“When she’s recovered from that disgrace of a show,” one of the women said.
The younger woman who was with her, obviously the woman’s daughter, huddled under the umbrella and nodded her head. “It’s always a challenge when disbelievers are present,” she said. “I imagine she has to refocus herself in order to be able to contact the spirits.”
“What show?” said the man. “I didn’t know of any show. I just came here for the spirit session.”
“I hope there are to be no more of us,” the older woman said, ignoring him. She gave James and me a disapproving look. “Six is plenty. Any more would ruin the session.”
Perhaps, but six paying customers was a half-decent take for an evening.
The young woman, who looked about nineteen, peered curiously at me through the rain. “What are you here for?”
“Hush,” her mother said. “There should be no talking amongst the attendees.”
“I’m paying my money,” the saddened man said a little loudly. “I say I can talk to whomever I please.”
“Do you want to ruin it all for us?” the woman hissed at him. “It upsets the spirits. She’ll send us all home, and then where will we be?”
The man went silent and looked away.
The door opened and Ramona appeared. She had washed off her stage makeup and reapplied the kohl around her eyes. She was dressed in a silk wrapper, with strings of beads layered around her neck. She looked calm, as if the debacle at the stage show had never happened. She wasn’t even wet from the rain. I wondered how she had traveled from the theater so quickly, and how we hadn’t crossed her on our way. “Enter,” she said, and turned away.
We followed her through the dreary vestibule and into the grim lobby. Ramona ascended the stairs, her wrapper luminous in the half-light, and I was glad we didn’t have to take the elevator. The sad man ascended after her first, followed by the girl and her mother, and finally an elderly woman who had not yet spoken. I held back, James at my elbow.
“Are you all right?” he said softly.
The yawning shadows at the top of the stairs swallowed Ramona, and then the others, one by one.
“I’m fine,” I said, and started after them.
Ramona’s silk-clad form reached the fourth floor and opened the door to her flat, beckoning us all in. She was strikingly underdressed in the wrapper, her body narrow and bony beneath it, and up close her face was strangely haggard, yet attractive, under its makeup. Her gaze skimmed indifferently over me as I passed her, then fixed on James with considerably more prurient interest.
The flat was small, the electric light dim, and the main feature was a séance table—shabbier than Gloria’s, perhaps, but undoubtedly meant for the same purpose. It was impossible to tell at first glance where the contraptions, strings, and pulleys were hidden, but I had no doubt they were there. A small kitchen with yellowed linoleum lay through one door, and a second closed door presumably led to the bedroom. I had a brief, disturbing memory of standing in the hallway outside the door to this flat the day before, listening to the silence and wondering whether Ramona was dead. I sat hurriedly at the séance table with the others and pushed the recollection away.
When we were seated, Ramona switched off the electric light and set a candle in the middle of the séance table. She struck a match and lit the candle, and when she lifted the match to her face to blow it out, I noticed her pupils were shrunk to small points. I gasped in a breath. Not drink, surely. Some kind of drug, perhaps?
She stood facing us in the candlelight, still on her feet. She seemed to look us over for a moment. I glanced around the circle: the young girl and her mother, the sad man, and the older woman. And James and me. We all sat quiet, waiting. The candle gave off a thick, smoky smell.
“The spirits shall come here tonight,” Ramona said. When she wasn’t shouting from a theater stage, her voice was low and husky, almost hypnotic. “We shall form a spirit circle. Join hands.”
She held out her hands, palms facing the ceiling. The rest of us obeyed. To my right was the young girl; this close, I could see the ruffles on her ill-fitting silk blouse, the sullen turn of her lip, the blotches of acne on her chin and neck. Her hand was plump and clammy in mine.
On my left side was James. He slid his hand in mine with no discernible hesitation, as if unconcerned about what I might see. He did not look at me.
“Now close your eyes and concentrate,” said Ramona. “Speak to the spirits. Listen. I am your conduit. I am nothing but a vessel, built between this world and the next. Send your messages through the circle, through me. The spirits will seek my power and come.”
Everyone closed their eyes. Ramona lowered her lids and flung her head back, as if listening to a signal from the other side; it was a timeworn trick, and she did it well. A medium who closes her eyes and throws her head back can watch the table from under her lashes and gauge facial expressions and body language—the priceless currency of the sham artist.
I watched her for a moment, then closed my own eyes. If Ramona had any skill, she would identify me immediately as a threat and attempt to contain me, probably through the communication of the spirits. But if her brain was muddled by drugs, I had no idea what she would do.
I waited. The scent from the candle on the table was pungent and strange, and in a split second I suddenly knew that the young girl who held my hand was named Rose, and that she did not seek any spirit in particular. She had come here for answers, because she was dying. She had a sickness—some sort of family illness, the name of which did not come to me—that would kill her within a year. Something about the dark, the candle, the spirit circle made my powers receptive, and I focused on controlling them, on shutting out messages, especially from James on my left hand.