Stalking the Moon

by Angel Leigh McCoy

  "It’s crazy, or I’m crazy?"

  "You’re crazy sometimes, but not this time. Somebody called you. It's right here on the phone."

  "Colin told me to look in his hiding place. Can we go to his room?"

  Lettie chewed on her lip. "Colin had a hiding place?"

  "He kept things in the leg of his bed—things he didn’t want anyone else to see. It’s hollow with a cap on the end. I can’t believe I didn’t remember it before. Let’s go!" I unfolded my legs and jumped up.

  Lettie crossed her arms on her chest. "What if there’s another patient in there?"

  "Lettie, this is important! C’mon. Let’s go now, before the place wakes up."

  I knew from experience that the best time to sneak around the Men’s Wing was between 7:00 and 8:00. The patients who weren’t still sleeping were at the breakfast buffet.

  I hopped a little. I was excited, and I couldn’t help it. "C’mon."

  "Okay. But you have to promise me something."

  "Anything."

  "No matter what happens, you can’t freak out on me. Okay?"

  I promised.

  ♦♦♦

  CHAPTER 19

  The Center wasn't a high-security institution. The patients were more likely to hurt themselves than each other. Nevertheless, the doors were locked behind an outdated system of numbered keypads. My staff had full access so we could collect the dirty laundry.

  Out of habit, I watched Lettie input the code.

  We went down first, to the ground floor. The rooms there held exercise and physical therapy equipment, and we passed a pair of bathrooms that led to the therapy pool, sauna, and whirlpools—all abandoned at that early hour. Once we were on the men’s side, we climbed to the third floor.

  The Men’s Wing had an entirely different smell from the Women’s. Everything about it was musky and musty. Colin’s room was right next to the stairwell, so we shuffled quickly from one to the other and shut the door behind us.

  The lights were off inside, and I fumbled for the switch. When they came on, a field of stark white blinded me for a moment. As my vision cleared, I didn’t find what I’d expected. The room had been gutted. The bed was a bare mattress on a metal frame built to be sturdy with hollow metal legs two inches in diameter. Nothing remained of Colin’s, not even his trunk. The doors on the dresser were ajar and empty. It was as if someone had come along with a bucket of bleach and cleaned away all evidence of Colin—every trace of his presence. The starkness of it cut me to the center of my heart.

  Lettie said, "They packed up his stuff."

  I got down on my hands and knees by the bed. "Help me. Can you lift this corner?"

  Lettie hurried over and raised the bed.

  With one hand, I felt around. There was a cap there—a plastic cap that covered the open end of the hollow metal leg. I pulled the cap off, and the end of a ribbon dropped out. I pulled on it, and a roll of papers came with it.

  Lettie said, "How about that? A secret stash."

  "He was afraid he’d forget everything again, so he used to write the important things down and put them in here. It slipped my mind until he mentioned it."

  "Can you get it all?"

  I stuck my fingers in as far as they would go, but I didn’t feel anything else. "That’s everything." I put the cap back on, and we lowered the leg to the floor.

  Lettie asked, "What about the other legs?"

  "I don’t know. It couldn’t hurt to look." So we found more.

  Lettie and I sat together on the bare bed, and I laid out the items, one by one, flattening them as much as possible. Among them were his notes, a shipping receipt, and photos of Colin and me—on his birthday, at the lake, and in front of the Center’s Christmas tree. I looked at the pictures for awhile, remembering, and then I reached for the shipping receipt.

  "What’s this?" The shipment had gone to B. Rosenblum at an address in Peoria.

  Lettie leaned to look at it. "Is that Doc Bella's home address? He must have stolen it."

  I shook my head. "I don’t know. Maybe she gave it to him."

  "I wonder what they shipped. What's the date on it?"

  "The day before the accident."

  "It must have been Dr. Rosenblum’s stuff? I mean, she's going to be gone for a long time."

  We looked at each other for a long minute, then Lettie said, "Let’s get out of here before we get caught. The last thing I need is to lose my job."

  We went back the way we’d come, doubly careful, and made it to my room without any hassles.

  "I need to go," Lettie said. "Are you going to be okay?"

  "Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m going to read this and see what I can find out." I nurtured that little spark of hope to the best of my ability, clinging to the memory of Colin's voice on the phone.

  Lettie kissed me on the forehead. "Call me if you find anything interesting. Okay?"

  I said, "I will," and the moment she was out the door, I started reading Colin's notes. They overflowed with his everyday thoughts and feelings. As I read, his voice came alive.

  Some days I think I’ll be this way forever. Bella keeps saying I’ll get my memory back, that I have to be patient. Patient, my ass. I want it now. This feeling is worse than anything I could ever find out about myself. It’s the time between death and birth, waiting for my life to begin. I know I have a future, a destiny so great that it haunts my dreams. I just can’t make out the details—not yet. I’m in a chrysalis. I’m a butterfly or maybe a locust. Either way, I’m ready to emerge.

  Colin talked like that, too. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with him. Everything was so…big. His world wasn’t limited to a 9-to-5 job and running errands. He dreamed big, talked big, and thought big.

  Viviane worries I won’t love her anymore if I remember, but that’s bullshit. The one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that she is mine.

  Nurse Bea interrupted me when she came trawling for breakfast stragglers. She was in the next room, urging Una out of her corner. I was next.

  I stuck Colin’s notes in my suitcase, and I locked it. If a nurse found it, she’d tell Richard, and if Richard knew I had them, he’d confiscate them. He’d want to go through them before me and take out anything that might upset me. I wasn’t ready to let him invade Colin’s privacy.

  I hit the breakfast buffet. Doing normal things made me feel and appear sane. It cowed the anxiety and shoved aside the dilemma, for the time being. I took the table in the corner and sat by myself.

  Richard had once said, "There are only two possibilities, Vivi. Either what you experienced was real, or it wasn’t. There’s no in-between. When you learn to recognize the difference, you’ll be able to function better in the world." I was nineteen when he said that, and I was usually pretty good at sorting the fantastic from the real.

  After that phone call, however, I felt as if I’d gotten off-track again.

  To myself, I said, "I want it to be real," and that might've explained everything.

  Someone said, "Hi."

  Corona stood beside me with a tray of food.

  "Hi."

  "You’re talking to yourself. Don’t let them see, or they’ll give you more meds."

  I glanced around at the nurses, dining staff, and patients. "Thanks."

  "No problem." She set the tray on my little table and pulled out a chair. "I’ll sit here, then they’ll think you’re talking to me." She moved her plates off the tray. She had six of them, all small, each holding a different item: scrambled eggs on one, sausage on another, toast on a third, fried potatoes, melon slices, and a single piece of bacon. She placed each plate carefully on the table, and when the tray was empty, she set it aside. She arranged the plates in two rows of three: eggs, sausage, and potatoes closest; toast, melon, and bacon farthest. She lined up her silverware on one side.

  On an impulse, I said, "Colin called me."

  She raised her brown eyes without lifting her head. "I was wondering."

 
I lowered my voice to a whisper, and the words tumbled out. "He called me in the middle of the night. He didn’t talk long. I don't think he was supposed to be on the phone."

  Corona nodded the whole time I was talking.

  "And, it was Doc Bella’s phone. I know because I called back, and she answered."

  Corona said, "I heard Doc Bella say Colin was checking out soon. She said, 'He's overdue for phase two.'"

  "What? When?"

  "I was in her office for my session. There was a knock on her door."

  "Who was she talking to?"

  "That old black guy from the laundry—you know him. He and Doc Bella are bosom buddies."

  I blinked in surprise. "What black guy from the laundry?"

  "You know. The tall, skinny one who works the graveyard shift."

  "You mean Ajani? Ajani Jones?"

  "Yup."

  Memories stirred of Ajani kneeling by Colin, asking me if I was okay. Colin had said, "It’s her," and Ajani’s response had been, "Are you sure?"

  Not "Her who?"

  Not "Whatever you say," but "Are you sure?" As if he'd known what Colin had meant.

  The hag had been after us in the stairwell. Colin had known it. That’s why he'd been so afraid. But Ajani? My head was spinning.

  I said, "I think Ajani knows about the hag."

  Corona’s eyebrows rose. "Ajani is a guardian."

  I asked, "I don’t understand."

  "All I can give is the truth. I’m limited that way." Corona looked me straight in the eyes.

  I was beginning to feel more frustrated and angry than upset and shaken.

  "Here’s how I see it," I said. "I have two options. I can accept the possibility that Colin is alive, or I can reject it. If I accept it, then I have to dig deeper."

  Corona said, "You’re at the crossroads between Easy Street and the Olympus Stairway. Choose one and everything stays manageable. Choose the other, and you'll have to overcome your humanity to reach the gods on Mt. Olympus—or die trying."

  I wondered what it was about Corona that made people think she was out of touch with reality. She spoke in metaphors, but they made perfect sense to me. I said, "It’s not an easy choice."

  Corona replied, "It never is when your reality is on the line."

  That was how it felt—as if the world, the cosmos, the universe, and my future happiness hung in the balance. If the man I loved were dead, then my version of reality had been corrupted. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of that anymore.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, then Corona asked, "Do you believe in soul mates?"

  "Yeah."

  "Do you know what the odds are of meeting a soul mate? If you factor in the size of this planet and the number of inhabitants, then consider time? The chance of them being born in the same generation as you puts the odds against finding your soul mate in your lifetime at a zillion to one."

  I stared at her.

  She continued without missing a beat. "Maybe, when we all first started incarnating, we had soul mates, and on some level, we remember that. That would explain the irrational yearning. But, it’s a wobbly wheel. Over time, our lives get out of sync with each other. In one lifetime, someone dies prematurely. In another, the other does. Before you know it, one is being born just as the other is getting old, and so on and so on."

  She paused, staring at me, waiting for a response.

  I said, "Wow."

  "Then," she continued, "there’s the gender remixing. And what if he was born on a different planet or in an alternate dimension? Here’s the crux of it, Viviane. If you think you’ve found your soul mate, and he’s not a cranky two-year-old, you have to go for it."

  "Wow."

  Corona turned her attention back to her food.

  I told her about the shipping receipt and how I'd found it.

  For the longest time, she had no response, but then she asked, "So, when are we gonna go toss Doc Bella’s office?"

  "What?"

  "That’s your next step, isn’t it?"

  She was right. If there were any clues about what happened, they’d be in Doc Bella’s office. "How will we get there? I could call Lettie?"

  Corona waved greasy fingers at me. "Didn't you get your friend Lettie's code this morning?"

  I stared at her. "Yes. How did you know?"

  "You're not as good at sneaking as you think."

  "All right. So we can use that to get to the offices, but what about Bella's door?"

  "I know that code from my last session. I doubt she took the time to change it before she left."

  "What if she did?"

  "Then we find another way."

  "Someone's bound to see us."

  "Nah. We’re invisible. I’ll show you." Corona wrapped her bacon in one napkin and her toast in another, then put them into the pockets of her pajama bottoms. She piled her empty plates neatly back on her tray.

  I gathered my dishes and went with her to the dirty-dish bins.

  Corona said, "Act like you belong, and you will. Don’t be afraid. Nothing fucks your plans the way fear does." She stood tall and made an ineffective attempt to smooth her hair, then she walked—bold as you please—to the exit doors.

  Fearless, she waited for me to tap in the security code, then walked right out into the foyer. I followed her example, grateful that I had put on jeans and a t-shirt that morning. I'd have felt even more conspicuous in my pajamas. Corona, on the other hand, didn’t let the fact that she was roaming the Center in slippers slow her down.

  We headed toward the main house. As we approached the double doors leading into the foyer, doctors and nurses came and went, escorting patients or reading charts. None of them gave us a second glance. The further we went without getting caught, the more I got into the role.

  Bella’s office was on the second floor there, just down the hall from Richard’s. We went straight to her door.

  Doc Marshall came out into the hall, thumbs working furiously on his smart phone. He was short with narrow shoulders, scrawny legs, and a firm, round belly. He looked like a forty-year-old cherub with rosy cheeks, minimal hair on his head, and a love for technological gadgets. He insisted on dressing casually at work, in long shorts and a T-shirt. He said it put his patients at ease. I heard about it often from Richard who found the informality offensive.

  I froze and held my breath.

  He looked at us. "Good morning, ladies." Then, he walked away.

  Corona had correctly guessed that Bella hadn't changed her code, and we were in.

  The door locked automatically behind us, and I stood with my back to it. "Oh my god. We did it. We just waltzed in here like we belong."

  Corona said, "We do belong. I know the P.I.N., after all. It’s magic. If you believe it, chances are everyone else will too. Nobody wants to have to think too hard, so they’re happy to let you do their thinking for them."

  She went to the desk. "Ignore the filing cabinets. Bella's probably got the keys with her." She sat down, turned on the computer, and tugged open desk drawers.

  Doc Bella’s taste in furniture was different from Richard’s. Hers was upholstered with midnight blue fabric, and all the wood was cherry. She had a love for early 20th-century styling. Her office could have been a state room on the Titanic. Bookshelves lined the walls. I tried looking at a couple of the books, but they were all psychology textbooks, psychiatry manuals, and medical encyclopedias.

  Corona said, "There’s nothing in her desk but office supplies. Let’s see what she left on her computer."

  "You can get into her computer?"

  "Sure. She used to say her password out loud when she was typing it in. You know—old people and computers." Corona went through the log-in process.

  I ran my finger around a square left on the desk. Something had been there and wasn’t any more. Dust had settled all around it but left the square clear. I noticed other such marks on the shelves.

  Corona typed and clicked the mouse.

  I w
ent to the couch and lay down on it. Colin must have lain in the same place a thousand times. I settled into the memory of his body the way a ghost settles into a living being. I closed my eyes and waited.

  "Here’s something," Corona said. "Her calendar. Wasn’t she supposed to go to Boston the day of the accident?"

  "Yeah."

  "Not according to this. She had an appointment at a tailor here in Peoria, two days after the accident."

  "A tailor?"

  "Grandma Bella’s a snazzy dresser, but she’d be cross-dressing if she bought her clothes there. One sec." Corona reached over and picked up the phone on the desk. She dialed a number. After a moment, she said, "Hello, yes, I’m calling on behalf of Bella Rosenblum. May I make another appointment?" She listened, and I watched her, fascinated. After a moment, she said, "It’s for the same thing as last time." A smile curved her lips, "Yes, that’s right. For her son. He needs another suit. I’m sorry. Which boy did she bring in last time? That’s the one. Thank you. Next Tuesday would be perfect. We’ll see you then."

  Once she'd hung up, I asked, "Bella has a son?"

  "Yeah." Corona snorted. "A son named Aubrey."

  I blinked and sat up straight. Aubrey was the family name Colin had chosen for himself. Could it have been another coincidence? My spark of hope evolved into a small, fragile flame. "My god, Corona. What’s going on? If Colin’s with her, then why doesn’t she tell anyone? Why’s she keeping this from me?"

  "It’s still too early to tell, but the clues are getting weird."

  A wave of excitement overcame me. I got to my feet and jumped up and down.

  Corona met me in the middle of the room, took my hands, and jumped with me a couple times, then we hugged, laughing.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  We went still in each others’ arms.

  In my ear, Corona said, "Shhhh." She kept hugging me, and we both listened.

  The person knocked again and said, "Doctor Rosenblum?" It was a man.

  I met Corona’s eyes. We said nothing.

  The man tried the door handle. "Doctor? Are you here?"

  I whispered, "What are we going to do?"

  "Shhh." Corona rested her cheek against my shoulder. I rested my chin on her head.