Chapter 22
Laif opened the car door and got back inside the Mercedes.
He could feel the vein in the center of his forehead bulging and throbbing. He reminded himself that he liked Sharon and that she was a good person. They could get through this together, but he still couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“Who did you see today?” he asked quietly, as he stuffed his burrito back into the brown paper bag, having lost his appetite.
“What does it matter?”
If she only knew how much it mattered. If we stumbled upon Jeffrey Dalhmer in a dark alley, it would matter. If we bumped into Osama bin Laden before he funded the terrorist attack on the twin towers, it would matter.
“Believe me, it matters.” He opened the glove box, pulled out his pack of Marlboro Lights, withdrew another cigarette and jammed it in his mouth. He wasn’t going to light it, although he was tempted. He didn’t need to light it. He could taste the sour bitter weed simply by sucking air through it, as he often did.
“This is ridiculous. You’re not my husband or father. I can see whoever I want.”
Something had gotten inside Sharon. Something was manipulating her. “Who?” he said impatiently. “Who?”
She chuckled.
“Who?”
“You sound like an owl.”
He didn’t respond.
After a few moments, she replied, “I was just working, okay? Did some home visits, went to the hospital to pick up a baby, placed the baby in a new foster home.” A smile blew open her face. “Oh, you should have seen him, Laif. He was so cute. His eyes were bugged out and his cheeks were so mushy, you just wanted to pinch them.”
He started the car, pulled away from the curb, and drove down the street, well below the speed limit. “Did you come in contact with Cindy’s parents or grandparents at the child empathy building?”
“Of course not. I would have told you. Why are you asking these questions? Where are we going?”
It was never easy being with people in denial, but it was most difficult with those Laif felt close with. They were, after all, the ones who were supposed to know better; they were supposed to continue being close. But denial wedges itself between the greatest of friends, lovers, and family members. “I know someone. He might help us.” He drove faster.
She picked up her taco and continued to crunch it. Between bites, she asked, “Is this really necessary? Honestly, I have another child on my caseload, Adriana, who is in more trouble than Cindy.”
“There’s a condition some psychic people can cause. They force others into lies. A little of something inside themselves enters you, like a psychic virus.” He took a right turn at the corner, a little too fast, causing the Mercedes’ tires to squeal.
She put one hand on the dashboard, steadying herself. “Slow down. I don’t see the need for the rush.”
“You will.” He accelerated out of the turn. “Our belief in the lies causes us to withdraw from ourselves.”
They passed an abandoned church, weeds squeezing out cracks in the asphalt parking lot, the big wooden cross rising from the roof in a tilt, yellowed paint vigorously peeling.
“Great," she replied, "now how does this concern me?”
“Did you go anywhere the Brewsters had been?”
“I don’t think so. They weren’t on the same floor as me in the child empathy building. Then I went to Cindy’s old foster home.”
“Why did you go there?” he said quickly.
“It had nothing to do with Cindy. The foster child in the home, Adriana, is missing.”
“That’s odd.”
“Not really,” she spoke as though reciting from a textbook, “because, unfortunately, running away from foster homes is not uncommon among older foster children.”
Laif turned onto the 57 freeway ramp and headed south. “How old is she?”
She appeared confused. “Nine. She’s nine years old.”
He could picture a teenager running away, out of rebellion, but a nine-year-old in a safe family usually clung to the family, its security, and its values. Deep down inside—underneath her denial—Sharon must also know that.
After forty minutes traveling down three freeways to Costa Mesa, he exited on Mulberry. Taking a few more turns, he arrived at his old friend’s house. But he had to park in the lot of a convenience store across the street because Creo had no driveway. Creo preferred natural settings and plants around his home.
They exited the Mercedes and crossed the street to the rust colored house, walked up the well-tended dirt path lined with sweetshrub, elderberry bushes, and bright purple flowers.
Before he had a chance to knock, his friend opened the front door.
The first thing he noticed was Creo’s flaming red hair, darting and shooting upward, some strands long, some short. It seemed disharmonious with his rich black skin, lime green sweats, and brown T-shirt. Laif liked his friend’s natural black hair color and style much better.
“What brings the goodhearted Laif here?”
Laif huffed.
Creo laughed richly and stepped aside as they walked inside.
The interior was ultra-modern, well-kept and clean, with colors that soothed the eyes—ocean blue, fern green, earth brown, mild pink. Creo led them to his living room with three black leather chairs, one of which Laif sank into too deeply, armrests raising his arms up to his shoulders.
Laif finally replied, “I’m only as good as you.”
Sharon sat on a large black leather couch across from the three chairs.
Creo remained standing beside the fireplace. “You know I don’t walk the same road as you.” Although it was April, Christmas lights twinkled around the mantle in a multitude of colors. Creo always cherished that time of year. Laif recalled him whistling Christmas songs while sun-bathing on his deck last June.
“Obviously. But sometimes two roads lead into one.”
“Who is the pretty woman?”
“I’m Sharon,” she answered with irritation, “and I’m not pretty. Umm, I mean I’m not just pretty.”
Laif looked at her. Her dark brown hair seemed to have grown warm highlights with the colors of the Christmas lights. Her feet in her sandals curled in self-doubt. Truly she was much more than simply a pretty woman. He wouldn’t have felt anything for her but lust if her beauty was only skin deep. Many women were beautiful, but few were attractive on the inside and out.
Suddenly he felt a strong desire to spend all seasons with her, to experience her through the ups and downs each year brings, to grow with her through life’s trials. It wasn’t just her indomitable spirit, her complex mind and wit, or her courage that spurred this, but her very essence.
His strong feelings unnerved him. They were too raw and unfocused. He cleared his throat. “This is my friend, Creo, who believes he is neither good nor bad.”
She rose and extended her hand to shake his, but he didn’t offer. Instead, he began pacing around the unlit fireplace.
She sat back down with a grimace.
“I know why you have come. One of your dreams, fairy tales, seeks to be fulfilled, where goodness triumphs.” He shook his head, and his red flared hair swayed. “When will you see reality, Laif?”
He scooted forward, which was difficult to do sunken in the chair. “The truth is always there, like a cup of water on a table. It is our choice to pick it up and drink or leave it resting, only to watch glimmers.”
This stopped Creo, and he sat on the couch beside Sharon. A smile grew slowly up his cheeks like poison ivy. “They forecast rain tonight.”
Laif gripped the armrests tightly. He wondered why he had chosen to use the metaphor of a glass of water of all things, spawning his friend’s taunting.
“Yes.” Creo leaned forward. “Rain, Laif. What do you think about that?”
He felt his chest tighten and his heart quicken.
Creo plucked a butterscotch candy from a crystal bowl on the marble coffee table, unwrapped it, and plopped it into his mouth. “Why would one who holds the truth be so fearful of rain?”
Sharon asked Laif, “You’re afraid of rain?”
“Not merely afraid,” informed Creo, “but absolutely phobic.” He sucked hard on the candy, his cheeks visibly contorting.
Laif’s head sank. He felt ashamed that his deepest weakness was fully exposed so soon. He wanted to look strong in her eyes, at least for a while longer—especially since he already revealed feelings of failure just two days ago. “No one can face the truth entirely,” he justified. “We only have perspectives from where we stand in life.” He was squeezing his knees tightly together, hating how much his weakness controlled him. “It’s impossible to see all sides at once. Because our perception is limited, we must cherish what can be seen.”
“Enough of this inexplicable talk. I find it tedious. What I like is reality, and it’s that you seek my help.”
Laif took a deep breath. “There’s a girl, one such as us. She has been through much suffering.”
Creo leaned his forearms into his thighs. “And who was there to help us in our misery?”
Memories threw him back to the seventh grade. He used to play in the Sonora Junior High School band, but he was the only violinist. He wanted to be in a symphony, but Sonora had only a band. Some guys in the trumpet section used to pick on him and call him, “Gay boy.” It wasn’t exactly a masculine thing to play the violin.
About halfway through the semester, right around when puberty was settling in, his senses melded for the first time. Instead of hearing their torturous comments, he saw them—red and violet snakes curling out of the boys’ mouths and striking. He got scared, which seemed to make the boys taunt harder. The girls from the flute section turned around and giggled at him as well, and he felt that on the skin of his shoulders as hot coals. He came home that day feeling insane like his father.
“Look, we really don’t know,” Sharon countered, playing with her hair with her index finger, “if Cindy needs our help at all. Laif, for some reason, is obsessed with the idea that she does.”
Creo leaned back into the couch, put a finger to his lips, and studied her.
Deep thunder roared quietly in the distance.
She asked, “What’re you looking at?”
“You.”
“What?” She turned to Laif, discomfort in her eyes.
Creo explained, “A dust trap.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked small and fragile, sitting beside him in the big leather couch, ensconced in her denial.
His hand rose before her forehead.
“No,” Laif shouted, rising off the chair.
“What? The man of truth, of goodness, does not want friends to be enlightened?”
His palms were sweaty. He swallowed several times. “She may not be ready.”
Creo lowered his hand to his lap. “Not ready like you?”
He felt nervous, spotlighted.
“Do you ask the people you enlighten if they’re ready? Do you give them a choice to find the truth on their own, at their leisure?”
“That’s different. You know that’s different.” Laif was breathing hard, as though each word were a work of labor. He sat back down.
“So you say. But would they?” Creo suddenly looked tired, wrinkles pulling his eyelids half closed.
“With Sharon, the risk isn’t worth it. She has too much good in her heart to force her to see a single lie.”
“What are you guys talking about?” she asked, “Who’s carrying the lies in this room? Me, you, or Creo?”
Creo scratched his chin, not taking his eyes from Laif. “There’s not much risk. If the lie is a part of her own doing, then there would be risk, but it’s from the dust trap. It’s artificial. I can centralize the energy so as to undo only what they have created.”
This was too scary. As far as Laif was concerned, this was using Sharon as a guinea pig. He stood up and walked to her.
Every time Laif forced someone to see truth, they either became insane or killed themselves. Given, these people held many self-deceptions, and the ones they held were very deep and anchored. But he did not want to take any chances with Sharon. “It might expand outward to other lies in her life, ones she isn’t ready to face. You don’t know for sure that it will remain centralized.”
“Aren’t you the one who believes Cindy’s life is at stake?”
How did he know her name? Did he meet with her already?
“You know as well as I, her time is running out.” Creo raised his hand, but Laif pushed it back down.
“Let’s try the old way—teaching—before we do anything rash.” Laif kneeled before Sharon and fixed on her brown eyes. “I want you to focus.”
She stopped playing with her hair and sat up straight. “Okay.”
“Good.” He spoke in clear, slow, melodious words: “Close your eyes and picture yourself falling into yourself ... Knowing all parts of your being. See a bright, blue flame there. Let this symbolize truth.” Her lips appeared curled in doubt. He spoke more forcefully. “Allow it to burn brighter inside. See this as the most important part of your life.”
She opened her eyes. “I can’t ... this isn’t making sense.”
Creo stood up and began pacing.
Laif scooted closer. “You can. Believe.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Picture a ball of blue force ... let’s call it motivation for truth. Picture this ball rolling through you and growing … bigger … bigger now … until it engulfs your entire being … making the truth the highest importance in your life.”
“I do regard the truth highly. I don’t feel like I’m in a lie.” She flipped her eyes open.
“Please, Sharon, just concentrate.”
Creo moved behind the couch, shaking his head. “You can’t teach people knowledge they believe they already have.”
She closed her eyes, but they fluttered back open after only a moment. “Look, maybe you guys should be the ones doing this. Why am I labeled as the liar?”
“No one called you a liar. But you do have to believe you’re imperfect.”
“Enough,” Creo declared. “Time is slipping.” Before Laif could react, Creo’s hand opened inches from her forehead. Fear coursed in Laif’s heart, fear of the unknown, fear of the power behind truth, fear of Sharon’s fragile love breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, never able to reunite. A white light pulsed from Creo’s palm, lasting just a fraction of a second—
—yet her face disappeared in that white glare.
She swayed as though she were going to faint. But she caught herself.
Laif should have blinked, should have closed his eyes, but he had been too worried for Sharon, too much in need to watch her to keep her safe.
From the little light that fell into his eyes, he saw himself at age four watching his father beating his mother. That was impossible though, because he never had any memory of her. Ever. His father had told him she left the day after his birth.
Sharon looked over her shoulder and glared at Creo. “You asshole.” Then several tears spilled. Laif expected this reaction. Anger and hurt were normal when someone was confronted with a denied truth. Her arms opened as she turned toward Laif. Her lips were trembling, and she hugged him, softly at first, then tighter. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I had been thinking that way.”
Her body was soft, warm, and supple. He never expected or experienced a hug so pleasant and comfortable. He didn’t want it to end. “It’s not your fault. Their dust is powerful.”
She gently moved away from him. “We can’t leave Cindy with them. I can’t imagine what she is going through, but if they do to her what they did to me ...”
“I know. We need to—”
“Do not think me completely coldhearted,” Creo interrupted. “I knew of Cindy’s coming weeks before you ... and I offered her my box.”
“She needs us.”
“You always meddle in other people’s affairs. Think you can save the world?” He jabbed his index finger at Laif. “She has a choice. Let her decide her fate.”
Sharon countered, “We don’t live in a vacuum. We live with each other. We’re there to help one another.”
Laif admired her gutsy attitude.
Deep thunder boomed. Creo went to the window and stared outside.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
He continued watching the darkening sky. “Only a fool wouldn’t be.”
“It’s getting chilly in here.” She scrunched her hands in her pockets.
Creo went to a cupboard, retrieved a blanket, and draped it around her shoulders. “I haven’t offered you guys anything to drink. How ‘bout some hot tea?”
She pulled out a chip of wood from her jeans. “I forgot about this. I found it in Cindy’s old foster home. Then I smelled something and grew dizzy, something like rotten eggs, and I couldn’t remember things.”
“Let me see that!” Creo plucked the chip from Sharon’s hands and held it at eye-level. “It certainly looks familiar to me.”
“Why?” she asked. “What is it?”
“It’s part of the box I gave Cindy.”
“Of course! I remember now. What’s in it?”
Creo set the wood chip on the coffee table.
Laif didn’t really know what the box was. All that was important was that it could help Cindy if she chose. He asked Sharon, “Whose bedroom did you find the chip in?”
“Adriana’s, which was also Cindy’s old bedroom.”
“It probably broke off when she used to live there.”
“I gave her the box,” Creo informed, “when she needed it most, after she was placed back with her family last Friday.”
“Then how did this chip get into Adriana’s room?” she questioned.
“Cindy must have either returned or sent the box to Adriana.”
“She couldn’t have mailed it because I saw the box with her this morning at the child empathy room. Mail doesn’t go that fast. And it wasn’t chipped this morning, so sometime between 10:30 am and 12:55 p.m., when I arrived at the foster home, somebody entered the foster home with the box.”
“If Cindy returned with her parents,” Laif proposed, “that would explain the dust trap.”
They all were silence for a moment.
As she looked into his eyes, she reflected, “It’s rather strange how Adriana disappeared right around all this.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Laif affirmed.
“Coincidence?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Me neither.”