The woman appeared concerned, her powerful features managing to seem exotic and warm at the same time. “You look like death. Come on over here and tell me all about it. We’ll get some food into you and you’ll feel better. It’s not man trouble, is it?”
Jess shook her head and smiled. She followed the swish of Charlie’s silk skirt to a small booth against the wall, amazed as always how the crowd seemed to part for her as if by magic. Charlie was a large woman, but lithe and quick on her feet. At twenty-seven, she had a beauty that transcended her size, a breathtaking nobility that others often found intimidating. But she could be refreshingly blunt. They had met in a shared lab class a year earlier, and since then had become fast friends. Jess admired the way nothing ever seemed to get to Charlie.
“If it’s not a man,” the woman continued, after they settled into the booth and ordered a plate of nachos and two Blue Moon beers from the tap, “then it must be family. I can’t think of anything else that would make a girl look the way you do.”
Jess wondered how on earth to respond. Normally she was fiercely independent, proud of her ability to thrive on her own. But since she’d returned from Gilbertsville, her evenings had been endless and too quiet. Something fundamental to her own nature had been changed. She felt like a caterpillar that had crawled into a cocoon—though she had no idea what kind of shape she would find herself in when the metamorphosis was over.
She was pleased with the sudden progress Sarah had been making. The girl seemed to be getting comfortable with her and opening up. They were bonding. And she and Shelley had been meeting regularly for coffee to discuss the case. But she was still uncertain about the experience of meeting Sarah’s family, and what it all meant. The image of Annie Voorsanger standing up in that dusty, forgotten room, the sound she had made, the sudden, wild look in her eyes, remained with Jess no matter how hard she tried to shake it.
And she was lonely. Late nights were the worst—waking up in the emptiness of her apartment, Otto gone from his customary spot at the foot of her bed. That was when she had the strongest feeling that some basic part of her had been shaken, some simple truth exposed. Her mind seemed to be humming, voices muttering at a distance too far to be overheard. It was then, and only then, that she would allow herself the longing for another human being, anyone who could fill these moments in time with something other than ghosts.
Finally this afternoon she had decided to follow up on something else that had been bothering her. Now she wished she hadn’t. Not until tonight had she been so desperately bewildered, so incapable of discovering her true feelings.
“I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot lately,” Jess said. “The way he died.”
Charlie knew about her brother. She knew about the agreement with Professor Shelley and the sessions with Sarah. Charlie knew more about Jess Chambers’s life than most people. “I think you’ve got an angry spirit,” Charlie said. Her eyes sparkled.
“What?”
“An urban myth, you might call it. Anyone you’ve done harm to will come back to haunt you. The gangs believe it. They’re careful about who they shoot. Only,” she said, leaning forward and fixing Jess with those deeply black, shining eyes, “you didn’t harm anyone, least of all your brother. So that’s all in your head. Just like it is with those Latin Kings.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Simple psychology,” Charlie explained patiently, like mother to child. “Come on, it’s an established phenomenon. A gang member who kills without proper justification decides he’s cursed. He’ll be dead within a year. Why? Not because he’s pursued by the souls he’s killed, because he takes risks, he exposes himself, he has a guilty conscience. He makes it happen.”
“Charlie—”
The woman shook her head. Jewelry tinkled somewhere. “Dear Lord, girl, let yourself go for a bit. I’ve never seen anyone so wound up. Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna just shoot off right through the ceiling.”
The drinks came. Jess let the cold beer wash down her throat, listening to the thump of the music, the loud chatter of voices. She had spent yet another hour with Sarah just that afternoon, going over what little schooling she had received. She had to search hard for any trace of mental illness; Sarah spoke with an intelligence and sophistication Jess would not have believed if she hadn’t been there herself.
And then she had gone home to make the telephone call. And that call had rattled her more than she believed possible. Only now, sitting here in the smoky confines of a bar filled with people, did she begin to relax.
“So what you’re doing, is trying to calm the dead.” Charlie glanced at a table to their right, then back again, the twinkle in her eyes. “What you need is a good, hard fucking.”
“Charlie…”
“I mean it. It would clear your head. That man over there seems willing to oblige.”
Jess glanced at the table, saw the man staring at her and smiling slightly, hunched and broad through the shoulders, heavy jaw and brow.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I prefer my own species.”
“Your prerogative. But let me ask you. Do you ever wonder why you surround yourself with women?” Charlie nodded. “Me, for example. Professor Shelley. All your other friends.” She paused for dramatic effect. “You’re afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Letting someone in, and I mean really inside, where you can’t hide things the way you normally do. The kind of vulnerability that comes from sleeping naked with another human being. They see all your flaws, pudgy thighs, puckered cheeks, moles and freckles and bad breath in the morning. It’s just a thought.”
“Let’s get up off the couch, shall we?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Let me ask you something. Can you think of any reason why a woman would suddenly quit a good job where she seemed to be respected and competent?”
“I can think of many reasons. Her boss is a creep. She’s found a better job. She won the lottery.”
“But she refuses to give an explanation. One day she’s there, the next she’s not.”
“Again, her boss is a creep. Coming on to her or something similar.”
Jess tried to imagine Dr. Wasserman putting his arm around Maria’s wide shoulders, leaning close to whisper in her ear. The image was laughable. “I don’t know.”
“Are we talking about someone at that place you’ve been spending so much time at, when you should have been spending it with me?”
“The woman who worked with the difficult patients. She gave her letter of resignation. And I keep thinking maybe it’s connected, the way she looked, the way she acted around Sarah, and Sarah’s sudden improvement—”
“That’s your problem,” Charlie announced, “you think too much.” She drained her glass with a tip of her wrist, somehow making it look dainty and sophisticated, and announced, “Tonight is not a thinking night. Am I getting through to you?”
“I called her,” Jess said absently, her mind continuing to play over the earlier conversation in a way she hadn’t allowed it to before. Maria’s voice over the phone line, her accent so difficult to understand, but the emotion unmistakable. “Swiped the number off her letter on Wasserman’s desk. You know what she said?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“That Sarah was ‘inside her head.’ That she was embrujado. I looked it up, it means—”
“Haunted,” Charlie said. “And from what you’ve told me about this poor girl, I’d agree. You’re not dealing with some suburban teenager with adjustment problems. This is a girl who probably doesn’t even remember what the outside world looks like.”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”