Snake Face Page 33

  “Excellent for creativity,” the professor said with a dry half smile, “and for engaging your audience. But, class, this was also an educational example of the selective distortion of well-researched facts.”

  “That’s what we meant it to be.” Joe Wayne grinned, put his guitar in his case, and joined Sylvie. They did a hand-jive game and bumped hips like teammates after a big win.

  Mae’s vision shifted through a quick shot of darkness to glimpse Joe Wayne on a bus with his band. He slouched in a back seat, tapping on a pack of cigarettes, staring out the window. One of the band members, ginger-haired Gary, walked over and spoke to him. Joe Wayne grunted and ignored him. Images of a concert flashed through, Joe Wayne wild and lively, singing, dancing, guitar picking, fiddling, making risqué jokes. Then he was in a hotel, alone at a table with his laptop. He drummed his fingers on the unopened pack of cigarettes while he scrolled through various links on Jamie’s web site.

  After listening to “Heartbeat of Time” twice, Joe Wayne got up and took his cigarettes out into the hallway, stomped on the pack, knocked on a door and handed the mess to Bubba. “Get rid of this for me.”

  He returned to his room, slumped at his laptop again, and opened a document.

  Genius. This album is a new direction for me as an artist and as a man. He half laughed a sharp exhalation, muttering, “I wish.” The ideas for these songs came from a translation of Da Vinci’s notebooks I picked up at a library dollar sale, and some of the words are straight from that book. I gave it to Sylvie for inspiration, and she did it justice. Today we say Da Vinci was a genius, but in the old days they would have said he had a genius. It used to mean a guiding or possessing spirit, an uncontrollable force of inspiration, or a genie. Creativity is like that.” He added a new line. “Sylvie is more than my muse. She’s my genius.”

  He sat back and looked at his work, whispered,“Sheeyit,” punching the second syllable, and tapped his hands rapidly on the table. Nicotine withdrawal must be kicking in. He paced to the bedside table and picked up his phone. “Syl?”

  “Christ, Joe, I’m sleeping. What is it?”

  “We need to get married again.”

  “Isn’t twice enough for you?”

  “Third time’s a charm.”

  “No thanks. I already got one asshole, and it shits just fine. I don’t need another.”

  Joe Wayne let out a sudden huh of laughter, without a smile. “Come on, girl. It’s time. You can feel it. We’re different. Look at that new song you sent me—Nothingness. Jeez. That’s like ... Leonard Cohen or something.”

  “It’s still Da Vinci. ‘Nothingness has no boundaries and no center.’ He’s trying to get a handle on nothing. It’s the physics of the void.”

  “Fine. It’s science to you and Da Vinci. It’s loneliness to me. Isn’t that why you liked it? It’s the poetry of the big empty. Listen, I worked on it.” He sang a sad but fast-flowing melody with the mood of a howling wind.

  “No boundaries, no center, no light, no sound.

  No landmarks, no directions, I’m so lost, I can’t be found.”

  He stretched for high notes on “center” and “directions,” and dropped into a gravelly low that seemed to hit the bottom of his heart on the last line.

  Sylvie waited, and then said, “My high school teacher hated it when people turned physics into metaphors. Ms. Savage.” She chuckled, and bedsprings creaked. “But you done good. What’s this got to do with getting married again?”

  “You heard me. Loneliness. We both had enough nothingness. We need each other. Quit that job and get rid of your apartment. Don’t just be a visitor, move back in all the way. We’ve run this thing about as far as it can go without the wheels falling off.”

  “What thing?”

  “Me. That thing. Bad Sweethearted myself about to death. I like this new album. I like being a poet and an artist, not just an asshole cowboy.”

  “Yeah, but that’s your base, babe. We need an album for them to come out at the same time as Genius. You’re like a politician, you got to play to the base—and you can’t say you’re not having fun playing to them.”

  “Tired of it. I quit smoking tonight. Gone six hours without a smoke.”

  “Fine. But I don’t want any shit to go with it. Don’t get fat on me. Or moody.”

  Joe Wayne made a growling noise and walked to the refrigerator that hummed under a small microwave. He took out a beer, holding the phone between his shoulder and ear as he twisted the cap off the long-necked bottle. “No, I’ll just get drunk. Like an asshole cowboy.” He sang it to the tune of “Rhinestone Cowboy.” After sucking down a long swallow of beer, he belched—no apologies—and walked to the window, pushing the heavy curtain open. “I’ll see you in a few days now. You gonna be at the house?”

  “I’m there now.”

  “Doesn’t answer my question, girl. You gonna be at the house when I get there?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “You’re in my bed when I’m not. Don’t you want to be in it when I am?”

  “I had a long day. I was too tired to go back into town. Roxana and I took all the horses out, and I ran the dogs good, and then I went to work, came home and ran the dogs again. Checked out all your damned machines, too. Diego has your Land Rover and the Vespa in the shop but he’s got the Harleys and the Indian in good shape, and the stupid MG is running, for what that piece of Brit shit is worth. We cleaned your damn house from top to bottom, all three of us, and I did your shopping.” She paused. “Bought you plenty of condoms and cigarettes.”

  “Get rid of the cigarettes.”

  “Shit, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Damn right. But keep the condoms. If you won’t re-marry me, I’ll fuck some other girl, and I’ll breathe so good I can sing like your goddamn Jangarrai and run with my own damn dogs.”

  He hit the end button and tossed his phone on the bed, still staring out the window at city lights streaking the wet pavement below. After a few more swigs of beer, he dropped into the armchair, holding the bottle with both hands against his belly. Gradually his surly look softened, and he laughed and sang to himself, “I think, therefore I am a fool. Need a rhyme, hmm hmmmm. I drink therefore I am a hmmm ... Descartes meets Sartre in a bar ... It’s the existential crisis of a cowboy fool.” He drank, set the bottle on the windowsill, empty. “Sheeyit. I need a goddam smoke.”

  For the second time in a vision of Joe Wayne, Mae found herself wanting to watch him longer. He was magnetic. Not likable, yet charismatic. She could see how he’d attracted so many women in spite of his bad habits and reputation. This time she caught herself, and left him.

  Had she learned anything useful?

  Sylvie wasn’t the doormat Stamos had perceived when Joe Wayne introduced the dogs but not the woman walking them. It was Sylvie’s idea from the first that Joe Wayne Brazos shouldn’t be seen with a plain little flat-ass girlfriend. Her invisibility was so carefully engineered that she kept her waitress job. It was a box she’d put herself in to help sell her own music. Had she tired of it? Sylvie and Joe Wayne were in a long-term committed dysfunction, but the pattern of their dance looked like it was breaking in some way. Their passions no longer matched.

  How was this related to her stalking Jamie? What clues did it give to her plans? Mae had to trust that the Sight led her to what she needed to know. Maybe the story would make sense to her later, but for now she felt as if she’d dug into Joe Wayne’s life again for nothing.

  She should have just checked on Gasser.

  Shifting her focus to the cat-hair shirt, she closed her eyes, breathed deeply and tuned in to the crystals to journey one more time.

  The lights were on in the garage, and a dark, stocky man with a hint of gray in his hair ran a cloth over the interior of the MG, got out, and locked it. Then he wiped down the motorcycles, as if giving everything one last touch-up before Joe Wayne got home. This had to be Diego, Joe Wayne’s mechanic.

  He finish
ed with the motorcycles and knelt beside Gasser, who lay blobbed on the cement. Addressing him as “Gordo,” the mechanic talked softly and scratched behind the cat’s ears. Gasser rolled on his side, and Diego rubbed the big white furry belly. It would mean a lot to Jamie to hear that his cat was getting some affection, but Gasser had grit in his fur, and his underside was gray with grime. Jamie would be sad about that and want to wash and brush him.

  Diego stood and started for the house. With a sudden spurt of energy, the cat lunged at something. Mae had never seen such vigor in him. Gasser pinned an enormous wolf spider under his soft, clawless paws, batted it, watched it run, and caught it again. Diego interrupted and stepped on the spider, leaving a smashed wet spot with legs on the cement. Gasser looked up at the man, down at his former toy, and slid into his usual lethargy.

  The vision ended. Spiders. Sylvie had left Jamie alone after the spider and the knife. It was no fun to chase him anymore, when her toy was broken. Joe Wayne was getting serious and existential, outgrowing the image she’d helped him sell. Maybe outgrowing their game as well, threatening to end it with either marriage or a complete breakup. Sylvie didn’t seem to want either. So what did she want?

  She wanted Jamie to know she was more successful than he was, and to punish him for ignoring her. She wanted to make Joe Wayne jealous to punish him for cheating. She’d accomplished those goals. Maybe the game was over. Or maybe this was her opening, a few pawns moved to bait the next play. A play that had to do with all of this, and her orchestration of Joe Wayne’s image to sell her songs. If only I could see the future.

  Mae texted her only helpful information to Jamie.

  Joe Wayne’s mechanic Diego likes Gasser. He pets him and talks to him in the garage. I bet he wouldn’t let Sylvie hurt him.

  Thnaks. Jamie ended the call. No scrambled chat, not even hooroo or catcha.

  This wasn’t like him. She pictured him still in his clothes, curled up with the roo in a torn-up bed, and wondered if there was a heap of empty food containers in the trash, and if there were pillows on the floor or chairs barricading the bathroom door. He couldn’t have another night that bad. Could he?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I had a premonition about that storm.” Christina Tsitouris held court in a corner of the family kitchen. She sat at the table while others stood around her listening. A tight yet shapeless black dress packed her bulky frame in a shiny casing, and clunky earrings of faceted black plastic matched the beads around the folds of her neck. Stamos had warned Mae that although Uncle George had been dead for years, Christina still dressed and acted the widow. The only break in her dismal color scheme was her hair, dyed a garish yellow. “When the weatherman said the hurricane season was over, I said, ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’ And look what happened.”

  Mae tried to act impressed, nodding with a solemn expression. Jamie had feared hurricanes before coming East, but a bad feeling didn’t mean he had predicted one. So far Christina was a disappointing psychic.

  Stamos handed Mae a glass of wine. “Aunt Christina is right sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” His aunt’s ship-like bosom rose in indignation. “You have not been around, young man, for all the times I have been right.”

  He stood closer to Mae than she had expected, but it might have been from the crowding in the room rather than desire for intimacy. Swamped by his warm, outgoing relatives, she’d hardly had a chance to talk to him since arriving at the party. It seemed that the entire Greek community of Norfolk was crammed into the one-story blue house. Wine flowed, platters of food covered every table in the living room and kitchen, and the laughter and conversation were loud.

  A stream of talking people squeezed past her, a handsome white-haired man patting her on the shoulder and giving her a wink. What for? She had no chance to ask and refocused on Christina. “What’s one of your best predictions?”

  “Him.” Christina pointed at Stamos. “And his Spanish bride. I said, ‘This is going to turn out badly.’ And did it? Did it?”

  “Christina.” Stamos frowned. “Diana and I stayed married for sixteen years. That is not proof of your accuracy.”

  “It is. I was right. It ended badly. And I was right about the storm. Mae, Stamos tells me you are psychic too. What have you predicted?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. I find lost people or pets, things like that. I don’t see the future.”

  Christina rose from her chair, using a cane. She barely came up to Mae’s chin, and had to tilt her head up to look into her eyes. “I saw my own George die. A day before he did.”

  Stamos caught Mae’s eye and gave her a grimace of apology. When he’d offered to introduce them psychic to psychic, he’d cautioned her that it could get gloomy. Mae acknowledged him with a quick nod and said to his aunt, “I’m sorry you lost him. That must have been hard.”

  “I miss him every day.” She took Mae’s hand and grasped it with a startling firmness. “Now, you and I need to talk. Come with me.”

  It was part of why she’d come to the party—curiosity about the spooky aunt—but Mae hadn’t expected to be taken away from Stamos so quickly. She wanted to talk to him before the dancing and music started so they could get a sense of where they stood with each other. After that, she doubted she’d have a chance, and this might be the only time they’d see each other before that long drive back to New Mexico.

  Assuring Stamos she’d find him shortly, Mae followed Christina to a small bedroom decorated with religious pictures and photos of Christina’s younger self with a man who looked like Stamos and his father, obviously her late George. Christina groaned as she lowered herself into a soft chair and indicated a small hard one for Mae.

  “He is not lucky in love, our Stamos,” Christina said. “And he is not going to be.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever. He is destined. He will not believe me. You should. I’m sorry, but he will never be a happy man in love. Anyway,” Christina raised an eyebrow and wagged a finger, “there is another man in your life.”

  “Not exactly.” Did she mean Jamie, or the fact that she was still legally married to Hubert? “No one I’m dating or anything.”

  “But he is in your life.” Christina closed her eyes and clasped the small cross that hung below her black beads. She shuddered and kissed her cross, then opened her eyes. “I have a very bad feeling about him. Very, very bad.”

  A chill crawled over Mae’s skin. Could this woman foresee anything? Christina seemed to have nothing to offer but bad feelings. She had predicted a bad end to Stamos’s marriage, but it had lasted a long time. She’d predicted the rare December storm, but with a warm fall and winter and warm oceans it was logical that it could happen. She didn’t claim to have given a date or other details. Only a bad feeling.

  Mae tested her. “Is it my ex-husband or someone else?”

  “I don’t know. I feel music around him.”

  Music. It could be anyone, listening to music, or it could mean Christina had actually picked up something of Jamie just from being around Mae. That would make her a powerful psychic—and it would also mean that Jamie’s attachment to Mae was so strong that it radiated through her. “What’s the music like?”

  “Sad. Pretty.”

  “Is it instrumental or someone singing?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” The widow frowned. “I don’t see and hear things, I only feel them.”

  This seemed more genuine to Mae, more true to the unique and puzzling nature of a psychic gift, than if Christina had told her what she heard. “What kind of bad feeling, then? Is it like depression?”

  “Perhaps.” Christina closed her eyes and squeezed her face into a kind of raisin of concentration. “What I feel ... It is like death.”

  Mae’s mind raced through a whirl of possible disasters. The wretched old van failing suddenly in heavy traffic. Insomniac Jamie finally falling asleep—at the wheel. Suicide. Sylvie’s knife. “Excuse me—I need to—�
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  She hurried from the bedroom to ransack the living room coat closet for her purse and her phone. No messages from Jamie. Did that mean he was all right or that something had gone wrong? She sent him a quick text. Get in touch right away. Christina shuffled into the room and touched Mae’s elbow. “Look at you. I told you there was a man in your life.” The elderly aunt looked meaningfully at Stamos as he approached Mae. “I’m right about both of you.”

  Stamos gave her a tolerant, teasing smile, and started to speak to Mae, but was interrupted by his father’s shout in Greek. In response, most of the people in the room formed a circle, and Stamos’s mother started lively Greek music on the stereo. A number of the dancers shouted what sounded to Mae like oompah!

  “This dance is easy.” Stamos slipped into the circle. “Just watch our feet.”

  Mae joined him reluctantly. She wanted to enjoy his company, but her distraction and worry persisted. The dancers joined hands, starting with a simple grapevine step and a few low kicks. Then the music sped up. The faster it went, the more Mae wished she hadn’t dressed up so much. Although her heels weren’t very high they were narrow, and precarious for dancing.

  “What did Christina say?” Stamos asked, with a seriousness that made Mae wonder if he put more stock in his aunt’s premonitions than he let on.

  “That you’re unlucky at love, and that she had a bad feeling about some man that I know. Not you. Someone else.” Mae wished she’d worn something with pockets to keep her phone with her. She wouldn’t hear it over the bouzoukis and the oompahs. Another shortcoming of dressing up. “She said she felt music around him. Sad music. And death.”

  “Death?” Stamos’s eyebrows lowered. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “You think she’s right? I thought she struck out half the time.”

  “Yes. But she bats 300 on death.”

  Mae froze. The dance kept going, though, pushing and pulling her along. She tripped over the approaching foot of the nearest dancer. The heel of her right shoe snagged in the rug as her left foot went out from under her. Stamos caught her just short of landing in a platter of tiropita.