“Brandon,” the older man said peevishly. “Sweetheart? What is going on with your shimmy? I’m looking for…” He leaned forward and gave a beautiful fluid shoulder shake. “And not…” Clumsily he shuddered his upper body like he was trying to shoulder his way through a crowd.
“I’m sorry, Claude.” One of the boys—clearly poor Brandon, the bad shimmier—said.
“This is what I’m looking for,” Claude said imperiously, and launched into a demo: balancing up on his toes, spinning around on the ball of his foot, doing the splits in midair, all the while doing this scary, fake smile. He finished, bowing in pretend humility right down to the floor, his arms in airplane wings up behind him…
“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Are you here for the spiritualism?”
I whipped my head around. A young guy, probably early twenties, was looking eagerly at me. I saw him clock my scar but he didn’t display any obvious revulsion.
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“Great! It’s always great to see a new face. I’m Nicholas.”
“Anna.”
He extended a hand, and in light of his youth and his pierced eyebrow, I wasn’t sure if he was proposing a normal handshake or a funny complicated young person’s one, but it turned out to just be a straightforward clasp.
“The other guys should be here soon.”
This Nicholas was lean and wiry—his jeans were hanging off him—with dark sticky-up hair, red high-tops, and a T-shirt saying BE UNAFRAID. BE VERY UNAFRAID. Several woven bracelets were twined around his wrist, and he wore at least three chunky silver rings and had a tattoo on his forearm, one I recognized because it was the current hot tattoo: a Sanskrit symbol that meant something like “The word is love” or “Love is the answer.”
He looked perfectly normal but that was the thing about New York: lunacy appeared in all shapes and sizes. It specialized in Stealth Nutters. In other places they make it easier—shouting in the street at invisible enemies or going to the chemist to buy Bonjela dressed in your Napoléon costume is usually a dead giveaway.
Nicholas nodded at the South Pacific lads being put through their paces. “Fame costs,” he said. “And right here’s where you start paying.”
He looked normal. He sounded normal. And all of a sudden I asked myself why shouldn’t he be normal? I was here and I wasn’t abnormal, simply bereaved and desperate.
And now that someone had finally turned up, I was avid for answers.
“Nicholas, you’ve been to…this…before?”
“Yeah.”
“And the person who does the channeling—”
“Leisl.”
“—Leisl. Does she really communicate with”—I didn’t want to say “the dead”—“the spirit world?”
“Yeah.” He sounded surprised. “She really does.”
“She gives us messages from people…on the other side?”
“Yes, she really has a gift. My dad died two years ago and, via Leisl, I’ve spoken to him more in the last two years than I did my entire life. We get on a whole lot better now that he’s dead.”
Out of the blue, I was nearly sick with anticipation.
“My husband died,” I splurged. “I really want to talk to him.”
“Sure.” Nicholas nodded. “But, just so as you know, it’s not like Leisl’s a telephone operator. If the person doesn’t want to be channeled, she can’t go after them and hunt them down like a dog.”
“I went to another woman.” I was talking very quickly. “Someone who said she was a psychic, but she was just a swizzer. She said there was a curse on me and she could take it away for a thousand dollars.”
“Oh, man, you’ve got to be careful.” He shook his head ruefully. “There are a lot of hustlers out there who take advantage of vulnerable people. All Leisl asks for is enough money to cover the rent. And here’s the lady herself.”
Leisl was a short, bowlegged woman, laden with shopping bags, through which I could see a chilled lasagne for one; it had made the inside of the bag wet with little drops of condensation. Her curly hair was lopsided: When Perms Go Bad.
Nicholas introduced me. “This is Anna, her husband bought it.”
Leisl immediately put down her bags and gathered me into a tight hug, pulling my face into her neck so that I was breathing into an impenetrable thicket of hair. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled through a mouthful of hair, close to tears from her kindness.
She released me, and said, “And here’s Mackenzie.”
I turned to see a girl walking down the corridor like she was walking down a catwalk. A Park Avenue Princess, with blown-out hair, a Dior purse, and wedge sandals so high most people would sprain (or strain, whichever is worse) their ankles in them.
“She’s coming here?” I asked.
“Comes every week.”
By the looks of her, she shouldn’t even be in New York. She should be stationed in some colonial-style mansion out in the Hamptons until the start of September. My spirits rose. Mackenzie should be able to afford the best medium money could buy, but she chose to come here. It must be good.
Behind Mackenzie lumbered a hulking, eight-foot-nine bloke, in an undertaker’s suit and with a green-white face. “That’s Undead Fred,” Nicholas whispered. “Come on, let’s help set up the room.”
Leisl had put some spooky-sounding cello music on a tape deck and was lighting candles when people started “flooding” in.
There was a round-faced frumpy girl, who was probably younger than me but looked like she had totally given up, an older gentleman, small and dapper with pomaded hair, and a selection of older women with nervous tics and elastic waistbands. Mind you, one of them had interesting sandals; they looked like they’d been made out of a car tire. The more I looked at them, the more I liked them. Not for me to wear, you understand, I got enough of that codology at work, but they were definitely interesting.
When another man walked in, Nicholas grabbed me and said, “Here’s Mitch. His wife bought it. You guys must have loads in common. C’mon and meet him.”
He shunted me across the room. “Mitch, this is Anna. Her husband died—when? Few months back? She got ripped off by some asshole psychic who told her she’d been cursed. Thought you could help her, tell her about Neris Hemming.”