Hey Nostradamus! Part 13

"I don't know anybody named Alex."

"Okay, then, lady, who are you? Because I've got Jura.s.sic Park III on pause, and if I start watching it again right now, I'll have just enough time to finish before Sheila gets back from Tae Bo."

"I'm Heather."

Paul looked back at the TV and zapped it off with the remote.

"Heather, do I know you or something? Wait - are you Sheila's crazy half-sister? Just what I need. She said you were in Texas for good."

I couldn't speak, because I was looking at Jason hidden somewhere not far beneath Paul's bone structure.

He said, "So what's the score here? I stopped dealing years ago, so don't even try me there. And if you're here for money, you're at the wrong place."

"I'm not here for anything, Paul. I'm not."

"Yeah. Right."

"No - " I hadn't given this part any real thought, or rather, I'd a.s.sumed it would be magic and not need any planning.

"I'm waiting."

I said, "My boyfriend's been missing for three months now, and I don't know what I'm going to do, I miss him so much, and I'm so desperate, and I was able to tap into the government's database of criminal faces, so I did, and I found yours, because you're the one closest to him, and I came down here to - " I lost it here.

"You what?"

I was crying and looking at the ground where the dead yellow lawn met the concrete. "I came here to see if you were like him."

"Are you out of your tree, lady?"

"I'm not 'lady.' My name is Heather."

"Heather, are you out of your tree?"

I was choking and even more of a mess.

"Heather, sit down. Jesus."

I sat down. He leaned against the railing and lit up a cigarette the same way Jason did. "You can really do that -just go into a computer and find the person who looks like you?"

I honked my nose. "Welcome to the future. Yes. You can."

"Whoa.'" He spent a moment obviously contemplating the social ramifications of a.n.a.logs. I was realizing what a mistake this had been.

"So," he said, "do I?"

"Do you what?"

"Look like him. Your boyfriend."

My body, drained of stress, went limp. I was already driving back up the coast in my head.

"Yeah. Pretty much. Not quite twins, but with different hair, three months of dieting, and some tweezers, you could pull it off."

"Huh."

"I should go."

"No. Don't. I'll get you a beer."

"I'm driving."

"So?"

I didn't argue. Paul went into the house and brought me back a can of something and opened it for me. Chivalry. To be honest, I wanted to see his face again. He'd had acne as a teenager, he'd spent too much time in the sun, he had twenty extra pounds, and he had a Celtic cross tattooed on his left shoulder, but it was all mesmerizingly Jason-ish.

"He dumped you?"

"No."

"Sorry. I've gotta ask these things."

We looked at each other.

"So tell me where it is you're supposed to go to find your twin?"

"Your a.n.a.log."

"Huh?"

"That's what you are. You're an a.n.a.log of my boyfriend."

"So where do I go to find my a.n.a.log?"

"You don't. I just fluked out. I have a friend of a friend who works in the place where the facial data's stored." He sat down beside me - too close beside me - on the crumbling concrete front steps. He touched the small of my back and I jumped out of my skin, at which point a black martial-artsy club smacked him on his forehead. It was Sheila.

"You stinking son of a dog - "

"Sheila - this isn't what it looks like."

I ran for my car, and luckily Sheila ignored me. Paul still must have a goose egg on his forehead, and I doubt Sheila's ever going to believe his story. On the other hand, Reg thought it was kind of funny, which made me feel better.

Sat.u.r.day night 11:45

It's almost midnight, and the kids have finally pa.s.sed out from sugar fatigue. They must be diabetic by now.

I spend my life in court hearing people yammer away and for once I want to be on the stand.

Forget my crazy trip to Portland. I want to talk about what happened yesterday, because that's what's gotten me to writing here. I'd have told Reg, but I have a hunch he doesn't go in for this kind of stuff.

But first, you have to understand that my life before Jason was dull. Not insignificant, mind you, but not many kicks either. I grew up in North Van, seven years ahead of Jason. Have I mentioned that I'm seven years older than he is? At the time of the Delbrook Ma.s.sacre I was living in Ontario and had just earned all the papers I needed to be a court stenographer. I was already working part time, in Windsor -a friend got me a job there. I was always a good typist, but stenography? It works by phonetics, not letters, and when it's flowing properly, it's as if the things people are telling each other in court are emerging from my own brain in real time. It's like I'm inventing the world! Other stenographers say the same thing - it's like catching the perfect wave.

And it's funny, because one of the side effects of being a good stenographer is that you can tell right away when someone's fibbing. Oh yeah: the presiding judge and jury might miss it, but not this gal. I suppose if you asked me what was the one thing that made me different from all other people, that might be it - that I'm a living lie detector.

That's how I "met" Jason the first time. On TV back in the 1980s; he was at a press conference just after he'd been absolved of any wrongdoing. I was homesick in Windsor, watching TV at my place with two neighbors who were also from Vancouver. We were drinking beer and feeling alienated from the ma.s.sive quilt of autumn leaves outside. My neighbors said Jason was lying his a.s.s off, but I said no way, and I stuck up for him, even back then. Imagine telling the truth about something as gruesome as that ma.s.sacre, and having only half the world believe you; I don't think you could ever trust people again. So when I encountered Jason at the Toys R Us, he looked familiar as well as sad, but at first I couldn't peg why.

But I was going to discuss Friday. It's what started me going on this. I was downtown on my lunch break from the courthouse. I was in a drugstore getting a few things for this weekend with the kids. My cell phone battery was dead, so I went to a pay phone and checked my messages, and there was just one, a woman's voice - nice enough, maybe fiftyish - and she had something to tell me she said was both unusual and urgent. And then she hung up, no phone number or anything. Well what was I supposed to make of that? I listened to the message again. She didn't sound evil, and believe me, I've seen and heard so much evil in the courtroom that by now you could use my blood as an anti-evil vaccine. Who was this woman, and what exactly was she on about - telemarketing?

If it had been something to do with Jason, I figured she would have used a different voice with a different tone. Meaning what, Heather? Meaning, this woman didn't sound like the type to deliver ransom instructions or notify the cops to go looking in the Fraser River for a corpse rolled up in a discount Persian carpet. I know that voice, and it wasn't hers.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon slightly distracted, trying to pinpoint the nature of her voice, in the process even making some boo-boos on the court transcript - but it's a dull-as-dishwater property suit, and the chances of anyone consulting the record are zero. I could sit there pumping out the Girl Guide Pledge all afternoon, and n.o.body would ever know. This is both a plus and a minus of my job: my work is important, and yet it isn't. To be honest, they should just wire everybody up, stuff the room with cameras and fire me, except that the electronics would cost far more to maintain and service. So my job's safe for a while yet.

At five o'clock, I made the dash across the bridge and got to Barb's just in time to take charge of the twins as Barb raced out to the airport. The two boys were ravenous. Dinner became the next thing, and then they wanted to show me their computer games, which was a snoozer for me, and then I headed back to the kitchen for a sip of white wine and my first calm moment since the morning.

I phoned and checked my messages. None. So I call-forwarded my number to Barb's and sat at the kitchen table where I picked at the kids' leftover hot dogs and tried to enjoy the silence. Then the phone rang. It was the woman.

"h.e.l.lo, is this . . . Heather?"

"Yes, it is. Who's this?" I kept my tone friendly.

"I'm Allison."

"h.e.l.lo, Allison. You're the one who said you had some information for me?"

"Well, I do and I don't."

"You're losing me."

"Do you have five minutes?"

What the heck. "Sure." I poured another gla.s.s and sat on the bar stool by the flecked black marble counter.

"I guess I should tell you right off, Heather, I'm a psychic."

I was about to hang up.

"Don't hang up."

"You're a good psychic. You read my mind."

"No. It's common sense. I'd hang up, too, if some woman saying she was a psychic called me."

"Allison, I'm sure you're a nice person, but . . ."

"Oh, I say."

"What?"

"Oh, I say."

"Oh, I say" was Gerard T. Giraffe's unfunny entrance line, like the ones people have in sitcoms which are supposed to be funny, but really aren't, like when Norm enters the bar on Cheers, and everyone says, "Norm!" She was even using the correct Gerard tone of voice, baritone and b.u.mbling.

" 'Oh, I say' . . . Does that mean anything to you?"

I kept silent.

"'Oh, I say."'

"Who are you, Allison? What do you want?"

"I don't want anything. I don't. But all day I've been getting this voice coming through my brain in the middle of whatever I'm doing, saying 'Oh, I say,' and it's freaking me out, and I'm supposed to be used to this sort of thing."

"How did you connect the voice to my name?"

"That's almost the easiest part. I emptied my head and used a pencil on white paper in a dark room and your name and number came out. It's not too far a stretch to get a phone number when you get such a weird, specific message like 'Oh, I say' delivered in a Rex Harrison baritone."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Heather, I'm sorry you feel this way. But there's no game-playing going on here. I don't want money. I don't want anything. But there's still these words pumping out of wherever. I just want to make sure I'm not cracking up. Oh, I say. Oh, I say. Oh, I say."

I was silent. In the other room the kids were bickering.

"Heather, look. I've never told anyone this before, but I'm not really a psychic. I'm a fake psychic.

I look at people's faces, their jewelry and scars and footwear and s.h.i.+rts and you name it. I pretty much feed them what they want to hear. You don't even need too much intuition to do it. I'm surprised there aren't millions of psychics out there. It's a total racket."

So much for me being a living lie detector. "How can you mess with people's lives like that?"

"Messing? Not at all. I give them hope, and I never raise their expectations too high. The only thing most people want is a bit of proof, however flimsy, that people they once knew are thinking of them from the great beyond."

"Most people? What do the other people want?"

"They want a conversation with the dead, but I can't do that for them. Because I'm a fake. And even if I could, a conversation with someone in the great beyond might not be the smartest thing to facilitate."

"But you're a fake. You said so yourself."

"I am, Heather. But this 'Oh, I say' thing - it's the only potentially real signal I've ever picked up on my antenna, and frankly it's scaring me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just tell me that it means something - that it means something real."

"Allison, give me a second here."

I put the winegla.s.s down on the counter. There were lipstick stains on it. Why was I wearing lipstick to baby-sit the kids? The icemaker rumbled and stopped, and the fridge's humming entered second gear.