by Sarah Noffke
My pops wouldn’t question a lion as my constant companion if he sensed a comment on the matter was going to be discouraged.
“What about it?” I say as the old tailor quietly goes to work taking measurements of my inseam.
“Well,” my pops begins, scratching the back of his neck nervously, “I usually subscribe to the philosophy of ‘don’t ask the question if you might not like the answer.’”
“You want to know what I do?” I say.
He nods as the tailor dutifully returns to the back to fetch the suit I picked out.
“Currently, I’m a rogue agent for the Lucidites,” I say.
“Oh, that’s a private society of Dream Travelers, isn’t it?” he says and although he’s trying I still hear the disapproval in his voice. I don’t fully know the extent of the experiences my pops had with Dream Traveler societies, but I know that he never appreciated that they usually maintained a division between themselves and Middlings. He fails to understand that this was to preserve our already small race. Our population of Dream Travelers wasn’t always tiny. However, once Christians feared us as witches we were slaughtered by the thousands. Preservation of the race rested in our ability to stay a secret. But explaining that to my pops would only be a headache. There’s no way I can convince the man in front of me that his religion is responsible for his race’s near extinction. This is because now he’s more Christian than he is Dream Traveler.
“Yes. The Lucidites are a secret society of Dream Travelers,” I say, slipping on the unfinished suit jacket the tailor has just returned with.
“Do you…well, what kinds of things do you do in this job? I mean… you don’t have to tell me if—”
“I don’t hurt people,” I say, cutting him off. That’s what he thinks. I know it.
He blows out a breath of relief. “That’s good. But… well… Do you do other things? You know… bad things?”
He’s looking at me with that old expression. The one where he was constantly trying to bolster himself against the disappointment I was about to cause. He still thinks I’m a scammer and a thief.
“I don’t cheat people, Pops. The Lucidites save lives. They use clairvoyance, strategy, and technology to see future events and prevent disasters. It’s because of them that this bloody planet is still spinning on its axis,” I say and this gains me the first curious look from the tailor. I’m not worried about what he will overhear though.
“Oh,” Pops says, the tension from his voice suddenly gone. “Well, that doesn’t sound all bad.”
I shake my head at the man before me whom I know thoroughly and have never understood. “It’s not bad at all. The Lucidites are the most upstanding and powerful organization in the world,” I say.
“And you’re an agent for them,” Pops says, almost smiling now with pride. “Like you work on cases to save people? That’s something to be proud of, son. You should have told me that.”
“You know I never sought your approval,” I say. I thoroughly believe that other people’s judgments of me are none of my concern and that goes for my pops. I don’t need to prove myself to him or make him proud. What’s the bloody point anyway? As soon as I subscribe to others’ endorsements of me then I set myself up for failure when they undoubtedly disapprove of me one day.
“Yes, I know, but for all these years I thought you were… well, you know,” he says.
“Working in a shifty business,” I say.
“Well, yeah,” he says with a relieved chuckle. “Actually even worse than shifty at times. When you disappeared for all those years, well, I thought the worst. And then you returned but had changed so much. However, to know you work as an agent helping people. Well, that’s nice. Do you think you’ll continue to move up the ranks in the company?”
I now regard him with a great deal of annoyance. “What do you think the most powerful position in the world is?” I say.
He thinks for moment. “Well, it has to be leader of a free nation.”
“Wrong,” I say. “Those blokes are fairly useless. They work for us and don’t even know it,” I say, pointing at my chest. “And for twenty years I held the second most powerful position in the world as the Head Strategist for the Lucidites.”
“Wait… what?” he says, his eyes growing large.
The old tailor’s red eyes do the same as my pops when he looks up at me.
“Well, it could be argued I was in the most powerful position, but the Head Official probably doesn’t want to hear that,” I say, thinking of Trey Underwood and what a great team we made together. His moral fiber and my superior logic.
“Son, you’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
I lower my chin and regard him with a dull expression.
He releases another laugh. “That’s right. You’re not the type for such things. That’s what you’re going to say, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“Well, this is just too much. Who would have thought, my son, the most powerful man in the world. Saving people and making the world a better place. That would have made your mum real proud,” Pops says.
I don’t nod or respond. The idea I could have made my mum proud. Well, that tightens my throat. I actually cared what she thought, but only a little. Really, I just never wanted to hurt her. Didn’t want her to worry about me, although I realize now that was impossible.
Then confusion wrinkles my pops’s long forehead. “However, why aren’t you still in that position?” he says. “Did something happen?”
“It was just time for me to be done,” I say.
A look of remorse falls on his face. “Oh, it’s Dahlia, isn’t it? You wanted to be with her in case—”
“No, that’s not it!” I yell, making the fragile old man beside me jump slightly.
“Son, this is something—”
“We aren’t discussing that,” I say, jerking my arm away from the tailor now sticking pins into the sleeve.
“But Ren, I know what you’re feeling and—”
“You don’t know what I’m feeling because I don’t have emotions,” I say, stepping off the platform.
“If you’d just talk to me about this then—”
“This discussion is over,” I say and then whip around and face the tailor, who is staring at me, bewildered. “The suit is off,” I say, pulling off the jacket and grabbing mine, which is stiff and worn in too many places. “And you will forget everything you heard just now. We never met,” I say, throwing a strong intention behind the words.
The man nods like in a daze. The mind control was effortless on his crippled brain.
Then I turn and stalk out of the shop, leaving my pops behind.
Chapter Fourteen
Pops rides in the middle row, making strange noises at the little monster. I didn’t say anything to him after leaving him in the shop. And in typical Pops style he just let the whole thing go. There was really nothing to discuss. I wish for him to mind his own bloody business in this instance like he did with my job for all those years. However, I sense he thinks he can help Dahlia and me. He can’t and should just stick to entertaining toddlers.
“Mind if we stop?” Dahlia says when we approach a city in Northern California.
“Yes!” Adelaide says dramatically.
I turn to see her spring up from the third row, her red hair stuck to her face where there are crease marks from her lying on the seat.
“Oh, bloody hell. I was certain we left you in San Francisco,” I say.
“I know you did and were trying to leave me behind. That’s why I had Granddad knock on my door when we were about to depart,” she says.
“Always so helpful,” I say to the man who I love and also slightly resent, mostly love though.
“Anyway, yes, let’s stop. I’ve got to piss like a race horse,” Adelaide says. “Please pull over soon.”
“Miss Doolittle would also benefit from a book on etiquette if you think we can find such reading at one of these stops,” I say.
D
ahlia pulls the car onto the off-ramp. “Eureka, California. Sounds like the perfect place to stop,” she sings.
“Where does this thing you’re labeling a trip have us going?” I say, realizing that we’ve just been toddling up the coast. The diva might have us staying in a hostel in Canada or washing hippies in the streets of Portland. I really should have been on the planning committee for this foray.
“We’re going all over,” she says simply.
“Is there a final destination planned, like a grand finale, or is that at a mortuary, like I suspect?” I say.
“Just you wait, Ren Lewis,” she says.
“The anticipation is killing me,” I say in a monotone as Dahlia parks the beast on what appears to be a main road. Quaint shops line the avenue, and in the distance the blue waters of a bay can be spotted. I’ve always enjoyed water. Maybe it’s because of my time at the Institute and because it is considered a protective element to Lucidites, but there’s something healing about water. I don’t believe the same can be said for the other elements.
“Let me out,” Adelaide says, busting through the door. She sprints for a nearby shop to do her business.
Pops already has Lucien out of his seat. “I’ll take the little tyke to that patch of green over there,” he says, indicating a park area. “Let him get out some energy.”
I peel out of the car to find the air is moist and full of salt. It’s clean and not laced with the exhaust I’m used to in Los Angeles.
“Come on, Ren, walk with me,” Dahlia says.
I join her on the sidewalk, offering an arm to her. Even with the ridiculously large hat and glasses she’s still the most beautiful woman in the world. Not beautiful because her features are perfectly balanced, although they are. There’s a mystery in this woman’s eyes, something that hints at her wild side. And what she said all those years ago when she barged into my flat and demanded I take her to lunch is true. Dahlia is too big for this world. She’s a magnet for attention because she’s completely extraordinary in a mostly ordinary world. And she has a work ethic to match mine. How could I not be enamored by this woman, the only person in the world that my powers don’t work on?
The shops fall away and we find ourselves on a boardwalk, the harbor quickly approaching.
“Ren, I want to talk about it,” Dahlia says, her voice faltering a bit on the last word.
My arm tightens around hers. “We promised we wouldn’t. Not while on this trip.”
“I know, but it’s starting to overwhelm my thoughts and I feel like talking about it will help,” she says.
Dahlia tugs me over to the rail, where the water stretches out in front of us. I have the urge to throw myself into the bay. It’s not like I need to worry about messing up my suit, which was cleaned again at the hotel but now has holes in places and my shirt has stains marked by this journey.
Instead of launching myself into the mossy water I turn to Dahlia, giving her what she deserves, my full attention.
“What do you want to discuss?” I say.
“Well, for starters, I feel like since we were given the news we’ve avoided talking about the future. We should discuss how we will handle things in a worst-case scenario. Actually, I think we are both in denial and need to come to terms with this reality,” she says.
“What’s happened isn’t something that we need to worry about affecting the future. We are going to deal with it and then we are going to move on,” I say simply.
“This may be something we can’t fix,” she says, taking my hands. Hers shake in mine, causing something to vibrate in my throat.
“We can fix this, Dahlia. This is going to go away,” I say, my voice gruff and raw.
She releases a nervous giggle and it sounds all wrong right now. “You, like me, are afraid to say it. To name it,” she says, and the smile is gone, replaced with a tragic piercing look. It’s as if all the light evaporated from her eyes all of a sudden.
“I can. It’s just not necessary,” I say.
“Cancer,” she says. And that one word is a bullet ripping through my insides. “Ren, I have cancer. We have to face it together.”
I want to tell her I haven’t stopped facing it but it isn’t true. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea. I’ve seen so much. My mind has sorted through the most complex scenarios in history and yet… The idea that the love of my life has cancer isn’t something I can come to terms with. It’s in her, the same way it was in my mum threatening to steal her life away. And again I’m helpless. And it’s not that I have so little faith in God. It’s that I know him. Know he rips people out of my life. Finds ways to make me tear my own heart out by tearing people away. Making me vulnerable to the one thing I can’t control. Saving the people I love.
“What do you want me to do?” I say.
“Nothing. I want you to allow me to say those words, the ones you interrupted the other night. The ones that should have followed when you read the doctor’s report and bleak prognosis,” she says.
“Why? What good will it do?” I say, squeezing her fingers so tight I’m afraid I’m hurting her. And that thought slices at my heart.
“I need to say it. I need you to allow me to say it,” Dahlia says. The event that triggered this trip’s conception happened three weeks ago. It was the news that Dahlia had cancer and it had taken over. My photographic memory won’t allow me to forget that look Dahlia gave me when she told me the news, like she pitied me, like this was my diagnosis and not hers. And then she opened her mouth to say those two words and sensing what she was about to say, knowing it, I turned and stormed away.
And she’s right. I blotted out her moment to express herself, and for the selfish reason that I couldn’t stand to see her weak.
“Go on then,” I say to her as warm summer air dashes across my cheeks.
Dahlia releases my hand and straightens, like she’s conquering something rather than lying down in front of it. Like she’s overpowering it rather than admitting she’s at its mercy.
With clear bright eyes she says, “I’m afraid.”
“I know,” I say with a curt nod.
“I’m afraid that this cancer is going to kill me. That it will take me away from you. And that you’ll never forgive God. That you’ll explode with fury and never have a moment of peace again,” Dahlia says.
Of course she’s worried for me in all of this. Worried of how I’ll survive if she dies. “Dahlia, if fucking cancer takes you away from me….” I say, but lose the right words, and they need to be right. My words need to be exact in expressing what I want to say.
“Ren, this is what we need to face together. To deal with. We need to talk through all of this,” she says.
I now grip both her shoulders and look down at her. “There’s nothing for me to deal with. I won’t be bitter if you die.”
She tilts her chin to the side, baffled by this response. “Really? Why?” And Dahlia almost appears a little disappointed, like me not being heartbroken without repair is unacceptable.
I squeeze her shoulders. “If God takes you from this world then I know how to find you. I know where you will go and I know how to get there,” I say, pure conviction in my voice. No one knows I have this power, but I indeed do.
She doesn’t look surprised. Dahlia would never be. She would have sensed this all about me. Know the great secrets I’m forced to keep. “What will something like that do to you?” she says because she’s incredibly brilliant and knows there would be a cost for something that great. She is keen about how actions and results work in my world, which is different than hers.
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Ren…”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, and it’s true. Even though the act of finding her in the afterlife will create a schism in my soul I would do it. I know I’d have to. The way to journey into the land of the dead is relatively new knowledge for me but I believe it to be true and know I could pull it off.
“You mustn’t do this, Ren. I can’t all
ow you to follow me if I die. It isn’t natural.”
I smile and feel the tenderness in the expression mirror itself in Dahlia’s eyes. “You won’t be able to stop me.”
“Ren—”
“If soul mates exist, then Dahlia, you are mine,” I say, cutting her off. “And that’s exactly how I know I can find you. No matter where you go from this world I can find you.”
“But you belong here,” she says.
I shake my head, a sincere smile on my lips. “No, Dahlia, I forever belong with you. That’s not marriage, that not me blindly committing myself to you. That’s pure instinct. If I’m not yours, then I’m nothing.”
“Ren,” she says, breathless.
“I know it makes me sound like I need you, but—”
“It’s okay,” she says, pushing forward into my arms. “Because I need you.”
And I press her into me, realizing she’s right. And it’s all right for us to need each other.
Chapter Fifteen
Dahlia lets out a long relieving sigh when she settles into the middle seat next to Lucien. “It feels so good not to drive and relax back here. Thanks, Reynold, for taking a leg of the trip,” she says.
My pops has checked the rearview mirror’s position fourteen times before putting the car into reverse and getting us back on the road.
