Remembrance Read online

  I took a deep breath. “I do not know what is blocking me because I am not in love with anyone.” I let my voice drip sarcasm. Lots of therapy in the last months had convinced me that I could not love a person who did not exist. And, basically, I hated Nora’s approach of telling me, not that I was going to meet someone who I would love, but that I already did love someone. I knew that was not true. There was no man in my life, not a flesh-and-blood one anyway. I decided that she was the worst psychic I had ever been to.

  With some anger at having been duped—knowing I should be assertive and demand my money back—I gathered my things and started to leave. “Thank you so much,” I said rather nastily, “but—”

  “You do not know you are in love with him because you have not met him yet.”

  I sat back down in the chair. Now we were getting somewhere. Now we were reaching the tall, dark stranger part. Better yet, this handsome stranger was preloved. Maybe he was the man who was going to take Jamie out of my mind and heart. And maybe Nora did know how to play the game after all.

  “When am I to meet this man?” I asked, for I know how to play the game.

  Nora just sat there staring at me, wordless, while I stared back. I was glad I wasn’t paying her by the hour.

  “Sorry,” she said, then looked away. “Just reading thoughts.”

  This statement made my mind reel. What were my thoughts? Could she read anyone at any time? What went on in the heads of people? Could she sit next to a guy on the bus and know he was planning a murder? I was sure there was a story in this.

  But then, of course, a person couldn’t read other people’s minds, could she?

  While I waited, Nora ran her hand over her face (proving she wore no makeup, something I truly envied; my hair and skin are so pale, remove the makeup and I look like a rabbit). “You are a very unhappy person.”

  I drew in my breath sharply. No one had ever before said that to me. I am successful, self-confident, pretty, smart, etc. I am what I hoped I would become.

  I gave Nora a raised-eyebrow look. “I am a very successful writer.” Damn! I thought. Rule number one: Never tell psychics anything; let them tell you.

  “Money means nothing in life,” Nora said. “Success means nothing. You could be a queen and be a failure in life.”

  The British royal family has proven that, haven’t they? “What constitutes success?” I asked, deciding to forgo sarcasm in favor of hearing another opinion.

  “The giving and receiving of love,” she answered.

  Love, I thought. Love is what I write about. Specifically, giving love to a man. But at the moment a human man was something I didn’t have.

  “I have friends,” I heard myself saying. “I love many people and they love me.” I sounded like a petulant child.

  “No,” she said. “For you there is something more.”

  Maybe I looked frustrated or maybe I looked as though I were going to start crying—about how I felt. I have a tendency toward self-pity anyway, and her telling me I wasn’t happy had rung some bells inside me. I had heard that Steve’s wedding was beautiful.

  “Maybe I should explain,” Nora said. “Many women can be happy with any of…well, perhaps one man in twenty. But then they don’t ask much. They want a nice man, someone who’ll support them, who plays with the children. They—”

  “Every woman wants that.” I have a dreadful habit of interrupting people. Only in New York, where people talk on top of each other, do I fit in.

  “Yes, that’s what I said,” Nora answered, eyes boring into me, pointing out my rudeness and showing she had more spirit than I originally thought. “Most women want a man who is good to them and they choose him based on compatibility, race, money, education, things like that.”

  After that she just sat there, saying not a word. Yes, okay, I thought, so you told me the prologue, but where’s the story? I searched my mind for what I was supposed to say, since she seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

  Sometimes my brain works like lightning but sometimes it just sits there. “Oh,” I said at last. “What do I want?”

  Nora smiled so sweetly at me that I felt as though I were back in first grade and had just received a star from my teacher.

  “You,” she said, with twinkling eyes, “want everything. You want a Grand Passion. A Great Romance. You want the stars and the moon. You want a man who is brilliant and strong, as well as soft and weak, a man who’s handsome and talented and…” She paused, looked hard into my eyes and said, “You want a man who can love. Love with all his being, just the way you’d love him in return.”

  I collapsed back against the chair and stared at her. In months, therapists, self-help books, palm readers, astrologers, all of them combined had not figured out as much about me as this woman had in minutes.

  “Yes,” I managed to say. “I want it all.” I was so full of emotion I could hardly speak.

  Unfortunately, what Nora did then was give me a very stern look. “You ought to settle for less.”

  My head started to clear. What were we talking about? My sense of humor was beginning to come back to me. “Okay,” I said, smiling. “I’ll settle for half. You have any good-looking cousins? Except red-haired men. I don’t like red-haired men.”

  Nora didn’t so much as crack a smile. “No. No one will do for you. You will know him when you see him.”

  I lost my humor. Yeah, right. One of those, I’ll-know-him-when-I-see-him gags. What I wanted was an address, or at least a telephone number. I wanted someone who would drive Jamie from my head.

  Nora was looking at me in that reading-thoughts way. Let her look into my mind all she wanted. Whatever was in my mind had already been put on paper and sold to my publishing house. And if she “saw” Jamie I could truthfully say that he was just another of my paper heroes.

  “So,” I said a bit nastily, “do you tell futures? Or do you just tell me what can’t be?”

  “Your future is your present. If you wish it to be.”

  Damnation! but I hate cryptic speech. I hate stories full of mystical claptrap about what the sun said to the moon. If I wrote something like what Nora had just said in one of my books, Daria would laugh at me, then point out that what I’d written was meaningless you-know-what.

  I thought I’d introduce a little logic into this conversation. “One minute you say there is this fabulous man for me and the next you say all the rest of my life will stay the same. I assume that means I don’t even meet this man. But then you say my life is as I wish it to be, so I assume that means that if I do meet this man I might be stupid enough to turn him down.”

  “Yes.”

  Aaargh! I meant to force her to explain herself, not agree with me. I looked at her hard, wanting to pin her down. “When and where am I to meet this marvelous man?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Three lifetimes from now.”

  I didn’t think and certainly didn’t speak but just sat there looking at her.

  She seemed to guess that she’d shocked me. When I asked about my future I meant, well, maybe ten years from now.

  “You will be very happy together,” she said as though this might console me. “But you have many things to learn before you find him.”

  I recovered enough to laugh. “What library do I go to to learn these things? If I pass the test early can I have the man for Christmas?”

  I was beginning to think Nora had no sense of humor (which is my description of a person who doesn’t laugh at my jokes) because she continued to gaze at me without a smile. When she continued not to speak, I said, “I can’t have a man because I haven’t learned things and because I’m blocked, is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you have any idea what is blocking me?”

  “I would have to do more work.”

  At that I smiled. Oh, the silver-crossing-my-palm routine, I thought. Now she tells me I must pay her thousands of bucks a week and she’ll “find” this man for me.

  At my sm