The charge is $229.54. How could I have missed this? I tend to be a bit absentminded when it comes to such things—it once took me six months to notice I was being charged a monthly membership fee for a health club I didn’t belong to—but a two-hundred-dollar phone call? And then I see the date. October 23 of last year. The day before Lexy’s death. Of course I paid my bills that month in a fog.
Lorelei comes into the room and whines to be let out. It’s late; she had her nightly walk hours ago, and there are hours still until morning. This is a strange night for us both. I follow her to the back door and let her out into the yard. She sniffs around the base of the apple tree. I wonder if Lexy’s scent is still there, embedded in the damp earth. Strange that Lorelei didn’t respond to Lexy’s voice on the TV. She slept through the whole thing, awakening only when she heard me cry out. How could she have missed it, with all her strong canine powers of hearing? Has she forgotten Lexy’s voice in this short time? Or is there something about the filtering effect of the tape recording, the tinny TV speakers, that reduces even the most beloved voice to mere background noise? I’ve noticed before that Lorelei doesn’t respond to familiar voices on the telephone answering machine either. The doorbell, though. Whenever she hears a doorbell on TV, she jumps up and runs to the door, barking. And our doorbell hasn’t worked as long as I’ve lived here.
After we come back inside, I go into the living room and pick up the phone. I dial the number I’ve written down. It rings once and picks up. There’s some tinny, mysterious-sounding music, then a recorded voice. “You have reached the Psychic Helpline, your gateway to psychic adventure. You must be over eighteen to enjoy our services. Our rates are four dollars ninety-nine cents per minute. The Psychic Helpline is for entertainment purposes only. Please hold for your personal psychic adviser.”
The extension rings, and a woman answers. She sounds young, Midwestern.
“Thank you for calling our Psychic Helpline. This is Caitlin, extension 79642. I’m going to do a tarot card reading for you today. Let me begin by getting your name, birth date, and address.”
“Um, actually, I’m not looking for a reading. I’d like to speak with Lady Arabelle.”
“Lady Arabelle’s not available right now. Why don’t you let me help you?”
“Well, maybe you could put me on hold. It’s very important that I speak to Lady Arabelle directly. I’m willing to wait until she’s free.”
“No, I’m afraid Lady Arabelle’s not here right now. Tell me, are you a Pisces? I’m getting a strong vibe here —”
“Maybe I could leave a message for you to give to her. Or maybe you could tell me when she’ll be there, and I can call back then?”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. But I assure you, I’m a qualified professional psychic, and I’ll be more than happy to help you. I’m sensing you’ve had some trouble in your life lately —”
“Listen,” I interrupt. “This is very important. It’s a matter of life and death.” Well, it is, in a manner of speaking. “You’ve got to tell me how to reach Lady Arabelle. I’m sure you’re not allowed to give me her home number, but maybe if I explain why I need to speak to her —”
Caitlin sighs. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea how to reach her.” She’s dropped the ethereal quality she’s been trying to inject into her voice.
“What do you mean? She does exist, doesn’t she? I’ve seen her on TV.”
“Well, I’m sure she exists, but the thing is, there are hundreds of psychics who work for this network, and when you call, they just connect you to whoever’s available. You don’t get to pick who you get to talk to.”
“Well, even so, you all work together. There must be some way you can leave a note or something.”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. See, right now, I’m sitting here in my apartment in Dayton, Ohio, and for all I know, this Lady Arabelle, who I’m sorry but I’ve never heard of, could be in California or Texas or anywhere. It’s not like we’re all sitting around in some big psychic room or something, looking into crystal balls. We don’t all even work for the same company. There are, like, a hundred little companies, and they all sign up with this other company that runs a big central computer in Florida or someplace, and when someone calls, the computer checks to see who’s logged on, and then the phone rings right here in my living room, and I pick it up. You could call a hundred times and never get the same person twice.”
“I see,” I say. I feel deflated. “But there must be some phone number I can call to talk to someone who’s in charge. Whoever runs the big computer in Florida, I guess.”
“Well, if there is, I don’t know it.” Her voice softens a little. “But, listen, if you tell me a little more about this life-or-death situation, maybe I can help you find some answers. Come on, honey, tell me your birthday.”
It’s the “honey” that does it. Even in that thin, young voice of hers, the word makes my chest ache. Do I crave kindness and tenderness that much?
“September twentieth,” I say. I press the phone to my ear, ready to hear whatever she has to tell me.
TWENTY-TWO
When I was a child, one of my favorite games on long car trips and rainy afternoons was to write a word, any word, at the top of a piece of paper and list beneath it all the words that could be made from its letters. The point wasn’t so much to count the number of words that I found, it was more to see what those words revealed about the word they came from. It was like magic to me, like a secret code to crack. Break apart family, and you find both yam, homey as Thanksgiving, and lam, the inevitable flight from the nest. Is it any accident that loser contains the letters to form sore?
I liked the surprise of the images this game conjured up and the way that the pictures it painted were often so right. I broke down father, and I saw the way my own father was like a raft, bobbing along, holding us all up. I broke down mother, and I saw the way my mother hovered around us like a moth.
I find myself playing the same game now, writing down names and seeing what they can tell me. Look inside Lorelei and you find roll and lie, two very doggy verbs, two things she does very well. But look further and you’ll see she carries within her a story to tell (see, there it is—lore) and a role she herself plays in that story.
Break open Lexy Ransome and you find omen and sexy and soar.Lost and rose.Yearn and near and anymore. See how it works? It doesn’t bear thinking about. It couldn’t be clearer. Only one letter away from remorse, and one letter away from answer.
My own name, Paul Iverson, holds a wealth of words within it. Many of them, disconcertingly, have to do with the life of the body. Look and you’ll see that I am made up of veins and liver and pores, nape and penis, loins and pulse. Try as I might, I cannot escape this body of mine that breathes and beats and lives, that still sweats in the sun and craves water to drink. That passes urine like any living thing. I am tangible as the earth. I am soil; I am vapor. But look again: I am more than my body, I am more than my living self. Look again and you’ll find soul and reason, prose and salve and lover. I am nervous and son and naive. I’m as human as you can get. I snore and I pine. (One letter away from passion. One letter away from reveal.)