Something about her anxious face and the wringing of her hands tugged at me, though. I sighed and checked in with "the crew," hoping they'd back me up. Instead I got a very firm "yes!" Crap.
Well, I wasn't that hungry anymore anyway. "Okay," I said, "I've got some time before my next appointment arrives. Come on in."
I unlocked the office, letting us both in, put my lunch in the small refrigerator in the waiting room, locked the front door and ushered Allison into my reading room.
Our office is laid out in a T-shaped floor plan. The front door deposits you in our tiny waiting room, where two chairs sit facing the door and a small table holds several magazines. Directly behind that room is our administrative office, with a small desk in the center of the room to hold the phone, the computer, and two large filing cabinets, which hold client release forms and mailing lists. Two other rooms also open off the waiting room: Theresa's reading room to the right, and mine to the left.
The space that I use to read people is one of my favorite places on earth. The room is rather small, only eleven by nine feet, but to me it's the perfect size. I'd painted the walls an azure blue that always reminded me of one of those travel calendars I'd seen with a photo of the Greek island of Mykonos and the sea surrounding it. The room has an abundance of trim, and this I'd painted a rich buttery cream that complemented the blue. Daylight pours in through two long horizontal windows that run almost the full length of the room. Seven very tall bamboo shoots sprout from a rainbow-colored glass vase, which rests on a credenza butted up against the windows.
Dotting every possible surface are clusters of crystals and lightly scented candles. In the center of the room two overstuffed cream-colored chairs sit facing each other, between them a small table that holds a tape recorder. On the walls I'd hung a favorite photo of Hawaii and a beautiful mosaic glass mirror. Tucked into one far corner, a mammoth linear waterfall gave rhythm to the room.
I pointed to one of the chairs, and as Allison settled herself, I quickly walked around the room with a lighter, igniting several of the candles. Finally, I went to my chair and pulled a blank tape from a stack on the credenza next to me. I stuck the tape in, set the clock and got comfortable.
For most people, intuition is little more than a whisper, a flutter in the white noise they've grown so used to ignoring. For me, it's an actual physical sensation involving flashes of pictures, pressure changes, ringing in my ears and tugs on my body. There are times when I feel so compelled to say something to someone that I can't focus on anything else until I've said it. I've even had instances where I've had a kind of tunnel vision, the world slipping from my peripheral vision as the message I'm supposed to relay plays over and over in my head.
Over the past several years I've discovered ways to control the beast, so to speak, and have found it best that before each session with a client I establish a regular routine. I begin by closing my eyes, and in my mind's eye envisioning white light surrounding me and filling the room. I then invite my crew in.
My "crew" consists of five spirit guides, and one by one I can "feel" their energy enter the room and stand on my right. Think of it like closing your eyes and sensing someone entering the room; there is almost a radiance emanating from them that you can detect without really understanding why you can detect it. This is how it feels to me when I ask my guides to attend.
Once my guides have entered, I then ask the client for their full name and date of birth, which is sort of like painting a bull's-eye on a target for me. Once I have the client's name and birth date I open my intuition, pointing it directly at the client, like an arrow at a target. When I feel a connection to their energy, I know it's time for me to speak.
After a few moments in front of Allison I felt a strong connection to her energy and got several images right away. "Okay, the first thing I'm picking up is pottery. They're showing me a potter's wheel and that scene from Ghost, you know, where Demi Moore is making clay pots?"
Allison replied in a surprised breath, "I teach a pottery class at the Art Institute."
"Cool! Okay, they're giving me the feeling that you've been very sad lately. I feel like someone close to you, a woman, has left the picture and that this has made you very depressed; your pottery is suffering or you're neglecting your class as a result."
"Yes," she said as I paused between sentences.
"They are making me feel like you used to be an outdoorsy kind of person, like you enjoyed planting flowers and tending the garden and you've been spending all this time indoors with the shades drawn."
"Yes."
"Your guides are telling me that you need to get on with your life, that this sadness needs to pass and that there is a big giant world of discovery out there if only you'll venture out."
Silence.
I rarely look at my clients when I'm doing a reading as I've found that their facial expressions tend to distract me. I typically point my gaze to an empty corner of the room or just close my eyes. The only time I will look at a client is when they don't confirm something I've said. Allison hadn't responded yet, so thinking that I might have gotten the last statement wrong, I glanced at her to gauge her physical reaction. What I noticed was that her mouth had formed a grim, thin line and her hands were gripping the sides of the chair so fiercely that her knuckles were turning white.
A little confused at her reaction, I checked again with my crew to make sure I was on track. They replayed everything I'd just said again in my head, a sign that I was in fact getting it right. I focused again on Allison, and I suddenly noticed the tiniest shift in her energy. She was closing herself off. Experience had taught me that this meant that either I was way off or I had struck a nerve. I mentally asked the crew for a different topic.
"Okay, now they're showing me a for sale sign…Are you selling your house?"
"Yes."
"Good, they're saying move forward with this. I feel like this is a really good thing you're doing, like they are really happy you're doing this. I get the feeling that there was too much of the past here and that by moving out you're letting go of things that have been weighing you down."
More silence. I refused to look at Allison anymore, deciding to keep my eyes closed. Her reactions were throwing me off, and I just wanted to concentrate on what I was getting. I could feel her energy both accepting what I was saying and holding it at bay. The incongruity of it was making me mentally scratch my head. Feeling slightly frustrated, I again asked my crew for another topic.
"Okay, they're saying there is a dark-haired man around you, and they are attaching a warning to him. They're saying that you need to have nothing to do with him. I get the feeling this guy is connected to you in some obscure way, like he's a family member but not, a brother figure or something, someone you've lost touch with, and you should keep it that way—he's just got bad news written all over him. They're also connecting him to this feeling of loss for you, like he was why this woman you were close to left, and that you want to blame him, and they're saying that it's okay to blame him, but not to his face. Like he really did do what you think he did, but you need to tread carefully here. They keep saying 'Leave well enough alone' and I get the feeling that you're sticking your nose into something that is bigger than you thought it was or that you could be getting yourself into trouble with this dark-haired man. They're saying that there's really nothing you can do and just to leave it alone."
Silence.
Once in a great while I will get a really "icky" feeling connected with a possible future event. The icky feeling with the professor and his heart condition was what compelled me to warn him that day in class.
I was getting the same type of very icky feeling around Allison and this dark-haired man. Hearing no confirmation for what I had just said, I finally opened my eyes and looked at her. She had gone very pale and very still and her eyes were liquid, tears on the verge of spilling over.
The warning continued to play over and over in my head, so I emphasized it by saying, "A
llison, I'm telling you, they are making it clear that you need to stay away from this guy, whoever he is. You have the power to change your destiny. It's called free will, and you can choose to ignore this advice and bring one kind of future to yourself, or you can take my advice and stay out of trouble. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she whispered and nodded her head.
In retrospect, I suppose I wanted to believe that I'd gotten through to her; I wanted to believe she'd listened to the warning and taken my advice. Why I didn't probe a little deeper when I had the chance, I'll never know. What I do remember is that my icky feeling refused to subside, but I asked for another topic anyway, and the rest of her reading was actually rather bland. Other than the initial warning nothing jumped out at me. I've gone back over it many times since then, wondering continually if I could have altered fate in some way. Maybe if I'd just pushed a little harder, used my gift to probe a little deeper, perhaps I could have saved Allison's life in the end, and in doing so prevented a serial killer from setting his sights on me.
The tricky thing about fate, however, is that it's all in the timing.
Chapter Two
"Theresa?!" I shouted up the stairs.
"Yeah?" she called back, the sound of paper crumpling emanating from her bedroom.
"I'm finished in the living room. Did you want me to start in on the kitchen, or the study?"
"Um, the kitchen, I think. Brett promised me he'd do the study, so leave that for him. I'll be down to help you in a minute. I'm almost done up here."
"Okay," I said, shuffling into the kitchen and patting her cat, Mystery, on the way.
My face was set in perma frown, and I'd done so much heavy sighing lately that I'd practically hyperventilated twice. The day after Theresa and Brett had arrived home they'd begun packing, making the past week a whirlwind of activity. I'd helped as much as I could in the hours after work, and now, as I stared at the kitchen table where Theresa and I had shared so many late-night talks and so much pizza, I found my eyes becoming blurry, and my throat felt tight—again.
With a sigh, I taped together a moving box, lugged in the wrapping paper from the other room and began unloading the kitchen cabinets. Theresa joined me about ten minutes later, her curly brown hair pulled up in a ponytail and her big brown eyes wide with energy. For a long time we didn't speak. Then, breaking the silence, she looked at me a little askance and asked, "Abby? Have you been holding out on me?"
"I'm sorry, what?" I asked, surprised by the question.
She looked at me more intently now and said, "Honey, you've got the love bug all over your energy! Did you meet someone?"
When Theresa and I first met, she was in the very early stages of dating Brett, the love of her life (and now her husband). I, on the other hand, was in the middle of letting go of mine. I had fallen in love with Ben Newman the moment I'd met him, and we'd been inseparable for three solid years. Then one day we'd talked marriage, and I had taken the bull by the horns and planned the entire wedding in a record-breaking fifteen minutes. I remember him getting a rather pained look on his face, and over the course of the next few weeks he had faded slowly away, like summer into fall, and I'd gotten the message. Okay, so it took him saying, "I don't want to marry you," for it to really sink in, but eventually I got there.
It was nearly four years later and I hadn't dated a single soul since. Six months ago I'd been ready to get back in the saddle, finally convinced that Ben just wasn't going to come to his senses and call me begging for forgiveness. I'd started fixing myself up a bit, making goo-goo eyes at attractive men, and wearing lingerie with an underwire and maybe a little bit of padding. Then one afternoon I was walking around the mall doing some shopping for more of the underwire push-up stuff when I spotted Ben standing outside a clothing store holding several packages. My heart did a flip-flop, and I looked in a nearby mirror, thanking the powers-that-be that I'd fixed my hair and was wearing makeup. "Play it cool," I muttered to myself, as I began to trot over. "Be breezy."
When I was ten feet from him I saw a woman come out of the clothing store pushing a stroller complete with baby. She stopped in front of Ben. He greeted her with a kiss and loaded some of the packages onto the stroller, the two of them laughing at something the woman said. Just then she caught me staring at them all bug-eyed, and she turned Ben's attention in my direction. He looked at me for a moment, trying to place the face, and just as recognition dawned I bolted away from him, straight out of the mall.
I cried for a week—okay, maybe four, but after that I made up my mind. No more men! Theresa indulged my heartache with open ears, boxes of Kleenex and lots of ice cream. One of the things I loved most about her was her ability to just listen, without judgment or unwanted advice. She let me cry and rage and fall into a well of self-pity. Smart woman that she is, she knew if she just let me heal, I would eventually find my way out of that well and put an end to my self-imposed spinsterhood.
So the day I heard that she and Brett were officially moving to California, I panicked, finding the thought of spending every weekend alone quite daunting. After mulling it over for a little while, I decided to stop living like plain old vanilla and start looking for some topping—or at least some chocolate sprinkles. So I'd joined Heart2heart.com, an Internet dating service, three days ago out of total desperation.
One of the other hazards of my job is that it doesn't invite a stream of eligible bachelors. To a very large degree my clientele is female; the men I do read are typically gay or in the throes of girl trouble themselves. Not exactly the perfect profession for meeting Prince Charming.
I hadn't shared joining the Internet dating service with Theresa, mostly because I just wanted it to happen naturally. For once I didn't want to know the outcome. I wanted it to be a surprise. I also meticulously avoided asking "my crew" about joining the site, for the same reason. The problem with being an intuitive is that you get advice all the time. I strictly told them to butt out until I was ready to ask them; so far they had listened and hadn't sent me any feelings one way or another, but that didn't mean they couldn't give Theresa a little hint. I frowned at how sneaky my crew was, but then again, I was a pretty stubborn pupil.
"Well?" she asked, hands now firmly on hips.
Rolling my eyes, I confessed. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. I just listed my profile on an Internet matching service to see what I'd see."
"And…?"
I sighed. Clearly I wasn't going to be able to get away with a simple answer. "And I have a date tomorrow with a guy who actually took a decent picture."
Theresa squealed and punched me in the arm, which caused me to roll my eyes so far back I had a lovely view of the top of my skull. "Don't make a big deal out of it. It's just a date."
"So what's his name?" she asked, now pumping me for details I was very reluctant to give. I just didn't want the pressure of it all. I was struggling with my own insecurities of being alone, so the fewer people who knew and felt pity for me the better.
I sighed again and gave her a look that pleaded for her to back off. She smiled winningly back at me and batted her eyelashes. There was no way she was letting me off the hook. She could be pretty stubborn too.
"His name is Dutch."
"Dutch?"
"Yep." If Theresa was going to continue fishing for details, she was going to find it a pretty dry lake.
"Hmmm, interesting name. Is it a nickname?"
"I'm not sure. He just signs his e-mails 'Dutch,' so it could be."
"What's he do?"
"I'm not sure. His profile said something about security, or securities. He might be a stockbroker or something."
"Uh-huh—and?"
I sighed again, as audibly as I could, feeling myself on the verge of getting rude and struggling to pull in my horns. "And what? He's in his mid-thirties, he's got wavy blond hair and blue eyes, he's over six two, and he's divorced, no kids. He's a nonsmoking, social-drinking, Michigan native, and he currently lives in Royal Oak. He's pro
bably a walking cliché and I'm probably going to have a rotten time and go home convinced that I will never marry and should reconsider my idea of breeding cats."
Theresa laughed and rubbed my arm. "Wow! I gotta say I'm so proud you have such an open mind about the whole thing."
The next day was Saturday, and it promised to be intense. On weekends I book the most readings, six to eight per day, which allows me to take Mondays and Tuesdays off. During the week I schedule no more than four to six per day; any more than that and I'm too tired to do a good job. It's great work if you can get it, and I feel very lucky that I make a pretty good living this way.
My alarm clanged at seven—my first reading was at nine. Sleepy-eyed, I pulled my waist-length light brown hair into a ponytail and slipped on jeans and a tank top. I slapped on a little makeup, thankful that the complexion god had smiled on me and no blemish had cropped up during the night. I had my date with Dutch tonight and was feeling nervous enough already.
At thirty-one I feel pretty lucky. I neither look nor act my age. I'm usually pegged as about three to five years younger than I really am, a myth I encourage.
At five six I'm a comfortable height, and thankfully I'm one of those supremely lucky souls blessed with a fast metabolism, allowing me, with a little effort, to maintain my 123 pounds. Overall I've always been content with my looks. I'm neither bombshell nor plain Jane, but somewhere comfortably in between. My looks allow me the freedom to float unnoticed among the masses when I'm makeup-less and sloppy or to turn a few heads when I need an ego boost and I've spent an hour in the bathroom priming and primping.
Throughout my twenties I'd been a fitness buff, and regular gym workouts were on my daily agenda. These days, however, I'm more into yoga, finding it just as toning and a lot gentler. It just seems to fit better with the whole intuitive image too—I mean, who wants to get a reading from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?