“So this is where the chick lives,” Lacey said. “I suppose I should think it refreshing that a guy would let himself be such a fool over a girl.”
He saw Lacey’s lips curl back in distaste.
“I don’t see why you should think anything. It’s got nothing to do with you,” Tristan replied. “Are you going to teach me?”
“Oh, why not? I have time to kill.”
They searched out a hidden nook in the trees and sat down, Ella following slowly behind them. Lacey began to pet the cat, and Ella rewarded her with a small, polite purr. When Tristan looked closely, he could see that the tips of her fingers did not glow. They were quite solid.
“All it requires is concentration,” said Lacey. “Intense concentration. Look at your fingertips, stare at them as a way of maintaining your focus. You almost will them into being.”
Tristan extended his hand toward Ella. He forced everything else out of his mind, focusing on his fingertips. He felt a slight tingling sensation, the kind of pins-and-needles feeling he used to get when his arm fell asleep. The sensation grew stronger and stronger in his fingers. Then another kind of tingling began in his head, a feeling he did not like. He started to grow faint. His whole self, except for his fingers, felt like it was melting away. He pulled back.
Lacey clucked at him. “Lost your nerve.”
“I’ll try again.”
“Better rest for a sec.”
“I don’t need rest!”
It was humiliating, after being strong and smart all his life—the swimming teacher, the math tutor—to accept lessons from this know-it-all girl on something as simple as petting a cat.
“Looks like I’m not the only one around here with a big ego,” Lacey observed with satisfaction.
Tristan ignored the comment. “What was happening to me?” he asked.
“All your energy was being rerouted to your fingertips,” she said, “which made the rest of you feel faint, or like you were dissolving or something.”
He nodded.
“As you build up your strength that won’t be a problem,” she added. “If you ever get to the point of materializing your whole self and projecting your voice—though, frankly, I doubt you will—you’ll have to learn to draw energy from your surroundings. I just suck it right out of there.”
“You sound like an alien in a sci-fi horror movie.”
She nodded. “Lips of Planet Indigo. You know, I came this close to winning an Oscar for that.”
Funny, Tristan remembered it as a box-office bomb.
“Want to try again now?”
Tristan extended his hand. In a way, it was like finding his pulse, like lying on a bed and hearing his own heart: he suddenly became aware of the way energy traveled through him, and he directed it, this time coolly and calmly, to his fingertips. They lost their shimmer.
Then he felt her. Soft, silky, deep fur. Ella began to purr loudly as he traced out all her favorite places to be petted. She rolled on her back. Tristan laughed. When he scratched her belly, her “motor” seemed as loud as a small prop plane’s.
Then he lost the touch. The sunlit day went gray. Ella stopped purring. All he could do was hold still and wait, sucking on the air around him like someone trying to catch his breath, though he had none.
“Excellent!” said Lacey. “I had no idea I was such a good teacher.”
Color returned to the grass and trees. The sky burned blue again. Only Ella, scrambling to her feet and sniffing the air, showed signs that something wasn’t quite right.
Tristan turned to Lacey, exhausted. “I won’t be able to reach her. If that is as much as I can do, I won’t be able to reach her.”
“Are we talking about the chick again?”
“You know her name.”
“Ivy. Symbol of faithfulness and remembering. Is there some message you’re trying to send her?”
“I have to convince her that I love her.”
“That’s it?” Lacey made a face. “That’s it?”
“I think it’s probably my mission,” Tristan said.
“Oh, puh-lease.”
“You know, I’m getting pretty tired of your sarcasm,” Tristan told her.
“I don’t much enjoy your silliness,” she replied. “Tristan, you are naive if you think the Number One Director would go to all the trouble of making you an angel so you could convince some chick that you love her. Missions are never that simple, never that easy.”
He wanted to fight with her, but her melodramatic hand-waving had ceased. She was serious.
“I still don’t get it,” he said. “How am I supposed to discover my mission?”
“You watch. You listen. You stay close to the people you know or the people you feel yourself drawn to—they’re probably the people you’ve been sent back to help.”
Tristan began to wonder who in his life might need special help.
“It’s sort of like being a detective,” Lacey said. “The hitch is, it’s not just a whodunit. It’s a who-done-what. Often you don’t know what the problem is that you’ve been sent to solve. Sometimes the problem hasn’t happened yet—you have to save the person from some disaster that is going to occur in the future.”
“You’re right,” said Tristan. “It’s not simple.”
They had walked their way past the tennis court and around to the front of the house. Ella, who had been following them, scurried ahead and up the front steps.
“Even if it is something that will happen in the future,” Lacey went on, “the key is often hidden in your own past. Fortunately, time travel is not that hard.”
Tristan raised his eyebrows. “Time travel?”
Lacey hopped up on Gregory’s car, which had been left in the driveway in front of the house.
“Traveling backward in your mind, I mean. There are a lot of things we forget if we remember only in the present. There may be clues that we didn’t pick up in the past, but they’re still there and can be found again by traveling backward in our minds.”
As Lacey spoke she stretched out on the hood of the BMW. She looked to Tristan like Morticia Addams doing a car ad.
“Maybe,” she baited him, “I’ll teach you how to travel through time, too. Of course, traveling backward in someone else’s mind, that’s not something for an amateur like you to fool around with. There is some danger in all of this,” she added. “Oh, cheer up, Dumps.”
“I’m not down. I’m thinking.”
“Then look up,” she said.
Tristan glanced toward the front door. Ivy stood there, looking out toward the driveway, as if waiting for someone.
“‘It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were!’” said Lacey.
Tristan kept his eyes on Ivy. “What?”
“Romeo and Juliet. Act two, scene two. I auditioned for it, you know, for Shakespeare in the Park. The casting director wanted me.”
“Good,” Tristan said vaguely. He wished she’d leave him alone now. All he wanted was to be alone, to revel in the sight of Ivy, Ivy stepping out onto the porch, Ivy with her hair blowing gold as she gracefully moved to the top of the steps and picked up Ella.
“The director said my kind of talent was to die for.”
“Great,” said Tristan. If only cats could talk, he thought. Tell her, Ella, tell her what you know.
“The producer, a major artsy-fartsy, said he wanted someone who had a ‘more classic’ face, someone with a voice that wouldn’t lapse into New Yorkese.”
Ivy was still standing on the porch, cuddling Ella and looking toward him. Maybe she did believe, Tristan thought. Maybe she had a faint sense of his presence.
“That producer is in New York for a couple of weeks, getting a road show ready. I thought I’d pay him a visit.”
“Great,” Tristan repeated. He turned his head when Ivy did, hearing the whine of a small car climbing to the top of the hill.
“I thought I’d murder him,” Lacey added, “cause a traffic accident that would kil
l him on the spot.”
“Terrific.”
“You’re pathetic!” she said. “You’re really pathetic! Were you this gaga in life? I can only imagine you when you still had hormones pumping through you.”
He turned to her angrily. “Look,” he said, “you’re no better than I am. I’m in love with Ivy, you’re in love with you. We’re both obsessed, so back off.”
For a moment Lacey didn’t say anything. Her eyes changed ever so slightly. A camera would not have caught the flicker of hurt feelings. But Tristan did, and knowing that this time she wasn’t acting, he regretted his words.
“I’m sorry.”
Lacey had turned away from him. He figured she’d be off anytime now, leaving him to fumble his way through his mission.
“Lacey, I’m sorry.”
“Well, well, well,” she said.
“It’s just that—”
“Who is this?” she interrupted him. “Tweedledee and Tweedledum come to mourn with your lady?”
He turned to watch Beth and Suzanne get out of the car. As it happened, they were both wearing black, but Suzanne had always liked black, especially scanty black, which was what she was wearing—a cool halter-top dress. Beth, on the other hand, was wearing clothes typical of Beth: a loose shift, black with small white flowers on it, whose ruffled hem blew a couple of inches above her red plastic sandals.
“They’re her friends, Beth and Suzanne.”
“That one is definitely a radio,” said Lacey.
“A radio?”
“The one who looks like she’s wearing a shower curtain.”
“Beth,” he said. “She’s a writer.”
“What’d I tell you? A born radio.”
Tristan watched Ivy greet her friends and lead them into the house.
“Let’s go,” Lacey said, springing forward. “This is going to be fun.”
He hung back. He had seen her kind of fun earlier.
“Do you want to tell her you love her, or don’t you? This will be good training for you, Tristan. You’ve got it made, the girl’s an absolute radio. Good radios don’t even have to believe,” she added. “They are receptive to all kinds of things, one of those things being angels. You can speak through her—at least, you can write through her. You know what automatic writing is, don’t you?”
He had heard of it. Mediums did it, their hands supposedly writing at the will of someone else, relaying messages from the dead.
“You mean Beth is like a medium?”
“An untrained one. A natural radio. She’ll broadcast you—if not today, then tomorrow. We’ve just got to establish the link and slip into her mind.”
“Slip into her mind?” he asked.
“It’s pretty simple,” Lacey said. “All you need to do is think exactly like her, see the world the way Beth sees it, feel as Beth feels, love whomever she loves, desire her deepest desires.”
“No way,” said Tristan.
“In short, you have to adopt the radio’s point of view, and then you slip right in.”
“You obviously don’t know the way Beth’s mind works,” said Tristan. “You’ve never seen her stories. She writes these torrid romances.”
“Oh… you mean the kind where the lover stares longingly at his beloved, his eyes soulful, his heart aching so that he cannot see or hear anyone else?”
“Exactly.”
She tilted back her head and smirked. “You’re right. You and Beth are certainly different.”
Tristan didn’t say anything.
“If you really loved Ivy, you’d try. I’m sure the lovers in Beth’s stories wouldn’t let a little challenge like this stop them.”
“How about Philip?” said Tristan. “He’s Ivy’s brother. And he can see me shimmering.”
“Ah! You’ve found a believer,” she said.
“A radio, I’m sure,” Tristan told her.
“Not necessarily. There’s no real connection between believing and being a radio.”
“Can’t we try him first?”
“Sure, we can waste time,” she said, and slipped inside the house.
Philip was in the kitchen making microwave brownies. On the counter next to his bowl were a few sticky baseball cards and a catalogue opened to a picture of kids’ mountain bikes. Tristan was confident. This was a point of view he knew well.
“Stay behind him,” Lacey advised. “If he notices your glow, it will distract him. He’ll start searching and trying to understand. He’ll focus outward so hard that he won’t be open to letting anything else in.”
Actually, staying behind Philip helped in other ways. Tristan read the box directions over Philip’s shoulder. He thought about what step he should do next and how the brownies would smell as they baked, how they would taste, warm and crumbly, just out of the oven. He wanted to lick the spoon, with its raw, runny chocolate. Philip did lick it.
Tristan knew who he was, and at the same time he was someone else too, the way he’d felt sometimes when reading a good story. This was easy. “Philip, it’s me—”
Wham! Tristan reeled backward, as if he had walked into a glass wall. He hadn’t seen it, had been totally unaware of it, till it slammed him in the face. For a few moments, he was stunned.
“It can get pretty rough sometimes,” Lacey said, observing him. “I guess it’s clear to you now. Philip doesn’t want you in.”
“But I was his friend.”
“He doesn’t know it’s you.”
“If he’d let me talk to him, then he would know,” Tristan argued.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “I warned you. I’m getting good at telling radios from non-radios. You can try him again, but he’ll be ready for you this time, and it will be even tougher. You don’t want a radio who fights you. Let’s try Beth.”
Tristan paced around. “Why don’t you try Beth?”
“Sorry.”
“But”—he thought fast—“you’re such a great actress, Lacey. That’s why this kind of thing comes easily to you. An actress’s job is to take on a role. The really great ones, like you, don’t just imitate. No, they become the other person. That’s why you do it so well.”
“Nice try,” she said. “But Beth is your radio to the one you’re messaging. You have to do it yourself. That’s just the way it works.”
“It never seems to work the way I want it to,” he complained.
“You’ve noticed that too,” she remarked. “I assume you know how to get up to your lady’s bower.”
Tristan led the way to Ivy’s bedroom. The door was open a crack. Ella, who was still following them, nudged it open and entered; they passed through the walls.
Suzanne was sitting in front of Ivy’s mirror, rifling through an open jewelry box, trying on Ivy’s necklaces and earrings. Ivy was sprawled out on her bed, reading a sheaf of papers—one of Beth’s stories, Tristan figured. Beth was pacing around the room.
“At least get yourself a jewel-encrusted pencil,” Suzanne said, “if you’re going to continue to wear it in your hair like that.”
Beth reached up to the knot of hair wound high on her head and plucked out a pencil. “I forgot.”
“You’re getting worse and worse, Beth.”
“It’s just all so interesting. Courtney swears her little sister is telling the truth. And when some of the guys went back to the chapel, they found one of the girls’ sweaters hung high up on a sconce.”
“The girls themselves could have thrown it up there,” Suzanne pointed out.
“Mmm. Maybe,” Beth said, and pulled a notebook out of her purse.
Lacey turned to Tristan. “There’s your entrance. She’s thinking about this morning. Couldn’t have been laid out easier for you.”
Beth rolled her pencil back and forth between her fingers. Tristan moved close to her. Guessing that she was trying to picture the scene, he recalled the way the chapel had looked, moving from the bright light outside into its tall shadowiness. He saw the girls settling themselve
s in the altar area. Beth’s stories always had a million details. He recalled the crumbling debris on the floor and imagined how the damp stone might feel beneath the girls’ bare legs, how their skin might prickle if a draft came through the broken window, or how they’d twitch if they thought they felt a spider on their legs.
He was in the scene, slipping out of himself and into—Whoa! She didn’t slam down like Philip, but he was pushed back swiftly and firmly. Beth stood up, moved several feet away, and looked back at the spot where she had been writing.
“Does she see me?” Tristan asked Lacey. “Does she see my glow?”
“I don’t think so—she’s not paying any attention to mine. But she knows something’s going on. You came on too strong.”
“I was trying to think the way she would think, giving her some details. She loves details.”
“You rushed her. She knows it doesn’t feel right. Back off a little.”
But Beth started writing then, describing the girls in the circle. Some of his details were there—whether by his suggestion or her own creation, he wasn’t sure—but he couldn’t resist pushing further.
Slam! This time it came down hard, so hard that Tristan actually fell backward.
“I warned you,” said Lacey.
“Beth, you are as nervous as a cat,” Suzanne said.
Ivy looked up from her story. “As nervous as Ella? She’s been acting really funny lately.”
Lacey shook her finger at Tristan. “Listen to me. You’ve got to go easy. Imagine Beth is a house and you’re a thief breaking in. You have to take your time. You have to creep. Find what you need in the basement, in her unconscious, but don’t disturb the person living upstairs. Got it?”
He got it, but he was reluctant to try again. The strength of Beth’s mind and the directness of her blow was much greater than Philip’s.
Tristan felt frustrated, unable to send the simplest message to Ivy. She was so close, so close, yet … He could pass his hand through hers, but never touch. Lie next to her, but never comfort. Say a line to make her smile, but never be heard. He had no place in her life now, and perhaps that was better for her, but it was life in death for him.
Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates Page 13
