Sometimes Rudy was happy that he could not actually ‘read’ people’s minds in the mystical sense, that is, inhabit their thoughts, like in pulp stories or movies. What he could do was more akin to skimming the surface of another consciousness — a stowaway, gleaning emotional textures, not a spy, excising deep, dark secrets whole. This made him a great winner at poker, but lousy at the track. He could not tell the future, nor tell you what you were thinking. He perceived tonalities, attitudes, colorations of feeling augmented by the occasional clear snapshot image. It was enough to keep him from working a legit job, or what the flim-flammers would call an honest con. It kept him in snack foods and cable.
It kept Teresa, too, if only by the card logic of two-of-a-kind. With some fast talk, he could keep her convinced that they belonged together for no other reason than they both had special, secret abilities; God-given or accidental or genetic did not matter. Their alignment might achieve, for them, some higher plane or evolutionary plateau… whatever was supposed to come next in this world for all the people who lacked even the distinction of a special power.
Rudy had come home after piggybacking the idiots at a poker-and-pan casino. They thought so much about their meagre hands it was simple for him to scrape intentions away as the thoughts rose towards autonomic function. When bad bluffers tried to stand pat, feelings were enough to suffice. Rudy cleaned them out with a smile and wished them well; average losses combined with his affable manner usually inspired well-banked suckers to belly up for at least one more bloodletting.
The work left little room for Teresa, sometimes.
Rudy hated his victims. His rage was a dull, toxic beast inside him, itching to lash out at anything, living or inert, that gave offence. He ached to murder the imbeciles ahead of him at traffic lights. He itched to kill the motherfuckers in the express lane at the market. He wanted to eviscerate anyone who wore a badge or had the authority to say no to him. Mostly, Rudy’s life was a study of dangerous stress versus thin restraints. Mostly, Rudy held stony, and watched his lip. And mostly, while he raged alone in the private darkness of his own psyche, he was under constant assault by leakage, from the skulls of everyone around him. He sensed the tips and tails of pedestrian feelings… and raged all the more, because he knew that even total strangers wanted to kill him, too.
Except for Teresa.
What restrained him was the innate sense of superiority that came with his power. He obsessed over the reasons for his half-baked ability, this incomplete talent. He wanted a rationale, a ‘why-him’. Linking up with Teresa was a matter of common sense. She might help him two steps closer to whatever the goal of his life might be. Possibilities were practically engraved in granite, amongst his aspirations: He was destined to become stronger, and through refinement would realise his purpose. Or: he’d remain this way, partially advantaged. Or: the power was temporary, and might vanish any time. Maybe the Earth had passed through some kind of cosmic belt, or perhaps he’d been dosed or poisoned, and the unintended ability would peter out. If it did recede, then he’d revert to being just like any other schmuck, and would have to survive by his wits — as he had in his previous life — but with the added lessons learned from sneaking into the heads of strangers.
Finding Teresa was proof that he was on the correct track, almost enough to let him acknowledge a higher power, as strangers had once counselled him to do in an anger management group, long ago.
Drama, however, could twist its own way, and when Rudy had returned home, and looked deeply into Teresa’s eyes, and seen the passing fancy there, and accelerated to the conclusion that she had fucked another man… Rudy lost it one more time. It seemed that whenever he strove hardest for control, his temper always sabotaged him. It wasn’t his fault, it was people — stupid fucking sneaky small petty goddamn people, always screwing up and never suspecting the approach of a man who could read the signposts of their mistakes and guilt the way a poet reads verse. It was all in the interpretation.
Give me more power, he thought as he fell asleep. Or take it away… but please don’t leave me like this, halfway, half-assed half-cocked. It was almost maddening enough to make any other lapsed Catholic pluck up the cross again.
As Teresa neared sleep, whole once more, she thought of the trouble she’d just shared with Rudy. Once she was sure Rudy was asleep, she reflected on what otherwise would have been hazardous thoughts.
Earlier that day, she had watched Señora Espinoza, examining the furrows and lines which bespoke the years of her life. For a moment, she felt as she imagined Rudy must feel, whenever contact was made with another person’s emotions. She read pain and loss and strife in the history of Señora Espinoza; a lifetime of reaching, a paucity of attainment, a guttering faith in a Church that promised rewards too late. Where her aged visage should have evidenced rich experience and fulfilment, Teresa perceived denial and disappointment. Years closer to death, Señora Espinoza’s face showed her more puzzlement than wisdom, more sadness than wholeness. It appeared that things would only get worse, until all the old woman had was the final betrayal of her chosen god.
‘Chocolate?’ Señora Espinoza tended a denty pot that had just begun to bubble. She pronounced the word properly, four syllables. ‘It’s better to have something warm to drink, since I think it’s time we talked of a few things.’
Nailed, thought Teresa, who had wrought the same minor miracles too often for the same set of beneficiaries. There was no chance Señora Espinoza would allow her a graceful escape. Teresa was not Supergirl, and had been denied the timely advantage of flying away once her good deeds were done. Now her talent begged an explanation, a quiz whose score could force her into a secretiveness she did not wish to suffer.
‘A hundred years ago, you would have been sainted,’ said Señora Espinoza. ‘I don’t want to know how you do it, or why. I need to ask something deeper. I hope you do not take offence at my asking.’
Surprised by this trajectory of enquiry, Teresa shook her head. Agreeability was the bane of her life. She never objected to things enough.
‘You are a beautiful child. You have a special gift, so much to offer the world.’ Bluntly, the old woman fixed her with a clear gaze. ‘Why do you stay with that Rudy Paz? He is not a good man. He hits you, he yells, he is — what is the word today? — abusive. I have seen a thousand of his type in my life, and they never come to good ends. No good. He takes. He does not give, as you do. I know these things. I do not have to bear witness to know. So, why? Why you?’
The truth had long sought an outlet in Teresa, and her own small measure of hope coerced a confession of sorts. If she had bothered to know Señora Espinoza past her recurrent crippling arthritis, the truth might have come so easily today. She wrung her healing hands. She was searching for the head of the serpent which coiled all around her life; decanting its ambient venom, long felt yet never specified, and words came hesitantly.
‘Dona, it is a painful thing to explain. The best way I can think of is this: you know the magic I work for you?’
‘You take away the pain.’ Señora Espinoza flexed her hands.
‘Yes. Rudy has such a pain, too, but he carries it in his heart. His soul is ill. The man you perceive is not Rudy Paz’s fault. His family, his upbringing, tragedies. They twisted him into the man you perceive. The hitter, the yeller. And I keep thinking, if I have the power to heal hurt things, I must be able to heal Rudy. To heal him inside, to repair him so he is once again the man with whom I fell in love.’