Future Imperfect (22 page)

“Yeah, I was bored,” I say, eyes still wide.

“Well, welcome to the Lair.”

“What is this?” I ask.

“What you’ve been wondering about. What you always hoped existed.”

“Like?”

“Like a world of people who can do what you can do. Who understand you.”

I’m stunned. Rooted to the spot. This place, these people. It can’t be real.

This looks like the present, though. It is not plastic. The scene is not overly shiny.

Leading me forward slowly, Belle tells me that there are thousands of people you will never meet trying to figure out what you’re going to do next. She tells me they’re trying to figure out what you’ll say at lunch, what you’ll eat at dinner, who you’ll ask to prom, who you won’t, what you’ll name you first child, when you’ll die and what you’ll answer for number three b on the physics final. She says, “These people will use anything and everything they can think of to see the future. It’ll be podomancy, which is reading the future by looking at lines on feet, casting lots, which is seeing the future in tossed dice or bones, empyromancy (from smoke), austromancy (by listening to the wind), icthyomancy (observing fish), or ophimancy (watching the behavior of snakes). They will drop molten lead into water and listen for the hiss. They will use precious gems. Stare at shadows. Run their fingers along the shoulder bones of sheep. Study cracks in pavement. Or if they live in Denver they’ll just be the LoDo Diviners.”

And with that, I arrive.

Charlie pulls a chair up, something padded and folding, and I have a seat across from the Diviners. The three people sitting on the couch, the one in the middle is a guy. Belle introduces me, the three on the couch don’t move, don’t even raise their eyebrows or mouth a hello, and then she says, “This is Gilberto Baumgartner, he’s the leader of the pack.”

“What’s new, Ade?” Gilberto asks leaning forward to offer me a cigarette.

Gilberto’s wearing corduroy pants and a Sonic Youth tee that looks about twenty years old. He’s got a knit cap pulled low over his head, a graying soul patch, and thin fingers like pale spiders. Black glasses. And he’s old enough to have a kid my age. Of course, he’s the guy Belle was with at Rock Island.

I shake my head. Say, “No, thanks.”

Smoking the way old people smoke, his hands cupped around his cigarette, Gilberto looks me over and then shrugs. “You think it was like a big deal, the girl in the lunchroom coming true?”

“To me it was. Is.”

He leans forward again. Leather rustling like leaves. “It’s freaking huge, man.”

That gets my heart racing.

I can’t even count the times I’ve daydreamed about this, about meeting these people, well, not necessarily these people but people like them. In my mind I saw them as super glamorous or wearing monk’s robes or floating on little colorful clouds. For the second time tonight, I’m not convinced that what I’m seeing is real. Like right now real.

Belle standing behind me, hands on my shoulders, says, “Gilberto reads palms. He’s one of the best in the world; people come from all over the world to see him. He’s like the Ayatollah of Prognostication.”

To Gilberto’s left, on the couch, is a mousy woman with thick-framed glasses like legal secretaries wore in 1983. They are electric blue and match her eye shadow. She’s wearing a frumpy housewife dress. Something even an Amish woman would feel overdressed in. She’s old enough to be a college dropout.

Belle says, “Lynne Raver can touch you and know when you’re going to die.”

Lynn says, “It’s a great party trick.”

And then, fast, silently, she reaches out and touches my hand. Her ring finger, really just the tip of it, is on my wrist for maybe two blinks and then she retracts her hand back to her lap. She says, “In your sleep, in a nursing home. Must be nice to know.”

Belle, lips by my ear, whispers, “She can’t see her own death. Very frustrating.”

To me, Lynne says, “Heavy stuff, Ade. Really heavy. Can’t think of anything like it. Can’t think of anyone seeing that far out, years like that.”

Gilberto says, “Not even Grandpa Razor.”

Lynne says, “Not even the Metal Sisters.”

And that’s when the third person on the couch, the woman sitting to the right of Gilberto, speaks up. She’s dressed like a Euro café regular, black leather pants tighter than hipster skater kids’, and a black-and-white-striped sweater. She’s wearing a purple wig. She’s chewing gum. She’s old enough to have seen the Second World War break out. Her voice is all sharp and Germanic and she says, “We want you to show us the way.”

Belle says, “This is Anka Welbert. She can remote view. When she’s in a trance she can send her mind spinning out into the world, look in on people, see the sights. Be anywhere.”

“Way to what?” I ask, turn and look at Belle.

Anka says, “The way to prosperity. The way out of town.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about and I stare dumbfounded.

“What about … them?” I ask, looking over at the twins.

Belle beams. “The Metal Sisters. Janice and Katrina Zinc.”

The twin girls, they nod at the same time. The effect is creepy.

“What do you say, Ade?” Gilberto asks.

“I have no idea what … What are you talking about?”

Silence.

To this I add: “Are you people for real? Why have you been hiding?”

Anka laughs first. She says, “We were never hiding, Ade. You just never noticed us. Have you walked down Colfax recently? Have you seen the neon signs? The billboards? Called any 1-900 numbers? We’ve always been here. Surrounding you, you could say.”

Lynne adds: “Funny what you don’t see when you’re not looking.”

Gilberto interrupts. “The guy who’s been calling you, his name is Grandpa Razor. That’s not really his real name, but no one knows just what his real name actually is. Doesn’t even matter. What matters is that Grandpa Razor can see into the future the way you can. He doesn’t need to knock himself out or anything like that, he just needs to eat something particularly nasty—”

“He’s a gastromancer,” Lynne says.

“Right,” Gilberto continues. “He sees things after eating. The more obscure the food, the further out he sees. Only Grandpa doesn’t have your skills, Ade. What he sees, it’s fuzzy most of the time. He gets just snippets. Just like thumbing through a magazine and missing most of the story.”

“You’re the real deal, babe,” Belle says.

I feel like hugging these people. In this den of shadows, for the first time I feel like I’ve found a real family.

THREE

I say, loud and grinning, “Can I like move in with you guys?”

Gilberto chuckles, says, “Belle told us about you a while ago. We weren’t convinced at first. She wasn’t convinced either, but she kept on us. She’s the reason you’re here.”

I look at Belle. She smiles, waves.

I turn around, stare Belle down, and ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She makes a face. Puts on a happy act. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

“What about you, Belle? Do you have powers too?”

Belle shrugs. “No, but I’m still hoping to develop some.”

“How’s that?”

“Gilberto says that certain combinations of, well, chemicals can spur the sudden development of … wait, how’d you say it, Gilberto?”

Gilberto says, “Opioid modification of genes to promote electrical abnormalities.”

Shaking my head, I ask him, “You a scientist or something?”

“I just read.”

Belle says, “Really I’m just getting started.”

Sounds ridiculously dangerous and totally mad science, but I let it go.

To the Diviners: “So the guy who’s been calling, the Grandpa dude, he saw me at the reservoir killing someone. He didn’t see it that clear, but I saw it. I saw me killing someone and doing it soon. Maybe even days from now. Can you help me?”

“I think we can,” Gilberto says. “Tell us what you saw.”

I tell them everything about seeing Vauxhall years ago and how it went down in real life. I tell them how I quit to win Vauxhall’s heart and how in the car accident I saw myself killing Jimi like a dog in the water. I say, “What I really need you all to tell me is how I can change the future. What I need is for you to help me not kill Jimi.”

Silence.

Belle squeezes my shoulders. She whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Gilberto says, “Can’t change the future.” He says it like it’s the law. “All of us figure it out in our own special way. It’s like unspoken, I guess. We all try at one point or another to change what we’ve seen when we don’t like it and we all have to learn on our own the pain of what it means to be able to let go. Frankly, it’s not easy being us, and you get used to it.”

I just keep on keeping on.

“I know that it seems impossible,” I say. “I’ve tried to do it and things only got worse, you know. It was like things sped up. But I think that I just need to see it from another angle. Maybe if I can play around with the way I see the—”

Gilberto stops me. “Don’t get caught up in the mechanics, Ade.”

I say, “I just want to understand it. This is life or death.”

Anka says, “Nothing matters but what comes next, Ade. Understanding how? Leave that to the historians. You get too caught up in the details and everything will just whiz by you.”

I laugh out of anxiety. They don’t laugh with me.

These aren’t my people.

“You guys don’t care that I’m going to kill someone?” I ask.

Belle says, softly, “Jimi’s always been an asshole.”

I stand up. Appalled. “I don’t want to kill him,” I say. “I’m going to change it.”

Gilberto motions for me to sit. I don’t. He cocks his head to the right, motions again. Still, I don’t sit. He sighs, says, “You’re going about this thing the wrong way. Getting all worked up over what is going to happen is like freaking out that the sun will rise in the morning. It will. It always does. Can’t stop it. But what you can do…”

And Anka takes the wheel like it’s some ventriloquist act. “… is change the way you see the future action. You have seen yourself in the future, correct? And have you ever seen yourself in prison?”

“No.”

“And have you ever seen yourself talking with police about it?”

“No.”

Gilberto claps. “You see you’ve already made the decision. Only you don’t know it yet. Since you’re not in prison in the future and I’m assuming you haven’t had visions of visiting a gravesite every year, then I think it’s safe to say that no one, well, no one but maybe us, knows that you kill Jimi. What I’m telling you, Ade, is that you should get over trying to stop it and move on to the next step: trying to forget it.”

Silence for maybe ten heartbeats and then I say, point-blank, “No.”

Anka looks to Gilberto. She cackles the way witches in cartoons do. “No?”

“I’m going to stop it,” I say. “No wonder you’re all hanging out under a parking garage. No wonder no one knows about this, this ridiculous scene you’ve got here. Fact is: You’re all a bunch of pussies. But not me. You tell me that I’m something special, that my being able to see the future clearly, not in stops and starts and not in pieces, makes me somehow better than the usual, then I’m going to use that. I will not kill Jimi Ministry. That’s why I’m not in prison in the future.”

Lynne yawns. To no one in particular she says, “Another hero. That’ll change.”

Anka adds, “A comic book wannabe.”

Gilberto shushes them, lights another smoke and, again, offers me one. Again I decline. He says, “I don’t think you’re an idiot, Ade. You’ve got balls. While I don’t think it’s going to make any difference, I’m going to recommend some people for you to meet with. Other Diviners. If anything, they’ll help talk you out of this. When you’ve had enough, you come back here and see us and let us groom you for something better.”

I choke. “Groom me? For what?”

Gilberto says, “Talent like yours is once in a lifetime—”

“I quit,” I say. “Went clean, remember?”

“Yeah, you said that already,” Gilberto says. “Look, let the Metal Sisters try their thing. If they can’t help you, maybe Slow Bob can. Grandpa Razor’s a last resort. Think of him as the puppet master. All of us, we live by Grandpa’s rules. What he says is law.”

I look over at the twins. Almost forgotten they were in the room.

The girls, they wave.

FOUR

Remember that one really old movie about a town filled with creepy children?

And at the end of the movie it turns out the kids have telekinetic abilities and they’re like the offspring of UFOs? Yeah, well, the Metal Sisters are their older siblings.

I can’t tell which one is which, but the one on my left, she pats the seat next to her.

I nod. Walk over, uncomfortable under her gaze.

She says, “I’m Katrina. I don’t tell the future. Just read what you have. But if I try, I can really get in there. Get in deep. It doesn’t always work flawlessly. It’s sometimes all hazy. Sometimes people just aren’t enough in tune to really get a good reading. But it means knowing everything. Intimately. All the moles and stray hairs. You want more details, you’re going to have to open up to me. You game?”