“I did have a few,” Teacher said. “Two sisters and a brother.”
“Do you all keep in touch?” This conversation was on life support.
“Yeah, more or less. We talk at Christmas, but we don’t visit a lot.”
Manfred thought he could let it drop now, and they drove in silence for some time. Manfred was thinking about his business, and the ominous stain he’d noticed on the ceiling after the last rain. He was pretty sure his rented house needed a new roof. He’d have to hit up Bobo, his landlord. Bobo had been in such a bad mood the past few days that Manfred didn’t relish the prospect.
“Have you ever put a roof on?” he asked Teacher.
“I can. A roofing crew can do it a hell of a lot faster.”
“That’s something to think about,” Manfred said. “Hey, you need to make a pit stop? I could use some tea.” Tea was not available at the convenience store, but Manfred was glad enough to get another Coke. While Teacher bought a tube of powdered sugar doughnuts, Manfred enjoyed a gulp of icy sweetness. This road trip was turning out to be—not a disaster, certainly, but less than pleasant. Manfred felt uncomfortable at the prolonged close proximity to Teacher.
After another hour of listening to the radio and exchanging a few more terse comments on the news, they reached Killeen. Manfred couldn’t tell how Teacher felt about it, but Manfred was relieved. Teacher was able to direct Manfred right to his friend’s shop in the older part of town, the main street. Manfred pulled into an empty parking space to let Teacher out. He noted that there were some small restaurants on the same block, and he was relieved to know that if his session with Agnes Orta took longer than he expected, Teacher wouldn’t be sitting on the sidewalk twiddling his thumbs. “I’ll call you when I’m through,” he said. “You good?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. If I get through with my business ahead of time, the pie at Mary Lee’s Café—over there, see the red awning?—is really, really good. Don’t tell my wife I said so.”
Manfred said, “I won’t. Have a good time with your tool guy.”
Teacher nodded. “Okay, man, see you later.” And he was out of the car and opening the door of the hardware store.
He walks like a different person, Manfred thought, watching Teacher go inside. Teacher looked freer, somehow; happier. Either his friend in Killeen was someone really special or Teacher found Midnight oppressive. Manfred navigated his way to Agnes Orta’s house, thinking only a little about Teacher as he drove. Mostly, Manfred felt pleased to be alone.
Magdalena Orta Powell’s mother lived in a neat white house built in the fifties, with a small and well-kept front yard. There was a whimsical statue of a squirrel in one flower bed (the squirrel was smiling), and in another flower bed there stood a painted wooden cutout of a woman with a big butt, bending over. In case Mrs. Orta was looking out the window, Manfred did not make a face. Instead, he knocked on the door, which had recently been repainted dark green. It opened immediately.
“Mrs. Orta?” he said, and she nodded vehemently.
“Well, if this isn’t wonderful!” Agnes Orta said. “I’m so excited. I feel like I’m meeting a movie star. Call me Agnes, I’m not so old!”
Agnes Orta really wasn’t old, even to Manfred’s eyes. She must have been very young when she’d had Magdalena. Agnes was short, and if she had bent over she would have looked very much like the wooden cutout in the yard. He appreciated her sense of humor a bit more when he realized that.
Agnes’s hair was still thick and glossy, though there were a few threads of gray running through it. A beautiful silver comb held it away from her face, and the comb contrasted sharply with the orange-patterned top and brown pants that hugged Agnes’s generous curves.
“Come in, come in!” she said, and he moved past her into the sunny house. “Can I get you some tea? Some coffee?”
“Thanks,” he said. “Some tea would be great.”
“And if you need the bathroom, it’s right there,” his hostess told him, pointing at a door to the right of the little living room.
“Thanks,” Manfred said, relieved, and availed himself of the offer.
When he emerged, she called him to the kitchen, which (though small) was bright and clean and full of plants. Mrs. Orta saw him looking around. “I brought in my rosemary and my basil,” she said. “The nights are getting too cold for them, even on the patio.”
“They make the kitchen look so nice,” he said, wishing his vocabulary had a better word for what he meant.
“My Magdalena bought this house for me,” she said proudly.
“What a great thing to do.” He meant it.
“She said she had met you in her professional capacity,” Mrs. Orta said. “I know Magdalena can be a forceful woman, so I hope she didn’t bulldoze you into coming to see me. I know it was a birthday present from her, but I also know that was quite a drive.”
Now that Manfred had met Agnes, he felt much happier about repaying his debt to Magdalena this way. “I’m glad to be here,” he said. “Magdalena told me you’re a fan of mine. I’m so flattered to hear it.”
“Oh, she don’t believe, but I do,” Agnes said. She put a mug of tea in front of him, along with a spoon and a tiny jug of milk and one of sugar. “And my priest understands.”
Manfred was surprised. He put a spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk in his tea in silence. In his experience, priests and ministers had strong feelings about psychics and fortune-tellers, and he’d been on the receiving end of plenty of lectures. He didn’t want to hear another.
“But he won’t be showing up here today to watch, I take it,” Manfred said gently.
“Oh!” Agnes laughed, a big infectious huff of merriment. “Not Father Antonio. He just said, ‘I’ll see you on Sunday, and you better be there!’”
Manfred tried a sip of his tea and told her how good it was, trying to hide his relief that a Catholic priest would not be part of the morning’s program. He unpacked his valise, bringing out the tarot cards, the crystal ball (which he used as a focusing object), and the Ouija board, which he simply despised but lugged along, anyway.
Agnes looked at his tools with excitement and anticipation. “Can my friend Linda come over?” she asked. “I didn’t know if you would charge Magdalena more if I invited someone or not? Linda’s just as big a follower of yours as I am, and she lives right next door. It would be such a treat for her; she don’t get out much. She’s been poorly.”
“It would be fine if Linda was here,” Manfred said. He did not tell Agnes that he was doing this for free; that was between him and Magdalena. After all, I might as well add another old lady to the reading, Manfred thought. He would definitely have gone above and beyond what was required to discharge his debt.
Agnes was on the phone with Linda in a New York minute. While they were waiting for the neighbor to arrive, Manfred looked around, trying to pick up more clues about this nice woman’s life. He asked a few gentle questions. Knowledge was always handy when it came to the psychic business. He was beginning to build up a picture of Agnes and her world when there came a gentle knock at the kitchen door.
Linda Ortega was definitely not what Manfred had expected. She was at least twenty years younger than Agnes, and she was in the process of dying. The certainty hit Manfred like a hammer.
Does she know? Manfred asked himself, because everything depended on the answer. When he shook Linda’s hand, he had his answer. She did know, but Agnes did not.
Linda’s eyes were huge and dark and melancholy, but not tragic. She’d accepted her death sentence. She didn’t want to talk about it. Manfred nodded, having gotten his cue. He sat at the kitchen table with the two women.
“Let’s talk about how we’re going to do this,” he said cheerfully, and fell into his professional patter. “There are different ways to lay out the cards, if you want to go with the tarot. What information are you s
eeking?”
“Can you explain?” Agnes asked.
“If you want to know if there are spirits in your house, we can try the planchette, though they may not cooperate,” he said. “If you want a reading on your future, we can lay out the tarot cards. If you want to find out what’s looming over you personally, we can use the ball to focus the spirits to give you an answer. If you want to see what spirit has a message for you specifically, I can link with you and we can explore that.” He had to go over all the options again before Agnes could make up her mind, but that gave him time to figure out how to handle the Linda-dying situation.
Agnes, as it turned out, wanted a little of everything.
Manfred did a tarot reading for her first, giving the cards to her to shuffle and laying them out in the familiar square. To his pleasure, the cards cooperated in a wonderful way. They hinted at a romance for Agnes, which put the older woman in a gale of giggles. Even Linda smiled.
Agnes was also delighted to hear she would have grandchildren sometime in the not-too-distant future . . . and that her daughter would be the vehicle by which those grandchildren would arrive. Manfred shuddered when he thought of the possible repercussions of that prediction. Magdalena would scalp him. Fortunately, Manfred had determined ahead of time that Magdalena was not Agnes’s only daughter.
When Agnes insisted Linda have a tarot reading, too, Linda stopped Manfred from handing her the cards to shuffle.
“No cards. Just hold my hands,” the young woman said. She switched places with Agnes, who was all smiles and excitement, and Manfred reached across to take her hands. They were cool and bony. The last time he’d done a private reading, his client had died while he was summoning her deceased husband. He tried not to shudder as he remembered how that had felt.
“Is there someone in particular you want to talk to?” he asked.
“Yes, my mother,” Linda said. “Lucy Trujillo.”
Manfred opened the other eye inside his head. He didn’t always think of it as an eye; sometimes it was a window, and sometimes it was a door. But today, it was a third eye, and its lid flew wide. Someone was close, waiting for Linda to ask. Feeling very encouraged, Manfred said quietly, “Lucy Trujillo, visit your daughter Linda. She’s waiting for you, Lucy.” He hoped the spirit would show up.
But Lucy Trujillo had nothing to say to her daughter that day; someone else wanted to speak. Manfred had to comply.
“Do you know a Donnie Trujillo?” he asked Linda. Her hands clenched his convulsively.
Agnes gave a thrilled gasp. (She really was the best audience you could possibly hope for.) “Oh my God, Linda, that’s your brother!” she whispered. As if Linda would not have recognized the name otherwise.
“Yes,” Linda said quietly. “I know that’s my brother.” She was not nearly as excited—more resigned than anything, if Manfred could judge. The spirit was circling him, waiting to be invited. When Linda didn’t speak again, Manfred said, “Donnie, you may approach and talk to your sister.”
Donnie did not want to use his own voice, and he wasn’t strong enough to use Manfred to speak. Manfred was grateful, because possession wore him out and was not a little frightening. Manfred relayed the message he was given. “Donnie says, ‘I’ve missed you, LindyLou, and I’ll be glad to see you.’”
Unexpectedly, Linda smiled. “It is him,” she said quietly. “That’s what he called me.”
“He misses you,” Agnes whispered. “Oh my God.” Manfred regretted that the older woman hadn’t chosen this method of communication, since she was so thrilled by Donnie’s appearance.
Donnie said, “Tell her not to worry.”
Manfred dutifully repeated the message.
“I’m not worried,” said Linda, managing to smile.
Liar, thought Manfred. But he finally felt someone coming for Agnes, and it was lucky he’d done some research because it helped him identify the spirit. “Donnie says he’ll see you in the blue hereafter,” Manfred said. “Excuse me, but there’s someone here to see Agnes.” Wide-eyed, Agnes took Linda’s place. Linda seemed content to move back to another chair, and she seemed at peace with the message she’d received, too.
“Agnes, it’s Anna,” Manfred said. “You know an Anna?”
“Anna!” Mrs. Orta was wide-eyed. “Anna, what do you want to tell me? Are you happy? Are you in heaven?”
“It’s beautiful,” Anna said, through Manfred. “Agnes, Mama’s ring . . . it’s in the sewing machine.” Manfred shook his head, puzzled. But that was what Anna was saying. “In the button box?” he said. “Does that make sense?”
Evidently, it did. Agnes didn’t wait to see if Anna had any other words for her. She was on her feet and hurrying into the next room, trailing exclamations like scarves behind her. There were sounds of vigorous rummaging. While Manfred and Linda waited, two tears slid down Linda’s cheeks, and she blotted them hastily on a napkin. She said, “Thank you,” very quietly.
A second later, Agnes burst back into the kitchen, carrying an ancient dark blue metal tin that had once held King Leo, whatever that was. She spilled the contents out on the table.
“Wow,” said Manfred involuntarily. There were buttons of every description imaginable on the table, many of them far older than he was. Some were metal, some covered in velvet, some were carved wood, some modern plastic. Agnes bent over them and began stirring them with an urgent finger.
“There,” said Linda, who had gotten interested in the search. “There it is!”
Sure enough, a pearl ring lay jumbled in with the buttons.
Agnes couldn’t stop repeating “Oh my God,” and Manfred was feeling pretty damn proud of himself. A genuine, tangible, result of his work! This didn’t happen often.
Agnes, the ring on her little finger, was turning it this way and that, exulting. Impulsively, she took Manfred’s hand and Linda’s, and said, “What a wonderful day this is!” But the link between the three of them flung Manfred back into the realm of spirits, and he was abruptly confronted with his grandmother.
He was horrified.
Seeing Xylda again, as a spirit, was almost unbearable. She wasn’t in color, which was very strange. He could only imagine the red of her hair, which was being whipped around her head. A wind was battering at her; soon it would rip her away. Xylda was desperate to tell him something. She reached out as if she were trying to physically grab his shoulders so she could hold on long enough to deliver her message. “Watch out,” she said. “Watch out. Get away from the crossroad! It’s waking up!”
And then she was gone, and the kitchen was silent, and both Linda and Agnes were looking at him with alarm. “I’m sorry,” Manfred said. “I hope I didn’t scare you?”
Agnes said, “You just looked scared and pretty upset for a minute. We didn’t know what was happening with you.”
“I saw someone I didn’t expect to see,” Manfred answered honestly. “It shook me up. I . . . was surprised. I’m fine, now.” He forced a smile.
Agnes was ready to be reassured, and Linda too absorbed in her own problems to spend a lot of time worrying about Manfred. They both accepted his explanation and returned to the topic of the ring.
Manfred could tell that Agnes was not only delighted to discover the ring but also proud that her whole belief in spiritualism had been validated by the ring’s reappearance. Since anything else he told Agnes would have been anticlimactic, Manfred extricated himself slowly and politely from Agnes’s hospitality. He took a moment to give Linda a quick hug. He was sure he would not see her again.
Because Agnes was so thrilled, it took Manfred a bit longer to actually get into his car and leave. With some relief, he returned to the main street, hoping to meet Teacher and get back to Midnight without further incident. Manfred had had a text from Teacher: I’m at Mary Lee’s Café. Pie still good.
Manfred entered to find Teacher sitting at
the counter, a big metal box on the floor beside him. It certainly looked heavy enough to contain real he-man tools. Manfred sat down with Teacher long enough to wolf down a sandwich, and then they were on their way.
Manfred had a lot to think about. Fortunately, Teacher took the hint when Manfred answered a couple of questions in a clipped way. Drawing out his cell phone, Teacher played a game most of the way back, at least in the areas where he had service.
When they reached Midnight, Manfred dropped Teacher off in front of his trailer, glad to have done a nice thing for Teacher but even gladder to have completed that nice thing and gotten rid of him. Manfred was itching to get back inside his own house, sit at his own computer, and catch up on the work he’d missed while he was in Killeen.
He was almost at the point of having to hire another “Manfredo” to help him with the website, because if he slackened, he had to hump to get back to keeping abreast.
Even with Manfred’s plunge into work, it seemed to take a very long time for the sky to darken outside. Finally, he felt so tired he stopped working. Though Manfred was preoccupied with his vision of Xylda and her alarming message, he also felt relieved to have discharged his debt to Magdalena. She was not a woman he’d wanted to owe, especially since she was his lawyer. Manfred knew he’d hear from Magdalena. He knew that Agnes would call her daughter today, assuming she hadn’t been on the phone the second he’d backed out of her driveway.
It surprised him, though, when Magdalena showed up in person just as he stood up from the computer. She was not alone. Sheriff Arthur Smith was with her, and he wasn’t in uniform.
Manfred liked Arthur, who not only seemed more flexible than most lawmen, but also seemed like a decent person. Manfred also knew that Arthur had been married three times already, since Arthur had told him that. In fact, the third divorce was only a month past. Magdalena had been married, too, at least once. Manfred was not optimistic that their couplehood would endure.
However, Manfred told himself sternly, it was none of his business, and Arthur and Magdalena were certainly old enough to chart their own course.