The Healer dressed in a blue flannel robe over the still-bloody Tommy Bahama and wearing lamb’s wool slippers opens the door to his apartment-office-pigsty-circus-tent-horses-meats-concession of stink. Guy stands waiting for an invitation—a hook of the head, a sweep of a hand, anything. His awkward silence is met with a stalwart Healer stare.
“I called for a session? To discuss a problem with you? Ten minutes ago?” He recoils from the stench oozing from the apartment. “Healer you gotta tell the super about those cats.”
Guy. You’re always wanting a sign from God. This is the sign. Let’s go home and stop calling this wrong number.
“It is a correct number you called.”
Invitation enough. Guy smiles. He leans into a half-body turn as if he will sidle by, but The Healer doesn’t yield a splinter of space between the door frames. Guy looks into the apartment and sees a slim shoulder in black enfolded in the quicksand chair where he sat in his earlier visit.
“Oh. You have company. Maybe another time.”
We should go.
“I should be advised to tell you that when you cancel a sessions within twenty hours you will still be charged for them.”
Duh. Which stupid remark to tackle first?
“Who are you talking to Healer?” A voice from the deep chair.
“And what is this duh?”
Oh. My. God.
“You speak of God for a second time.”
“I wasn’t speaking to myself out loud. I know I wasn’t.”
And there you have it. The sign from God!
“What is this sign from God?”
Go Dawg go! Go now.
“Right. I change my mind.” Guy flaps a hand toward the inside of the apartment. “Sorry. I have to go. I’ll pay the forty dollars. I didn’t realize you had another . . .”
Sucker.
“ . . . patient.”
“It is neither.”
She’s the Angel of Death.
“Neither that either of the three.”
Guy gives one quick wag of his head. “Neither what three?”
“Nor patient nor sucker nor Angel of Death.”
Guy blinks.
We did not say that out loud.
“No you did not speak the words aloud.”
Omigod.
“Healer I can’t stay after all.” Guy blinks hard and fast. He rewinds the last few snatches of conversation and replays everything in his mind’s ear. The Healer.
He’s in your head.
The Healer nods.
Guy’s voice is a bare murmur. “Those things. I didn’t say them out loud. What’s going on? You said I had tells? Before? In the last session?”
“Many tells. Most yes.”
“Tells that can tell you what I’m thinking? What? Eyes shifting? Face-touching? Blushing? Blinking? Flushing? Flinching? What?”
“I know nothing of these things you say—this blinking and clinking.”
What more proof do you need? This freak can hear your inside voice.
“Why is it you call me a freak?”
“There! You did it again.”
“What is this thing that I did?”
“Answering questions that I didn’t ask. Responding to things I didn’t say.”
“Yes to those.”
“You can read my mind?” Guy’s knees go weak. He puts a hand to his forehead. “My God you can read my mind.”
“You are mistaken.”
Liar!
“I am insulted for you to call me so.”
“Call you what?”
“A liar.”
“There! Again! You knew what I was thinking—that I was thinking you’re a liar. You can read minds.”
Your worst nightmare a moron who can read your mind.
“Again I am neither a liar nor this moron person of which you speak. I do not read minds I listen only to what your voices tells me. What both of your voices tells.” He points to Guy’s lips. “The one from there.” He taps a yellow fingernail to Guy’s forehead. “And the one from there.”
“Inside my head?”
“Yes the voice that is so loud and full of annoyances. These are the tells.”
He’s talking about me. I have no secrets anymore.
“You have many secrets indeed. I will keep your secrets safely. It is my ethics to do so.”
This can’t be happening.
The Healer turns his hands outward inside the pockets of his robe. “And yet it is.”
Break out the tinfoil.
“For what purpose is this tinfoil?”
“A hat,” Guy says. “To shield the voice from your ears.”
“I do not think these foil hats will work. Your Kavorka is very strong and behaving badly.”
You’re nuts Healer.
Guy puts up his hands. “Stop it you two. You’re talking as if I’m not even here.”
Guy hears a rustling inside the apartment. He remembers the urgency of the very sound he has made in previous visits. The person in the easy chair is struggling to escape its deep uneasy clutches. This might be his out.
“It’s been interesting Healer but you have a visitor and I really have to go now.”
Far and forever.
“That somebody is here for you. To help us with your problems.”
Behind The Healer the shoulder reveals itself fully as part of a portrait in black. Black shoes, black trousers, black blazer, black vest, black blouse, black skin. The lips are a lovely violet and the black hair is going to gray but the eyes are of black ice with no edge between irises and pupils.
Guy spots a strip of white demarcation between head and shoulders. A clerical collar.
The Angel of Death wears a pants suit.
“Hello,” she says past The Healer’s bicep to Guy. She turns to The Healer. “Who else were you talking to Yev?” She looks past Guy. “I thought I heard a conversation of three.”
“Only this Guy is here I want for you to meet. He thinks you are the Angel of Death.”
“Right.” Her smile is a slit. “This guy have a name.”
“It’s Guy.”
“Guy I’m Reverend Aster.”
Reverend?
“Exorcism?”
She gives the smirk of the Amazon.com logo.
“You’re not an exorcist?”
“Worse.” She sends the smirk to the other side of her face. “I’m a theologian.” Then she whirls away. “Yev. Consulting in doorways is for missionaries. When you two—or three or four—are finished I’ll be inside.”
“Consulting, Healer?”
“As you can see.”
“With a pastor?”
“Theologian,” the Reverend says from deep inside the apartment. “Don’t call me pastor. Flocks are so not me.”
“How did she get here so soon after I called?”
“I live in the building,” she sings out. “And I’m very curious about you.”
“Curious Healer? Why would she be curious about me?”
My secrets!
“You told her?”
“It’s not polite to talk about somebody behind her back,” the Reverend calls out.
“It’s not polite Healer.”
He told my secrets!
“I told no such secrets.”
“Guy,” she says. “I’m tired of braying. Come. Tell me about your childhood.”
Childhood?
“Childhood, Healer. I never told you anything about my childhood except that tidbit about Sister Mary Mary.”
“Of that I am silent.”
“Right.” Guy speaks past him to the Reverend “What did he say about my childhood?”
“You were raised by wolves.”