Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (8 page)

"So
what's the energy between you and Manaba? Even I can feel that."

"Manaba
and I were once very connected spiritually." Pause. "We've had what
you might call...a cerebral affair," Callie said, taking my fear and
frustration to a higher level.

"A
cerebral affair? Is that like you mentally wanted to sleep with her, but you
didn't because you were too busy thinking about it?"

"It's
more like a very elevated version of a romantic friendship."

"Which
is what women had in the 1800s—the hots for each other but fought it for
economic reasons."

"Love
is intensely aligned energies, and our mental energy was intense.. .sort of a
melding of our minds."

I
was getting more pissed and hurt by the minute, and tired of what I considered
esoteric bullshit.

"Mind
fucking is what I call it. It goes from fucking someone in your mind to, hey,
would you mind fucking? So if you're so hot for this, this—" I was
searching for the most scathingly negative word I could find because Callie's
having a Vulcan mind meld with anyone made me insane, and I started to tear up.

"It's
over," Callie said. "And I didn't have to tell you."

"Hey,
I always appreciate the truth," I said, giving her a small dig for
constantly goading me about truth. "Don't you think I could see it? When
she first saw you she was salivating all over her muskrat moccasins."

"I
didn't know you then," Callie said, ignoring my fashion barbs.

"I'm
referring to now." And I stormed off, mentally analyzing if I'd had
virtual sex, cerebral sex, or any other kind of non-touch sex with anyone in my
life and concluded I hadn't.
Probably because I tend to have physical sex
instead,
I reasoned.
But if I do decide to have cerebral sex I can
guarantee it won't be with anyone whose idea of great threads is sinew socks.

"Is
that what was going on in the fire at the ceremonial site," I shouted over
my shoulder, "your energy moving together, because it looked like sex to
me." There, I'd said what was on my mind.

"What
happened in the flames was pure imagery, not sex. Manaba doesn't use her powers
like that. Could we call a halt to the jabbing?" she asked and suddenly
put her arms around me from behind, stopping my verbal stomping.

Turning
to embrace her, I wondered if this is what living together would be like. Right
now, I didn't care. Worn out from the energy it took to wage a good sarcastic
battle over several hours, I was maxed.

"When
I went over to talk to Manaba at the ceremonial site, I asked her for her
grandmother's exact time of death, and she told me it was November 21, 1997 at
4:23 p.m. I remembered reading about her grandmother's unexpected
transition—the entire community was in mourning over Eyota, meaning 'the great
one.' Her time of death at 4:23 adds up to nine. She died on a spiritual
number, and of course the number nine signifies distance, a faraway trip. The
online accounts said she died of heart trouble, but Manaba thinks her
grandmother's passing wasn't accidental."

"So
why doesn't Manaba come out and say that in front of me and let's get to it?
Too high school for me. If the woman wants help she should speak up or let us
alone. Did you ask her for Nizhoni's time of death too?"

Callie
perked up, very happy I was speaking her language.

"I
did. Manaba didn't know to the minute when she was killed. I could only get
within a couple of hours." The computer graphics spun, and numbers
appeared and adjusted and reappeared. Then the strange astrological wheel that
looked like a blueprint of the cosmos settled in, and Callie studied the
computer screen. "I don't see anything at all. Something doesn't feel
right. I don't know." Callie shook her head as if trying to sort out the
confusing bits of information.

"Maybe
you're being blocked from seeing," I said, and Callie looked up at me and
gave me a warm smile that seemed like celestial appreciation for my paying
attention. "Look up November 21, 1997," I ordered, demonstrating to
my lover that all had not been lost on me and surprising myself at how cosmic I
could become when a shaman was my competition. Callie began clicking the keys
down on the keyboard until the wheel in front of us read 1997 and stared at it
silently for a few seconds.

"She
lost her grandmother at a time when the Moon in the Fourth House of home was
squaring the Sun in the Seventh House of the grandmother of a woman. Venus was
in Capricorn in the Ninth House, trapped between Mars, indicating male, and
Neptune, indicating disillusionment or deception. Of course, look, Venus was
besieged!" She spoke into the computer screen as if my head was in there
instead of over her shoulder.

"Run
that by me again."

"Besiegement
is an old-world astrological aspect that occurs when a planet like Venus is
trapped between two heavier planets." Callie pointed to the symbols.
"Mars can be many things but certainly, in a negative sense, it means
danger or aggression. That's behind her, to the backside of Venus. In front of
Venus is Neptune, which negatively could mean disillusionment. With danger at
her back, she may have walked forward into deception."

Callie
flopped back in the chair as if the energy of discovery had exhausted her.
"A woman will save the day, even though the woman is under threat, because
Venus, representing women, is trining the Ascendant, which represents the
event—her death."

"How's
a woman going to save the day? Isn't the day pretty much over, since the
grandmother is dead?"

"I'm
telling you what I see in the chart. I don't know if it makes sense or
not."

I
didn't know what it was about Callie studying astrological charts that always
made her look so sexy, but it did. Her intense focus away from me allowed me
time to examine every part of her without her looking back, and I had a chance
to observe her magnificent mane of white-blond hair, short but feminine and
full, barely touching the beautiful white sweater she often wore and framing
the thick gold necklace that had to be an inch wide.

I
didn't ask her where she'd gotten the necklace, afraid perhaps her ex-husband,
reportedly of ten minutes, had given it to her, in which case I would have to
bite it off with my teeth and melt it down into a dagger with which to stab the
sonofabitch. I marveled at how I could still have that much hate for Robert
Isaacs.

"What
are you thinking? Your energy has gone completely dark." Callie turned to
look at me.

"Sorry,
I'll wipe those thoughts away," I said, making a windshield-wiper motion
in front of my face as Callie had taught me. "Look up November
twenty-first in the present."

"So
you're becoming an astrologer?" she teased, obviously pleased, and I
should have basked in her smile and enjoyed the moment. Instead my thoughts
flashed from Robert Isaacs in bed with Callie to Manaba having an affair with
Callie, and I became so knotted up inside that I choked on all possible
playfulness.

"Right
now, Moon, ruler of women, is trapped between Mars and Uranus squaring Venus—so
a woman is almost trapping herself. I don't feel the woman is dead,"
Callie said, shutting down her computer and letting the screen go dark.

"Too
cosmic for me. I've got to write a screenplay. I'm on deadline."

Even
as I said the word, the irony of it struck me—the line at which we are dead.
For me, merely an abstract point in time beyond which I would have no studio
deal. For an Indian woman, a literal line at the edge of a cliff beyond which
she would have no life.

Early
the next morning, the phone rang. Checking the caller ID, I picked up to hear
Barrett wanting to talk about the e-mail file containing the first seventy-five
pages I'd sent her.

"Teague,
you ought to spend more time out of the sack and at the computer. Good
stuff."

"I'm
very glad you like the script, Barrett," I said, intentionally completing
full sentences to let Callie know who was on the phone and what we were talking
about, and thinking that married people's lives must simply border on hell.

"I
like everything about your work..." Barrett's words dangled like a lure at
the end of a fishing line—letting "work" encompass the screenplay I'd
written for her or the sex I'd once had with her, her tone trying to snag me
like a hook passing a hungry fish. I didn't take the bait.

"So
I'll continue writing brilliant work and—"

My
upbeat tone annoyed her because she abruptly interrupted. "I sent it on to
Jacowitz, to let him know you're on it, and he had a couple of comments that I
don't think are too off base. Is this a good time?"

That
was the Hollywood version of
I'm-letting-you-know-I-have-manners-but-I-hold-your-career-in-my-hands.

"Great
time, shoot," I said, the last word obviously Freudian.

"You've
done wonders with what you've got. I love the interplay between the housewife
and the husband, dead-on in its honesty. Makes me believe you're
straight." And Barrett laughed so I laughed. "First dialogue between
the women, nice. Jacowitz loved it.. .but he thinks it needs to be a little
grittier. Maybe develop a kind of sexy grunge, make it a little more hip, and
of course that's going to be hard unless we make a few character tweaks. He was
thinking, we make the nun a therapist—"

"A
therapist nun..." I repeated, trying to be open-minded.
After all, the
novice is studying psychology.

"Therapist,
period. Drop the nun. And the therapist is trying to help this psychologically
abused hooker."

"Hooker?"
My mind was scrunching into a psychotic ball.

"Don't
you love it?" Her voice was gleeful.

"But
the abused wife is—"

"Gone.
She's the hooker. Who better to know about psychological abuse, to have
experienced abuse, than a hooker? So the therapist and the hooker give you that
kind of grunge right from the start, and you don't have to deal with the whole
church thing and having the movie picketed and all that BS. Now we can get some
language in there that's sexier because the hooker can say things like
pussy
and
cunt,
where the housewife wouldn't—"

"Why
does she have to say
pussy
and
cunt?"

"She's
a hooker!" Barrett shouted as if she'd written the entire screenplay and I
was too dense to get it. I was silently clouding up, the spectrum of my
internal energy waffling between corpse gray and hearse black as Barrett rushed
her closing remarks. "Think about it. It would make Jacowitz happy to know
you're at least listening."

"Look,
I'm listening but—"

"I
know you're listening." She verbally stroked me. "You listen better
than any writer I know, you're the best. It's a small change. You okay with
it?"

I
sighed. "I wouldn't call it okay—"

"Look,
this is your first motion picture with a big-time director. The important thing
here is the relationship, right?" Pause. "Right?"

"Right,"
I repeated at her prodding and then hated myself for it.
Why is the
relationship the most important thing? The work is the most important thing.

"He
works with people who get it. You've got to show him you get it."

"Got
it," I said, dejected beyond description.

"Got
to go to a meeting at the Bev," she said, apparently forgetting I would
know why she had a meeting at the Bev—it was her casting couch. "Call me
if you have questions and hi to the blonde." She hung up before I could
comment further.

Putting
my face in my hands, I moaned. "I'm a whore writing about a hooker."

"Don't
say that!"

"I'm
a fucking Hollywood hamster who jumped back on the wheel of ‘love your story,
let's do your story, let's change your story, was this
your
story, I
thought it was
my
story.'"

"Was
she yelling at you?" Callie frowned, having heard Barrett's voice through
the phone and seen my dejected expression.

"Yeah,
redeveloping my story and then shouting at me because I don't get the plot. By
the time this project is over, I won't recognize this as my story, which is
good because it will probably be about a psychologically abused aardvark that
has sex with a chicken, and there will be enough writers on the credit roll to
start a ball team. The entire shape of the story is shifting...subtle at first,
a tweak here, a tweak there.. .and soon it's unrecognizable, like a screenplay
suffering from Alzheimer's, the original idea still buried inside there
somewhere, struggling to communicate something...but it's forgotten what."

"Your
story—subtly shifting like the wolf."

"What?"
I glanced over at Callie, wondering why, when I was baring my soul, all she
could talk about was the wolf, which as far as I could see had no relevance to
my current trauma.

"The
Navajo clan in which Manaba was reared." The faraway look on Callie's face
was making me squirmy.