Absence of Faith (8 page)

"These will help you to learn what
to look for. The set sells for $129.95," she said handing him the
volumes.

Kyle looked at the titles.
The
Satanic Bible, The Compleat Witch, What To Do When Virtue Fails,
Book of Shadows
. He opened the
Book of
Shadows
.

"Ha! This one must be a reject or
something. All the pages are blank," he said.

"That's the way it's supposed to
be," the young woman replied rolling her eyes.

Kyle looked at her incredulously, a
strange smirk on his lips. She stared back at him like a
stone.

"Too much like religion to me," he
said.

"Just the opposite. They're
anti-religion," she said.

"Well, I hadn't planned to spend
that kind of money on books."

"Think of it as an investment in
your afterlife," she said moving to sit on a canvas cot on the
other side of the tiny room. "Besides, you don't have to pay with
money."

Kyle looked at her strangely. His
stomach seemed to be lifted inside his body, but he liked what he
was feeling.

"That's ok," he said placing the
books on a small table nearby.

The woman moved her long legs up
onto the cot and posed seductively. Kyle ran his eyes from her toes
to her milk-white thighs. She smiled and deliberately turned her
head towards the light of the candles. Her skin was flawless,
white, smooth, and clear as if she had never been in the sun. A
tiny round black object protruded from her lower left cheek. At
first, Kyle thought it was mole, but when she turned, he saw it was
an earring with a black polished stone about the size of a shirt
button embedded on a silver mounting. A silver star was etched into
the black stone.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I got to
go," Kyle said and rushed out of the room. The woman followed and
stopped at the door staring at Kyle. He looked up at her as he
started his car and she smiled sweetly. Kyle drove out of the
parking lot into the stream of traffic.

That night, Kyle couldn't keep her
out of his thoughts. He kept thinking of what would have happened
if he had stayed. She would have taken the robe off revealing her
body. He would have touched her all over with his hands, and then
with his mouth, putting kisses everywhere. He would go slowly,
discovering every inch of her body, until the final moment of
pleasure. He would ask her to do the same to him, first slowly
peeling away his clothes, then his bad feelings, and then his
dreams for he was in a dream and didn't need any others. He
couldn't sleep.

The next day he returned to The
Other Syde and found the store closed.

"Shit!" he grumbled.

The mural on the glass display
window caught his eye again. He focused on a gargoyle pulling a
thin, bony naked man down into a fiery pit. The gargoyle seemed to
laugh at him. He turned away suddenly, and thought he saw his face
on the unfortunate figure.

"Screw all the weird shit," he said
to himself. "I'm not letting this one go," he stammered and got
back into his car and drove off.

He returned the next day, and the
store was open. He walked in wearing his tightest fitting jeans and
a black t-shirt. The store had several customers milling around the
tables. He walked toward the counter.

"I'm looking for the girl who was
working on Saturday," he said to a thin man with a white pasty
face.

"She's in the back. I'll get her,"
he replied.

The pasty-faced man returned with
the girl in tow. She walked towards Kyle wearing black stretch
pants and a purple stretch top, which accented the size and curves
of her breasts.

"Hi. Good to see you again. Are you
looking for me?" she said.

"Yeah, I was thinking about those
books..."

"You're going to take
them?"

"No, but I'd like to learn more
about them and you. Would you like to go for a drink sometime?" he
said.

"That depends on what you want to
talk about...me or the books?" she replied.

"Honestly, I could give two shits
about the books. I'd like to talk about you," Kyle said.

"Ok, you're on. I'll meet you at
The Ink Well say around eight tomorrow night?"

"What? Where?"

"It's a small cafe in the West End
on Canal Street," the girl explained.

"I'll find it. Ok, see you then,"
Kyle said. "I didn't catch your name?"

"That’s because I never gave it to
you. It’s Chantress."

"That's a nice name," he
said.

"It was my great grandmother's.
What's yours?"

"Kyle."

"Nice to meet you," she said
holding out her hand for him.

Kyle took her smooth white hand and
shook it weakly. Her hand felt like velvet in his hand.

"Nice to meet you, too," he said.
"Can I have your phone number?"

"I'll give it to you at the cafe,"
Chantress said. "Let me have yours. I'll call you if I can't make
it."

"Yeah, ok," Kyle said.

Chantress walked behind the counter
and grabbed a small pad and a pencil. Kyle recited his phone number
and she wrote it down. The paper stock was neon green.

"Great, see you," he
said.

"Bye. See you tomorrow."

Kyle went home and fell into a deep
sleep thinking about Chantress and the tiny room in the back of the
store and what would have happened if he had stayed. Then he
thought about their date the following night and how they would
celebrate their mutual attraction.

* * *

Kyle rushed into the Ink Well as if
something terrible was chasing him outside. The room was dim and
smelled of coffee. Everyone was dressed in dark clothing and some
of the women wore white, pasty makeup.

"Over here, Kyle!" Chantress stood
up from one of the larger tables against the wall in the back. She
wore tight-fitting jeans and a black tube top, but it was the black
cape with one-inch silver stars that Kyle noticed. Her hair
glistened with silver sparkles and a rose-scented
perfume.

"Hi," she said. "I thought you were
a no show."

"Oh, yeah...my car got a flat," he
said out of breath.

"Oh, I want you to meet some of my
friends," Chantress said taking his hand and directing him into one
of the empty chairs at the table.

"Guys, this is Kyle. Kyle, that's
Krista and Yanni."

The two girls dressed similar –
both had short black capes draped over their shoulders, too much
black eye shadow and fire-red lipstick with matching long red
fingernails. However, the two contrasted like a salt and
peppershaker - Yanni’s hair was blonde; Krista’s was
brown.

"Nice to meet you," Kyle said
turning away from them.

"Likewise," they
replied.

"This is nice," Chantress
said.

"So...is this a preview of
Halloween?" Kyle said.

The girl's faces went
sour.

"Kyle doesn't know everything yet,
guys, so give him a break," Chantress said.

"Know what?" he said.

"About our beliefs and what all of
this means," she said. "I'll tell you about it later."

Kyle raised an eyebrow.

"Do you always ask strange girls
out?" Chantress asked.

"No, not at all. I don't know why I
even stopped in," he replied.

"Fate, I guess. I'm glad you did.
Do you live around here?"

"Oh, yeah. I have an apartment in
Cedarbrook."

"Oh. What sign are you? Wait, let
me guess...Aries."

"How did you know?"

"It's not everyday that a guy asks
me out after seeing me only twice. I think that was pretty bold - a
dead giveaway for an Aries. Besides, I like that sign. I'm a
Taurus. We are supposed to get along really well."

"I think we'll go to the ladies
room," Yanni said. "See you guys later."

The two girls got up to leave,
their black capes flowing like ominous shadows in the dim, smoky
light. A waiter came over dressed in a black shirt and black pants.
He looked at Kyle.

"What can I get for you?" the
waiter said.

"A Bud Lite."

The waiter nodded and walked back
to the bar. Kyle turned towards Chantress.

"Are those two...you
know...connected?" Kyle asked.

"How could you tell?"

"Easy. They dress almost identical
and their lipstick was the same color. What are the odds of that
happening?" Kyle explained. "Anyway, I could just tell - a feeling
I get...something about their body language...the way they moved
next to each other as if their bodies were in sync."

"Does it work for guys,
too?"

"Even better. I can almost pick one
out of a crowd," he said.

"Does that make you
one?"

"No, I'm straight as an arrow - and
always will be. The whole gay thing has me baffled. I can't
understand what makes them attracted to the same sex. I just don't
see how they can do it to each other."

"Well, I'm glad," Chantress
said.

"What about you? Are you like them,
too?"

"Maybe," she said.

"You go both ways?" Kyle asked
raising his eyebrows again.

"No, silly. I was only kidding. I'm
as straight as you. I've known Yanni and Krista since high school.
They are really sweet, sensitive girls, who got screwed up by too
many guys," Chantress explained.

"So they became gay?"

"No, silly. All three of us are
really good friends. They got screwed up and found comfort in us
and it just happened," she said.

"And it didn't happen to
you?"

"No. It's not my thing. What would
you do? Disown your best friends because they’re gay?"

"I guess," Kyle said looking deeply
into Chantress' eyes.

"What? You don't believe me? Why
are you looking at me that way?"

"I know you're telling the truth. I
can tell. I have this ability..." Kyle said.

"So do a lot of people. I can judge
character, too," she said.

"No, no. This is different. It's
like I can see into a person's soul, see into their mind, and see
what they are feeling and thinking. It's so clear sometimes it's
scary. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it's
intense," Kyle explained.

"How intense?" she said.

"Like I'm totally inside the other
person. It's like I'm totally swallowed by them and everything
around me disappears," he explained.

"You're clairvoyant,
then?"

"I don't know. I don't think that's
it. But, this is something different. I can tell if a person is
good or bad," Kyle said. "I can sense their evil and their good.
Some have more good...some have more evil. It's wild."

"That is wild. Have you ever spoken
to anyone about this? You know, like another psychic or
medium?"

"No. You're the first to know," he
said.

"Where were you born?"

"What's that got to do with
it?"

"Maybe, nothing, maybe, lots,"
Chantress said.

"Vietnam. My father was stationed
in Saigon and met my mother there. They lived there until I was
born. Then my father got typhoid fever and died. My mother took me
to the states after that and we lived in New York until I was
three, then she met my stepfather, married him, and we lived all
over Europe. He's a career man in the Army. Europe is really my
home. I was happiest in France. We lived there for about six
years," Kyle explained.

The waiter returned and placed the
bottle of beer in front of Kyle.

"That’s four," the waiter
said.

Kyle dug into his pocket and pulled
out a crumbled five-dollar bill. He smoothed it out and gave it to
the waiter. The waiter took a dollar out of his waist pouch and
handed to Kyle.

"Keep it," Kyle said, and the
waiter left.

"Where are your parents now?"
Chantress said.

"They live in Middletown. My father
retired from the Army about two years ago," he said. "He worked at
Fort Monmouth."

"Would you like to go back to
France someday?"

"Oh yeah, but just to visit...maybe
live there for several months..."

"Gee, for someone who didn't want
to tell me where he was born, you sure tell a lot," Chantress
added. "Have you had these experiences before?"

"A few times, but they really just
started," he said looking down. He brought his head up and stared
into Chantress' eyes. "So tell me...what possesses you to work at
The Other Syde? Excuse the pun."

She did not laugh.

"Sorry, I was only making a joke,"
Kyle said.

"It's ok. Many people react the
same way at first, then they accept it," she explained.