“You really are Terry and Joanie,” she said. “I mean, it’s, uh, it’s the, the mentalism thing, I was playing around, I didn’t know …” Struck speechless, stopped cold, she could only smile and give an apologetic shrug.
“Well,” said Terry, “it was an amazing demonstration.” He gave Joanie a comforting squeeze. “You were so accurate it was disconcerting.”
Joanie was disconcerted, all right. “Is this … is what you did really a trick?”
Terry held her close. “Yes, of course it was.” Then he smiled at Mandy to show he wasn’t mad or anything. “I’m just amazed at the extent of homework you had to have done, and … I’ll never figure out how you knew we’d meet you tonight. It’s a real craft you have there!”
No!Mandy cried out inside. It wasn’t a trick. She put her hands in her lap so the trembling wouldn’t show. “Could …” Her voice trembled. She drew a breath to steady herself. “What can you tell me about the Mandy Whitacre you knew?”
Lisa brought coffee cups and filled them. Then she talked about the apple pie and how it was fresh from the oven, and then she talked about where they were from: Joanie, Terry, and Mandy were from the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene area; Joanie and Terry still lived in Coeur d’Alene; Lisa grew up in Hawthorne, Nevada, and was studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Finally, Lisa left.
Where were they?
Joanie looked puzzled. “What do you want to know?”
Terry broke in, “I thought you were supposed to tell us.”
Well … she could blow them out of the water by telling them, but that wouldn’t prove Joanie and Terry were real friends from then, the life she couldn’t possibly have lived but did somehow … Oh, Lord, help me, don’t let me freak out.
“Sweetheart, are you all right?” Joanie asked.
What can I say, what can I say?“I … I might know you, I mean, kind of like a trick and kind of for real. It’s hard to explain.”
They looked at each other.
“Could you tell me … what was her father’s name?”
Joanie tilted her head. “You don’t know that?”
Terry said, “So … what? We’re doing mentalism in reverse? How’s this work?”
Oh, please, just tell me!She was desperate but wanted with all of her being not to look crazy. “Uh, okay, let’s do this: let me try a little mentalism on Mandy and we’ll see how I do.”
They perked up, Terry ready to be amazed, Joanie still nervous about it.
“Uh … she … she …”
Lisa brought the pies. “Apple for you, apple for you, and cherry for you. Can I bring you anything else?”
Terry thought he might like some cream for his coffee. Lisa then recalled she had a cousin in Spokane but hadn’t been up there to visit since high school. Was the weather still cold up there? Yes, that was why Terry and Joanie thought to spend some time in California and then Vegas. So, could she bring them anything else? No, they were fine.
“I know!” said Mandy. “Why don’t you ask me some questions?”
“Ask you … ?” Joanie faltered.
“About Mandy, anything you want.”
“Who’d she marry?”
Ohhh … Her mind froze. She didn’t know the answer to that. She didn’t want to know, she just couldn’t bear it. “Sh-she got married?”
Lisa popped by again. “Oh, I forgot to ask: is this on separate tickets?”
Separate, they told her, Mandy on one, Joanie and Terry on the other.
Terry asked, “What was her favorite animal?”
Mandy was still working on the fact—was it a fact?—that she got married. “Uh, animal?”
Terry helped her out, “She had some pets.”
“Doves?”
They affirmed that but didn’t seem too impressed. Joanie countered, “She was a magician. Easy guess.”
Mandy groped for the right suggestion, the right way. She finally tried, “Now, what if I asked you some questions?”
Terry said, “Well, how are we going to know whether you know our answers are right?”
Joanie offered, “Well, if we give a wrong answer and she says we’re right, then we’ll know she doesn’t know.”
He crinkled his face.
“Uh, back and forth, back and forth,” said Mandy. “I’ll ask one, you ask one. Let’s try that.”
“Okay,” said Terry, “you asked what her father’s name was. It was Arthur.”
“Where did Mandy live?”
“No, you tell us,” said Joanie.
“Hayden, on a ranch. What was the name of the ranch?”
“Wooly Acres. What did they raise there?”
“Llamas and some horses. What were the names of Mandy’s doves?”
Joanie scrunched her face. “Um … Bonkers was one. What were the names of the others?”
“Lily, Maybelle, and Carson. What big, significant thing happened to Mandy in the ninth grade?”
Joanie balked a moment, then answered, “Her mother, Eloise, died of breast cancer. What was Mandy’s favorite card trick in junior high?”
“Flipping the Aces. Who was Mandy’s favorite Mouseketeer?”
Joanie was reeling from the question and from knowing the answer. “Cubby.” Then, mustering strength, she sang an advertising jingle they learned in their childhood, “If you need coal or oil …”
“Call Boyle,” Mandy sang back. “Fairfax eight-one-five-two-one.”
Joanie’s hands went to her face and she gazed over her fingers at Mandy. “My God!”
Yes,Mandy thought. Silence. It was her turn. “Um …” She didn’t want to ask. “Is … is Arthur, Mandy’s dad … is he … ?”
“You mean, is he alive?” asked Joanie.
“Yes.”
Joanie seemed to sense the game was getting serious. She spoke as if bringing bad news to a friend. “He died from a heart attack in 1992. I think he was about eighty-three.”
Mandy’s hand went over her mouth. She shouldn’t have asked. She should have known she would believe the answer, that an old sorrow-in-waiting would take its opportunity.
Daddy …
This was not a dream she could wake up from, a delusion she could excuse away. There were no other worlds she could run to, no other places or times in which to hide. There was only this corner booth in the Claim Jumper restaurant at twenty-two after eleven, and all of it, including the couple sitting there, was real. She looked away as the tears came. She couldn’t hold them back.
Game over.
Terry sighed. “Well, it’s been very interesting.” But Lisa had not brought their checks yet.
Mandy tried to recover, couldn’t shake it, signaled she’d be okay—it was a lie—put a napkin to her eyes.
Joanie reached and touched her. “Sweetie, I don’t know what just happened. Is there some way, any way I could understand this?”
What other way was there? “Joanie …”
Joanie stroked her shoulder to comfort her. “Just help me understand.”
“I’m … What if …” She stepped off the precipice. “What if I really was Mandy? What if I really was born January fifteenth, 1951, and I really did go to school with you and we were friends and … well, what if that could really happen?”
Joanie’s gaze lingered. Did she believe? Did she?
Terry fidgeted and looked for Lisa. Joanie …
Mandy could see her words had fallen to the ground. Joanie’s eyes, though sorrowful, were perplexed and disbelieving. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but that just can’t be. My friend Mandy … is dead.”
Dane was back at the ranch where he could wake up in a plain and simple life, think without distraction, believe most everything he saw or heard, and live in the world as it was, not as it was dressed up to be. From this vantage point he could handle things with a reasonable perspective—things like the letter he got in the old-fashioned U.S. Mail from Jerome Parmenter instructing him to call Parmenter at such and such a time at such and such a number and be sure he called from a public pay phone of his own random choosing.
He chose the pay phone outside the Conoco Quik Stop on Highway 95, and for an added touch, he wore his cowboy hat and kept his coat collar turned up to obscure his face.