Beloved Lives Page 4

  The moon, brilliant and nearly full, lighted their way home, assisted by the city lights and the city fireflies. In her driveway, April dismounted and pulled off her helmet, gloves, and jacket. Mitch also took off his helmet.

  “Would you like to come in?” She felt oddly shy asking.

  “I would love to, but I have to get my lecture ready for tomorrow night. Want to give the people their money’s worth,” Mitch said. He frowned with mock seriousness.

  “The class is free.” April called his bluff.

  “Huh. No wonder they don’t pay me,” he replied, grinning. Then he leaned toward her and kissed her firmly on the lips.

  As the kiss warmed up, April began to feel as if her feet were catching fire. Her arms went around Mitch, banging the helmet she still held into his shoulder blades. By the time they parted, she couldn’t quite breathe.

  He wasn’t smiling. “Maybe I do want to come in,” he whispered.

  April slowly shook her head. It looked as if she was saying no, but really, she was trying to get her ears to stop ringing. Finally, she caught her breath.

  “Trish told me not to mess this up, so she can keep coming to class. Maybe we need to not rush things, ‘cause… I’m not really sure why.”

  “I know why,” Mitch said, smiling slightly and looking into her eyes. “I don’t want to mess this up, either.”

  He took the gloves and jacket from her as she shed them, then he opened the seat, took out her purse, and put the gloves and jacket away. Turning back to her, he kissed her again, lightly, his mustache tickling her lip.

  April said, “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow. I had a really good time.”

  “Me, too. Maybe next Saturday again?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. Your favorite restaurant this time. Okay?”

  “Sounds perfect.” He nodded. “Until tomorrow.”

  He pulled on his helmet, waved, and fired up his blue scooter.

  April watched him back out of the drive and turn onto the street. He lifted his hand again in a final wave and began scooting away at his usual, sensible pace. As she watched him go, she saw that the silver Mercedes was back, parked just one house down from hers on the opposite side of the street. When Mitch passed it, the car’s engine roared to life, the headlights snapping on. The Mercedes quickly backed up then pulled forward out of its parking spot with a screech of tires. It quickly caught up with Mitch, pulling much too closely behind him. The car's engine raced, and the horn sounded once. Mitch barely managed to move to the side of the street before the car veered around the scooter and sped away. When April saw that Mitch was safe, she let out her breath in a sigh of relief.

  “Rude jerk,” she muttered, breathing in the cool, night air to calm her anger. She followed the scooter’s taillight down the street until it was no longer visible then went into the house.

  Winston, pacing and fretting like an anxious father, would not settle until April had safely locked the front door. He demonstrated how glad he was to have her home by rolling onto his back and inviting a belly rub. When she complied, he bit her hand.

  “You are a psychopath,” April told her cat.

  Winston only purred.

  Chapter 8. Use the Bell

  Sunday is for being lazy, April decided. Since she had run most days that week, she would change up her routine by doing some slow-paced weight training, Pilates, and calisthenics. Winston helped by being a free weight, settling on her back during her pushups, making them a serious challenge, and by otherwise contributing his bulk to the program. April was beginning to think she was finally building some muscle, when she realized Winston was no longer helping, and that was why things had suddenly gotten easier.

  Because it was her naked day and a day when she tried to schedule nothing important or social, in part because she was often hung over, April was completely unprepared for the knock that, by its strength and rhythm, was so obviously not Trish. She ran to her bedroom and grabbed a ragged, chenille bathrobe that hung on a hook behind the door. When she opened the front door, she froze, stunned.

  “Hello. I just wanted to make sure you were okay and that you got my flowers.”

  Dr. Winston Weston stood on her front porch, wearing the sort of clothes you might imagine folks wore at Wimbledon, in the area where the royals sat being summer posh. He looked her up and down, taking in the ratty robe, his mouth turning up in a slightly off-center smile.

  April couldn’t get words to form in her brain, much less spill lightly from her lips.

  “May I come in?” he asked, looking past her into the house.

  “Uh, sure. I was just exercising,” she said, thawing slightly, her brain beginning to function again. She stepped aside. The house was still clean from yesterday. She and Winston hadn’t had time to mess it up yet.

  Dr. Weston looked around the small and tidy living room then frowned slightly.

  Oh, crap, April thought. He’s looking for the flowers. The ones that were now being appreciated by Trish, probably sitting in a place of honor at her condo.

  “Can I get you something to drink? Juice? Coffee? Water?” April asked to cover her embarrassment.

  “Coffee would be nice,” he said, crossing the room and sitting down on her sofa.

  “Milk or sugar?”

  “No, thank you. Black is fine.”

  By the time April came back with the coffee, he was looking at the books in the built-in bookcases on either side of her tiny, gas fireplace. Her library included some leather-bound classics her parents had given her for birthdays past, a Merck Manual, the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, a bunch of old chemistry and microbiology textbooks, and a whole raft of murder mysteries.

  “You like mysteries?” he asked, that crooked smile showing up again.

  She couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at her. April sat in her grandmother’s rocking chair across the coffee table from the sofa to avoid sitting next to him. Something about this guy bothered her.

  “Most of those belong to my husband,” she said.

  “You’re married?” He jerked his head around to look at her, his eyes wide.

  “Divorced. He never came back for them.” She didn’t elaborate further.

  Weston seemed to relax.

  Returning to the sofa, he asked, “If not mysteries, what do you read?” He picked up the cup and sipped the coffee, looking at her over the rim. He didn’t grimace, so it must have tasted okay to him.

  None of your business, she thought, then she pulled herself up. What was her issue? He had been nothing but nice to her, and still he bent her out of shape. “I get a lot of sci-fi from the library.”

  For some reason, as he sat looking at her, she felt the need to add more.

  “I watch TV and go to movies.”

  Weston nodded.

  “Once or twice a year, I go to the ballet. And some plays.” Why was she explaining herself to this guy?

  A familiar banging on the door made them both jump.

  What is this, April thought, Grand Central? Can’t a girl have a nice, quiet Sunday off? And by the way, Mitch fixed the doorbell. I need to tell everyone that, so they’ll quit pounding on that poor door.

  “Excuse me,” April said as she got up to open the door for Trish.

  Trish barely glanced at the bathrobe as she pushed past April, talking all the way.

  “The silver Mercedes is back.” She looked at Dr. Weston sitting on the sofa and didn't pause for breath. “Oh, hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Patricia Swenburg, but you can call me Trish. Everyone who loves me does. You must be Dr. Weston.”

  Moving with the confidence of an avalanche, Trish crossed the room and shook Dr. Weston’s hand. He had risen to greet her and appeared to be only slightly less overwhelmed by her than most people were. In her heels, she was nearly as tall as he was and looked him squarely in the eyes, appraising his market value, no doubt.

  “Please, call me Winston,” he said politely.

  At that moment,
hearing his name, Winston strolled into the room. Dr. Weston startled at the sudden appearance of something huge and black cruising near knee height.

  “Is that a cat?” Weston blurted.

  “Winston, meet Winston,” April said smoothly. Winston caused that reaction in a lot of people when they met him for the first time.

  Winston—the black, furry one—hissed, puffed his fur to an even more monstrous size and fled the room.

  “Your cat is named Winston?”

  “He looked like Winston Churchill when he was a kitten,” April explained. “He usually likes people.”

  There was an awkward silence, then Dr. Weston said, “Well, I just wanted to drop by. I see you’re busy,”—he waved vaguely toward Trish—“so I’ll say good afternoon.”

  “Oh, don’t go so soon,” Trish said.

  At the same time April said, “Thanks. I’ll see you at work, maybe.”

  He turned from April to Trish, looking indecisive.

  “Trish and I do have some important,” April paused only a beat, “shopping we need to do before our class tonight.”

  Trish looked at April as if she’d lost her mind. Getting April to shop usually involved dire threats and lavish promises.

  “A class?” Dr. Weston asked, sounding interested. “What are you studying?”

  “Psychic phenomena.” Trish dived in. “Quite interesting. It’s taught by Mitch van der Waals. Yes, he is related, distantly,” she said in response to Weston's cocked eyebrow.

  She sat. He sat. April sighed. She sat, too.

  “And what sort of psychic phenomena would these be?”

  Dr. Weston looked amused again. April was glad she was providing him with so much entertainment.

  Trish smiled and told him, “Too early to say. We’ve only had one class, but he has mentioned ghost sightings, divination, astral projection, past-life experiences, that sort of …” Her voice faded.

  Weston’s smile had disappeared. He stood up. “I must go now. Have a good afternoon.”

  He was out the door before Trish and April could get to their feet.

  “What was that about?” Trish asked as she moved into the vacuum left in his wake.

  “Maybe he’s afraid of ghosts.”

  They peeked out the front window and saw Weston climbing into the silver Mercedes parked just down the street from April's house. It screamed away from the curb, causing April’s belly and jaw to clinch.

  “Do you think that’s the same car that’s been here all along?” she asked. “If it is, that jerk nearly ran over Mitch last night.”

  “You’re kidding! Must be the same car. There can’t be that many like it around here. Do you suppose he’s stalking you?”

  “Don’t be silly. The first time we saw it was before I even met him. Maybe he parks here and walks to the hospital,” April said, picking up Weston's nearly full coffee cup.

  “Like that would make so much sense, what with the docs getting special parking places and all. I think he’s stalking you. But he’s still mine.” Trish followed her into the kitchen, where April dumped the coffee into the sink.

  “Okay, fine. He’s stalking me, and he’s yours. And it’s possible he’s a homicidal driver. You want tea?”

  Instead of shopping, April made chai for them both and told Trish about her date with Mitch.

  “Oh, and the first thing he did, before anything else, was fix my doorbell. A man who can actually fix things. That’s like, unbelievably amazing. I thought my dad was the last one of those on Earth.”

  They were both sitting on the sofa with their bare feet propped up on the coffee table. Winston sat between them, purring.

  “So I don’t have to bang on your door anymore?” Trish asked as she sipped her chai.

  April was quiet, thinking.

  “What?” Trish asked.

  “I always know it’s you because of the way you knock. I knew Dr. Weston wasn’t you because of the way he knocked.” She looked at Trish. “But why did he knock? The first time anyone comes here, they try to ring the bell. The flower delivery guy, pizza delivery people—unless you warn them ahead of time. How come Weston knew to knock?”

  “He’s been here before?” Trish suggested.

  “But I only met him for the first time on Friday.”

  “Like I said. Stalking. Still mine.”

  “I’m telling you, the guy bugs me. Yes, definitely yours. And speaking of men in your life, how did your third date go?”

  Trish sighed tragically and set down her teacup. “Alas, there will be room for Dr. Weston on the roster. Danny was a no go.”

  “Still friends, though?”

  “I’m afraid he’s not quite my type, even as a friend. His idea of conversation is baseball statistics, not bad in and of themselves, but eventually, you really do have to talk about something else. Anything else.”

  “Football statistics?”

  “Very funny.”

  Chapter 9. Psyched

  After dissection and analysis of the week’s episodes of their favorite television programs and the associated heartthrobs thereon, April and Trish decided it was time for them to find a cheap and healthy dinner—no mean feat in a city basted in barbecue sauce—then head for class.

  After their experience from the previous week, they had the parking situation figured out and arrived before the classroom was completely full. Still, Trish and April sat in the front row, this time because they wanted to. Mitch smiled at them and at the appointed time he dived right in to the night’s topic.

  “What if you know something without hearing it, seeing it, or using your usual senses to find it out? What is that, and how does it work?

  “Well, this is known as telepathy or, as it was once called, thought transference. The term telepathy comes from Frederic Myers, one of those guys who founded the Society for Psychical Research that we talked about last week.”

  April felt as if she should be taking notes, but had decided after last week's lecture to just listen and let the information roll over her.

  Mitch continued. “Different types of telepathy have been grouped into categories at various times, and we’re going to talk about four of these. The first is called latent telepathy. This is knowing something at some point after it has been transmitted; that is, there is a time lag between one person thinking or feeling or otherwise having the information to send and the second person getting the message.

  “A second kind is telepathy where one person can receive information about the past, the present, or the future from another person’s mind. This is the sort of telepathy a lot of psychics claim to have. In fact, someone using this kind of telepathy is often said to be psychic.

  “Then there is emotional transfer, where feelings or sensations are transmitted from one person to another. This is also called empathy.”

  April felt she understood what he meant by empathy, having heard the term used so often in the healing arts and having seen what she was pretty sure were examples of it during her work.

  “The final kind of telepathy is something called superconscious telepathy, where someone is supposed to be tapping into the collective knowledge of all humans.” Mitch paused and then went on.

  “Some people claim to have the ability to use telepathy spontaneously, but imagine how distracting it would be if you knew what everyone was thinking or feeling all the time. Could get kind of noisy in your brain, right? So, these people sometimes use tools or techniques to control or turn off their ability. Other people have some latent talent and need tools or techniques to turn on their ability.”

  “Then for people who don’t naturally have such easy access to telepathy, the use of altered states can aid in transferences of information and feelings. Altered states can include dreaming, hypnosis, trances, and in some settings, such as among shamans, the use of ritual drugs. Sorry, but we won’t be trying any shamanic drugs during these sessions.”

  The class laughed.

  “Telepathy has its doubter
s and it proponents, and both have studied telepathy under controlled conditions in laboratories. A lot of tools have been developed by various people to try to find out how real or not, how telepathic, or psychic, if you will, a person is.”

  For the rest of the hour, Mitch talked about telepathy’s proposed mechanisms, the research done into its proof or refutation, and told anecdotal stories about real people who swore they had experienced psychic or telepathic events. During the last half hour, he pulled out decks of Zener cards and scoring sheets to give the group a chance to see if they might have some telepathic ability.

  “Everyone form into groups of three. One of you will be the test subject, one will hold up the cards, and one will keep the record. Take turns through the deck of twenty-five cards, then we’ll swap places until everyone gets a chance to try their telepathic ability,” Mitch said to the class.

  Because there were an odd number of people, Mitch volunteered to be April and Trish’s third person.

  “Okay, just relax, clear your mind, and we’ll start,” he said.

  Mitch held up the cards, one after another—the star, cross, circle, waves and square—their backs facing Trish. April marked the scoresheet on a clipboard held out of Trish’s sight as she tried to guess which card Mitch was holding. It seemed to April that Trish got a lot of the cards right, but April didn't know what a good score was supposed to be. They switched, with April being the test subject and Trish holding up the cards as Mitch scored. Mitch's face gave nothing away as he recorded April's scores. Finally, they switched again.

  “We’re out of time,” Mitch said when the last of the groups finished. “If you want, I can run statistics on your results and let you know next week how telepathic you are. Or not.”