Chapter Four Linda #3
Linda took a rideshare back to her town house.
Fatigue sat on her shoulders like cinder blocks, the adrenaline high slowly wearing off.
She wasn’t in the mood to weigh what it meant that the government might be involved in taking care of Samuelson.
To consider the larger implications for who she was and what she did on the low. She was too beat.
The image of the Bartletts continued to play in her head. The show that Mrs. Bartlett put on to engender affection from her husband, an annoying game that reminded Linda of her solitude.
She got out the car. The sight of her town house soured her mood further.
The peeling paint, the patchwork of roof shingles that had fallen away, the chipped bricks…
a shaggy, embarrassing thing, considering the pristine condition of the other properties on the block.
She chuckled to herself, how some of her more lucid Broken Hearts would opine about the gorgeousness of the space they’d just wandered into upon meeting her.
The aftereffects of her gift touching their mind.
They needed to believe that what they’d stumbled onto was majestic, beyond reproach, a sparkling haven that would ease what ailed them.
She made a beeline through the foyer and up the steps to her room, a small space with a bed, desk, two large shelves, an altar, and bathroom in the corner. On the middle of the shelf closest to her bed lay a framed picture of her and another young woman, the image signed XO… Imani…
Linda stared at the photo, realized that there was a slight resemblance between Imani and Monica.
She needed to focus on Imani’s face just for a moment, to steady herself, be reminded of what was important.
Imani is what kept her going. Everything she did, for her girl.
Then Linda got to the floor and sat down on the mat at the foot of her bed.
She began to meditate. A sea of voices swam in her consciousness.
She quieted them down. She did this before bed when she’d had a difficult day, just to be safe.
Her teenage years, so many sleepless nights when she didn’t know how to control herself, to control the whispers that swam willy-nilly in her head.
Linda took in her altar dedicated to the orisha Elegua.
A mat lay on the floor with an unwrapped cigar, coins from around the world, three bowls of rice and beans, three bowls of assorted chocolates, three bottles of rum, and a doll in a red and black dress.
The candles that flanked each corner of the mat were unlit.
Above the altar hung portraits of the orisha in his three guises.
Elegua as a smiling child with a red cap, his eyes bright and mischievous.
Elegua as a lean, shirtless man with feline eyes and red and black beads draped over his chest. Elegua as a cackling elder with a long gray beard and missing front tooth, sitting cross-legged in red pants.
Linda wasn’t a santero, even with her gift of empathy, but she’d long deduced that Elegua’s guises were a metaphor for choice.
Who would people choose to be when it came to how they dealt with the world, when they were at the crossroads?
A petulant child? A clear-eyed adult? A self-satisfied senior?
She rose from the floor, then showered, brushed her teeth, being as gentle as possible with her busted lip, and crept into bed.
Despite her fatigue, she wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon.
Something was irritating her, how for a moment she’d second-guessed herself.
Linda knew within seconds of meeting Jeremiah she’d stumbled onto something supernatural.
She was a pro at taking someone in when they were up close, remembering key elements, refusing to use her empathy to get easy answers.
In less than five seconds, she could recall faces, hairstyles, general attire.
Give her fifteen seconds, she could discern fabrics, labels, subtle features.
The mole under a droopy left eye. An upper molar stained yellow from cigarettes.
The gold band with a diamond inlay on someone’s pinky.
With Jeremiah and his unearthly appearance, she just hadn’t wanted to believe.
Linda ran through the facts, what she did in any case. He was clearly in pain, in despair, seemed to be in a state of decay. His skin blistered, peeling. Or rather, like he was burning up from the inside. Linda shuddered. She’d been in close contact, had touched him. Should she be concerned?
She thought about Samuelson’s eyes, how they reminded her of the bloodred sky above New York during the ghost invasion. How the heavens seemed to be on fire.
And that was it. The answer. She was aggravated because, despite her weeks of rationalizations and equivocations and self-soothing, she knew all along that the same thing that happened to New York could happen to DC.
She knew better than to be walking around so lax, knew it in her gut.
If she had been more communicative with other members of her order, other Guardianes, maybe they might’ve seen this coming.
In a strange way, she blamed herself.
Linda stared hard at the ceiling. I’m going to fix this, she thought. A pledge that came without warning, that nonetheless felt right, true. She would figure out what had happened to Jeremiah Samuelson.