“Okay, okay. So you essentially bring up
the Aryan Whore
without admitting what you did. Which, I must say, was very bad.”

“I know; I’m aware.”

“This worked for me once, when I found out a bunch of info on some guy I had a date with. It turned out one of my friends worked at the same company he did, and she told me all this shit, which of course he didn’t know I knew. So on our date I got a bit tipsy and decided to mess with him. I told him I was psychic and started rattling off all these things about him, down to the fact that he’d recently been on house arrest.”

“You went on a date with a guy who’d been on house arrest?”

“It was during my bad-boy stage. He used to be a model and was absolutely gorgeous. It was just the one date, though, which was just as well, ’cause he obviously wasn’t relationship material. He even had a tattoo across his lower stomach that said ‘Pervert.’”

“That’s pretty spelled out.”

“I know. Point is, though, he totally bought it. He flipped out. He thought I was psychic. Of course I scared him off and never saw him again, but I went overboard with the predictions. I was
trying
to freak him out.”

“That’s an interesting first-date tactic.”

“Yeah, then I got him drunk and painted his nails pink. In general guys don’t have nail polish remover at home, so he had to go in to work like that.” She laughed. “My bad-boy stage coincided with my angry stage.”

Play psychic. It wasn’t a bad idea. How else was I going to confront him? Of course, having just asked about the mystery girl in the car, I couldn’t exactly claim to have also had a dream about a girl. He’d get suspicious. I’d have to give it some time.

I made it till the next morning. As I watched him sleep, so peaceful, so innocent, a small puddle of drool on his pillow and his sparse hair locked and in the upright position, I debated over approaches. Would I tell him the dream freaked me out? Made me mad? Scared? Sad? The words “old basket of eggs” streaked through my mind. Damnit. I was pissed. I got out of bed and went to the kitchen, where I furiously paced till I heard Wilhelm staggering down the hall.

“Hi, honey,” I said, my words laced with a top note of sweetness, a middle note of challenge, and a base note of pure fury. A smile plastered on my face, I opened the refrigerator door. “Do you want some
eggs
? I have some, but they might be
old
.”

“Are they rotten?”

My eyes narrowed. “No. They’re not
that
old.”

“We don’t have to have eggs; we can have something else.”

I slammed the door shut. “Fine.”

“I can make au gratin potatoes?”

“Yeah. You do that.”

I watched him peel the potatoes, then start to slice them. What remained of his hair was still upright, though a few strands had ventured sideways. Poor guy hadn’t even had time to take a shower before I’d accosted him and forced him to cook. I had to calm down.
Calm,
I thought.
Use the Good Dog Voice.
“I’m sorry, honey. I guess I’m in a bad mood.”

He nodded. “I know. They’re just eggs. Who cares if they’re old?”

I smiled. “That’s sweet. Not necessarily true, but sweet.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just had this horrible nightmare last night. I think it’s still with me. You know how your dreams sometimes affect your moods? In it there was this girl in Germany who was in love with you.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, it was crazy.” I rolled my eyes as if to say, “I know, I’m just so wacky” and then said, “So there was this girl who lived there, and I guess she really liked you because she was upset we were together. And then I found out that you guys talked all the time. God, what else? There was something else.” I paused, staring up at the ceiling as if trying to jog my memory. “Oh, right. You
e-mailed
each other.”

Now he looked up at me, his smile gone. “Huh.” Then, without saying anything more, he went back to work on his potatoes, sliding the slices to one end of the chopping board.

“And then,” I continued, “I found out you two were involved.”

“Involved? Like romantically?”

“Yeah. Strange, huh? It
was
a romantic involvement. Ha.” I said this in an absurdly flippant tone, as if remarking how silly an F5 twister was when it wiped out an entire town. “And then it got
really
bizarre, because I found out you saw her recently.”

Now he put the knife down. His eyes were wide. “Okay, Sarah, this is strange. I do have a friend back in Germany I talk to. We’re just friends, though, nothing more, but we
do
e-mail to each other,
and I saw her recently
.”

“You did?”

“
Yes. My God!
I cannot believe you dreamt that!”

“Me either!”

Shaking his head, he resumed his slicing. “Just last week she was here, too, visiting California with her boyfriend. That is so strange.”

Her boyfriend. She has a
boyfriend
. Suddenly the image I’d conjured, the two of them cozy and speaking in their mother tongue over white wine and oysters, morphed into the two of them plus her boyfriend, all with café lattes in a bright Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Maybe they’d had blueberry muffins, but they certainly hadn’t had oysters.

I don’t think I’d ever felt relief like that. It was more comforting than shade on a hundred-degree day, more exciting than discovering an employee at a skin-care counter who ached to give out free samples, more welcome than a spotless restroom on a road trip. In short, I’d worried for nothing, and relief flooded over me with such force I felt the need to lie down in the middle of the kitchen and start giggling. “She has a boyfriend?”

He nodded. “They’ve been together for a year? Maybe less. He sounds like a great guy, but a bit dull.”

Sounds like. Sounds like. Sounds like? “So wait, you didn’t meet him?”

“No. Not this time. They were on different flights; he got in later than she did. I met her at the airport and took her out for the afternoon.”

Okay, breathe, Sarah.
I needed to fixate on something. Stare at something, take it in, think of nothing else, be calm.
Breathe.
My eyes locked on his widow’s peak. I watched it. The skin beside it was shining. The hair was haphazard. I swear it was becoming more defined by the second. I blinked. “That was nice of you. What day was this?”