Chapter Thirty-Four
I’LL NEVER GET used to the sight of a possession.
It’s like a bad special effect in a low-budget horror flick, back before they did everything on computers, when they would cut to someone and think we wouldn’t notice the actor turning into claymation for a few frames.
Boswell almost looked like he’d joined a breakdance flash mob as Sarah stretched her limbs into his.
But then he straightened up, gave his head a shake, and dove at Sarah’s body.
“Stop right there!” Jesus Christ. The rent-a-cop.
I pulled out my federal ID and told the guy, “We’ve got this.” But now I could hardly tell Jacob who was who. Using Boswell’s body, Sarah made a dive for her own…though it looked more like Boswell was giving Sarah an awkward and completely unwanted hug.
Security didn’t even glance at my ID. Instead, the guy pulled a stun gun and made for Boswell. “Step away from that woman,” he called out. I caught a slight wobble in his voice—he was just as freaked out as Sarah. But he was determined to do The Right Thing.
“Stand down,” I barked, and the guy flinched. Sarah’s body elbowed its way out of Boswell’s hug and turned to face him. The two of them started slapping ineffectively at each other like a couple of sugared-up preschoolers.
“We got this.” I shoved my ID in the guard’s face before he could taze Boswell’s body.
Yeah, it was tempting to just let it happen, and maybe we’d get lucky and he’d shock Sarah’s ghost out of it.
But now Jacob was pinning Boswell’s arms, since it looked to Jacob like he’d suddenly gone ballistic for no reason at all.
Jacob would only hold the spirit in place—and get zapped for his efforts while he was at it.
“Jacob—” crap, how could I say it in front of the guard? “We’ll book him for possession.”
Jacob was confused…until Sarah piped up. “My hair!” It was Sarah’s whine—Boswell’s vocal cords. “Look what she did!”
“Calm down,” he told her. Him. Them. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Whatever,” the body said—and stomped off, right past the flummoxed security guy.
“I’ve got Sarah,” I told Jacob. “You deal with—” her ghost? “Boswell.”
I caught up with the body at the exit. Bodies aren’t exactly cerebral, but they have a good knack for self-preservation, and the body didn’t fall for the revolving door trick again. I spilled out through the handicap exit right behind it. “Hold up, where are you going?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
I fell into step beside it. “I’ve got an idea. How about some ice cream?”
It looked up at the dreary sky, then gave me a “duh” look and kept on walking.
I kept pace. “Okay. It’s not exactly ice cream weather.” I spied a donut shop across the street. “How about…a coffee?”
The body paused.
“And…an eclair?”
It shrugged. “I could eat.”
It cut a sharp left into the street, and I grabbed it by the shoulder before it got flattened by a dump truck.
So much for a body’s self preservation. If it did get hit, would it leave a repeater?
No clue. It was totally unpredictable, at least to my logic.
So, it was better to make friends with the body than to keep hunting it down.
Once we were safely across the street, we headed for the donut shop and I opened the door for the body. As it passed me, it said, “I hope you’re not trying to get laid.”
“I’m…not.”
“Good. I mean, you’re cute and all. But you’re way too old.”
“Thanks. My husband thinks so, too. The cute part, I mean.”
No reaction. Maybe bodies don’t have a sense of humor. At least it wasn’t homophobic. It made a beeline for the counter and said, “Gimme three jelly-filled donuts. And a chocolate croissant. And a bear claw. And a skinny matcha with double whip.”
The cashier punched in the order. “That’ll be $18.89.”
Sarah dug in the pocket of her sweatshirt and came up with a crumpled wad of singles and two pennies. She plunked it all on the counter and the cashier stared at the money blandly. “That’s not enough.”
Sarah gave a gusty huff of exasperation.
“You could get the bear claw,” the cashier offered.
“I got it,” I said—and pulled out my own plastic, not the FPMP Visa. Yes, it was a business expense…and yes, they were probably tracking my personal spending. But who’s to say I didn’t have a sudden craving for sweets? “And add a regular coffee and a cruller.”
The body and I adjourned to a two-seater table with a good view of the window. The tiny tabletop was hardly big enough to spread out the haul, but when Sarah wolfed down one of the jelly donuts in five bites, I figured we’d have plenty of space soon enough.
I took off the lid and blew at my scalding coffee so as not to take the skin off the roof of my mouth, and ventured, “Maybe you’d be better off with some kind of plan, given that you’ve got no car, no place to stay, and three bucks to your name.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
I was sure she would. But I didn’t want that “something” to involve carjacking or turning tricks by the underpass. “If you don’t know where you’re going…maybe we can eliminate where you’re not going.”
Sarah’s body washed down a mouthful of donut with a huge swig of sugary green matcha. “You talk way too much.”
Said no one, ever. But how else could I figure out the best way to wrangle it?
Since I was focused in the etheric, it was disorienting for me to talk to a vacant vessel with nobody home.
It was like chatting with your phone, when you can swear all you want when it’s being obtuse, and you don’t have to feel bad for it later.
Plus, her emotional body was AWOL, too. So it felt like I was having coffee with a walking, talking hunk of meat.
I put down my half-eaten cruller queasily. “Are you running away from something?”
“I’m eating a croissant. A really stale croissant.” She dropped it on the floor.
“You know what I mean.”
The body did a “whatever” eye roll. “I’m doing what I’ve been doing for the last few months and putting some distance between Zach and me.”
“And that’s why you tried to cut your hair? So he wouldn’t recognize you?”
The body blinked. “Oh, I didn’t think about that. Not a bad idea.” She took another long slurp of matcha. “I’m just so sick of having to work so hard at superficial things I don’t even care about. Hair, nails, makeup, clothes. Who cares what I look like?”
Evidently, her consciousness did, given the way she’d been wailing about it back at the drug store. “Look, even if you’re done primping for Instagram, there’s no sense in drawing undue attention to yourself. A box-cutter hairdo is only gonna make you stand out.”
Sarah’s body grunted around the bear claw. “Yeah, probably. But it’s not fair that women are expected to spend an hour a day putting themselves together when all men have to do is slap on a little moisturizer. Oh, I know what you’re thinking.”
That I, for one, didn’t even bother with that? Whenever I used hand lotion, I found myself unable to open a door until I wiped it off on my pants.
“Men have to do their hair.” It flapped at the hank it just hacked off.
“Same. But men have to shave. Ha, try a Brazilian wax.” No thanks.
“And men have to work out. Well, where do you think me and Zach met? I wasn’t even checking him out.
He says I was watching him in the mirror from the treadmill—and I let him keep telling that story.
But I was just making sure I was at the right incline. ”
“I’m not much of a gym guy,” I admitted, mainly to keep the conversation flowing.
“That’s not the point. If Zach and I never met there, I would have ended up with someone just like him eventually. Because guys like him can spot the type of girl I was from a mile away.”
“What type of girl is that?”
“The type that’s willing to spend an hour on her hair and then go to the gym and sweat right through it!”
With that, the body sucked at the straw, made a frustrated noise, ripped the top off the drink, and knocked the matcha back in a huge gulp. It was left with a big green mustache. And it didn’t give a flying fuck.
Over the years, I’d heard people claim they hated themselves.
Heck, I often found myself fairly disappointing.
But I worried that Sarah’s body might truly be happier without the burden of her consciousness or emotions.
And given how much Sarah’s life sucked when they were running the show… I couldn’t blame it.
There must be something it missed about being intact. “Sunsets are pretty good,” I ventured.
“Huh?”
“Sunsets…..” The body looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Uh, never mind. Why don’t you tell me about your hobbies—hey, where are you going?”
The body was halfway to the door already, leaving a table of crumbs and wrappers behind for someone else to bus. “Union station, I guess.”
I trotted along after it. “You can’t ride a train with no money.”
“Then I’ll panhandle.”
Better than turning tricks, I supposed. But would anyone give it anything?
Without an emotional body, its affect was offputting, to say the least. I had to reunite all the Sarahs.
Not only was it my bright idea to reattach her fragment.
I also felt responsible for Boswell getting caught in the crossfire.
Yeah, he’d brought it on himself by butting in.
But I’d known he was a medium and never gave a thought to the vulnerabilities that entailed.
And if he was spooked by the idea of being observed, having another entity control him would be downright traumatic.
I had to get all the Sarahs—body, mind and emotions—somewhere private enough there’d be no collateral damage. HQ was ideal, but I’d gone rogue, and the team of experts normally at my beck and call were now off-limits.
Why hadn’t I stuck with possessed Boswell and left Jacob to handle the fleeing body? Sure, I’d probably end up on the wrong end of a stun gun. But Jacob was a master strategist. He’d know just what to say.
If I wanted to appeal to a body, I’d have to think like a body. And all bodies cared about was having their needs met. (Which made me suddenly grateful I was so “old.”) “Say, it’s pretty cold out here—why don’t we go get you a warmer jacket?”
The offer was more transparent than a decade-old repeater, and I was kicking myself for sounding so obvious…but the body stopped on a dime. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure if it would be willing to deal with Boswell’s ride again, so I looked around to see if there was a hailable cab nearby. Right on cue, a familiar van turned the corner from the apartment’s side street and peeled off into traffic.
And then my husband followed, jogging to intercept from the Walgreens parking lot. I dunno how it’s possible to jog irately, but he managed. As the van sped off, he paused to plant his hands on his hips and scowl after it.
So much for Jacob’s strategic prowess.
We caught up with him and called an Uber.
Meanwhile, I texted him: Promised body a warm jacket, and it took me forever.
It was so much easier to dictate my texts, but I could hardly tell Jacob the plan with it standing right there.
At least I caught autocorrect before it changed body to Bob and made the whole thing even more convoluted.
Aloud, I said, “We were heading to SaverPlus.” Texting, I added, Stall it.
Jacob glanced at his phone. “They’re closed,” he said. “Went out of business last month.”
I displayed more alarm than Sarah’s body did—even though I knew he was lying. “But the bod— Sarah can’t go around in this flimsy tracksuit. The weather’s turning. In fact, I even had to scrape my windshield the other day.”
Jacob winced—yeah, I was overselling it. But the body looked like it was about to bail, so one of us had to say something.
“Didn’t my sister forget her jacket last visit?” Jacob ad-libbed. “They’re just about the same size.” Pants on fire—you could fit two Sarahs in one of Barb’s jackets. But that wasn’t the point. Never mind that Barb was too tightly wound to forget anything anywhere, ever.
Sarah’s body had its eye on an approaching bus, so I said, “Good idea, that’ll be a lot faster than shopping, anyhow.”
Thankfully, that convinced it. We grabbed an Uber, let it ride shotgun with the driver, and climbed in back.
The driver was one of those extreme extroverts who could hardly breathe without commenting on it, so we left him to barrage the body with a bunch of chitchat while we whispered amongst ourselves.
“Why did you let them get away?” I asked. Them being Sarah’s ghost…and Boswell’s body.
“What was I supposed to do? I’m lucky no one got Tasered.” He worked his jaw so hard I could practically feel his molars squeak. “They took off while I was paying for all the stuff she opened.”
“Who d’ya like for today’s game?” the driver asked Sarah. “The Packers or the Bears?”
Obviously a trick question. Anyone who said the Packers would be shoved out into traffic.
“There’s a game?” Sarah’s body actually seemed interested in something for a change. “What time?”
“One o’clock. ‘Course, it won’t be as good as a home game, but Lambeau Field is close enough that our guys’ll at least see some decent support.”
“Take us to Green Bay,” the body demanded.
“It’s almost noon,” I told it. “The game will be half over by the time we get there. We can watch it at home.”
And here I’d told Jacob the 80-inch TV was overkill. I suspected it was the only reason the body didn’t eject the driver and head for the border.
“Do you have beer?” the body asked. “We can’t tailgate without beer. Or pigs in a blanket. Or a 7-layer dip.”
There was some guac in the fridge, and we could scrounge a can of refried beans from the back of the cupboard. “We’ll make dip,” I said.
“Okay, then, let’s go.”