Soul Loss

by Amber Foxx

  They stopped at the water dispenser in the middle of the room. Jamie didn’t fully release her, dancing side by side as they drank. Between gulps he switched his hat from her head back to his.

  Mae said, “You still haven’t caught me up on your life, sugar. I can’t find out much from your web site, and Niall’s his usual tight-lipped self, if your mama’s told him anything.” Mae’s father’s partner was a close friend of Jamie’s mother.

  Jamie swallowed another cup of water and led Mae the rest of the way through the crowd. “Short version: therapy. Long version has to wait.”

  In a loose, open hold, Jamie led Mae into a dance so demanding it matched her uphill runs in the desert and left him panting, his fitness not on a par with the skill of his feet. He broke away from her at the end of the song and returned with two cups of water. Mae thanked him and drank.

  “Fuck. I almost killed myself.” He laughed, spilling water on his already saturated shirt. He was still short of breath. “Danced hard, too.”

  He undid his shirt’s top buttons and sank into one of the theater seats, fanning himself with his hat, and Mae excused herself to the restroom. On her way, a collection of life-sized skeletons in the passage startled her. One wore a sports coat and pirate hat. Another lay on the floor, crumpled and missing most of its torso, wearing a red veil like a cross between a mantilla and pool of blood. A third one in shredded khaki shorts grasped a metal steering wheel. The pirate-hatted and red-caped figures were pieced by swords. She looked around at the skeletal rider on the far wall. Sparky’s did Day of the Dead all year ’round. Fuck. I almost killed myself. Danced hard, too.

  Mae hoped to get the long version of Jamie’s story when she rejoined him in the theater seats, but as soon as she sat down Harold announced, “We have a singer from Santa Fe here, Jangarrai. I’d love to have him do a song. This man’s got a voice that makes me sound like some poor ol’ frog. Hope I didn’t take you off guard, man. Do me the honor?”

  Jamie looked surprised, but nodded his consent. He kissed Mae and glided to the stage. She headed toward the back of the room to sit with Kenny. While Jamie conferred with the band, Harold strolled through the crowd to join Mae and Kenny, as if a rock star sitting with ordinary people was the most normal thing in the world. They introduced themselves and shook hands.

  “Hope you don’t mind my borrowing him,” Harold said. “My ex-wife turned me into a big fan of his. He tell you her drum circle played with him in Asheville last winter?”

  “Yeah.” Mae remembered how stressful and lonely Jamie’s tour had been. “We talked a lot while he was on the road. He really liked her. She was like a mama to him.”

  A doubtful smile lifted one side of Harold’s mouth. “She was into doing something with that drum group. That’s Naomi’s big thing right now.” He paused. “You know that lady in Santa Fe that writes those books about women’s drumming and all that? Naomi idolizes her. Jill something?”

  “No. Sorry. Never heard of her.”

  “I have,” Kenny said. “I read one of her books.”

  “What’d you think?” Harold had to speak up a little, as Jamie had begun some vocal warm-ups while the band’s piano man plunked a simple melody.

  Kenny drank his iced tea, taking his time to answer. “I read the one on how she learned to be a shaman. I didn’t like it, but that could be because I’m in recovery. It seemed to me she didn’t know the difference between spirituality and getting high. Maybe the later books are better. Like the one your ex-wife likes, on the women’s stuff.”

  Harold cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe. Maybe not. Naomi runs a New Age bookstore. I think she gets a little saturated with this woo-woo stuff. Guess it’s a risk you take living in Asheville—and so I’ve heard, Santa Fe.”

  “I reckon,” Mae said. “I haven’t spent that much time there. Kenny and I live in T or C—Truth or Consequences. It’s just up I-25 from here.”

  Harold exaggerated his own Carolina mountain accent. “I should have realized you’re from southern New Mexico.”

  Mae smiled. “I’m from the North Carolina Blue Ridge. Born in Boone.”

  His blue eyes lit up, and the lines around them crinkled as he gave her an unexpected avuncular side-hug. “My fellow hillbilly. We should all go out after the show, if you have the time. Jamie needed to see me about something anyway. We can make it a party.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that.” It would give her a little space to get readjusted to Jamie. “I’m sure he would, too.”

  Kenny thanked Harold but declined the invitation. “I need to stay out of slippery places.”

  Onstage, Jamie spoke into the mic. “Thanks for having me up here. This song was written by a friend who thought he owed me a satire. As Harold said, I’m from Santa Fe— yeah, obviously from ’Straya to start with. Anyway, this is a crying-in-your-local-organic-microbrew song. ‘The Sensitive Man’s Santa Fe Blues.’ ”

  He acknowledged the audience’s ripple of laughter with a grin, and the band began a lively tune. It wasn’t a typical Jangarrai song—more Western swing than world music.

  “I’m a sensitive man

  I’ve got the Santa Fe Blues

  This city feels so different without you.”

  Jamie took the mic from its stand and walked the stage, connecting with the audience like he was telling them a story. The song lamented the struggles of coping with the blues through therapy, yoga, and Reiki, as well as all-natural local brews. Mae wondered if it was a satire on Santa Fe generally or Jamie personally. Those Eastern practices were Kenny’s kinds of things, not Jamie’s.

  He slowed the final verse down. Either he wanted to make sure no one missed a word or he was improvising.

  “My answer to the question of ‘red or green?’

  Is my red-haired, green-eyed dancing queen

  She’s my hot Hatch chile who keeps leaving me

  But with the sweetest rear view I ever did see.”

  In a gesture like someone at a funeral placing a hat over his heart, he lowered his hat over his groin.

  “Hard on a sensitive man—”

  The audience mixed chuckles and groans at the pun, and a few looked at Mae. Her cheeks burned. Jamie snapped into a full spin, put the hat back on his head, and picked up the mic again, every move precisely on one of the four beats before the next line.

  “Who’s got the Santa Fe blue——s.”

  The last word stretched and slid up and down octaves in a vocal tour de force. Jamie jumped down from the stage and took a solo turn on the dance floor while the band played a coda. Light on his feet, with a Gene Kelly casual elegance, he looked like the happiest man in the world. Not a trace of the blues.

  Chapter Three

  In the hot, gritty wind outside Sparky’s after Blues Ridge’s final set, Kenny said goodbye, shaking hands with Harold and Jamie and reiterating how exciting it had been to meet them. As her neighbor walked off, Mae realized what this meant. Jamie would be taking her home. She was glad they had the party in between to give them a chance to talk more. Aside from his lyrics—if they were true, and not just a joke from a fellow musician—she still hadn’t caught up on his life over the past few months.

  Harold gave them directions to the band’s hotel and went into the restaurant half of the building to order takeout food for the party. Jamie bounced on his heels and adjusted his top buttons, having buttoned them crooked on the first attempt. “This all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. You got ’em straight this time.”

  “Nah, meant Harold. Party.”

  “Of course it is. You came here to see him. I’m a surprise.”

  “Jesus. Yeah.” Jamie pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and studied her face. “Good one, but I’m still in shock, y’know?”

  “Me too.”

  He slipped his arm around her waist, his touch light with nervous tenderness, and led her across the street to a parking lot bordered by more advertising statues—a bull, a tiger, a wild-eyed eight-foot-t
all man serving ice cream, and a Tyrannosaurus.

  “First time I’ve ever driven you anywhere except crazy.” He opened both sides of a sparkly green Fiesta hatchback parked near the dinosaur. “Never had a new car before. Like it?”

  Mae took a moment to get used to the choice. Her ex’s fiancée had a car just like it. “It’s nice, but how do you fit all your instruments in it?”

  He mimed a long diagonal movement, which she understood to be sliding the didgeridoo in through the hatch and across to the reclining passenger seat. “Drums on the floor. All fits. Like a big puzzle.”

  “You couldn’t fit your luggage for a tour, though.”

  “Yeah.” He adjusted the passenger seat to accommodate a person rather than the didg. “Kind of where my head was at when I bought it.”

  The interior of the car was hotter than a sauna. When he turned the key, both air conditioning and opera blasted. “Sorry.” Jamie popped the CD out, put it away, and absently patted a faded, threadbare toy kangaroo that perched on the center console. For some reason Mae liked it that he still rode with his roo. “Love having a real sound system.” He rubbed the Fiesta’s steering wheel. “It’s a good little car. Miss the old Aerostar, though. Feel like I let it down.”

  Mae caught herself about to reassure him that his van had forgiven him. It wasn’t alive. “You get enough work without touring?”

  “For now. Not pushing it.” He steered onto the main street. “I’ll know when I’m ready. I was in worse shape than the van, y’know? Had to do a lot of repairs.”

  “How’s that going?”

  He took her hand and slid it under his shirt to make her rub his belly. His bare flesh made her more aware than their hugs had how much the loose shirt was hiding. He’d put on at least twenty pounds, maybe more. In five months. Jamie wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Fucking great.”

  At the party in the hotel suite, Mae tried to focus on her conversation with Harold, but Jamie-noise bubbled in the background, distracting her: fuck-punctuated chatter and his unmistakable laugh, a single hah and a snort, followed by another ear-blasting hah. So familiar and yet disorienting. He was back in her life. Again.

  “Phew.” Beside her on the couch, Harold bit into a green chile cheeseburger, then gulped from a large soda, his eyes watering. He took another sip. “How’d a Boone girl end up in the land of green chile?”

  “My daddy coaches at College of the Rio Grande in Las Cruces. I get free tuition, so I came out to go to school, and to be with him.”

  “I thought you might have moved here for Jamie.”

  “No. I met him last summer when I was in Santa Fe for a few days. Daddy used to live up there. His partner is Niall Kerrigan, the sculptor—”

  Harold looked delighted. “He was artist in residence at Appalachian State—wow, that was like fifteen or sixteen years ago. I bought a bull he made out of Toro lawnmower parts. Love that thing. I got the biggest kick out of his exhibit.”

  “That was where Daddy met him.” Mae paused, and then decided to skip the family mess. “He moved to Santa Fe with Niall. They got to be good friends with Jamie’s folks there.” She edited out another complicated story. Explaining her friendship with Jamie could take all day. “That’s how I know Jamie.”

  Harold nodded. “Sounds like you and your daddy had good reasons to move to this wasteland. Don’t see how you could do it without someone to do it for. Place looks like kitty litter to me.”

  Mae laughed. “I like it.”

  “Don’t you miss those rolling old mountains, the green grass, the waterfalls?”

  “Not really. I’d already left Boone. Mama moved me to a little town in the eastern part of the state when she and Daddy split. I didn’t fit in too good there. It’s nothing like Asheville.”

  “Not much else in Carolina is.” He scraped some of the chile off his cheeseburger and took another bite. “I heard New Mexico is a good place to be unconventional. You fit in here?”

  Mae nodded, her mouth full.

  “Naomi’s fantasy is to go to Santa Fe and study with this lady shaman that writes those books Kenny didn’t like.” A hint of sadness weighed Harold’s voice down. “She asked our daughter to look the woman up when Lily did a shoot in Santa Fe back in March. Don’t know if she did.”

  “Sounds like you don’t see Lily much. Is she an actress?”

  “No. A model.” Harold scrolled through some pictures on his phone and showed it to Mae. “This is one of the first things she ever did. For a vineyard near Asheville a couple of years ago, while she was still in high school. When she does fashion stuff, they put her hair up and paint her so much you wouldn’t know her, but this looks like Lily.”

  The ad was both campy and elegant, with gold art nouveau lettering. Da Vine Wine. Blessed by the Goddess of the Grape. The goddess, a pale slender girl, had thick brown hair partly contained in a circlet of leaves and grapes from which lustrous tendrils escaped, rippling over her shoulders and down to her hips. She wore a purple tunic and clasped a golden goblet in one hand, while the other rested on a grapevine. Vine tendrils tickled her long slim legs and bare toes.

  “She’s pretty.” What else could Mae say? Aside from her hair, Lily looked like a lot of models, a generic, forgettable, but attractive girl with a straight nose, a narrow face, and scarcely any curves in her subtle shape. Only her hair was memorable, and the color of her eyes. Mae wondered if they’d been photoshopped to go better with the grapes. “You must be proud of her.”

  “Not always. I saw her in some fancy underwear catalogue.” Harold reddened. “Not exactly what a father wants to see, even if it’s good for her career.” He sipped his soda, gazed out the window across the room. “Haven’t heard from her for months on end. I only know she’s alive and well because I look at my sleazy junk mail.”

  “Months? Are you sure she’s all right? It might take a while to get that catalogue out.”

  “I exaggerated a little. You know how it is—ol’ Southern boy telling a story. Her agent says she’s still working. But Lily didn’t get back to Naomi when she told her to look up that shaman lady, and she hasn’t been in touch with me since then, either. And that’s strange. Lily and I were always a lot closer than Lily and her mama.”

  “Why don’t you go see her? You have to know where she’s living.”

  “Not anymore. She works out of New York a lot, but her agent says Lily flies in from somewhere. Same when she works in LA. You’d think she’d live one place or the other. But mail to her old New York address comes back, and she’s changed her number. Her agent won’t give it out without Lily’s permission. Since she dropped out of our sights around that shoot in Santa Fe, I was hoping you or Jamie might somehow know her, run into her, if that’s where she moved.”

  Mae gave him his phone back. She couldn’t find a missing person through a picture. As a psychic, she had to touch something the person had handled enough to put energy into it. With that kind of trace, Mae could probably find Lily.

  “One reason I don’t miss that little town in eastern North Carolina is ...” She hesitated. She was cautious about revealing her psychic ability. It was easily misunderstood. But Harold was from Asheville. His ex was into shamanism. He’d be okay with this. “They thought I was a witch.”

  His eyes widened. “What’d you do to make ’em think that?

  “Nothing bad. I’m psychic, or as they say in the mountains, I have the Sight. I’m pretty good at finding missing people and animals.”

  “Even if you are—and mind you I’m having a hard time with this—I think Lily doesn’t want to be found.”

  “You mean,” Mae’s voice softened, “y’all had a fight?”

  “No. We got along fine, and Naomi had really been trying to heal things between them. Can’t figure out why Lily’s cut us off. I worry she’s got some crazy possessive boyfriend or some other problem she doesn’t want to tell us about.” He sipped his soda and picked up a fry but didn’t eat it, tapping the bun of his cheeseburg
er with it instead. “I never been to a psychic. Not sure I believe in it. Naomi would. Are you saying you could actually find out if Lily’s in trouble?”

  “Maybe. The Sight usually shows me what I’m asking for, but it’s not perfect.”

  He took a long pause, rattling the ice in his soda. “Can you do that work here?”

  “I do better somewhere quiet. And I need something that belonged to the person I’m looking for. Helps me pick up sort of a scent, energy-wise.”

  “I suppose you charge money for it.”

  She did unless the client was poor or a very close friend. “I do. But I didn’t mention it because of that.”

  Long brown fingers curled over Mae’s shoulder. A kiss landed on the crown of her head. Jamie still didn’t make a sound when he walked. How long had he been there?

  “Hey, sugar. Did you hear what Harold and I were talking about?”

  “Finding someone named Lily. Yeah.” He sat between her and Harold and began to eat fries off her plate. “Psychic work.”

  “Lily’s my daughter,” Harold said. “Nineteen, living on her own. I can’t get hold of her.”

  “Jeezus. Hope she’s all right.” Jamie broke off the end of a fry that had touched meat juice, laid it on a napkin, ate the uncontaminated portion, and took a slug of his beer. “Almost forgot you had a daughter. Naomi hardly talked about her.” He dumped hot chile sauce on the edge of Mae’s plate, poked several fries into it at once and talked through eating them. “Can’t remember if she had her picture anywhere.” He swallowed, mumbled an apology for his bad manners, dipped another cluster of fries and repeated the same lapse. “Yeah. In ballet clothes. Some recital or something when she was a kid. Hair in a bun, tutu ...”