Zeffy shook her head. “I know Johnny. He’s a lot of things I don’t much care for, but violent isn’t one of them. He’s into mind games and we can’t afford to get caught up in them any more than we already are.”
“But—”
“Honestly. We’ll deal with it all as soon as lunch is over. Meanwhile, why don’t you see if Frank’s got something for Buddy. Are you hungry?”
Nia shook her head.
“Well, if you want a pop or anything, just help yourself. I’ll put it on my tab.”
“You don’t just get your food and stuff free?” Nia asked, obviously surprised.
“Nothing’s free in this world,” Zeffy told her, “except leftovers and friendship and even friendship costs. The difference is, usually we don’t mind paying the coin it requires.”
“I like the way that sounds,” Nia said, smiling. “Did you come up with it?”
Zeffy nodded. “I guess I did. Maybe I’ll put it in a song.” Her gaze went out to the restaurant again, then returned to Nia. “I’ve really got to help out.”
She showed Nia through the kitchen door and introduced her to Frank, then hurried back out into the main room to help Jilly. Susan arrived fifteen minutes later, full of apologies at having missed her bus, with a flushed but happy-looking Tanya coming in a few minutes after her. The first thing Tanya did was come up to Zeffy.
“About last night,” she began.
“I was out of line,” Zeffy said.
“No, I was. I’m so sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Jilly came up to them and gave them a quick smile. “The both of you are sorry already and we’ve got customers waiting.”
Zeffy and Tanya grinned and gave each other a hug before getting back to work. With the four of them on the job, they finally managed to get customers seated, orders taken and filled, and everything back to a working semblance of order, but it wasn’t until after two o’clock that Jilly, Tanya and Zeffy were able to take a break and join Nia down by the riverbank where she was still trying to coax Buddy to relax without much success.
“Hey, there, big boy,” Jilly said.
She knelt down on one knee and opened her arms. Buddy didn’t hesitate. He went right up to her, almost pulling Nia off balance as the leash stretched tight. He pushed his muzzle up under Jilly’s arm, his tail wagging for the first time that Zeffy had seen all day. When Nia looked up at her, Zeffy couldn’t stifle a giggle that had as much to do with the adrenaline rush of the past couple of hours as it did with Nia’s look of surprise.
“Animals just like her,” Zeffy explained.
“Everybody likes her,” Tanya added.
Jilly gave them a quick smile. She sat down on the grass and Buddy settled close beside her, putting his head on her lap. She ruffled the fur around his ears and looked over at Nia.
“It’s just a—”
“Gift she has,” Zeffy and Tanya chimed in before Jilly could finish.
Jilly laughed. “Or something. It’s a reciprocal sort of a thing. If you put out good feelings, usually you get them back. Or to put it another way, I always see the cup as half-full instead of half-empty. Most people have something good about them.”
“And those that don’t?” Nia asked.
“I ignore. Unless they get in my face.” Jilly glanced at Tanya. “Like Johnny Devlin today.”
Tanya got a worried look. “What happened after I left?”
“Nothing much, really. He just swore a bit and swaggered out. I’m more interested in what happened when you caught up with Geordie.”
Tanya blushed. “Oh, we worked stuff out.”
“Time out,” Zeffy said. “I’m missing something here and Nia’s not going to know what we’re talking about. How about we start at the beginning? What happened with Johnny and Geordie?”
As Tanya started to explain, Jilly leaned over to Nia and told her who Geordie was. They all seemed to talk at once, but their stories got told, the narratives crisscrossing each other as one series of events had their effect upon another. When they were done, they sat quietly for a while, thinking. Zeffy stared across the river to where the buildings of Butler University could be seen on the far side of the common. From this far away, the ivy-covered old stone structures were merely a grey blur against the green of the common’s trees and lawn.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “But I still don’t believe it. Johnny’s got to be pulling some kind of scam. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense otherwise. How can this kind of thing make sense?”
“I believe it’s real,” Jilly said. “I’ve never met Max Trader and I don’t know Johnny all that well, but the guy in Trader’s body who came into the café today had all of Johnny’s mannerisms and icky vibes.”
“Oh please,” Zeffy said, smiling to take the sting out of her words. “Not mumbo jumbo and tired sixties expressions.”
Jilly shrugged. “Whatever. But I do believe it. Just because something’s not generally known or seen, doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
“That’s what Geordie said,” Tanya put in.
“And I can’t tell you how long it’s taken Christy and me to get him to admit to it,” Jilly said.
Nia seemed a little smitten by Jilly, Zeffy thought. But then Jilly got that sort of a reaction from most people who came within the sphere of her good humor and kindnesses.
“You really believe in magic?” Nia asked.
Jilly nodded. “Though everything strange isn’t necessarily magic. Sometimes it’s just stuff we don’t know yet, or have never seen before.”
“Jilly’s Believe It Or Not,” Zeffy joked.
“Exactly,” Jilly said, taking her seriously. “Those things exist whether we accept them or not.”
“But how can you believe in that sort of stuff?” Zeffy had to ask. “Because I’ve seen it. Not once or twice, but many times. Bits and pieces of things that shouldn’t exist in this world, but do.”
“Like what?”
Jilly’s ready smile returned. “Oh, I don’t know. It all seems so preposterous when you start to talk about it, doesn’t it? But this business with Johnny and Max is a perfectly good example.”
“Of a successful delusion,” Zeffy couldn’t help but mutter. She gave Jilly a guilty look when she realized she’d spoken aloud. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “I just find it so hard to accept.”
“There comes a point,” Jilly said, “when not accepting is simply being stubborn. I understand why you feel the way you do: it changes things. It’s like a kind of vertigo takes hold of you and you don’t know where to step because stone might be quicksand and vice versa. Suddenly, everything you see or hear is suspect. But I’ll tell you from experience that you quickly learn to figure out what’s truly magic and what only seems to be.”
“I believe it,” Tanya said. “I can’t not believe it after Johnny’s visit to the café today.”
Nia nodded. “I believe it, too. And I think if we don’t do something soon, things are going to get worse. Even if...if my mom’s okay, there’s still something wrong with Max.”
Zeffy shivered, remembering Nia’s theory that maybe Johnny hadn’t exactly switched brains with Max, but had a finger in his head instead, controlling him and taking what he needed out of Max’s memories to lend credence to this convoluted scam he was trying to pull off. She didn’t believe— not in her head because it made no sense, and not in her heart where perhaps it mattered more. But she could imagine it and the thought of someone being in her head, little say pushing her right out of her body, made her feel queasy. Because if it was true for Max, then it could happen to any of them.
“But what can we do?” Tanya asked.
No one knew—not even Jilly.
“There was that Indian he was talking to in the park,” Zeffy said finally. She glanced at Nia. “You remember—the guy he was having that argument with? He might know something.”
“Handsome guy with spooky eyes?” Jilly asked. “Re
ads fortunes in the park?”
Zeffy nodded. “I guess that’s what he does. He does something with, I don’t know, chicken bones, I guess. Some kind of small bones anyway. Nia and I were going to talk to him, but he was gone by the time we went to look for him.”
“I know him,” Jilly said.
Zeffy smiled. “Why didn’t I just know that?”
“His name’s Joseph Crazy Dog,” Jilly said.
“Crazy Dog?”
Jilly nodded. “I don’t know if it’s really his family name or something he just acquired along the way, but it suits him. He’s kind of like all those stories about Coyote—a good man, but things always seem to go a little off-kilter around him.”
Off-kilter, Zeffy thought. That certainly fit the bill for how the last few days had been for her.
“Anyway,” Jilly said. “Most people call him Bones because of what he uses to tell his fortunes.”
“Do you think he could have something to do with all of this?” Zeffy asked.
“Ah-ha!” Jilly said, loud enough to startle Buddy. He lifted his head nervously until she calmed him. “Listen to the unbeliever now,” she added in a quieter voice and then scratched the fur around Buddy’s ears.
“I’m willing to keep an open mind,” Zeffy said. “I just don’t want my brain to be mistaken for Swiss cheese, that’s all.”
Buddy settled his head back on Jilly’s lap and gave a contented sigh as she continued her ministrations.
“Could he be involved?” Tanya asked.
Jilly shrugged. “He might know what’s going on. The only way to find out is to ask him.”
“Do you know his address?”
“He lives somewhere in the Tombs, but I don’t know exactly where. He’s got squats in a bunch of different buildings.”
“Great,” Zeffy said. “That makes it easy.”
“Well, you’re going to hate me for saying this,” Jilly went on, “but he’s actually pretty easy to find. He just kind of shows up whenever you’re looking for him—like you’d made plans to get together or something. It’s this—”
“Gift he has,” Tanya said.
“Exactly.”
Zeffy sighed. “You’re right. I do hate you. I was hoping for something practical, like a phone number or an actual address—you know, the way you get in touch with normal people.”
“Normal people aren’t going to be much help to you right now,” Jilly said.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” Zeffy told her.
“Why don’t we just go to Max’s apartment?” Nia asked.
Jilly shook her head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea—not until you know what’s going on with him. Otherwise you could make things worse.”
“So we go wandering about,” Zeffy said, “hoping to run into this guy, and he’s going to show up?”
“Something like that.” Jilly looked at her watch. “Some of us should head back and help Susan.”
“I’ll go back with you,” Tanya said.
Zeffy glanced at Nia. “That leaves it up to you and me. Are you game?”
“I guess.”
Jilly shifted Buddy’s head so that she could stand up.
“You be good now,” she told him. “Do what Nia tells you. She’s your friend, too, you know.”
Buddy gave her a quizzical look. When the rest of them stood up, he scrambled to his feet and went to Nia. She gave him a tentative pat, smiling when he didn’t shrink away.
“How did you do that?” Nia wanted to know, then added before anyone could speak, “Never mind. It’s a gift, right?”
Jilly laughed. But as they headed back toward the café, she held Zeffy back, letting the other two walk ahead of them.
“What’s up?” Zeffy asked.
“I don’t want to make you nervous or anything,” Jilly said, “but there’s something I should tell you about Bones.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Depends on how open you’re keeping that mind of yours.”
Zeffy sighed. “Okay. I’m in this far, I might as well go all the way. What do we have to be careful about?”
“Two things,” Jilly told her. “If he decides to help you, make sure you find out what kind of a bargain you’re getting into.”
“He’s going to charge us?”
“Not money. Think of it along the lines of those old fairy tales. You know, don’t promise to give him the first thing you see when you get home or something.”
Lovely, Zeffy thought. “And the other thing?”
“Don’t give him your full name.”
Even Zeffy knew enough folklore to understand why.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
Jilly shook her head. “It’s not so much that I think Bones would do anything himself. But like I said, spirits seem to crowd around him, good and bad or just plain mischievous. You don’t necessarily want them to know your true name.”
“Or what? They’ll change us into newts or something?”
“I’m just asking you to be careful,” Jilly said. “Humor me. You don’t have to believe.”
She looked so serious that Zeffy couldn’t joke about it. Instead she found herself nodding, promising to be careful on both counts, but it made her uncomfortable. Unaccountably jumpy. She couldn’t help but feel that by doing so, she was buying into Jilly’s world of make-believe. Buying into it and making it real.
“Are you okay?” Nia asked after they’d left Jilly and Tanya at the café and continued on to the park with Buddy. “You look kind of pale all of a sudden.” Zeffy managed to find a smile, though she had to rummage through her sudden nervousness to do so.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just...”
She repeated what Jilly had told her, the unfamiliar anxiety growing as she watched Nia’s eyes widen. Nia believed. Tanya did. And Jilly. Everybody believed in magic except for her. Then she glanced at Buddy, padding along so docilely beside Nia since Jilly had told him to be good. That was a kind of magic, too, wasn’t it?
“Do you think it’s going to be dangerous?” Nia asked. “Talking to this Crazy Bones guy, I mean?”
“Crazy Dog,” Zeffy said, correcting her without even thinking about it. Then she fell silent again.
“But do you?” Nia wanted to know.
“I hope not,” Zeffy finally said. “But I’ll tell you the truth, I have no idea what we’re getting into anymore and that scares me.”
They walked along in silence for a while, following Lakeside Drive on their way back to the park. This time Buddy was the only one of the three of them who didn’t appear to be feeling skittish.
“Jilly wouldn’t have sent us looking for him if it was too dangerous,” Nia said, obviously trying to convince herself as much as Zeffy. “Would she?”
“No. I suppose not.”
Certainly not on purpose, Zeffy thought, but she kept that to herself. “One way or another we’ll get to the bottom of all of this,” she added aloud. “And we’ll stay in one piece.”
It sounded good and it seemed to make Nia feel better. Zeffy only hoped she could keep that promise.
30 LISA
Long after the stranger had gone, Lisa lay on her bed, staring up at the cracks in the plaster of her ceiling, unable to relax. She’d been too tired to undress, or even take off her shoes, little say get under the covers, but once she’d lain down, sleep eluded her. All she could do was think about what the stranger had said regarding Nia, about what his relationship really was to her daughter, about the distance that had crept into her relationship with Nia, and a hundred other things that only a mother could find to worry about. The more she tried to relax, to find the sleep she so desperately needed, the more she worried. The focus of her anxiety alternated from Nia to Julie—lying there now in intensive care and how did she really feel about their relationship?— before returning full circle to her daughter again.
Turning her head into the pillow, she thought she c
ould still smell Julie’s presence on the slipcase—a faint whiff of perfume that couldn’t quite mask the scent that was uniquely Julie. She grew flushed, remembering the two of them, bodies entwined on this same bed, how soft and slippery it had all felt. But the heat died in her when she also remembered afterward, how weird it had seemed, how she’d thought that what they’d done was right, but wrong somehow, too, and she couldn’t decide if she really thought it was wrong, or if it was something she’d been conditioned to think because of the way she’d been brought up.
Finally she sat up.
How can my life have become such a mess? she asked herself.
Any hope of sleep was long vanished now. Between worrying over Julie and Nia, there was no point in pretending she could rest. There was nothing she could do for Julie at the moment, but the same couldn’t be said about Nia. She might be making a mess of her love life, but she didn’t have to lose her daughter at the same time. Things were really bad when some stranger knew more about Nia than she did.
That stranger, she thought as she made her way into the bathroom.
It was true she’d never seen him before, but there’d been a certain familiarity about him all the same. Nothing in the way he looked, but something in how he carried himself, the cadence of his voice. It nagged at her and made her feel uneasy for no reason that made sense, except perhaps that he knew something about Nia that she didn’t. Nia had confided in him, where she couldn’t with her own mother.
How had he become part of her daughter’s life? Nia never seemed to have any real friends except for Max Trader, who, after talking to him yesterday, definitely gave Lisa the creeps now. If Julie hadn’t been with her, she didn’t know what she would have done.
That reminded her of Julie’s plight all over again. The rock in the pit of her stomach grew heavier, her chest tightening.
She splashed water on her face. It helped a little—not so much to wake her up as for something to do. Something to prove that she was still functioning, still capable of dealing with her problems instead of simply folding up the way she wanted to. She washed her face, dried it, brushed her teeth, went through the mechanics of the actions without really thinking about what she was doing. She didn’t bother with makeup. A pale face looked back at her from the mirror as she gave her hair a cursory brushing. The washed-out features reminded her of Nia.