In Your Dreams (6 page)

Yeah, right.
Naked Cupids, swaths of silk, and ugly furniture were all welcome. But a lousy
gossip show on television? Quick! Call the Good Taste Police! Swallowing the
sarcasm took several huge gulps, but she managed to sound contrite when she
pleaded, “Five minutes, please, binky? I need to see it.”

“No, you don’t.
You know exactly what they’re going to say. And you don’t need that kind of
bile right now.” Balancing the tray on one palm, he lifted the lid off the
smallest plate to reveal a slab of sourdough bread slathered in herb butter.

If he’d hoped to
distract her, he’d failed. “Oh, for God’s sake, who died and made you my
mother?” she snapped.

“
You
did,” he replied, his tone blander than paste. “When you called me to come get
you from the hospital.” After placing the tray on her lap, he lifted the second
cover: pesto chicken with fresh zucchini and parmesan shavings.

She inhaled the
aroma and let the bad humors melt away. “I only came here for the food, you
know.”

“You came here
because you had nowhere else to go.” He whipped the tray away before she could
lift the fork. “And if you’re eating
my
food, you’ll follow my rules.”

Her traitorous
stomach growled, and she folded her arms over her abdomen to mask any
additional commentary elicited by her hunger. She glared up at Justin, who gave
the stink-eye back. “You suck.”

“Only for Tony,”
he replied sweetly.

“Eeeww!” She
slapped her hands over her face. “I so did not need to know that.”

Both men
laughed—Justin’s high-pitched, Tony’s deeper.

“How about we
settle for a sitcom rerun?” Tony suggested.

“Goody. Maybe we
can find an episode of ‘Shipp Shape,’ huh? Maybe the one where Rick shows up in
Bethany’s room in his underwear.”

The barb struck
its intended target. Justin winced, as she knew he would. Any reminders of his
fifteen minutes of awkward fame gave him the cold sweats.

On a defeated
sigh, he replaced the tray in her lap. “Fine. You can watch those cockroaches
nibble at your soul. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She gave Tony
the nod, and he clicked the remote back in time for her to see footage of her
apartment building. Paramedics carried a blanket-covered lump on a stretcher
out the front door and into the open ambulance while the white lights of
television news cameras lit up the darkness.

“...Ms. Fichetti
was found by a family friend who called 911. She was rushed to an undisclosed
hospital and released sometime late this afternoon. Details of her condition
were unavailable. Phone calls to Ms. Fichetti’s representatives went
unanswered.”

Isabelle stared
at the screen. “My representatives? What representatives? My answering
machine?”

“Probably,”
Justin remarked. “You know how this works. It doesn’t matter if they get a busy
signal, a voicemail, or a hangup. Anything but an exclusive statement
translates into ‘unanswered.’”

“We did manage
to reach Ms. Fichetti’s estranged husband, Carlo Romanelli,” the talking head
on T.V. continued, “who had this to say.”

Carlo. That
bastard. The blood drained from her head. These vultures had tracked down Carlo
to talk about her? Great! Now he knew about her attempted suicide. It would
have been okay if she’d succeeded. But to have this become another failure for
him to hold over her head? She cringed.

The studio scene
cut to a rainy street in Manhattan, where her not-soon-enough-ex huddled with
his latest blond bimbo under a black umbrella as he spoke into a microphone
held by an off-camera reporter. “Well, of course, I’m dismayed to hear of
Belle’s situation. I care very deeply about her, despite our pending divorce—”

“Fucking liar!”
She scooped up the hunk of bread from her plate and flung it at the image of
her smarmy ex on the seventy-two inch screen, smearing fancy herb butter across
his weak chin.

“That does it.”
At her sudden outburst, Justin grabbed the remote and turned off the television.
“You’ve seen enough.” He gave a curt nod toward her tray as he bent to pick up
her makeshift missile. “Now, eat.”

Rage sparked her
nerve endings, but she picked up her fork and speared a piece of chicken with
complete composure. “Yes, Mama. I’m sorry. You were right.”

“Of course I’m
right.” He used a blue cloth to wipe the grease off the television screen
before moving closer to crouch at her side. “You made a mistake, but it’s over
now. You should be looking at this as a new beginning—the next chapter. You’re
only thirty-five, chica. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

Yep. A whole
year. Two, at most. Awesome. At least the press—and Carlo—wouldn’t have her to
kick around for long. Unbeknownst to any of them, she had an expiration date.
Her insides kinked up, blocking any food from moving down her gullet.

“I think I’ll go
back upstairs,” she mumbled and pushed the tray toward her thighs. “I’m not as
hungry as I thought I was.”

“Oh, sweetie,
I’m sorry.” Justin clutched her hand and squeezed. “I didn’t mean to rush you.
Take all the time you need to heal before we talk about your future. You know
you can stay here forever, if that’s what you want. Tony and I love having you
with us.” He cast a glance up at his partner. “Right, Tony?”

“Absolutely,” the
big guy exclaimed. “You know we love you.”

Forcing a smile,
she called on her all acting skills to lie outright. “I’m not upset, guys. I’m
just more tired than I originally thought.”

Justin clucked
his tongue. “I knew it was a mistake to let you watch the coverage.”

Hmm... Maybe her
lack of work had rusted her acting skills. Still, no way would she allow him to
hold, “I told you so,” over her head. Pulling the food tray close again, she
replied, “On second thought, I
am
hungry. I should probably stick around
for a while.”

“Christ, you’re
stubborn.” Justin straightened and glared over her.

She speared a
zucchini slice with the fork and slid it between her smiling lips. “Mmm…” The
morsel lay on her tongue like a hot coal, thanks to the acid roiling over Carlo’s
stint on the entertainment show. On a humungous gulp, she swallowed, then
fought back tears when the vegetable tried to reverse direction in her throat.

I will not throw
up, she insisted silently.
I’ll keep this down if it kills me
.
“Delicious, as always. You know, binky, if you ever tire of the antiques biz,
you’d make a great chef.”

His still
furious expression communicated how little sway her compliment held with him.

Okay, now what?
Maybe move on to a safer topic. “You’ll make a good daddy one day. How goes the
baby hunt?”

Tony sighed with
all the drama of a diva.

Justin’s open
anger deteriorated into melancholy as he sank onto the sofa beside his partner.
“We’re on a few waiting lists.”

“But let’s face
it.” Tony’s expression contorted with misery. “We’ll be ready for the old age
home before we ever see a baby.”
          Justin patted Tony’s
jean-clad thigh. “Then we’ll just have to spoil the nieces and nephews Belle
gives us.”

In mid-swallow,
she choked. Sputtering to clear her throat, she waved a frantic hand. “Boy,
have you got the wrong girl,” she finally rasped.

“You’re just
saying that because you’re still hung up on Carlo and your career,” Justin said
with a know-it-all air that, under normal circumstances would have burned her.
“Give yourself time. Once you begin a new life with smart goals, you’ll find
someone who really loves you and whammo! The house with the white picket fence,
kids, and requisite golden retriever will fall into your lap.”

Bitter regret
tainted her taste buds, and she pushed the dinner tray away—for good this time.
She’d never thought about having a family. But now, knowing her diagnosis made
such a dream impossible, she allowed herself a few minutes to mourn the loss.
“I’d make a lousy mother,” she told herself to stop the pity party in its
tracks. “I didn’t exactly have the best example of stellar parenting.”

An
understatement. Sophia Fichetti drank too much, smoked too much, slept around
too much, and pimped out her daughter to foot the bills—professionally
and
personally, when required.

“All the more
reason you’ll be a great mom someday,” Justin replied, his tone soft and
soothing. “You know what
not
to do.”

Yeah, she did.
She knew not to tell her friends the truth about her doomed future.

Xavia entered the
auditorium on trembling limbs, her chest tight. Receiving a summons from her
Elder Counselor always meant bad news. The double doors closed behind her with
the finality of a mausoleum seal. Rows of empty chairs lined the aisle on
either side. She never understood why so many seats existed; no one ever sat in
them. On the dais, though, the twelve sages of the Afterlife watched her
approach from their chairs at the long, glossy ebony table—a ghostly jury of
condemnation.

All for show,
she reminded herself. For intimidation. To keep the restless souls of the
Hereafter in line. Still, she admitted, the subterfuge worked too well. Her
galloping atoms, in that core where her heart had once resided, confirmed the
success of the Elders’ manipulations.

As she neared
the sky-high stage, the council of twelve faded to one lone man, a Yul Brynner
look-alike with shiny pate and fathomless almond eyes, who could have stepped
out of Central Casting for
The King and I
. On the heels of the remaining
Elders’ disappearance, the auditorium melted away, revealing Xavia’s personal
oasis. The air grew thick with humidity and the waxy scent of magnolias.
Palmetto bugs buzzed, and Spanish moss dripped from the leafy branches of a
gnarled but majestic cypress tree that shaded her grandmother’s porch from the
brutal South Carolina summer sun. Every July and August, Xavia’s mother put her
on a Greyhound bus to this backwater town an hour outside of Charleston, where
she spent the happiest moments of her childhood. A pitcher of Grammy’s lemonade
sat on the overturned milk crate that served as an outdoor table, condensation
frosting the slender crackled green plastic. She often wondered if she’d
actually taste anything if she dared to pour herself a glass here. Or was the
lemonade, like everything else, a mirage intended to manipulate her into
submission?

On the subject
of manipulation, Uriah, her personal Elder Counselor, chosen at the time she
arrived in the Afterlife, floated forward to join her on the fantasy porch, an
ominous frown twisting his noble Egyptian features.

Shivers nearly
broke her, but she kept herself together and perched on the edge of the wicker
chair she’d favored in her earthly youth.

“Xavia.” Even
the way Uriah said her name—with James Earl Jones depth and Darth Vader
severity—ratcheted up the tension inside her. Clearly, his request to see her
meant bad tidings. “Your son came through here. Again.”

She allowed
herself to feel hope for the first time in eons, gripping the worn chair arms
to keep her excitement in check. “When? Is he still here? Can I see him?” Maybe
this time…

Uriah folded his
arms over his gold-vested chest. “You know you cannot.”

Frustration
reared its ugly head. Of course not. Once again, the Elder crushed her like an
ant beneath his gilt shoe. “Then why tell me?” How long would they force her to
do penance for one lousy mistake? Hands white-knuckling the chair arms, she
glared up at Uriah. “Jee-zus, I get it. I screwed up. I couldn’t bear to live
another day without my son so I offed myself, thinking we’d be reunited in
death. My bad. And you guys saw that as a reason to punish me for eternity.”

No easy
punishment, either. Instead of the joyful reunion she’d dreamed of, she arrived
here and learned her suicide had damned them both to never see each other
again. As much as that knowledge had devastated her, some kind of ripple effect
had pulled an even worse voodoo on her son. No matter what kind of lifetime the
Elders sent him to, he kept screwing up, kept winding up back here in the
Afterlife before he reached adulthood.

“What happened
this time?”

“He stole a car
and was killed in a high-speed chase with the police.”

Police. Always
the police. Her son, Noah, had been gunned down by a trigger-happy cop two
blocks from their apartment in Bed-Stuy. At the time, Noah and a friend had
been shooting out windows with a pellet gun. The idiot cop thought the gun was
real, panicked, and shot her son straight through the heart. Since then, every
time Uriah summoned her to one of these meetings, the scenario remained
constant: Noah, caught doing something illegal, would come up against the Wall
of Blue and lose. Every single time.

“He can’t make
peace with the universe until he makes peace with me,” she told Uriah.

“That door has
been sealed from both of you,” he replied.

“Then why bring
me here to tell me about his problems? You won’t let me fix them, so what’s the
point?” He said nothing, which only enraged her. “You once told me there is no
heaven or hell—only the Afterlife. Well, guess what? I’d rather be in hell than
stuck here for eternity, talking people off their private ledges, and knowing
my son and I can never find our own comfort. If that ain’t hell, Uriah, what
would you call it?”

“Karmic
justice.”

“Bullshit.”

His composure
didn’t crack at her vulgarity. He sank into Grammy’s rocker and pushed the
chair into motion with a pointed toe. “We’ve never discussed karmic justice
before, have we?”

“No.”

“Ah.” The rocker
creaked as it moved back and forth in a slow rhythm. “Allow me to explain.”

She nodded. Not
like she had a choice.

“Usually, the
sins we visit upon others in life are revisited upon us while we still reside
on Earth. It is expected that the wrongdoer will learn from the experience and
better himself in the future.”

“Yes, but
I
wasn’t the wrongdoer. The wrong was done to my son. And by extension, to me.”

“Yet, you didn’t
wait to see how justice would deal with the wrongdoer.”

Was he kidding?
“I knew what would happen. Nothing! A black boy from the slums against a cop?”
She blew a burst of irate air out her nostrils. “Please.”

“So you devised
your own solution. Tell me, are you happy with the results?”

“You know I’m
not,” she snapped. “I hardly think it’s fair that my son and I will suffer for
eternity while his killer is probably honored as some goddamn hero.” His
expression remained inscrutable, and that confirmed her suspicions. “I’m right,
aren’t I? He’s living some cushy life with awards and a pension and a happy
family, untouched by scandal, poverty or tragedy. Right?”

“What happened
to him is of no consequence to you now. Had you weathered your personal storm
and lived to fight on, you might have seen a different outcome for you and your
son.
You
changed your fate, and the fates of all those who would have
faced karmic justice on your behalf.”

“A fact you guys
drill into my head every single damn day. Who knew I had so much power? I’m
like that butterfly that flaps its wings at the wrong time and brings about the
destruction of the world.”

“Not the world.
Just your role in it.”  He stopped rocking, his almond gaze steady on her.
“Suicides often do not receive their karmic justice on Earth because they screw
up the natural timeline that has been predestined for them. Thus, it is the
responsibility of the Elders here to devise a fitting end that will serve to
teach the wrongdoer and prevent them from carrying those same errors forward
into new incarnations.” He frowned. “Unfortunately, like Noah, you have
continued to make the same mistakes, lifetime after lifetime.”

A guilty flush
crept into her cheeks, and she looked at the weathered wood beneath her feet
rather than face Uriah’s disapproval head-on. “Not exactly the same,” she
murmured. Upon her arrival here, after choosing Uriah as her Elder Counselor,
she and he had reviewed several of her past lives. She’d relived her
self-destructive behavior, lifetime after lifetime.

They began with
her days as a house slave in Mississippi, where she’d taken care of her
master’s children. Overhearing her master’s plans to sell her, she’d devised a
plan to make herself indispensable to the household. If, she thought, the
family became sick and only she knew what to do to cure them, her master would
be so grateful, he’d never sell her. She chose the wrong
poison—rhododendron—and the wrong cure—fennel seeds boiled in vinegar, killing
all three of the children. It didn’t take long for her secret treachery to be
discovered, and she was hanged, her body left as carrion, a stark warning to
the other slaves.

In another
lifetime, she’d been Colette Deveraux, assistant to Josephine Baker when the
“Creole Goddess” served in the French resistance movement. Josephine, while on
tour in Europe, managed to acquire and pass intelligence information to Allied
forces in several different ways. She carried messages in invisible ink
embedded in her sheet music, listened in on discussions when German soldiers
attended her shows, and even pinned directives inside her underwear—what little
she wore with her skimpy feather costumes. When the Gestapo caught Colette on a
message run for Miss Baker, they imprisoned and interrogated her over several
days. Throughout the brutal beatings and threats, she swore she knew nothing,
and claimed she was just a simple chorus girl on her way to her next show in
some small German town a few miles away. On the fourth night, the Gestapo
leader announced he would take her to this town in the morning to see the show
for himself. Since there was no upcoming show in the town, Colette realized her
lies would soon be revealed. To avoid discovery, she spent the night repeatedly
slamming her head into the stone wall of her prison cell in the hope she’d
require hospitalization. She did, but she lapsed into a coma and eventually
died from her self-inflicted injuries. The only benefit? The interrogator was
blamed for her head injuries, and Josephine Baker and her associates escaped
suspicion.

“In every
cycle,” Uriah said, “you opt to take fate into your own hands, rather than play
the cards you’re dealt.”

“Because my
cards suck!” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she hated the fact he thought he was all
that. “Maybe, if, just once, I got a decent hand, I’d be willing to play it
out. Let’s give it a try. Send me back to Earth as some rich man’s daughter,
instead of stacking the deck against me. Let me be Muffy Vanderbilt or some
European princess for a change.” Her thoughts veered to Isabelle Fichetti. “Or
a spoiled Hollywood actress.”

One sculpted
eyebrow quirked. “Like the woman Sean Martino’s working with?”

She shrugged.
“Why not? I bet I could handle that kind of life a lot better than she did.”

“Including the
physical abuse, the unresolved dreams—”

“You wanna talk
about unresolved dreams, Uriah?” She thumped her chest. “I’m the one who never
got to see her child become a man. Who
never will
see what he becomes.
That’s
unresolved.” She waved him off before he could interrupt. “Yeah, I know. My
own fault.” Leaning forward, she glared at him with the hostility every black
woman raised in the New York projects wore like cheap jeans. “You know what the
real difference is between me and Isabelle Fichetti? She had a friend to stop
her. If that Justin character hadn’t shown up when he did, she’d be sitting
across from some soulless counselor, trying to deal with her hellish penance
while I had the white guy with the soulful eyes invading my dreams and looking
out for me on Earth.”

“‘The white guy
with the soulful eyes’? You mean Mr. Martino?”

“Yeah.” His
scrutiny unnerved her, and she glanced down at her hands, at the perfect
manicure that never chipped and could be changed to match any outfit with just
a thought. “But don’t read nothing into that. Those were Isabelle’s words, not
mine. I’m still not happy you shoved him in my department. He just happens to
have nice eyes. A shitty personality, but nice eyes.”

“Is Mr. Martino
giving you difficulty?”

“Difficulty?
Well, lemme see.” She counted on her fingers. “He’s bitter, angry, stubborn,
and disrespectful. But difficult? Nah. He’s a piece of cake.”

Once again,
Uriah remained passive, despite her sarcastic edge. “Have you spoken to him about
his past? About why he’s here?”

“No. You made it
pretty clear he wasn’t Mr. Popularity when you assigned him to my department. I
don’t need any trouble. So long as he does his job, I don’t care about his past
or why he’s here. This ain’t no church social. He stays out of my way, and I’ll
stay out of his.”

“The Board and I
would prefer you worked more closely together.”

Suspicion
bounced inside her like popcorn kernels on hot oil. “Why?”

At last, she got
a rise out of him. His eyes narrowed to feline slits. “It is not your place to
question the Board’s directives, merely to follow them.”

The damn Board.
Nothing she’d ever seen in the bible or heard in church had prepared her for
the Afterlife. Along with learning about the lack of heaven and hell, she had to
come to grips with the Board. Not God, but the same general idea. If God did
exist, He held no sway here. The Board—so named because all beings in the
Afterlife received communications through the magical clipboards they were
required to carry—had full control. Even the Council of Elders answered to that
same enigmatic power.

In some ways,
the Board made sense to Xavia. Grammy used to tell her, “Only the righteous
shall look upon the face of God.” In that case, anyone stuck here—the suicides
and other assorted losers—certainly hadn’t lived a righteous life on Earth. So
why not make them communicate with the Almighty through impulses delivered via
a clipboard to their fingers—rather than with face-to-face dialogue?