Deja Who

by MaryJanice Davidson

  MAYOR MAKES AMENDS FOR RACIST REMARKS; PLEDGES TO KEEP LIBRARY OPEN

  “Really? That did the trick? You know, the journalists really got us off track with this one. The Boston Globe is basically a black hole from which no scandal, however silly, can escape.”

  RACIST MAYOR CITES BOSTON GLOBE AS BLACK HOLE; THINKS BIGOTED REMARKS SILLY

  “Oh, come on! I didn’t mean that I think the Globe is solely staffed by African-Americans! A black hole has nothing to do with race!”

  RACIST MAYOR DENIES BEING A RACIST AGAIN

  “It’s a region of space-time that nothing escapes! It’s called black because it sucks up everything, even light, and doesn’t have one thing to do with race or creed or color. Which you can also find out if you use the fucking public library!”

  RACIST MAYOR CLAIMS BLACKS SUCK

  “That’s it. I quit.”

  RACIST MAYOR RESIGNS

  And that is how the former mayor of Boston came to live part-time in a small Chicago public park.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Hmm. Okay. It’s probably not gonna be Cat.”

  “She’s not even poor,” Leah giggled. Somehow they’d ended up prone on the couch, Archer on his back, Leah on his front. This had stemmed in mid-story from her demand to examine his stab wounds, and had progressed to kissing and, of course, the finale of the Tale of Cat.

  “No? Really?”

  “Boston, right? Most of her family can trace their roots back to Plymouth Rock and she’s got a six-figure trust fund. So she didn’t just quit being mayor; she quit all of it. Corporations and business suits and shaking hands while kissing babies and politics of any kind and now she sort of pokes around the city and sometimes she sleeps in shelters and sometimes she gets a suite at the Marriott but she always ends up in that park. She must really like the ducks.”

  “She really likes you, dork!” Archer gave her a gentle smack on the forehead with the palm of his hand. “Why does that never ever occur to you?”

  “Um.” She tipped her head to the side and thought. “Past precedent?”

  “Ooooh, I love when you’re a clueless dumbass and then use big words.”

  She shifted her weight enough so that an elbow went into his ribs and he groaned. Smiling, she sat up and straightened her skirt. And then her hair. And readjusted her blouse. “Don’t pout.”

  “Awwww.”

  “That is the exact opposite of ‘don’t pout.’ Besides, I know I was hurting you.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “I was lying on your chest,” she said, exasperated. “So, directly on your stab wounds. You should have prevented that—”

  “Fat goddamn chance.”

  “—or at least told me I was hurting you.”

  “I get off on it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t. But I don’t mind.”

  He sat up, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Leah was having a hard time deciding which she liked best: the blue or the green. “Did not mind. Did not care. Still don’t care. You can make me your mattress anytime.”

  “Thank you. Do you want to call it a day?” They’d been discussing past lives and possible future murders for hours; the clinic had long since closed. “You understand that because of confidentiality issues I couldn’t exactly hand you a pile of charts and a copy machine and let you have at it.”

  “And you understand that you should wear green all the time. It makes you look like a sexy leprechaun.” At Leah’s snort, he continued. “Besides, we’ve already been over this. I thought maybe we could figure out the type of person this guy or gal could be, and you could watch for them.”

  Adorable. “It’s not always someone in my life,” she reminded him. She had a brief flash of someone

  (my name is Mary Jane Kelly)

  and a sensation of dread and drowning

  (the knife like silver fish)

  but the memory was gone before she could chase it down.

  “Well, it’s something,” Archer was saying. “Better than your Plan A, which was ‘hang around not engaging in a single thing while waiting to be murdered.’”

  I haven’t entirely abandoned that one. I’m just hoping to get laid first.

  “And then there’s the people you know.”

  “There are the people I know.”

  “Oh, God, all your hotness plus you’re a sworn officer of the Grammar Police.” He pretended to swoon, which was a good trick since he was sitting down. “You are the complete package.”

  She shook her head. He approves of everything about me. Ergo, this cannot will not shall not last. As I foresaw. Too bad. It might have been spectacular.

  “So, people you know? I mean really know, not just the charts in your office. Because don’t studies show we’re most likely to be murdered by someone we know?”

  “That’s true.” Depressing beyond belief. And completely true.

  “I know you don’t have a lot of—uh—the nature of your work demands you keep a certain—um—distance—which isn’t to say you’re not—uh—you’re—”

  Adorable! “I’m a chilly bitch,” she said, smiling, “and my only friend is the former mayor of Boston, who isn’t a racist. Oh, and you, perhaps.” She speared him with a look. “Are you a friend?”

  “Nope.” He shook his head so hard his hair flew. “You can’t put me in that zone; don’t waste time trying. I’m your future snuggle sweetie and never forget it.”

  “I will absolutely forget it if required to ever use the term ‘snuggle sweetie.’”

  “Got it.” Now that she’d rearranged her clothing, Archer again patted the space beside him on the sofa and she sat. She hadn’t bothered to put her shoes back on, so she curled up and tucked her legs beneath her. Archer, meanwhile, had moved over the small empty space on the sofa so fast and hard that he nearly knocked her through the arm rest. “That’s better.” He patted her knee. “Argh, even your knees are sexy.”

  “Archer . . .” She rolled her eyes.

  “So, people in your life. We can eliminate me—”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Don’t start that again,” he almost pleaded. “I’m begging, here. What about your boss?”

  “I’m the boss. I mean, it’s not my clinic,” she clarified, “but I’m the head Insighter. My supervisor no longer sees patients. She’s in administration and likes it that way, and likes that I’m good at my job. She’s the last person who would kill me, if for no other reason than it would make her life difficult short term as well as long term.”

  “Okaaaay.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s good news, Archer.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He would not look at her, just kept making notes. “What about colleagues? Were you ever killed by someone you worked with?”

  “Not that I recall. It’s not like I’ve got a mental file cabinet of all my lives and can effortlessly call up even the smallest detail at any time.” But oh, wouldn’t that be efficient! And convenient! “And they might not love me, but I don’t think they loathe me enough to kill me. One of them could knife me out of envy? Malice? Resentment because I refused to chip in for the birthday cake fund?” She would never, ever understand the forced socializing expected at work. She had zero interest in their birthdays, or her own, and they in hers, so why pretend? Also, cake? At 10:00 a.m.?

  “Don’t joke, babe.”

  “Ugh. Babe?”

  She put her tongue out at him, but he refused to be distracted. “People knife each other for a lot less.”

  “Oh yes! But in this case, none of them care about me enough to want to kill me. They only want to force pastry on me at all hours of the workday. We’re all quite jaded, and nobody wants to take on my case load. So again: good news.”

  He looked at his notes for a few seconds, then back up at her. “Yo
ur idea of good news is different from mine. And you’re so calm about it. ‘Nobody cares about me enough to kill me’ is not good news, Leah, okay? It’s pretty sad news, in fact. More on that later because I can tell you’re already tuning me out, but we’re definitely not done discussing this, get it?”

  She shrugged. Tack “tenacious” onto “adorable.” Tenorable? Adoracious?

  “Okay, what about that nervous-looking bald guy at Nellie’s house? Your mom’s agent and I guess yours, too, once. He seems pretty furtive.”

  “Tom Winn of Winner’s TalentTM (ugh). Don’t be fooled, though. He’s a Hollywood agent, he can’t help it,” she explained. “Tom’s furtive because it’s his nature, not because he’s murdered me a dozen times.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “That wet-eyed bastard has been in my life for years; he’s had several opportunities to kill me. Anytime she decided I needed new head shots, for example. The cattle call for the Tampax commercial, for example. The callback for Sweets to the Suite, for example. My entire childhood and a chunk of my adolescence, for example.” She took a closer look at Archer and saw he was still puzzled. “It doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not going to be some random stranger who knifes me on the subway. It’ll be someone I know, even if just briefly. A patient, or someone who referred a patient. A former teacher.”

  “Then why stab me? I was a stranger!”

  “Instinct?” she suggested. But it was a fair question. “It’s one thing to intellectually understand my killer is going to strike again and when he does, he’ll be known to me. It’s another not to fight against someone who’s been following me for weeks and then corners me in an alley.”

  “Point,” he muttered.

  “Plus as I said, Tom has had over a decade to kill me. And he’s entirely my mother’s creature, and was even when I was outearning her five to one.”

  A look of understanding crossed Archer’s face. “Oh, she must have loved that.”

  Leah managed a sour smirk. “You can guess how much. It was petty revenge, but it was mine. The irony, of course, is that if I’d had no success, she wouldn’t have been so driven to keep me working long after I loathed everything about it. And, in fairness to her, I could be quite smug about it. I would read the trades praising whatever nonsense I’d been up to that week, then ‘accidentally’ leave them for her to read and eat her heart out over.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo, your mom deserved it.”

  “Well, yes. But regardless, you can scratch Tom. He’s harmless, which is what I always disliked about him.”

  “That’s what they all say. But it’s always the quiet ones.”

  She couldn’t restrain the fond smile. “It’s sometimes the quiet ones,” she corrected. “History proves it.”

  “Okay, so he’s off the list. Also, our list sucks, because we don’t actually have any names on it now. I feel like we should put at least one name down—”

  “For the false illusion of progress?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yep.” Archer remained admirably unmoved by her sarcasm. “So here comes the toughie: your mom.”

  Leah barked a laugh. “Toughie?”

  Undaunted (adorable!), he plowed ahead. “I can’t imagine how hard even talking about this must be—”

  She laughed again; she couldn’t help it. He was just so earnest, as though he feared hurting her. Nothing had hurt her in forever. Crying in her mother’s driveway those few days ago was the first time she’d cried in years. “As in it will be emotionally difficult for me to discuss the possibility that she will indulge in filicide? Ah . . . no.”

  “This is the part where I pretend I know what filicide means.”

  “Killing your son or daughter, also known as prolicide. There’s also nepoticide, when you kill your nephew; maricitide, which is killing your husband; parricide, killing a close relative; fratricide, killing your brother; sororocide, killing your sister; uxoricide, when you kill your wife; avunculicide, killing your uncle; and of course my personal favorite, matricide.”

  “It’s awful that you know all that.”

  “It is awful that I know all that.”

  “Getting away from fucked-up uncles killing nephews, the thing about your mom is, she’s kinda killed you in the past.”

  “You’re so cute when you’re striving for tactful.”

  “Thanks,” he said modestly. “But you know I’m right.”

  “Oh, yes. She has most definitely kinda killed me in the past. And because you’re not confused enough, I feel compelled to point out she kinda hasn’t, too.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “You have no. Good. Stories.” Archer was practically fetal on the couch. “I think I have to get up and go kill myself now.”

  Why do I keep telling him these things? To test him? To test herself? To show him the things she sees and knows, an Insighter reaching for the life-blind? She didn’t know. But she leaned forward and smoothed his hair away from his face. “It’s not so bad.”

  “It’s your life, Leah. And it’s very bad. They’re all very very very very very very very very—”

  “Archer.”

  “—very very very very very very very—”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “—very very very bad.”

  “But it isn’t.” When he blinked up at her she elaborated. “Yes, those things happened, but it’s like watching a movie. I can tell you what Fred Barker’s favorite color was but not how he felt when he bit into a slice of watermelon. I don’t feel him. Them. I just know things about them.”

  “And at least one of them was screwed over by her mother. Your mother, I mean.” Anger, now, but not heated. She could almost feel the chill coming off him.

  “It’s her nature,” she said softly. “Nothing to be done about it.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Abruptly he sat up and wriggled his shoulders in what she assumed was an attempt to physically shake off the anger. “This is my big problem with the whole Insight industry.”

  This should be interesting. She raised her eyebrows, wordlessly encouraging him to continue.

  “It’s like when someone finds out the reason they’re a raging bitch in this life is because they were a raging bitch in the last one, and suddenly that’s it. Case closed. ‘Nothing to be done about it.’ Nobody tries to improve. Nobody asks themselves why they feel compelled to be a jackass. It’s more about embracing your old inner bitch. You know what would be even better? Family therapy.”

  “Sorry, what?” There was never a need for such a thing. Insighters covered . . . well . . . everything. They were available for children, adults, and the elderly. They worked in hospitals and schools, and were everywhere in the legal system: they advised lawyers, they were in the courtroom when clients got sentenced, in the prisons where clients paid their debt. They were in schools and nursing homes and, sometimes, funeral homes. (Although by then, it was often too late for the Insighter to do much besides, “Yes, well, he died. Again, I mean.”)

  “You know, a setup where the whole family could go talk to somebody, a professional, not about their past life garbage but where and why they’re making wrong turns in this life. They could, mmmm, talk about their feelings and how they felt when they did whatever it is that’s wrecking their life and how they plan to not keep doing it. They can make their own lives better.”

  She tried to swallow the laugh, but it escaped anyway. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, “it just sounds absurd. Sitting around talking without going back at all. Or, rather, talking but only going back to your life at that time. It would never work. Frankly, only someone who . . . uh . . .” Too late, she realized the rest of the sentence: “was life-blind could come up with such a spectacularly ignorant idea.” “. . . uh . . .”

  “And,” he sighed, sounding equal parts annoyed and enthralled, “you also look gorgeou
s when you blush as you’ve just realized you’re sounding like an entitled jerk who is quick to dismiss any therapy outside of her own profession.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Sorry to laugh and sorry to immediately discount your idea. I just don’t see the need for that service when people like me are here.”

  “That,” he said, quirking an eyebrow at her, “might be part of the problem.”

  “Maybe family therapy would be a good idea for the life-blind, though.” Now that she was giving it some thought, it seemed almost . . . logical? There were next to no resources for the life-blind; if they had a problem, there wasn’t much set up in the system to help them. And if they were true rasa, the theory went that they didn’t need anything in the system to help them. But the therapy thing sounded interesting. “Although now that I think about it . . .” Then she heard it, and forgot everything.

  “Oh my God, is that your ringtone?”

  She had frozen at the sound. Her phone, across the room on top of her desk, was shrieking in Faye Dunaway’s voice, “I told you! No wire hangers, ever!”

  “Is that Mommie Dearest?”

  “Big fan of cult camp classics, hmm?”

  “Not me. My dad. Interesting choice for your ringtone.”

  Leah shrugged, uncomfortable but unable to squash the small smile, then crossed the room to pick up her phone. “I know, it’s childish and petty.”

  “Yeah, well, so’s your mom. Why would she call you? Is that a thing?” Archer’s eyes went wide as he considered the possibilities. “Does she call you? Especially after you’ve sworn you’re done with her forever? She blows off your murder and you march out and then a day later she calls and doesn’t apologize?”

  “No.” Leah stared down at her phone, which was still trembling and shrilling, “No wire hangers, ever!” “That is not a thing. She does not do that.”

  She debated another few seconds, which Archer misread, and he turned toward the door. “Oh. Sorry. I’ll let you take—”