Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  The height of the Industrial Revolution was also the height of the Spiritualist movement. The fact that Edison was a supporter of the mechanical breakthroughs in the physical world doesn’t mean he wasn’t equally entranced by the metaphysical. If mediums could do it via séance, he reasoned, surely a machine calibrated with great care could communicate with those on the other side.

  He didn’t talk much about this intended invention. Maybe he was afraid of his concept being stolen; maybe he had not come up with a specific design. He told Scientific American magazine that the machine would be “in the nature of a valve”—meaning that, with the slightest effort from the other side, some wire might be tripped, some bell might be rung, some proof might be had.

  Can I tell you that Edison believed in the afterlife? Well, although he was quoted as saying that life wasn’t destructible, he never came back to tell me so personally.

  Can I tell you he wasn’t trying to debunk Spiritualism? Not entirely.

  But it is equally possible that he wanted to apply a scientist’s brain to a field that was hard to quantify. It is equally possible that he was trying to justify what I used to do for a living, by giving cold, hard evidence.

  I also know that Edison believed the moment between being awake and being asleep was a veil, and it was in that moment that we were most connected to our higher selves. He would set pie tins out on the floor beside each arm of his easy chair and take a nap. Holding a big ball bearing in each hand, he’d nod off—until the metal struck metal. He’d write down whatever he was seeing, thinking, imagining at that moment. He became pretty proficient at maintaining that in-between state.

  Maybe he was trying to channel his creativity. Or maybe he was trying to channel … well … spirits.

  After Edison’s death, no prototypes or papers were found that suggested he’d started work on his machine to talk to the dead. I suppose that means the folks in charge of his estate were embarrassed by his Spiritualist leanings, or they didn’t want that to be the memory left behind of a great scientist.

  Seems to me, though, that Thomas Edison got the last laugh. Because at his home in Fort Myers, Florida, there’s a life-size statue of him in the parking lot. And in his hand, he’s holding that ball bearing.

  I am having the sense of a male presence.

  Although, if I’m going to be honest, that might just be a sinus headache coming on.

  “Of course you’re sensing a guy,” Virgil says, balling up the aluminum foil that housed his chili dog. I have never seen a human being eat the way this man eats. The terms that come to mind are giant squid and wet vac. “Who else would give a chick a necklace?”

  “Are you always this rude?”

  He picks off one of my French fries. “For you, I’m making a special exception.”

  “You still hungry?” I ask. “How about I serve up a steaming platter of I told you so?”

  Virgil scowls. “Why? Because you tripped over a piece of jewelry?”

  “Well, what did you find?” The pimply boy in the corrugated metal trailer who served up our hot dogs is watching this exchange. “What?” I bark at him. “Have you never seen people argue?”

  “He’s probably never seen someone with pink hair,” Virgil murmurs.

  “At least I still have hair,” I point out.

  That, at least, hits him where it hurts. He runs a hand over his nearly buzzed cut. “This is badass,” he says.

  “You just keep telling yourself that.” I glimpse the teen hot dog vendor from the corner of my eye again, staring. Part of me wants to believe that he’s drawn to the spectacle of the Human Hoover polishing off the rest of my lunch, but there’s a niggling thought in my head that maybe he recognizes me as the celebrity I used to be. “Don’t you have some ketchup bottles to fill?” I snap, and he shrinks back from the window.

  We are sitting outside in a park, eating the hot dogs I bought after Virgil realized he didn’t have a dime on him.

  “It’s my father,” Jenna says, over a mouthful of her tofu dog. She is wearing the necklace now. It dangles over her T-shirt. “That’s who gave it to my mother. I was there. I remember.”

  “Great. You remember your mother getting a rock on a chain, but not what happened the night she vanished,” Virgil says.

  “Try holding it, Jenna,” I suggest. “When I used to get called in for kidnappings, the way I got my best leads was to touch something that had belonged to the missing child.”

  “Spoken like a bitch,” Virgil says.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He looks up, all innocence. “Female dog, right? Isn’t that how bloodhounds track, too?”

  Ignoring him, I watch Jenna curl the necklace into her fist, squeeze her eyes shut. “Nothing,” she says after a moment.

  “It’ll come,” I promise. “When you least expect it. You’ve got a lot of natural ability, I can tell. I bet you’ll remember something important when you’re brushing your teeth tonight.”

  This is not necessarily true, of course. I’ve been waiting for years now, and I’m as dry as a bar in Salt Lake City.

  “She’s not the only one who could use that to jog a memory,” Virgil says, thinking out loud. “Maybe the guy who gave it to Alice could tell us something.”

  Jenna’s head snaps up. “My father? He can’t even remember my name half the time.”

  I pat her arm. “No need to be embarrassed about the sins of the fathers. My daddy was a drag queen.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Jenna asks.

  “Nothing. But he happened to be a very bad drag queen.”

  “Well, my father’s in an institution,” Jenna says.

  I look at Virgil over her head. “Ah.”

  “Far as I know,” Virgil says, “no one ever went back to talk to your father, after your mom disappeared. Maybe it’s worth a try.”

  I’ve done enough cold reading to be able to tell when a person is not being transparent. And right now, Virgil Stanhope is lying like a rug. I don’t know what his game is, or what he hopes to get out of Thomas Metcalf, but I’m not letting Jenna go with him alone.

  Even if I swore I’d never go back into a psychiatric facility.

  After the incident with the senator, I had a run of dark days. There was a lot of vodka involved, and some prescription medication. My manager at the time was the one who suggested I take a vacation, and by vacation, she meant a little sojourn at a psych ward. It was incredibly discreet—the kind of place that celebrities go to to refresh, which is Hollywoodspeak for get your stomach pumped, dry out, or have ECT. I was there for thirty days, long enough to know I would never let myself get that low again if it meant returning.

  My roommate was a pretty little thing who was the daughter of a famous hip-hop artist. Gita had shaved off all her hair and had a line of piercings down the curve of her spine, linked by a thin platinum chain, which made me wonder how she slept on her back. She talked to an invisible posse that was absolutely real to her. When one of those imaginary people apparently came after her with a knife, she had run into traffic and gotten hit by a taxi. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. At the time I lived with her, she believed that she was being controlled by aliens through cell phones. Every time someone tried to send a text, Gita went ballistic.

  One night, Gita started rocking back and forth in her bed, saying, “I’m gonna get struck by lightning. I’m gonna get struck by lightning.”

  It was a clear summer night, mind you, but she wouldn’t stop. She kept this up, and an hour later, when a thunderstorm cell came sweeping through the area, she started to scream and rip at her own skin. A nurse came in, trying to calm her down. “Honey,” she said, “the thunder and the lightning are outside. You’re safe in here.”

  Gita turned to her, and in that one moment I saw nothing but clarity in her eyes. “You know nothing,” she whispered.

  There was a drumroll of thunder, and suddenly the window shattered. A neon arc of lightning staggered in, seared the rug,