Bleeding Hearts(12)
“Caroline is always hysterical. Was it something in particular this time?”
Max nodded. “Candida DeWitt, that’s what it was. Apparently nobody got around to telling her what was going on until today, and then your sister Alyssa just blurted it all out, and now Caroline—”
“—is acting like a Victorian virgin with the vapors. I’m glad you took the call instead of me.”
“I don’t mind talking to Victorian virgins with the vapors. Especially your sister Caroline. She’s like listening to the Donahue show. Do you suppose she is a virgin?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“It would be really wonderful if she were. Nobody’s a virgin anymore. I think virginity’s a very frustrating thing, don’t you? As soon as you try to do anything with it, you lose it.”
“Was all that supposed to make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Max said lightly. “Never mind. Are you all worried about Candida DeWitt?”
James took a long sip of his coffee, which was smooth and soothing and just the right kind of bitter for the end of a working day. Oddly enough, he wasn’t in the least bit worried about Candida DeWitt. The death of Jacqueline Isherwood and the circumstances surrounding it had driven Caroline half crazy and embarrassed Alyssa and Nick, but they had been good for James. SOCIETY VICTIM WARNED, the headline on the National Enquirer said, and it was followed by a story about how “psychic James Hazzard, the victim’s stepson” had told his stepmother she would die a violent death within the month if she didn’t take steps to protect herself, which, of course, she hadn’t, so she did. It was all a lot of nonsense. James had never claimed to be a psychic, just a “trained astrological counselor,” whatever that meant. He had certainly never warned Jacqueline that she was about to die a violent death. He had never warned Jacqueline about anything. God, how he had hated that woman. Prissy, frumpy, uptight, and absolutely humorless—James just knew Paul had married her for her money. There couldn’t be any other reason. James himself hadn’t said four words a day to her for the last five years before she died. Jacqueline made his skin crawl.
SOCIETY VICTIM WARNED, the headline said, and then another one, in an even less respectable outlet: PERILS OF DISBELIEF. In any rational world, that sort of publicity should have been enough to kill half his business. The people he dealt with had a positive allergy to anything that smacked of low rent. Instead, his business had actually increased, and increased most dramatically in the level of his private consultations. It was as if all these people read the supermarket tabloids, and more than half believed them, on the sly. It was as if the entire upper-middle-class population of the United States had taken a step backward and sideways, into a new Dark Age of superstition and insanity, into a dream-world full of cackling demons that stayed just out of sight. James himself did not believe in astrology. He knew perfectly well that the stars and the planets were not where his charts said they were. He’d taken more than one astronomy course in college. He didn’t believe his fate was tied up with some cosmic force in the universe either. He didn’t think there was any cosmic force in the universe. He didn’t think there was any such thing as fate. He just—
His mug was more than two-thirds empty. He topped it up with coffee and Scotch—with a lot of Scotch—and then realized Max was staring at him. James raised his glass in a toast and said, “Here’s to nothing. What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s you we ought to be worried about,” Max said. “You look definitely odd right now.”
“I was indulging in a very dangerous activity. I was letting myself get ethics.”
“Oh, don’t do that. We’d go broke.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you can get ethics after you retire. You can write a big exposé of the New Age movement and make a million dollars going on talk shows and telling the public how you ripped them off.”
“If I did, thirty psychics would go on with me and tell the public how they never rip anybody off, and the audience would believe them. Do you ever wonder what’s wrong with people these days?”
“Not if I can help it.”
James took a deep swallow of coffee and Scotch and sighed. “Are you sure that was all Caroline wanted, to talk about Candida DeWitt?”
“Absolutely. Except for the usual, of course. Your dysfunctional family. How long you were going to be content to stay mired in denial before you came to your senses and decided to take control of your life.”