Psychic Junkie (24 page)

In fact, I decided one day as I filled my mother in on the plans, “We’ll rent out the entire motel in town to make sure all my friends come!”

My mother stumbled and tried to hide her alarm.

The funny thing was that this was the first time I’d envisioned my wedding. Oh sure, I’d debated over wedding dresses and engagement rings, but that was because I like fashion and diamonds. But the wedding itself? That had never been my thing. Too conventional. The appealing part of marriage was actually the security aspect, the part about never being alone and always having someone to wake up next to—basically, someone being contractually bound to be with me.

But now I was kind of into the actual wedding. While we were walking, I narrowly avoided walking into a prickly pear, which naturally made me think of Wilhelm. “It’s not like you’re my wife” ricocheted in my mind. Whatever. Back to planning. I had much to decide, like what kind of shoes to wear in this rough terrain, how I could wrestle the dogs into tuxes, and where I could find a good catering company in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert.

My recovery wasn’t flawless, as the damn ranch did have a phone. It wasn’t really my fault, though. I mean, I was left alone in the house, completely unattended. That should
never
happen at a rehab. But there I was, all by my lonesome, with a phone, on an afternoon when my parents had gone out to get supplies. Getting supplies, by the way, is what you do when you live on a ranch, versus life in L.A., where you end up at the grocery store because you’re
bored
and figure you’ll kill time by studying the carb content in tofu or selecting the perfect teeth whitener.

At any rate, they were buying supplies and I was eyeing the phone. The store was so far away it’d be nightfall before they returned, and I knew I couldn’t spend the entire evening in a face-off with the phone. Well, I could, but I shouldn’t. To distract myself I flipped on the TV and was about to settle in on the couch when I spotted a book on the coffee table about my great-grandfather, Louis Marcoussis, a rather well-known cubist painter. Hmmm. Curious, I flipped it open, and then froze. There before me was a chapter on a series of works that he’d done, called “Les Devins”—which translates to “The Fortune-Tellers.”

My first thought was,
Holy crap, it’s genetic.
No wonder my mother didn’t seem shocked when I’d told her about my addiction to psychics—the predisposition runs in our family! I’ve got the gene! I tried to remain calm, though I seriously felt exhilarated, comforted, and strangely justified. Honestly, I must not have stood a chance.

The etchings were amazing. Each one represented a different form of divining: the interpreter of dreams, the crystal ball, the palm reader, the séance, the medium, the card reader, and several others. In fact, in one of them my great-grandfather portrayed himself as the numerologist, and, as the author mentioned, out of all the numbers that filled the etching, only one was repeated: the number twenty-two. As if my great grandfather were predicting his own death, he later died on the twenty-second of August.

I read more and realized that these were his last artworks, that he’d done this series while hiding from the Nazis in Vichy during the German Occupation.
Huh,
I thought.
Look at that.
We both have an interest in fortune-telling and we’ve both suffered at the hands of the Germans.

Well, that was all it took. I had Germans and fortune-telling on the brain and a phone that I
swear
was pulsating on the table behind me. Before I knew it, I was talking to Lady Lily.

Lily, a card reader, informed me that she was shuffling and that I should focus my energy on the cards. Duh, as if I were new at this.

“This first card,” she said at last, “is going to represent your situation.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Oh! The sorrow card.”

I sank into the sofa. “Go on.”

She tried to buffer her words just a bit. “The sorrow card’s not always bad, though. Anyway, it’s more about this sense of
upheaval
in your life I’m getting. Emotional or physical. Something has caused a disruption. Does this make sense?”

I thought of the breakup, which had evidently caused a disruption in my sanity. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Sarah,” she said, “I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to put the cards down. I don’t think I need them right now. Psychically I’m feeling your energy
very
strongly, what you’re going through. This doesn’t happen to me often. But it’s really strong. I’m being told that this time in your life is
necessary
. It’s a time to sort out your problems and allow for progress. Does that make sense?”

I said yes. I mean, I didn’t know about sorting out my problems, but I certainly had discovered a lot of them. I guess my next goal should have been to sort them, and then do that whole progress bit. Still, if she was getting strong psychic wavelengths, I wanted to know about Wilhelm, not about me. “But can you tell me how Wilhelm’s feeling?”

“Love,” she said right away, “makes people do crazy things.”

Oh my God! Yes! Tell me about it!

“He was confronted by something wonderful,” she continued, “and his worry was that he didn’t deserve it. I feel he doesn’t always think he’s deserving. Does this make sense?”

I pictured him window-shopping at Ross. “It
completely
does. Yes.”

“So there you were, and the intensity of his feelings scared him, because in a way he thought he’d lost you. But those are
his
issues. Those issues and fears, I feel they go back into his childhood. Does that make sense?”

He’d never spoken of issues with from childhood. In fact, he’d never spoken of his childhood at all. He’d glazed right over that portion of his life as if it had never happened. Right there, I figured, that said there were issues. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Okay. So he must confront the idea of losing you, of life without you. And he
will
do that if he hasn’t already. He loves you. That much I’m getting really strongly. It’s just a matter of
when
he’ll come around. My feeling is by Christmas you’ll hear from him. He’ll be back in your life before the stockings are hung.”

The reading was amazing. Just hearing he’d come back to me and that he still loved me made me feel better, which, I have to say, pissed me off. I mean, did I even want him back? Why would his loving me make me happy? I didn’t want him! Or did I? Maybe I just wanted him to want me. That’s normal. Or maybe I did want him back, just so I’d not have to face being alone, or, God forbid, have to go blindly through another maze of a relationship?
The evil you know is less scary than the evil you have yet to meet.
Maybe that was it. I didn’t want him back, but at least I knew him. I knew the extent of the pain he could cause me. With someone else my pain could be endless.
Or,
I thought with irritation,
maybe I
did
just want him. Period.

Back in Los Angeles, a month and a half after the breakup, I was again faced with the horror of the Hunt for a Job. This would help my recovery, my mother insisted, as no longer would I have time to call psychics if I was actually working. And although this was true, the real motivating factor was the arrival of my last unemployment check. That came, and I started making calls.

It didn’t take long. Soon I was working as a personal assistant for a rich Beverly Hills woman who didn’t mind when, in the interview, I declared I’d need time to go on auditions. (Not that I
was
going on auditions, but I had fond memories of days when I had, and I liked saying the words.) Really, my new job wasn’t that bad. Of course, while other people my age were already doctors and lawyers, their days filled with importance, my days involved such tasks as going to Prada to get the handle on a handbag fixed. But you know what? Getting paid to go to Prada was just fine by me.

Soon, on my daily excursions to stores I couldn’t afford, I got the hint that the holidays had arrived. Whereas cheaper stores accost customers with holiday cheer, higher-end boutiques are subtle about such observances, and very easily one could miss the single red tie on a suit’s hanging display, or the white fiber-glass sculpture vaguely shaped like a wreath behind the front counter. Meanwhile, at cheaper stores off in the land of malls and other such gauche shopping complexes, tinsel abounds, Santa music blasts, and reindeer antlers sprout from employees’ heads.

All this was why the holidays had crept up on me, essentially ambushing me when I left the clean sanctity of stores such as Chanel and Christian Dior and stepped out onto a Rodeo Drive that had suddenly been adorned with yuletide décor, trees tied with stylish matching red ribbons, and tasteful and well-groomed poinsettias placed lovingly in center dividers. The holidays had officially arrived, but this lead to another, more upsetting feature of the season. Where, oh, pray tell, was Wilhelm?

There was no sign at all to indicate that Lady Lily had been right. My phone was silent and there was nothing of promise in his e-mails. Yep, I still checked them. The thing is, I couldn’t
not
check them. Checking his e-mail was a habit, a custom, like morning coffee, just a part of my daily routine…very similar to how the readings were. Adjusting my life to calling only two psychics a week had been hard, but that had been an emotional and financial necessity. But checking his e-mail? I was fine, and it was free. So why not?

But, as I said, there was nothing of interest in his e-mails, and from what I could gather, he’d still not told friends nor family we’d even broken up. That, I figured, was because it was still such a sore subject for him. Besides, if he was planning on getting back together—as Lady Lily had said—informing people of a minor split would have been pointless.

I tried confirming this with Gina one night at her house. “Right? If he hasn’t told people we’ve broken up, maybe it’s because he’s banking on it not being permanent?”

“Are you
still
checking his e-mails?”

“Maybe.” I eyed Mark on the other couch, my expression that of “Don’t say another word. We can’t let him know how crazy I am.” Mark, however, was completely engrossed in a football game, his eyes tracking a guy in orange and blue racing across the field, and I realized he wouldn’t have noticed me even if flames had been blasting from my head. “Should we go in the other room?”

“Nah. He’s seen it.”

“The game? It’s not live?”

“No, it was on two days ago. He saw it then.”

Clearly men and women have their own special versions of crazy. “Okay,” I said. “So back to me. I just don’t get it. Lily gave me such a great reading. I mean, it should be coming true. It’s almost Christmas.”

This last fact was confirmed by the Christmas tree Gina and Mark had bought, one tastefully adorned and glowing beautifully by the window, one with a silver ornament shaped like a bell that said
GINA
&
MARK
,
FIRST CHRISTMAS
, an ornament that was literally like a sword in my heart. I wanted one. I wanted to have a first Christmas with someone, and yet somehow it seemed like I was always having last Christmases with people.

“Maybe I should call Lily,” Gina said.

“What? Why?”

“For a reading. You know, to see how good she is.”

“You mean to
test
her.”

“Why not? She’s getting her four dollars a minute, what does she care?”

“Dollar. I’m only doing dollar psychics now.”

“Even better.” She turned to Mark. “Honey, Sarah and I are going into the bedroom to call psychics.”

He nodded, the images of full-grown men jumping on each other flashing in his eyes.

It was an interesting idea. If Lily were right in her reading about Gina’s life, then surely I’d hear from Wilhelm soon. “Wait,” I said as we made our way down the hall. “I just thought of something. I don’t even
have
stockings to hang. What if she was talking about some future Christmas? Like I hear from him Christmas 2008, when I have stockings? She didn’t say
which
Christmas.”

“Oh, good God. Just give me the number.”

She called Lily, and I sat on the bed kneading a pillow. “She’s on,” Gina eventually mouthed. “Hey, Lily, do you mind if I put you on speaker phone? My neck’s been bothering me. Oh, and I’d love to hear your theories on when that’s gonna get better.”

With that, Lily’s voice sprang from the telephone. “Gina is it? I’m shuffling and I need you to
really
concentrate and focus your energy on the cards, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now this first one,” she said, “this is going to represent your situation.”

Gina rolled her eyes. “Okay.”

Lily took a deep, audible breath. “Gina, I got the sorrow card.”

“I’m sad?”

“Not necessarily. And the sorrow card’s not always bad. It’s more about a sense of
upheaval
in your life I’m getting. Emotional or physical. Something has caused a disruption.”

I looked at Gina, who shrugged. I was having a slight sense of déjà vu, but ignored it. I was too busy racking my brain to identify Gina’s upheaval, her disruption. Mark
had
just moved in, did that count? She now only got three quarters of her closet?

“Gina,” Lily continued, “I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to put the cards down. I don’t think I need them right now. Psychically I’m feeling your energy
very
strongly, what you’re going through. This doesn’t happen to me very often.”

Now I was off the bed, hovering above the phone, glaring.

Lily went on, oblivious to the fire in my eyes. “But it’s really strong. I’m being told that this time in your life is
necessary
. That it’s time to sort out your problems and allow for progress. Does that make sense?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d like to say I screamed, “No, Lily, it doesn’t make sense, because you’re reading from a script! You’re a cheat! You’re a scam!” But alas, I still had that fear of psychics putting curses on me, so instead I very angrily, and with much force, hung up the phone.