by Amber Foxx
“I’m Muffie.” The well-dressed woman took one of the empty chairs at the small table, reached over and grasped Mae’s hand, and then paused in mid-handshake, frowning. She shook her head slowly and dramatically.
Puzzled, Mae asked, “Excuse me?”
Muffie held up her other hand, commanding silence, and closed her eyes. Her breath became loud and slow, her frown more pronounced. “Your circulation ... there’s a blockage ...” She groped up Mae’s forearm and gripped it, like a lobster claw’s pinch. “There is canola oil in your system. Do you get pain here?”
“Only where you’re grabbing my arm.”
Muffie’s eyes flew open. She let go. “That’s the toxins.”
“Ma’am, that canola oil scare was like an urban legend on the net, it’s not—”
“I am always right.” Muffie stood and walked behind Mae, holding a hand over her head. Mae didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or argue. Muffie hissed, “Shh.”
Mae massaged her arm, waiting for the next pronouncement.
“Your aura,” Muffie said, “is dirty.” She pressed the hovering hand down onto Mae’s head. “Your entire field needs cleansing. I recommend the spinach and squash soup. And you should get some sun. Let its vibrations and energy heal your light.”
“The soup sounds good,” Mae said. Muffie returned to the seat beside her. Curious how bad the advice would be, Mae asked, “But the sun ... Will my aura get cleansed if I wear sunscreen?”
“No, no, it blocks your pores, you need to dance under the sun, be one with it, bathe in light. Shake off your dirt in it. This is important. Along with the inner cleansing.”
“Of my blockages.”
Muffie nodded. “Your health is not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been feeling pretty darned excellent.”
Enough was enough. This woman should not be getting away with this nonsense. Reaching a firm, well-muscled arm around to the back of the chair where she had hung her purse, Mae pulled out her business card case and opened it. She took out two cards and handed them to Muffie.
She watched the restaurateur go still and expressionless as she read. The first card said:
Mae Martin-Ridley
American Council on Exercise Certified Personal Trainer
and Group Fitness Instructor
Muffie sighed irritably. “Health does not come in the form of fitness.” She regarded Mae as if she were a sad, benighted soul. “You exist at another level you can’t see.”
“But I can see it. The other card is me, too.”
Muffie slid the first one behind the other, the one with deep green script on pale green stock, and images of trees bending over the words.
Breda Outlaw
Psychic, Energy Healer, Medical Intuitive
Healing Balance Center
Virginia Beach, VA
“Are you challenging me?” Muffie’s eyes seemed to bulge. “Because if you are, you don’t have to eat here. I’m always right.”
“Bless your heart.” Mae smiled. “I’m sure you think you are.”
Muffie slapped the cards on the table, inhaled sharply, and marched back out to the main dining room. The other diners in the room looked at Mae, some with stifled laughter, others with disapproving frowns.
“About time someone took her on,” Niall said with approval as he returned to the table, beer in hand.
An unusually tall, thin young man with light brown dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail of hair sausages arrived with a camera. “Hi. I’m Bryan. May I?” He aimed the camera at Mae’s cards on the table. “I caught the rest on the camera that watches your table.” He nodded toward a camera, one of several arrayed along the angle of the wall and ceiling. “But I need the close-up.”
“Who’s gonna see the film?”
“I’m entering it in a film competition in Santa Fe. But probably only the judges and my advisor, and maybe a showing on campus if my advisor likes it. Why?”
“My boss at Healing Balance liked us to have these working names, not our real names. I don’t necessarily want anyone who does a web search for me as a personal trainer finding out I’m also this healer-psychic person. Not everyone respects that kind of work. I kind of like the two names being separate for the most part. Put them together on this film and it doesn’t do so well for me.”
“Sure it does, if you’re good at both jobs. This is free advertising.”
“You’re in T or C now,” Niall said. “Weird is normal.”
As if Niall’s comment meant Mae’s permission, Bryan zoomed in on the cards, got his shot, and then let the camera hang from a strap across his body. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“I want to see that scene before you show it on campus, if it gets that far. I’m gonna be a student at Rio Grande. I don’t want to start out looking like a wacko. On the release form, look for Mae Martin-Ridley, that one’s my legal name.” Ridley was coming off soon. She had to get used to that. Bryan clasped his hands and bowed formally, nodding. “I’d like iced tea,” Mae said. “Sweet.”
“We never add sugar, but,” he over-acted a conspiratorial whisper, “I’ll bring you a ton of it.”
“You sound like you’re not into Muffie’s advice.”
“Muffie.” Bryan almost giggled. He resumed his whisper. “She told me to detox with seaweed and,” he looked to ceiling as if the other substance was inscribed there, “I think it was some herb, dandelion, maybe.” Leaning on the table he spoke even more softly, “So I went out and partied hard, totally toxified myself,” he winked, “and she said my aura was a hundred percent brighter.”
“Does she know you think this?”
“I’m an actor. You have no idea if I think this.” He straightened up and strode off, returning shortly with her drink, along with a sugar bowl that had feet clad in little pottery Mary Jane shoes, and a spoon with a Humpty-Dumpty figure on the handle. “Enjoy.” He departed again. Mae wondered if he had a microphone picking up his own whispers.
“Good work,” Niall said. “I’m glad you got rid of her. Maybe you can work somewhere here as a real psychic and shut her up for good.”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” Mae put the cards back in her purse. She could still use the personal training cards, but she needed to drop Breda in the recycling bin, though Deborah would be disappointed. “I probably won’t be doing that kind of work much while I’m going to school. It takes too much out of me.”
Bryan glided up, notepad and pencil poised, and tilted his head expectantly. “Shall I recite the specials?”
They agreed that he should, and he went to great length to describe the virtues of each dish, its freshness, its freedom from animal cruelty, and Muffie’s recommendation for the type of person who might benefit from it. Mae tried not to laugh at Niall’s irritated expression.
As soon as they had placed their orders and Bryan left, Niall said, “The person who might benefit from those specials is her. People don’t even look at the price when they hear it’ll cure their stress or their toxicity. A lot of health nuts are suckers, and the spiritual tourists are worse.”
“What do you mean by spiritual tourists? The place I used to work had a New Age bookstore and psychic readings, and sometimes the beach tourists would come see us.”
“Not like that kind of tourist—more like coming here especially to have a New Age experience. You see even more of that in Santa Fe. Christ, some people can’t sort the wheat from the chaff. Can’t tell shit from Shinola.”
When Bryan delivered their meals, serving from a tray balanced on his shoulder, he said to Mae, “When you’re done, would you please stop by the office? Roseanne Porter, the manager, wants to see you.”
“About making Muffie mad?”
“More than that. Muffie left.”
Chapter Three
“Best thing that could happen would be if she’s gone for good,” Niall said. “Don’t waste time on her. Your father’s expecting you in Santa Fe.”
/> “I’ll try to make it quick.”
At the end of their meal Niall paid, brushing off Mae’s thanks, and left to get ready for his upcoming gallery opening. Mae followed Bryan to the restaurant’s office, a small room that contrasted with the décor of the rest of the place. She’d found that even the ladies’ room was Dada, with a pink-and-yellow polka dot floor and zebra-striped walls, but the office was bland and white walled, furnished with an old metal desk and metal folding chairs, and a desktop computer. An elfin-faced, petite woman with short black hair looked up, her hands pausing on the keyboard.
“Rose, this is the psychic,” Bryan said. “Or so her card says. You want the cartridge from the hall camera?”
“No, thanks. Get back on the floor. Your customers come first.”
“You’re so bossy, boss.”
Her cat-like eyes flashed, and she leaned forward as if to scold, but Bryan left before she could. To Mae, Roseanne said, “Have a seat.” She smiled. “I hear you really pissed off Muffie.”
Relieved at the smile, Mae sat in one of the metal chairs. “Seems so. I had no idea she’d be so wacky. I thought she’d be a little on the fringe, but not that bad.”
“Oh, it gets worse. I mean, she’s had people change what clothes they wear so the colors fit their auras, change their cologne, shave their heads, all sorts of stuff to tune their vibration.” Roseanne leaned back and dropped her small hands heavily on the desk. “And people love it. Even the ones that think she’s a quack come to hear this crap for entertainment.”
“I’m sorry I made her so mad, then. Am I the first? That’s hard to believe.”
“A few people leave if they don’t like her. You’re the first person who’s claimed to be qualified to challenge her. I was wondering if you’re a real psychic.”
“I am.”
“How do you work?”
“My granma was a folk healer in the Blue Ridge, used to lay hands on people and heal them. I take after some of her gifts. Usually I use crystals to help me. I don’t see the future, I can only see where people are or lost pets—I’m good with them. And I can see inside folks’ bodies when they’re sick, or see the past to find how a problem got started. I don’t always know what it is I’m seeing, but I can describe it. I do some energy healing, too. It’s all related.”
“So I could have you check on a diagnosis Muffie gave me.”
“Yeah, if you really wanted me to. I’m pretty sure it’s all a load of bull.”
“I think so, too. So that wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t find anything. I was looking for a way you could prove you’re psychic.”
“If I hold something that belonged to the person, I can see them. Answer some questions about them.”
Roseanne looked around the bare office. “Everything in here is mine.” She finally handed Mae a plate with a half-eaten muffin on it. “Tell me about the cook. Who made this?”
This had to be the strangest object she’d ever used for a psychic search. Mae held the remains of the muffin and closed her eyes. It was hard to concentrate. Voices and clanging and clattering from the kitchen intruded, and she could feel Roseanne’s impatience. Breaking off the effort, Mae reached into her purse for the pouch of crystals she carried, took out a clear quartz point, and tried again. She sensed Roseanne fidgeting, but did her best to tune her out, focusing on quieting her own energy and tuning in through the crystal as well as receiving what came from the food in her hand. She set a goal, to find the person who made it, not the one who ate half of it.
Gradually the tunnel that told her she was entering a vision opened and carried her to a large, bright kitchen with stainless steel counters. A slender young man, his fair hair in a ponytail tucked back up under a chef’s hat, measured flour into a mixing bowl, looking at a recipe, and then glancing at the woman who worked beside him, also in a chef’s hat. She wore dark-rimmed glasses, and was as pink and round as he was wiry and pale.
Mae let go of the vision, and described the chef and the baker-in-training.
“And you’ve never met Nancy? Or Frank?”
“No. I just moved here about an hour ago.”
“I guess that’ll do. I wish I had something totally outside of this place for you to check on, though, something more unpredictable. Can you see what Nancy’s doing right now?”
“I’d rather not. What if I end up seeing her in the bathroom or something? I don’t like dropping in on people that way just to prove something. It’s not fair for their privacy that I could just look at ’em. There has to be a good reason.”
“Fine.” Roseanne sounded exasperated. “You’re ethical. I guess that’s okay.” She tapped her hands rapidly on the desk. “See, I want to investigate Muffie.” She glanced into the hallway, walked to the door and closed it. “I don’t want Bryan’s camera getting this.”
Mae waited. She didn’t like Roseanne’s attitude, but the idea of debunking Muffie appealed to her. Bryan was getting a lot of people on film who were being made into fools when they thought they were being serious and spiritual. Roseanne’s request might be worth listening to.
“See, after she tried to read your aura and you said whatever you did, she came back in here and got her purse out of the desk and then she stopped in the doorway and took this kind of pose, nose in the air, like she’s some diva in a bad opera, and she says, ‘I have been disrespected. Disregarded. Dismissed.’ I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t. You have no idea how often I have to do that. This job—God.” Roseanne let out a groan, wrinkling her nose and hiking her shoulders. “Anyway, she says,” she imitated Muffie’s dramatic, deep voice and grand posturing, “ ‘This was my sign. It is time to ascend.’ I could swear she was even getting right in front of the hallway camera to makes sure Bryan got it in his documentary—and then she leaves.”
“Is that normal?”
“Wrong word with Muffie, normal.” Roseanne returned to her desk and sat down again. “But for her it’s not typical. She never ever leaves in the middle of the day. It had to be because of what you did. See, she’s got these claims that she’s always right, that she never gets sick, and that she can see what people need for their health by touching them. And that she can ascend. All thanks to Sri Rama Kriya.” After typing something on her keyboard, Roseanne rotated her computer’s monitor to face Mae. “This web site is Muffie’s tribute to her guru.”
The screen showed a garden with tall sage and lavender plants growing in it, against a background of pinkish dirt and pink-beige adobe walls. Text describing the wonders of the Ascended Bliss Center for Enlightenment and the teachings of Sri Rama Kriya struck Mae as vague babble, but the explanation of ascension got her attention:
Sri Rama Kriya teaches us how to choose our time and leave our bodies without pain or death, how to channel our spirits directly to the upper realms of energy and light. When you study Ascended Bliss, you are freed from the cycle of karma and rebirth, and from your body.
“This sounds like it’s really mystical and spiritual, but then I tick her off and she’s gonna leave her body? Sounds like she’s taking her toys and going home. ”
“I kind of hope she does, frankly. She’s been driving me crazy for almost a year. I mean, I don’t exactly want her to kill herself, but,” Roseanne sped up, “this is a great place, or it would be if it didn’t have her. The old Dada playbills at the bar are these amazing antiques, the whole concept is brilliant, and the business is thriving. T or C needs a good restaurant like this, and I want to run this place without her.”
“Couldn’t you try to buy it from her? I don’t get why you need me.”
“She doesn’t answer her phone.”
“It’s been less than an hour.”
“I know you think I’m jumping the gun. But she’s usually glued to this place and to her phone when she leaves. After that speech about ascending, I think she’s going to disappear. I don’t think she’d claim that and then come back.” Roseanne dumped the half-eaten muffin into her trash can. “If she doesn’t
come back, would you check her out for me?”
“If she doesn’t come back, wouldn’t you call the police and report her missing?”
Roseanne shook her head. “She could go to Santa Fe to study with her guru. She does that a lot.”
“And she answers her phone then, right?”
“Of course. She’s a control freak. She calls all the time when she’s there and she answers her phone before it rings twice.”
Mae slipped the quartz point into her jeans pocket, to remind herself to clean it before using it again. “I’m gonna be in Santa Fe myself. If I run into her, I’ll let you know, but I don’t see any psychic work you need done. Sounds like she’s just sulking.”
“Maybe. But ...” Roseanne hesitated, and then spoke softly. “I think a real psychic would be the one to find out if she—okay, I’m embarrassed to ask—if she really could ascend. Don’t laugh. I don’t know anything about yoga and meditation and all that stuff, but Frank and his roommate Kenny are really into it, and they believe her. They say there are yogis who can stop their hearts, and melt snow naked in the Himalayas, and levitate, and they really believe she could leave her body like that. They read all of Sri Rama Kriya’s books.”
Mae considered the possibility. She didn’t know much about Eastern mysticism either. She had a book on meditation, but she had only read part of it. So far, skipping the whole death process hadn’t come up. That didn’t mean someone couldn’t do it, though. Her own powers were considered impossible by a lot of people. Who was she to dismiss the strange and unlikely? Except, Muffie seemed like such a quack. That special powers could be hers was harder to believe than that such powers were possible. “So, you think that if you don’t hear from her and she’s not at her guru’s place, that maybe she really ascended?”
