Good Karma

by Christina Kelly

  “Of course you can,” she answered, thinking of the few rain checks they’d collected from postponed night games at Shea Stadium, unused tickets that had sat for years in a crowded utility drawer. Then, thinking of Audrey, she added softly, “But no substitutions or exchanges.”

  chapter 19

  He is a liar. I just don’t know what the lie is yet,” the television voice said.

  Ida Blue pressed the remote control and powered off the rerun of CSI: Miami. She usually admired Lieutenant Horatio Caine, with his peach cobbler–colored hair and his creative tactics for solving crimes and collaring perps. He was like a race car driver on an icy highway—prepared, focused, and always on the edge of danger. Yet lately she’d been feeling bored with network TV and fictional mysteries when she had her own.

  She remained splayed across her old couch, a can of flat Diet Mountain Dew resting on her stomach. Outside she saw the leaning trees that bordered Fred Wolfe’s property and recognized that she’d felt a little unzipped since she’d spoken to her neighbor, since she’d experienced a pulsating aura that must have been very close to real psychic energy. Maybe the phantom old woman hovering on her deck was a key to another dimension. If she could tap that wellspring, she could attract new clients or develop a radio show. Even an Internet webinar. Embracing Your Oracle. Secrets to Good Karma. Vibrational Energy Enlightenment. Maybe she could compete with the likes of Celebrity Animal Communicator Sonya Fitzpatrick, who surely had no better connection to the inner thoughts of pets than anyone else, just the spicy pull of a British accent.

  Ida Blue had to quit pretending that word of mouth would grow her business. That clients would fall into her lap like pecans from a tree. That wishing would make a phone ring. If she was to keep her house and continue to live in Seven Oaks, she needed to expand. She needed to do something. As Lieutenant Caine would have said, holding dark sunglasses between the tips of his fingers: “The only thing that matters is the evidence.” And the evidence was that she was going broke.

  If Ida Blue could pay off her bills, she could work on building an empire. She imagined hosting a heartwarming show about animals finding love. She’d originally conceived it as a sort of matchmaking business for dogs, but she knew such a powerful idea couldn’t be restricted to one species. Perhaps the universe needed a dating service for cats, ferrets, turtles, even silverback gorillas. The primates were endangered, after all; the World Wildlife Fund might be a viable sponsor. And what didn’t she know about love? Ida Blue had done her research and watched all the latest episodes of The Bachelor and The Millionaire Matchmaker. Courtship rituals were fairly straightforward. In the wild, male birds presented sticks, flamingos danced, and cockroaches stroked antennae. In humans it was equally obvious. Don’t order the most expensive thing on a menu. Say thank you when complimented. Don’t go to second base on the first date. Never vomit in a Jacuzzi.

  Although it had been years ago, she did have firsthand experience. Nothing long-term, but she could still speak from her heart. In high school she had had a boyfriend for a few months. McSweeney was a slender senior in the AV club who smelled of maple syrup. Sadly, she’d lost track of him once he’d moved to Las Vegas to pursue his dream of becoming a ventriloquist magician. But maybe one day, when Ida Blue got herself back on her feet, she’d throw her own hat back into the dating arena. If so, she’d need to be careful. She knew she’d come across as intimidating on a first date. Yes, I’m a career woman. Yes, I run my own successful business out of my home. And she wasn’t sure a husband was really a good thing to bring into a house. It seemed an ironic coincidence that the breeding of farm animals was known as animal husbandry.

  On several occasions in the last week, Ida Blue had been tempted to call Fred Wolfe to try some sort of psychic reconnection. If she did, she could ask him if his computer was running, just as he had asked her: “Is your Internet working?” She used to make prank phone calls, before caller ID put the kibosh on a little neighborhood fun. Is your refrigerator running? Is your air-conditioning running? Is your computer running? Well, then go catch them! But calling him out of the blue felt a tad aggressive, and the last thing she wanted was to scare him away. She feared smothering the source, like an Eskimo who has lived his entire life in Arctic darkness throwing himself on top of the first Weber grill he sees.

  But given her financial pickle, Ida Blue knew it was time to get closer to Fred, as if he were a sort of human Wi-Fi connection. So it wasn’t hard to will herself off the couch. After setting the TV remote and Diet Mountain Dew on the coffee table, she maneuvered around a mass of empty pizza boxes tilting dangerously to one side. The Leaning Tower of Pizza! Inside her walk-in closet, she slipped off her housecoat and selected a sundress with brown vertical stripes. Oprah had worn a similar outfit on her recent vacation with Stedman. The dress seemed a little tight and she wondered if it had shrunk in the spring humidity. After choosing a pair of wide red flip-flops that would accommodate her bunions, she congratulated herself on putting the smart outfit together. She might even offer fashion advice on her matchmaking show. A V-line neck will give the illusion of a slender torso. Long necklaces bring attention away from wide hips. Let your smile be your umbrella.

  She moved back into the living room and out the sliding doors onto the deck. Cobwebs hung from the eaves, and she waved both hands in front of her head to get through them. Moving down six steps, she arrived at the flagstone patio. Dollarweed thrived in the fissures between broken slate where she hadn’t been in several months. She saw her single chaise longue with a missing armrest. Of course, it had come with the house, but it didn’t look as uncomfortable as she’d remembered. Perhaps she’d even sit outside one day, if she could find the time.

  Fred Wolfe’s house was practically within spitting distance, but Ida Blue didn’t dare wander through the half acre of tilting trees. She’d watched too many episodes of The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin wrestling an alligator, calming a stingray, or mugging it up with a Komodo dragon. He’d told her about rattlesnakes and copperheads and cottonmouths. About how the venom from a single bite could cause hemorrhaging and sudden, painful death. And look what happened to poor Steve! Of course, she was a large woman, so it would take the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the reptile world to really give her a run for her money, but still.

  As she walked out onto the lawn, she noticed that a large clump of lemony daffodils had taken root at the far side of her giant oak tree. From her vantage point on the living room couch she had never noticed the cluster, and it surprised her that flowers so vibrant could grow untended. She moved farther to the property’s edge, where a thick band of pine straw separated the lawn from the tangled undergrowth. It was burnt orange, like dull police tape. Probably like Lieutenant Horatio Caine’s hair before a little Hollywood highlighting. “Slowly step away from the crime scene,” he might tell her. The pine straw was a visual break from the green grass to the dark thicket of woods. From manicured suburbia to savage wilderness.

  As she approached the edge, birds began to call above her, and she thought she heard the snickering of a raccoon. She could even see Fred Wolfe’s breakfast alcove, a curtain pulled halfway across one of the windows. As she watched, she hoped she might catch a glimpse of him. She lifted one leg, dangled her foot above the edge of the property, and felt a tingle move from her toes to her ankles. She didn’t dare step closer lest the venomous snakes appear, but she knew she had a connection to the old man she needed to explore.

  Although Ida Blue used her car only for weekly trips to the grocery store and occasionally downtown to promote tourism, she knew it was an appropriate time to splurge on a few unwarranted miles. This was about getting a connection, investing in her business and maybe even herself, so she padded back across the lawn and climbed the porch steps one at a time. Like most patio homes on the street, her house was single story but raised eight feet above sea level, as the housing code required. Her knees were thankful she lived in a low-lying city like Savannah and not San Franci
sco or Machu Picchu.

  On her way to the garage she stopped at the pantry, her shelves filled with AA batteries and drinking water and duct tape, supplies for any apocalyptic incident. Though she couldn’t be sure of the coming chain of events, she figured she might need some quick energy. Dr. Oz always said that dark chocolate was loaded with nutrients, so she grabbed several chewy-chip granola bars and congratulated herself on a healthy choice. She would take the snacks just in case. Justin Case. Justin Time. Is Justin Time home? No? Well, when he gets back tell him he’s late. She snapped her rubber band.

  The garage was a mess; always had been. Almost from her first week in the condo, she’d collected neighbors’ knickknacks on dump days. Even though she hadn’t had a need for slanting chairs or stained comforters, she hated for perfectly good hand-me-downs to be carted to the incinerator.

  Wood rot had created several gaping holes in the garage door, so Ida Blue’s car sported a thin layer of bright yellow pollen, as if Rachael Ray had sneaked into Seven Oaks and sprinkled curry powder across the hood. In order to sit down, Ida Blue had to move several empty bottles of diet soda and the manila envelope that held her pet psychic flyers. After opening the door and backing into the road, she pulled the car forward to the stop sign. Journey’s Greatest Hits was stuck in the CD player.

  It was time to take immediate and positive action. “Bag it and tag it,” Lieutenant Caine would say. At the main road she turned left. This wasn’t rocket science. In fact, the adjacent neighborhood looked vaguely familiar, since earlier in the week she’d used Google Maps to make a virtual journey to Fred Wolfe’s house, to see if she felt a connection from the computer screen. She hadn’t.

  In a quarter mile she reached Jolly Badger Lane and took another left. Just as she pulled onto the road, a surge of electricity moved up her spine. Of course, the Seven Oaks homeowner code didn’t allow any last names on mailboxes, no reflective letters that spelled WOLFE, but as she approached number four, a fiery spark ignited in her stomach, like the start of inflammatory bowel disease.

  Fred Wolfe’s house was a traditional Low Country home with a covered, wraparound porch, black wooden shutters, and two third-floor dormers that seemed to eye her suspiciously. His neighborhood was fancier than her own, but it offered the same wide streets and neat sidewalks. As she drove past his mailbox, she felt as if she’d just lit a Fourth of July sparkler on a dark night. But she had to keep driving. She couldn’t just stop and draw attention to herself and her car. She couldn’t just roll up to his house like some sort of lost relative. Or lost niece. Do you have Aunt Jemima in a bottle? Well, let her out! As she continued past the house, the electricity faded. In two hundred yards, the road ended in a wide cul-de-sac. Several real estate signs identified the undeveloped marsh lots for sale. She pulled around the circle, rolled down the windows, and turned off the engine.

  From this spot she could see Fred Wolfe’s property. There was no car in the driveway, no Great Dane on the prowl, no one sweeping the front walk or watering the bushes. A coiled hose hung from a metal hook by the side of the garage. Is your hose running? You’d better catch it. May I speak with Mr. Hugh Jass? “Stop it!” she shouted, her voice reverberating in the small car. She had to keep focus. Couldn’t panic. Couldn’t get all worked up about what she didn’t have—a steady income, a plan for the future, a connection to psychic power. She had to focus on what she did have, and right now it was hope. Hope that she could connect to an energy and a matter greater than herself, if only through her neighbor.

  She knew that if someone saw her idling outside Fred’s house, he might think she was a nutcase. A stalker. What did the celery say to the vegetable dip? I’m stalking you! But Seven Oaks was too safe to harbor stalkers. She wasn’t some sort of psychopath who jumps out of Martha Stewart’s pantry or Alec Baldwin’s pool house. She was just inextricably drawn to him to get a link to another world.

  The longer she lingered, the greater was her longing. She felt an invisible pull, a giant magnetic horseshoe drawing her car closer. After five minutes, she could barely take it anymore. The amount of effort she was putting into not driving up onto his lawn and throwing herself at his feet was exhausting. She’d never lifted weights or been to an aerobics class but imagined this was what exercising felt like. And as she sat, she felt a rise in her blood pressure and a lightness to her chest. It reminded her of McSweeney and the first time they’d tried Boone’s Farm Strawberry Fiesta wine. They’d been parked on a dead-end street and had left their senior prom early. He’d been showing her a magic trick that involved taking a joker out of her ear. “Just wait till you see where the jack is hiding,” he’d said. As she sat in the car by Fred Wolfe’s house, she remembered the cool night and the tickling in her throat and carbonated rush to her head. The feeling that anything was possible.

  The memory made her think of missed opportunities and roads not taken. It’d been seven years since she’d relocated from the cragged Georgia mountains, but it was now time to be proactive again. To make the universe aware that she was willing to make an effort on her own behalf. She took the manila envelope on the passenger seat and pulled out one of her pet psychic flyers. She grabbed a pencil from the carpet before realizing it was just a dried french fry. She threw it out the open window and found a pen. The nib was clotted with dirt so she ran it in small circles until a ragged line of ink appeared. She didn’t want to scare her neighbor, but she needed to get her point across: 7 OAKS CITIZENS . . . 1st Call FREE!!! And then for added emphasis she wrote: LARGE dog special!! As she sat there, she had the sensation of looking down at herself from above. Willing Fred Wolfe to appear before her, half-expecting him to come out of his house, arms outstretched, light emanating behind him.

  With a plan in place, she turned on the engine and slowly moved her car forward. With each advancing moment, her heart beat faster. At last she was in front of Four Jolly Badger. She parked the car, sat back, and reveled in conscious completeness. Just as on her half-dozen dates with McSweeney, she felt fully alive, at one with her body and the universe. She caught her breath and grabbed the flyer. She would just roll it up, step out, and place it in Fred Wolfe’s mailbox. Nothing could be simpler. She looked ahead of her and behind her, and no one was on the street. No one was walking a dog or pushing a baby carriage. No one was delivering mail or trimming a hedge. The world had stopped for a moment. All the noise in her head was suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet. As she unfastened the seat belt and opened the car door, she looked one more time at the house. And that’s when she saw it.

  In the wide living room window, an indistinct figure. It might have been a reflection on the glass, her eyes playing tricks. But as she stared, the lacy white curtain fluttered. Ida Blue was so surprised that she felt paralyzed, as if a lightning bolt had struck her.

  Unsure whether to get out, stay put, or race away as fast as her car could carry her, she remained still. Then, as if in answer to her question, the curtain fluttered again. This time a willowy arm pulled the fabric away and a red-haired woman peered at her. The woman moved her face toward the window. As she did, Ida Blue spied a golf visor and knew immediately, in the same way a mother can identify her newborn child in a crowded nursery, that it was the very woman from her patio the previous week. Ida Blue refused to move, could barely breathe, but the woman pushed her face even closer to the pane. It seemed her head might have even passed through the glass. Then, slowly and deliberately, the woman brought her arm toward the car, fingers cupped together, and beckoned Ida Blue inside.

  chapter 20

  And the dog park committee?” Fred was just trying to make conversation with Ernie. Trying to pass the time as he got his dog and himself out of the house. Hunter had stressed the importance of routine, so here he was at the park again.

  “We’re working on some very important issues.” Ernie lowered his voice, as if the NSA were listening. “You know, implementing some new rules.”

  “Like?”

  “No digging,
no humping, et cetera.” He stopped to let Fred catch up. “And did you know dollarweeds are infiltrating this joint?”

  “Not really.” Fred didn’t notice and didn’t care. He cared that his wife’s boxes of letters and unfinished crochet projects crowded his living room coffee table. He cared that he was beginning to feel like a curator in some sort of perverse theme park. Not Dollywood but Lissaland.

  “It’s not the Pentagon, but we do discuss nuclear waste.” With no response, Ernie repeated, “Nuclear waste!”

  Fred pushed out a mock laugh because it was probably what he would have done before Lissa’s illness. But that seemed so very long ago, and he could barely remember what it was to feel normal. To act normal. Fake it till you make it, Hunter had told him, and so he tried now.

  Lulu, Ernie’s terrier, had struck a play position in front of Sequoia, hind legs up and chest to the ground, but Sequoia was having nothing to do with her. “Sequoia still in a funk, huh?” Ernie asked.

  “Comes and goes, just like me. Maybe she’s just getting old.” Then the Great Dane lifted her watermelon head and blinked rapidly, the first real movement she’d made in the last half hour. Sequoia turned toward the front gate and both Ernie and Fred followed her gaze.

  In the transition area to the dog park, the enclosed space between the front gate and the six-acre enclosure, a woman stood as her dog, a brown-and-white streak, ran back and forth excitedly. “Calm down!” she said, laughing. The woman opened the interior gate and the dog tumbled through it, rolled on the ground a few times, then took off.

  “Looks like we got a live one,” Ernie said. They both watched her with interest. Fred saw her pull her left hand across her forehead, then stop to take in a big breath, then exhale. He studied her as Ernie turned his attention to her dog. “A Boston terrier, looks like. Look at him go.”