CHAPTER EIGHT
Maximus ended up taking me to a quaint little wine bar that overlooked the river at the end of Waterfront Park. In the summer, the patio area would be packed with tourists and locals snapping up the breezes off the water, but in the winter it was small and cozy. If I were in the right frame of mind, I might have even cal ed it romantic, especial y with the lights as they twinkled off the black, waving currents outside and contrasted against the soft glow inside.
I wasn’t in my right frame of mind, though, and Maximus knew it. As he drove us here, he kept the conversation safe as a disoriented Tom Waits crooned from his stereo, mimicking how I felt. I tried to keep my mind somewhere else. But once we settled down in our tiny, windowside table, his large frame looking almost comical in the narrow spot, and ordered our first drinks, he started giving me the expectant eye.
The waiter placed a shot of tequila down in front of me and I raised it in the air at Maximus.
“To…,” I trailed off, unable to think of a single thing worth toasting to.
“To us,” he finished, raising his Corona. I raised my brow. His green eyes twinkled in the candlelight.
“Wel , it’s better than nothing,” I said with a smirk and we clinked glasses. I tried to hold his eyes as I did the shot but it burned hard in my throat and I coughed.
“Easy there, it’s not a race,” he chided, picking up my lime and passing it to me.
I shoved it in my mouth until the bitterness took the wincing away. I smiled at him, all lime mouth, and sat back in my chair feeling more relaxed than I had in weeks.
“That’s a nice look for you,” he said with a wink. I took the lime out and placed it in the empty shot glass.
“You’re looking very pretty tonight,” he continued after clearing his throat. “I don’t know why I never pictured you wearing a dress before.”
“Because I don’t wear dresses, unless it’s a special occasion.”
It was his turn to raise his brow. “Is this a special occasion?”
I shrugged as the waiter came by again and poured me a glass of riesling.
“No. Maybe. Some part of me thought it was a great idea to wear it.”
“Wel I’m glad that part of you did.”
“I just wish I knew what part.” I gave him a steady look.
I took a large sip of my wine and immediately felt the smooth, golden liquid go straight to my head where the tequila was already sitting. I don’t even think I ate anything for dinner. Things like food were slipping my mind lately.
“So what happened tonight that made you cal me? I’d like to pretend you just wanted my company, but it sounded as if anybody would have done the job.”
My lips twitched slightly as I observed him. He looked a bit put upon, like there was a chance I could hurt him if I told him that actual y anyone would have done the job and I just wanted to get out of the house, to be with people. But I wasn’t sure how true that was.
“I think I’m being hunted,” I said, leaning in closer to him, keeping my voice low. “Or haunted. Or I’m going crazy. One of those three. Or all of them.”
He leaned forward too, and his forehead nearly bumped against mine. He grabbed my hands with his large, weatherbeaten ones and squeezed them. It was a comforting gesture.
“Tel me everything,” he whispered. His drawl was incredibly sexy when he whispered like that. I didn’t like how I was noticing him in that way. Not tonight.
I dropped my eyes to the table and begun the long, crazy tale of the last few weeks. I left out the miscarriage part because it was none of his business. I just told him I had severe “woman problems” and I’m not sure if he deduced anything out of that. I concluded the story with the last straw, the baby slippers in my room.
While I was talking Maximus kept quiet; his eyes were squinty emeralds in the low light. I met them occasional y, afraid to see signs of doubt in them. To his credit, he only seemed engrossed by my story and then extremely concerned. He finished the rest of his beer and placed it on the table so that the bottle spun around like a top.
“I wish I wasn’t the designated driver tonight, darling,” he said final y, “because after hearing that story, I reckon I want another drink. And I know you do too.”
The idea of throwing caution to the wind and convincing Maximus to get loaded with me was suddenly very tempting. But I had a mystery to solve.
“Wel , what do you think?” I asked cautiously.
He gave my hands a quick squeeze again and leaned back in his chair.
“I’m going to speak my mind here, Perry,” he said. My heart thudded around a little. He thought I was crazy. He thought I was nutso. He thought I was losing my mind.
“I do think you are being haunted,” was his matter-of-fact answer. “And I’d love to come over, spend some time in your house, and do a reading. Get to the bottom of this.”
Oh.
“Are you serious? You believe me?”
“Of course I do. Not every haunting is a clear-cut case.
There’s no guide for ghosts to fol ow. If you’re being haunted by something, it could mess up a lot of things in your life.”
“But it doesn’t explain everything…”
>
He stroked his chin for a few moments and observed new people entering the bar, the cold blast from outside fol owing them in. “No, it doesn’t. I reckon your problem is you’re combining all these events that have happened to you and expect them to all be connected. But I don’t think that’s the case here.”
I waved my hand for the waiter and caught his eye.
Screw it, Nancy Drew must have let her hair down once in a while.
“So what says ‘ghost’ to you?” I asked, my attention back on the burly redhead.
“Obviously the slippers. The doorbel . The knocks. The yel ing, the TV, those are all things that poltergeists do.”
“Last time you thought there was a poltergeist, it turned out to be skinwalkers,” I pointed out.
He smiled, a tad embarrassed. “I’m not saying it can’t be anything else…”
“What about my nail polish?” I say, wiggling my right hand at him.
“It’s very pretty.”
“I mean, how did this get on my nails? And for that matter, who hid the syrup on me?”
He gave me a sharp look as the waiter approached the table. I composed myself and smiled up at him.
“What wil you be having?” the waiter asked. “Another of the Quails Gate?”
I nodded and Maximus caved and ordered another beer.
His eyes fol owed the waiter until he was gone, then he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. I noticed his steel grey shirt was made out of fine silk, like fancy cowboy wear.
“What happened to you in Seattle?”
I flinched, surprised at the question. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean with Dex, I don’t care to hear about that.”
I could have sworn a dark shadow passed over his freckled face as he mentioned his name. The same look probably appeared on my face as well , and often.
He continued, “What ghosts did you encounter?”
“Oh. well I don’t care to particularly think about that. You saw the footage that aired, right?”
He nodded. “And that was it? Was there anything else in that asylum?”
I thought about Creepy Clown Lady’s message on the EVP. Then I thought about Creepy Clown Lady in the hospital.
“You know how I was tel ing you about that woman I saw?”
“Circus freak?”
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. “Yeah. She left a message for Dex. well , us, real y. On the EVP. And only I had heard it. Dex might have now, but I heard it first and told him not to listen and then everything, well , you know… she real y does seem to want to warn me about something.”
He leaned closer stil . I caught a whiff of his spicy cinnamon smel . I breathed it in and automatical y found myself closing my eyes for a second.
“What did the message say?”
“I can’t real y remember,” I said, somewhat truthful y.
“She told me to ask my parents who Declan O’Shea was… do you know?”
“Not unless Dex had a different last name. He hasn’t for as long as I’ve known him.”
I nodded, not real y expecting to have gotten an answer. I took in a deep breath before I blurted out the more painful stuff.
“She knew I had done some things to Dex.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “What things?”
“Don’t judge me, but…I switched his medication. I mean, I found out what he was taking and then I replaced half his pil s with placebos.”
“Jesus,” Maximus swore, his eyes going wide as saucers. He let out a low whistle. “Perry, I’m not sure what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said quickly, feeling cold sweat nip at the center of my palms. “I know what I did was wrong. I just had to know. I had to know what was wrong with him.”
“Did you find out?”
“I think he’s as sane as I am. I don’t think there’s anything that medication can fix.”
“I don’t know about that,” he began.
“I do,” I said firmly. “And I don’t mean to talk about him. I don’t want to talk about him. There was something else.
Pippa, circus freak, said that she’s being watched. By the soul ess ones who keep her there…the…demons.”
“Demons?” Maximus repeated. He sounded rather disbelieving and I didn’t want to have to convince him by bringing up some of the freaky shit I dealt with in the past.
Freaky shit like Jacob.
“Yes, that’s what she said,” I reiterated. “Then she said, I’m in real danger, especial y if he thinks I’m fine. When I’m safe, the damage wil be done. That she’d come after me…”
“She? Who? Pippa?”
I looked down, my head twitching no. I placed my hand on the crook of his elbow, needing something solid to hold onto.
“No. Not Pippa. Pippa was warning Dex. About Abby.”
Because my hand was on him, I could feel all the muscles in his arm tense up at the mention of her name. I looked up at him slyly, and grinned. I felt a wave of hate dripping off of myself, as if it clung wetly to my teeth.
“You remember me, don’t you Redboy?”
A look of utter terror fil ed his face. “W-what?”
“I said, you remember Abby, don’t you?” I gripped his arm for a second and then let go. The strange rush of anger I felt seconds earlier was released. “You told me about her yourself, in New Mexico.”
“That’s not what you just said,” he stammered and pul ed away like he was suddenly scared of me. “You just cal ed me Redboy.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Maybe crazy is contagious.”
He seemed to think about that.
“Maybe,” he finally said, his voice low and wispy. A line of fear never left his face. “Maybe.”
“Wel , we saw Abby all over the damn place.”
“We?”
“Dex and I. We both saw her. In the asylum, on the street, in the apartment.” I couldn’t help but shudder at the vision of her walking across his apartment, dripping blood onto the floor, the thick splats. The wasps. The smel of gin.
“I think she might be f*cking with me,” I said slowly. It was like dawn was bursting through the windows and il uminating a very simple problem. “Abby. I think she’s haunting me.”
Maximus nodded but I could tel he wasn’t too impressed with my deduction skil s. Of freaking course Abby was haunting me. That’s what Pippa warned would happen.
That’s why I saw Abby in my dreams, in the hospital. That’s who was knocking on the doors and leaving baby slippers everywhere.
Talking about her was making me feel extremely edgy, like she was perched somewhere on my shoulder, waiting to slip inside through my ears.
“Can ghosts…,” I started, then looked around me. The crowd was loud and the sound of clinking glasses reverberated around the room, but I was stil incredibly conscious of what we were talking about. “Can ghosts f*ck with you like that? Like, get inside your head? Can they… take over?”
“You mean like possession?” he asked, and at the word, my blood ran cold. I brought my cardigan around me.
I urged him to continue by gesturing with my fingers.
“It depends on the culture,” he explained. “In some societies, shamans can possess someone. In others, like in Wicca, they can be possessed by the Goddess, wil ingly.
In Catholic society, some believe you can be possessed by the Devil.”
“Do you?”
He looked a bit uncomfortable and fidgeted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. “I don’t know if I do. It’s usual y something else. Mental il ness.”
Oh, of course. Everyone goes for the mental y il angle.
“OK, and what about ghosts. Plain ol’ dead people.
Spirits. Specters. Et cetera. Do you think they can take over?”
He pursed his lips and wiggled them back and forth as he thought. “No. And if they can, if they do, I believe it has to be voluntary. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t get inside your head. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a nasty, revenge-fueled poltergeist on your hands, straight from Seattle, Washington.”
I let out a burst of hot, booze-soaked breath I must have been holding onto for the last hour. So there was a distinct chance that some of the crazy, terrifying things that were happening to me were because Abby had decided to haunt me and make my life a living hel . I felt partial y relieved at having come to some sort of conclusion, but it left me with the overal debilitating sense of what the f*ck do I do now?
I mean, seriously?
I had forgotten I had thought of the solution to my predicament earlier. And that was to get extremely drunk.
After the Abby epiphany, I drank more wine and Maximus said we’d take a cab back, and then he got in on a few rounds and shots of whisky.
We stayed at the wine bar until it closed. I fielded texts from my parents and Ada wondering where I was and if I was OK and I reassured them I was fine. But I hadn’t expected to stumble out of the bar at 2 a.m.
We both waved drunkenly at the waiter, who was only so happy to see us go as he locked the doors with a resounding click, and Maximus grabbed my arm and led me to the bike path that weaved its way along the dark, churning river and passed through the open park space where homeless bums slept on the benches. It was cold and a little bit frightening, but I felt safe with his hand on me.
And I felt safer two seconds later when his hand slid down my back and wrapped around my waist.
I gazed up at him as we walked, like we were on a romantic middle-of-the-night strol in the waning days of winter. I didn’t know how I felt about him. I felt drunk, that was for sure. I also felt scared, and it wasn’t just about Abby, or about the weird shadows that lurked in the park, or the fact that I would be going home tonight. It was that I knew I didn’t have to go home tonight, and that scared me too. Because the last thing I needed was to get embroiled with another man, especial y this man. As charming a gentleman as Maximus was, he was stil so tightly woven into the story of me and Dex that I didn’t see how any of this could be a good idea.
And when I started to think that maybe I did like him, like him (as Ada would say), I wondered how much of that was real. And how much of that was because I was scared. And how much of that was because I was lonely. And how much of that was because there was something deep inside me that stil craved one final stab of my own revenge. I wasn’t going to pretend I was better than that, that I wasn’t thinking how poetic it would be for me to sleep with Dex’s ex-best friend.
But that was a bit icky. And when Maximus brought me closer to him, I felt all warm and gooey at the strength of his hands and I couldn’t imagine just walking away with nothing happening between us. Lonely, icky, scared…I wanted him and I wanted him badly. I ached for him.
As if picking up on that vibe I was emanating from my lady parts, he stopped at a part of the path that jutted out in a semi-circle, where people would stand on sunny days to take better photographs of the river. I stopped with him and he put his other hand on my side and faced me straight on.
My goodness, he real y was a tal guy. The wind off the river whipped up his hair, messing up his Elvis-like do, and it looked colorless in the cold lights of the city. His eyes were stil green somehow, like a liquid forest, and they stared down into mine. It wasn’t intense or dramatic or even particularly romantic, but I could see the feverish want in them fighting against his ever-present need to be respectful.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I whispered, my voice catching on a damp gust.
He grinned, that sly, lazy smile that only worked one side of his mouth. “I was thinking about it.”
I might need a ladder, was my last thought before he leaned over and placed his lips on mine.
His lips were slightly rough, but they were large and pil owy and stirred up tickles on my tongue that traveled down to the base of my spine. He put one hand behind my head and held me there, the back of my head feeling very small , and I had the image of a baby bird being cupped between two hands. It was a weird mixture of feeling desire and feeling safe and the longer we made out in that park, his hands never straying from my head or the dent of my side, the safer I felt. Like nothing could touch me except him and as long as I was around him, I would be OK. Dex used to make me feel that way with everything. Except my heart.
I lifted my hands and placed them inside his leather jacket, which was open slightly. I could feel his muscles underneath his silky shirt. He wasn’t rock hard; instead, he looked predestined to carry weight rather than lose it, but his body was stil a pil ar of strength and the more my tiny coral-painted fingers pushed and prodded against him, the more I felt like nothing could knock him over. He was as rooted as a tree. I wanted to borrow some of that strength, take it from him. Just thinking it made my kisses faster, more frenzied.
Final y he pul ed back and moved his hand around to the side of my face. It was warm against my cold cheek that was braised by the chil ing wind.
“It’s getting late,” he said, his voice uneven. He cleared his throat.
“It already is late,” I whispered, not wanting to stop.
“And cold,” he said as he pul ed my cardigan around me. “You need something warmer than this.”
“You’l do,” I said. I was surprised at my boldness.
Maximus was too.
“I’m pretty hot, I’l admit that,” he said slyly, then chuckled at himself. “But we need to be inside a warm cab before you get pneumonia.”
He gave me a quick peck on the lips, then took my hand in his and led me back to the path. Now that the makeout session was over, the terrors and shadows that lurked in the back of mind were free to play. I didn’t want to go home. >
I couldn’t. Abby would be there.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say any of this to him as we cut across the park, the damp grass brushing against the bottoms of my boots, the bums who lurked beneath the trees. I probably would have felt safer snuggling up to the guy who slept under his garbage bags ful of beer cans than alone in my room.
We hailed a cab fairly easily once we got to Burnside Street – it was the weekend and downtown Portland was in ful swing with people spil ing out of hole-in-the-wal bars, music venues with shitty bands, and late-night dives. I wanted the night to keep going. I wanted to line up with the masses at Voodoo Donuts and feel like the city had my back.
But instead we both got in the cab. At least Maximus made sure to drop me off before him, even though he lived way closer to downtown than I did.
As the cab pul ed down my familiar street, he asked, “Do you have a big day tomorrow?”
“I was scheduled to work,” I said, feeling a pang of embarrassment, anxiousness. “But who knows what’s going on with that anymore. I guess I’l just get haunted.
Maybe I’l take up knitting. Baby slippers seem to be pretty popular.”
My voice was shaking slightly at that last bit and I swal owed back my tears. My house loomed in front of us, the cabbie reciting my address.
“Perry,” Maximus said, reaching for my hand. “I know you’re scared. But so far, nothing real y bad has happened.”
“What?” I snapped at him. I briefly eyed the cabbie in the rearview mirror and he quickly looked away, none of his business.
“Abby is taking it slow. Knocking and slippers, painting your nails.”
“And taking over my body!”
I could sense the cabbie was looking back at me again, wondering who the hel these weirdos in his cab were.
Maximus lowered his voice. “We don’t know yet if it’s connected, remember? I don’t think it is. In fact, I know it’s not. You’re stil you, Perry. One hundred percent.”
“Oh, well , if you’re so smart, why don’t you tel me what else it could be?”
He gave me a small smile, immune to my anger. “I don’t know. I know you don’t like to hear that it could all be in your head-”
I gasped at that. Appal ed.
“But,” he continued, “you’ve been through a lot. So I would at least consider it, if I were you. I’m going to come over in the next few days and we’re going to figure this out and start from there. One thing at a time. Abby won’t be a problem, you’l see.”
I wondered when he had gone from Ghost Whisperer to Ghost Buster, but I had no choice but to believe him. He was the only person who had experience in this, and the only person who took me seriously. Maybe not entirely seriously, but enough. And he was a good kisser.
He leaned forward and hugged me and that cinnamon smel engulfed me again. Then he said, “I’l cal you tomorrow.”
I would have stayed all night in that cab if I could, but I reluctantly got out. To his credit, he kept the cab waiting outside until I had unlocked my front door, then it sped away into the night.
I tiptoed up to my room, trying to ignore the darkness of the sleeping house, and made it to bed. The slippers on the floor were gone. The pamphlet was back on the table. I don’t know why I was so against having it all be inside my head. That would actual y be glorious. Maybe there never were any slippers. And if there were no slippers, there was nothing to fear.
It didn’t explain a lot of other things, though, but before I could even indulge those possibilities, the evening of wine and tequila folded over me like a breaking wave and I was down for the count.