Psychic Junkie

by Sarah Lassez

  The day went on, overwhelming me with varying scenarios of my upcoming life, as if the universe were fitting me for my fate the way a confused girl tries on an entire closet full of clothes before making a selection. Each minute that passed presented another option, another alternative, and though I’d called for comfort, I soon found myself staring at a long line of future heartbreaks and pain.

  10:13 a.m.—Madam Clara announced we’d get back together, which, though it sounded positive, proved to be not such a good thing. “He’ll convince you to come back with him,” she said, “but in June he makes the break, and that’s it. You’re over.”

  10:18 a.m.—Psychic Jane revealed a more optimistic course, saying we’d get back together and have three children, all healthy and blond. “I feel a set of twins. Yes, definitely. I see you pregnant and very large.”

  12:39 p.m.—Love by Paulette also made a stab at being comforting. “You’ll hear from him soon. He’s definitely willing to change, but, well, unfortunately the cards are resistant to tell me if he actually does change.”

  3:42 p.m.—Royal Star alleged, in a staunch English accent, that we’d never reunite, and I’d instead meet an artist who’d propose during a full moon, though evidently that was where the fun would end. “I see struggle. Creatively you two are dynamic, but financially your relationship is marked with issues.”

  3:57 p.m.—Tarot by Sophie decided we’d get back together, in a “romantic and surprising way.” But two years later I’d also be surprised to learn he’d been having an affair with a coworker. “But I see you really benefit from the fresh start. Sure, it’ll be devastating, I won’t deny that, but there’s a silver lining.”

  4:28 p.m.—Fairy Whispers said, in a deep smoker’s voice, there’d be a long stretch of silence and it wouldn’t be till next year that I’d hear from him, at which point he’d return “from a place of a high elevation,” sorry for everything, and wanting me back. “You reunite, and though I’m not seeing much beyond that, I feel marriage.”

  I should’ve just stopped at the feeling of marriage, but at 6:11 p.m. Ask Ruth proclaimed we’d get back together in four months and he’d seem absolutely wonderful, but then one day I’d catch him in bed with a male neighbor.

  Clearly there was no ending the day on that disturbing note, so at 6:17 p.m. Erlin told me to be patient. “You will be together again, don’t worry. And yes, I still see the proposal very clearly.”

  Thank you.

  Another week of psychic binging passed, and I realized I had to try to be healthier and fill my time with things that didn’t make the folks at Mastercard and Visa jump for joy. I found three such free activities, and attempted to intersperse them for the longest durations possible between calls. The first was reading each and every psychic’s feedback on the Web site. For hours I would read commentaries written by troubled people, noting which psychics they deemed reliable, studying up as if doing a thesis on fortune-telling. The second activity involved online tarot readings, because Gina had captured my French deck when she’d learned of its existence. And the third was to obsessively cut my split ends, something that tended to have a calming effect on me, much like yoga for a normal person. After the intensive split-end-cutting sessions I’d return to the computer—eyes crossed and hair becoming more and more lopsided—cry for ten minutes or so, and then figure out which psychic was next on my list.

  For three weeks I did this. I also finally admitted to Gina what had happened, but insisted I was fine and just needed some time to be alone. I then changed the subject to that of her new man, and she briefly, and with as much toned-down enthusiasm as she could manage, told me all about him. “And,” she said, trying to be helpful, “he’s got a bunch of guy friends you’ve never met! It’s like an entire untapped vein of boys! Forget about Wilhelm—he wore pink shirts.”

  And though in theory meeting new people sounded nice, the reality was that I was still trying to find the will to take showers and feed myself, and hence leaving the house and dating was a far off and lofty goal. For now the only relationship I could handle was with my local Thai restaurant’s delivery person, a kind-looking man who’d begun appraising me with growing concern each time he arrived at my house. Part of me wanted to take him inside, sit him down in my living room, give him a plate of Pad Thai noodles, and tell him everything. I knew he didn’t speak English, so it would be perfect. I could talk and talk and talk, and he’d chew and nod, and that would be it. I’d feel better and he’d be full. But I couldn’t let him in, because then he’d actually see the state of my apartment and really grow alarmed, so I instead simply gave him hefty tips, courtesy of Visa or Mastercard, and he’d smile and head back to his car, tossing back one last glance in my direction, perhaps to check if I’d collapsed at the door. I’d wait for him to do this, meet his eye, then wave like a healthy person and head upstairs, where I’d force a couple noodles into my mouth, concentrate on chewing, then close the carton and set it in the fridge with the rest of the white Styrofoam collection.

  One day, after the best shaft of light for identifying and obliterating split ends disappeared, I decided to put my scissors away and call Misty Mystical. Her photo made her appear kind and soothing, understanding and gentle. She was a large woman perched in a rocking chair with an expression that said “Come here, little one.” And so I did.

  “What’s your question, my dear?” she asked with a sweet Southern drawl that was very un-Evangeline-like.

  I wanted to curl up in her massive lap and let her rock me to sleep. Sarah, time is money. Spit it out. “How’s Wilhelm feeling about me?”

  “Give me just a sec while I shuffle the cards.” There was the recognizable flapping of cards and Misty’s mothering coos of “Just a sec more; we’re almost there.” “Alrighty, then,” she finally said. “Now you pick a pile. Left, middle, or right.”

  “Left, please.”

  There was a pause, and then, “He loves you, honey. He misses you.”

  “Really?” My heart was aching.

  “Oh, yes. He knows he’s been a fool. You’ll hear from him in three to ten days.”

  “Thank you, Misty!” I cried, and then hung up before she could tell me what would happen after those three to ten days.

  Three to ten days. As much as I wanted to believe her, there was absolutely nothing to give credence to her prediction. Erlin as well maintained that Wilhelm was suffering and that I should be patient, and even I couldn’t shake the feeling that things weren’t over. We all seemed to be under the ridiculous impression that Wilhelm and I would reunite, but what if we were all just flat-out wrong? What if Wilhelm had moved on? What if he were dating? Writing love letters to his Aryan goddess? I had no proof of his supposed suffering or that we’d get back together. In five weeks I hadn’t heard a peep out of him, and the only time there’d been a hang up on my machine, I’d raced to the phone and pressed star sixty-nine, only to end up talking to Gina and having to tell her no, I did not feel like bowling with her and her boyfriend, and no, I really didn’t think imagining Wilhelm as the pins would help.

  That night I lulled myself to sleep by reading notes from all the readings that foretold Wilhelm’s return. I did that the next night as well, and the next, the notes becoming bedtime stories that fed my dreams with happiness and made waking in the morning painful. On the seventh night of doing this, I was almost asleep, the pages spread beside me, when the phone rang. I glanced at the time, saw it was one a.m., and figured it was Gina, tipsy and trying to entice me to meet one of her new beau’s friends. I was about to pick up the phone and yell at her when the machine clicked on…and the voice that spoke stopped me cold.

  “Sarah…it’s me.”

  I stared at the machine, my heart pounding against my chest in a way that only happens when you know someone’s words are about to change your life.

  “You don’t have to pick up the phone,” Wilhelm continued. “I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t take one more night wondering about you. I�
��ve been a fool.”

  My breath caught—“I’ve been a fool”—Misty Mystical’s exact words!

  “I’ve been praying to God that if only he’d give me one more chance with you, I’d do better, I’d be different. I swear I’d be really committed this time.”

  As he paused, I noted with excitement that though his voice sounded sad and small, it did not sound drunk. As any girl will tell you, this is key.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt as though the world had grown bright and my room had filled with rainbows and dancing kittens. I leapt for the phone.

  “Hi, Wilhelm,” I said as calmly and as casually as I could, as if I hadn’t been a raving, wailing, psychic-calling lunatic for the past forty-two days.

  I listened to him profess how sorry he was, how badly he wanted me back. I tried to remain composed, my face frozen in a smile as I found my star stickers and my “Psychics I Like and Why” document, the three pages of names I’d stapled together, buried beneath the notes on Wilhelm’s return.

  It was happening.

  I told him I’d give him a chance, and just like that all became right again. Wilhelm and I were back together, and Misty Mystical got a gold star by her name.

  7

  Ding-Ding! Round Two

  THERE IS, SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, A BOYFRIEND boot camp. You may not find it in the yellow pages, you may not be able to point it out on a map, you may not actually find any proof of its existence at all—but I’ll tell you this: It’s out there, and it’s the place where bad boyfriends go to become good.

  Wilhelm’s six-week enrollment in the camp completely changed him. Suddenly he was attentive, romantic, and loving, and didn’t even mind my repeated requests to “Say again what you did on my answering machine.” I was in heaven, and out of sheer happiness I was eating everything in sight.

  “I don’t know about this,” Gina said one evening.

  We were at her place, on one of the few nights her boyfriend, Mark, wasn’t over, though his existence was still seen in a pair of large tennis shoes in the hall, a coat slung over a chair, and a cell phone he’d left behind on her coffee table.

  “What don’t you know about?” I took a sip of wine and stuffed a large wedge of Brie into my mouth.

  “About you taking him back just like that. What about all that moving-to-another-country stuff?”

  I chewed and chewed and chewed and finally swallowed. “I don’t know. I asked him about it, and he said he hasn’t thought about it lately. All he could think about was getting me back.”

  “It just worries me. What he said about not liking L.A. But maybe it’s no big deal.”

  I shrugged. “I’m telling you, he’s completely changed. He’s totally committed, which means if he leaves L.A., I go with him.” I leaned over to saw off another chunk of Brie. “I can’t believe Mark just left his cell phone here. Did you go through it? Look at missed calls?”

  “No,” Gina laughed. “Hey! Look who’s here!”

  I turned and saw Onyx, my former cat…at the same moment that Onyx saw me. Though I was happy to see her, the feeling, apparently, was not mutual. Like an animal in the wild who spots an enemy and wishes not to draw attention with movement of any kind, Onyx completely froze, midstride, in the dining room. We stared at each other. I opened my mouth to say hi, and that was it; she did a 180 and flew back down the hall.

  “I saved you, you know!” I shouted after her. “Geez. I’ll try not to be offended.”

  “She’s a freak; she does that with everyone. She loves Mark, though. It’s so cute. When he gets ready for work, she just circles around him, practically begging him not to leave.”

  I nodded, familiar with the act.

  “And he loves her, too, I can tell. Of course he won’t admit it. He keeps saying, “She’s a cat,” but I catch him talking to her now and then.” She sighed. “He’s so cute.”

  Now that Wilhelm and I were back together, Gina was free to express her feelings for her new man. He was the one, she went on to proclaim, and I kept silent, resisting the urge to warn her about the dangers of premature ring shopping.

  Of course I was shopping for rings. Wilhelm was a different person, committed and without fear, exactly the kind of person who’d propose. Erlin told me it was just a matter of time, that this whole fiasco we’d gone through had happened to prepare him for marriage and reinforce his love. To this I laughed with glee and said, “So do you see a round diamond? Or a square?”

  “The ring I see,” Erlin said, “will surprise you.”

  I was silent. It better not be a marquise. To me marquise cuts are the Hyundais of the diamond world; no matter what, they just seem cheap. Never should a marquise diamond be a center stone. I tried asking how the ring would surprise me (we all know how I feel about surprises), but to this, Erlin only said, “It will be revealed to you when it’s revealed to you.” Great, Erlin. Glad you clarified.

  Still, for the first time in a long time everything seemed right. Wilhelm was taking enormous leaps to change, even promising that the next time he went to Germany he’d take me with him. “I want you to meet my family,” he said, and I felt woozy with happiness. Then, when at last we got into the hot tub, he sat next to me. I was amazed, bursting with pleasure, and again a bit woozy. We had become the couple that some other girl would watch with envy and longing—and perhaps a bit of concern, since, finally submerged in the water, Wilhelm bore an uncanny resemblance to a lobster in a pot. Still, as a testament of his love for me, he smiled bravely through the pain, wiped the sweat off his reddened brow, and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I was in a bubbly, luxurious heaven.

  That heaven, it turned out, paled in comparison to what awaited me: a trip to Hawaii. We deserved it, he said. A vacation, a pure vacation of relaxation and rest and no work. Not one to argue with a vacation to Hawaii, or to anywhere, for that matter, I simply smiled and agreed and neglected to point out that I didn’t work at all, I pretty much laid about the house and did nothing. But whatever. Maybe I could use a break from that.

  After Wilhelm’s finagling and securing a discount package deal, and my busting out my already exhausted credit cards, we arrived in Maui to air that was strange.

  “What’s that smell?” I asked him.

  Wilhelm breathed in. “Fresh air.”

  I touched my arms. “My God, it’s like lotion. Do people age here?”

  We had to move there. It was that simple; I had to live in that air. Wilhelm could work at some hotel, and me, I’d be the host of a Hawaiian TV show, maybe something called Good Morning, Maui! or Wake up, Waikiki! Every morning my bright smile would tell Hawaiians “Yes, you are about to have a great day, we all are!” And I’d be beloved and drive a convertible and have an endless supply of pink hibiscuses to wear in my hair.

  And then, if the whole fresh balmy air thing wasn’t already a shock to our systems, we arrived at our four-and-a-half-star hotel, a sprawling and magnificent place built on black rocks that jutted into an ocean so soothingly turquoise that my instinct was to stick a pineapple wedge and a little umbrella in it and take a gulp. It had been years since I’d seen water that color. By comparison, the ocean in L.A. is a sort of grayish menacing navy blue, the kind of ocean that makes one think of shipwrecks and dead bodies and sewage spills. Really, the beaches in L.A. are beaches simply because they’re where the ocean meets the land—they’re beaches by default. But this, this beach before me, this was a beach that was rated, a beach that was in competition with other beaches to be the best beach in the world, a beach that made me want to bypass my hotel room, go straight to the water’s edge with my suitcase, whip out my cell phone, and order a piña colada.

  Everything kept getting better and better. Upon checking in we were immediately upgraded to a deluxe beachfront room. Wilhelm smiled and whispered in my ear, “See? Working in a hotel has its perks. Everything’s falling into place.”

  Into place for what? Let me just say here that since coming up with the idea of this
vacation, Wilhelm had been beyond suspicious. Even as we packed, he’d been secretive and not allowed me into the same room, had in fact forced me into the living room, where I’d sat and silently stared at the television—which was off—fidgety with hope. As if the packing episode hadn’t been suspect enough, when airport security in its post-9/11 invasive and yet welcome way asked him to open up his suitcase for display, Wilhelm ordered me to not only close my eyes but also turn around. So “falling into place” for what? I certainly had my sparkly theories.

  Our room was like a brochure on luxury. Even Wilhelm, notoriously critical of hotels and known to fly off the handle at the discovery of a white instead of ivory tablecloth, seemed to be impressed, and was particularly thrilled upon finding the hard straight-backed chairs on the balcony. Before we’d even unpacked, he’d moved one of the chairs indoors, I assumed so he’d be prepared should he accidentally find himself comfortable.

  Dinner involved scallop and lobster pot stickers in a guava plum sauce, one of the most divine dishes I’d ever had. I tallied up how many days we’d be staying and determined I could order the dish at least twice a day and thus be ensured of eight more heavenly experiences. “We need to buy an ice chest,” I told Wilhelm. “And take pounds of this home.”

  At this he laughed and smiled, but then suddenly became somber. All traces of fun and enjoyment were gone and he leaned in so close to his plate, he could’ve opened his mouth and snatched a pot sticker with his teeth. It seemed my words had just flipped a switch, and now he was all business, no longer eating or enjoying, but picking apart his dish with a meticulousness that would put a surgeon to shame.

  Though I would’ve been thrilled to have the dish re-created for me at home, for about ten minutes there, I was pretty much dining alone while he examined each fleck of spice, each shade of color, closing his eyes for long periods of time to taste and ascertain the ingredients, essentially shutting me out as I downed a daiquiri and waited patiently for conversation to resume. I wondered if I had enough cash to just bribe the chef for the recipe and get it over with, but knew that would never make Wilhelm happy, Wilhelm whose motto could be “I don’t want it if I don’t have to suffer for it.” All around us other couples were laughing and eating and talking and actually looking at each other. But me? Me, I was with the guy who’d just scraped a green speck off his tongue and was now studying it by candlelight. I smiled. You had to love him.