Death Omen Read online

  The band’s original instrumentals had an African flair with a touch of jazz in Jamie’s flute improvisations. Toward the end of the set, an ensemble of women dressed in wrap skirts and short bodices came onstage. Mwizenge introduced them as members of an African dance group that met at the Railyard Center. Mae knew Jamie had been taking classes with them, and was delighted when the women drew him into their dance. The energy of the crowd and the drummers soared higher as the dancers crouched and shook and spun. Jamie didn’t leap the way the women did, but his low-to-the ground style was equally ablaze with excitement. Mae, like most of the other adults on the dance floor, became too wrapped up in watching to do more than move her hips and feet to the beat, but she could see the children at the front of the crowd, doing their frenzied best to keep up.

  When the dancers exited, the audience whooped and applauded. Mwizenge thanked them, and then added, “As you may know, Jangarrai will be on the road for a while after tonight, so this is our last show for a few months. Zambethalia will be back together in October, playing at the Magic Bean in La Villa Real Center. We’ll see you then.”

  The band left the stage, and left Mae in an unexpected flood of worry. She hadn’t fully acknowledged how concerned she was about Jamie traveling alone for so long, and wondered if his manager had too much confidence in his stability. If only his bandmates were free to tour, or wanted to.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the audience’s rhythmic applause demanding an encore.

  Zambethalia returned and broke out in a fast-paced drum and woodwind jam, with Mwizenge and Dagmawi providing the rhythms and Jamie alternating between flutes and didgeridoo. Suddenly, Sierra ran up the steps to the stage and began to shimmy in front of him. Jamie dodged to the side and jogged down to the dance floor to wind his way through the audience, still playing his flute. Instead of taking the hint, Sierra picked up one of his drums and pounded on it, failing to keep the tempo. Mwizenge gave her a hard look and the crowd booed her.

  A security officer moved toward Sierra. People in Santa Fe were, as in T or C, accepting of eccentricity, but messing with good music was obviously beyond their tolerance. The audience clapped when the officer signaled to Sierra to leave. Her companion met her at the side of the stage as she stalked off, head held high, and they departed arm in arm. Jamie danced through the crowd and rejoined the band for the rest of the encore.

  During the break that followed, while the director of the Bandstand concert series made announcements, Jamie joined Mae sitting on the wall. He was drenched with sweat and shaky as he put his arm around her and kissed her on the ear. “You didn’t dance, love.”

  She handed him his steel water bottle from the cooler near her feet. “I did earlier, but I can’t keep up with that African stuff. I need lessons.”

  “Didn’t stop Sierra.” Jamie drank until he had to pause for air and wiped a drip from his braided goatee. “What in bloody hell is wrong with that woman?”

  “A lot. I’ll tell you in a minute.” Mae stood to better watch the children. They should have been coming back to her, but instead were ducking behind the stage with Mwizenge’s older boy. “I have to go see what the kids are up to.”

  “Sekani’s got a crush on ’em. Wants to ask his mum if he can take ’em home.” Jamie finished his water and began rooting in the cooler, bringing out a bottle of vegetable juice and a plastic cup. He filled the cup and drank. “Think it’s too soon for them to do a sleepover?”

  “Of course it is. They just met.”

  He slid his hand along her hip and caressed her. “A man can dream.”

  There was still a residual tremor in him that concerned Mae, though he didn’t sound anxious. She snuggled close again, rubbing his back. “You’re thinking about us having our sleepover, aren’t you?”

  “Not expecting it. Not ’til October, anyway.” He sighed, then brightened. “Wendy got me a gig in T or C for when I get back. Healing music at some retreat. Means I have to work right away, but I get free massages and get to sleep with you.”

  Maybe he would actually sleep, after spending his days that way. “What a wonderful idea. I love it.”

  Jamie looked around. “Sierra’s gone?”

  “She left with her boyfriend. At least, I think he’s her boyfriend. She didn’t introduce him, but they acted like a couple.”

  “Good. Means she’s not after my body, just my soul.”

  “You don’t want her near your soul, sugar. You know her support group does some sort of ritual with their garbage?”

  Jamie laughed. “Jeezus. Shouldn’t it be their recycling?”

  “I made the same joke.” Mae related her encounter with Sierra and Kate.

  “I can see why Kate got mad. Knocks out her helping Bernadette with an article, though.”

  “I bet I can talk Kate into going. Sierra wants her to.”

  “Good. Kate’s tough. Maybe they’ll fight it out.”

  “It’s got to be an investigation, not a fight. I already fought with Sierra and it’s hard to win with her. She didn’t stop anything she was doing. Scaring the kids or harassing you.”

  “Scaring the kids?” Jamie’s eyes flashed. “What’d she say to them?”

  Mae hesitated, then told him about Sierra’s karmic baggage talk.

  He stared at her, and his words came out in a tight whisper. “Bloody fucking hell. She said I could die?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mae said. “Now I’ve gone and scared you, too.”

  “Nah. Not scared.” Jamie finished his juice and looked away. “Just shocked, y’know? That she’d say that to your kids.” He squeezed the cup until it cracked. “Person like that shouldn’t run a support group. Kate’s got to prove she’s wrong, totally wrong, about everything.”

  Chapter Nine

  In her motel room after the concert, Mae cuddled with Jamie, lying side by side on top of the bedspread. Their last chance for intimacy for a long time. In the other bed, Brook and Stream had ceased squirming and giggling and had fallen asleep. Having danced and played themselves into exhaustion, they’d struggled to stay awake long enough to talk with Jamie and tell him that Sekani was now their boyfriend.

  Faint illumination from the streetlights and the crack under the door kept the room from being fully dark, and pinpoints of red, blue, and green glowed on the microwave, the TV, and the smoke detectors. Mae imagined Jamie in room after room like this on the road. “So this is your life for the next two months,” she whispered.

  He crossed his leg over hers and toyed with her fingers. “Don’t remind me. At least I’ll get some couch-surfing breaks.”

  They turned and faced each other to explore a slow, deep, sensual kiss. Mae knew this was going to drive her crazy, making out like teenagers, fully clothed and trying to be quiet. Their hands slid under each other’s shirts, stroking and caressing, and then they stopped, signaled by a mutual realization that they had to. Any more and they would be making noises the children shouldn’t hear.

  Jamie murmured under his breath, “Guess I’d better go.”

  Mae walked with him to the door. “We’ll see you in the morning. Help you load the van.”

  “Yeah.” He took an unsteady breath followed by a loud, wet sniff and hugged her again.

  “Sugar—”

  “Sh. I’m all right. Just sad, y’know? Normal-sad. No worries. Hooroo, love. Catcha.”

  He let himself out and closed the door.

  No worries? Mae was already worried. Jamie wouldn’t want to think she was, though.

  She showered, got into bed, and lay awake gazing at the girls. They slept undisturbed by things that would wake an adult. The sounds of other people were reassuring when you were a kid. Water running, music, grown-ups’ quiet conversations and footsteps. Maybe Jamie would get that kind of comfort from his couch-surfing breaks. Staying with total strangers would be more stressful than a motel to Mae, but Jamie loved meeting new people, and he needed people as much as she needed peace and privacy.

&n
bsp; She shouldn’t worry about him. He had a good stress plan, and though he didn’t like traveling, he would enjoy his performances. During his solo show, the second half of Bandstand, he’d been as happy as Mae had ever seen him, interacting with his audience, getting them to clap and stomp rhythms, to sing melodies while he improvised around them, and to dance patterns that drummed the beat with their feet. His show was an immersion, a relationship. He would be fine every time he got onstage. Crying as he said goodbye was nothing to fret about. Jamie was like that. She’d never known anyone, male or female, who cried so easily. It shouldn’t trouble her, yet it did.

  Had Sierra seen something serious? She’d been accurate with his hip problem and his nerve pain. Had she seen depression coming back? Was that why she’d predicted his karma could kill him?

  To calm her mind, Mae closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the room. The air conditioner was quieter than the one in her bedroom at home, so quiet she could hear the children breathing. She hadn’t slept in the same room with them since they were little, those rare times when they’d been too scared to comfort each other and had crawled in with her and Hubert. The memory felt as if it came from both a long time ago and just yesterday. The girls seemed to be growing up fast, when she only saw them on vacations. Maybe she should move back East when she graduated, to be closer to them. She got free tuition at the college where Marty coached, so of course she would finish college in Las Cruces, but after that—after that, Jamie wanted her to move to Santa Fe.

  Only a month ago, she’d thought she might, though she hadn’t promised anything. In three years, Brook and Stream would be ten years old. Mae didn’t like to picture them heading into preteen and teenage years without her, even if Jen got better in her stepmother role by then. Had Jamie liked Norfolk and Virginia Beach on his last tour? Would he be willing to leave Santa Fe?

  The harder question was: would she want him to? She didn’t know if they would still be a couple in three years. They had to take it slowly and see how their relationship grew, see how it worked long-distance while he traveled. See how they handled being apart and then together again. She hoped it all went well, but they couldn’t know until they tried it. Maybe that was why he’d been so emotional. It wasn’t just his stress tolerance that was going to be tested by his tour.

  *****

  Jamie walked down the hallway still in tears, drowning in a wave of love and longing. This was what he wanted. He’d just left the life he wanted, that moment with Mae and the children, together in the way she didn’t want them to be. Like a family. It had been an illusion and he knew it. Brook and Stream had said goodnight to him without wanting a hug or kiss. They didn’t see him as part of their family yet, just a friend. But some day they would be a family. He would lie with Mae at night in their own house, children sleeping in nearby rooms, her children and, he hoped, children from their marriage. His children and Mae’s. The wholeness, the tenderness, peace, and safety—it was the life he wanted. The love he wanted.

  He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath as he went downstairs into the lobby. Now he got it, really got it, why Mwizenge and Dagmawi wouldn’t travel with him, wouldn’t try to make a living from music.

  Tourists checking in gave him a wary look, as if perhaps a black man with blond hair and a braided goatee didn’t belong in the Santa Fe they’d come to visit. Or did he look like he’d been crying? Embarrassed, he ducked outside. A light rain had come up, clouds covering the stars. He welcomed the cooling dampness and stood in it for a moment, letting it calm him before walking to his apartment. The parrots would like the rain.

  When he got home, he took them out and flew them in circles in the middle of his spiral lavender garden. It made him a little dizzy but it gave them a longer flight path, and they looked beautiful. Placido was starting to get enough lift that the red and blue patches under his wings showed, the way he was meant to be seen. At the end of their rain-bath flight, the birds landed on Jamie’s arms.

  “You have fun?” he asked them. “Was that good?”

  “Ma-a-a-ate,” said Placido, using the affectionate long form. “Love you.”

  “Love ya, too.”

  Bouquet climbed to Jamie’s shoulder, and he petted her.

  He gazed across the street at the side of the Sage Inn. His heart ached again. How long would it be before he could have the life he craved? Three years? Five? Would it ever really happen? He brought the birds in and let them walk around the living room to dry off, and went to the kitchen.

  Since the show had started at six, he’d skipped dinner and now faced the near-empty fridge and cupboards. He had deliberately run out of food before traveling, leaving himself only enough for this night and the morning. One beer. One take-out wrap, curried tofu and veggies. Enough granola for breakfast, one small container of soy yogurt, and one banana. Less food than he craved under stress, but maybe that was for the best.

  He opened the beer and stood at the counter eating the wrap and gazing at the children’s art magnetized to the freezer door. It gave him hope, especially the picture of the four of them together. Gasser, who was not in any of the pictures, came in at a gallop and skidded on the linoleum, then stood and meowed.

  “Yeah, the birds are on the floor. I know. You hate it.” Placido sometimes attempted to groom Gasser’s tail, which terrified the cat. Just as well he didn’t return the affection—cat spit was toxic to parrots—but Jamie still felt guilty that Gasser was unhappy with his new housemates. “You’re the only one that’s going to love this tour, mate. Just you and me for weeks on end.” Jamie washed down a bite with a slug of beer and contemplated his cat. “No, I take that back. I’m going to make myself like it, too.”

  He finished his meal and called his bird-sitter, explaining that it would be easier to bring Placido and Bouquet out tonight, if it wasn’t too late. One less thing to do in the morning. She said she would pick them up, since she and her boyfriend had come downtown for Bandstand and were just finishing dinner.

  Jamie gave her directions and then loaded the van. He went back and forth over putting his roo, his childhood stuffed toy, on the center console to ride with him, but the poor old thing was getting too fragile. And Jamie himself—he hoped—was getting less fragile. He could travel without it. By the time he went to bed, he had said goodbye to his parrots and done everything he could to be ready for the tour. Exhausted, he left the hall light on and the bedroom door halfway closed. Inviting sleep, he lay with Gasser spread over his chest and belly, feeling his breath move against the cat’s weight. It wasn’t as soothing as usual, as if his chest was too full. Anxiety, or had Gasser gotten heavier? Jeezus, I’m a failure as a cat owner. “I’ll exercise you every day, mate. Take you out for walks. You’ll see the world.”

  The bed felt empty. Mae should have been there. Jamie understood why she wasn’t, but it bothered him nonetheless. What if I die? His heart pounded. With his upcoming thousands of miles of travel, he could be in a car crash. He could die without having the life he wanted with Mae, die without making love to her again.

  Gasser passed wind, moving up higher on his owner’s torso, and put one big white clawless paw against his cheek. Jamie stroked the cat’s back. “Thanks, mate.” Ignoring the odor as best he could, he returned to his breath.

  As he drifted into sleep, a small furry presence lodged against the side of his neck, purring. Bloody hell. Jamie stared at the ceiling, wide awake again. Maybe the ghost meant to be comforting, but it wasn’t. What did William want?

  *****

  Mae clasped the children’s hands and looked toward the four-way intersection and then up Don Diego before crossing. It was early yet, and the morning traffic was light. Several blocks away, she spotted Don Gross from the workshop striding down the street with the unmistakable arm-pumping movement of the serious walker, wearing a fitness-tracker gadget on his wrist. She waved, and he waved back.

  When she reached the gray stucco duplex, she called Jamie as prearranged in her rol
e as his alarm clock. “Morning, sugar.”

  He made one of his not-awake noises.

  “Come on down and let us in. We had breakfast at the motel. All we need is some hugs and to help you pack.”

  “Mmm. Just hugs. Packed last night. Letitia picked up the birds. All set.”

  Don had reached the house. He checked some data in his fitness gadget, pressed a button, and smiled at Mae. “Good morning. Seeing Jamie off?”

  “Yeah. This is the day.” She was surprised Don knew this, but then Jamie shared a lot with people he hardly knew. Mae introduced Brook and Stream to Dr. Gross. The girls exchanged glances and emitted little smothered snorts, then told him they were glad to meet him.

  “Did you think my name is funny? Kids usually think Dr. Gross is hilarious,” he said, “since medicine is pretty icky sometimes.”

  “We like icky stuff,” Brook said. “But we weren’t gonna laugh at your name.”

  “Why not? I do.”

  Mae explained about the encounter with Sierra at Bandstand.

  Don shook his head. “She’s utterly humorless, isn’t she?”

  Jamie, his hair wilder than usual and his shirt half-buttoned, opened the front door. The twins ran to him. He hugged them, straightened up, and called out, “G’day, Dr. Don. Come in for coffee?”

  Mae asked the doctor, “You mind interrupting your workout?”

  “Not at all. I’ve only walked a few blocks. Not even warmed up yet. I can start over.”

  After Don and the girls had gone into the kitchen, Jamie held Mae, kissing her and crushing her against him. “Missed you so much last night. Jeezus.”

  She drew back and looked into his eyes. There were puffy bags under them. “Did you sleep much?” Foolish question. Jamie normally fell asleep around sunrise.

  “Nah. Got a lot done, though. Miss the birds but ...” He shrugged. “Y’know. More time this morning to just be with you. Nice long goodbye.”

  They went into the kitchen. He made coffee and apologized for having no food to offer his guests, then fixed his breakfast and ate standing at the counter, telling everyone else to take the chairs. “I’ll be sitting for the next ten hours.”