Forever Odd

indicated a bottle of wine and another glass on the table. “Will you join me in a drink?”
        “That’s hospitable of you. But I better keep a clear head.”
        If the Mona Lisa’s smile had been the same as Datura’s, no one would ever have heard of that painting. “Yes, I think you better.”
        “Is that the remote control to trigger the explosives?”
        Only her frozen smile revealed her surprise. “Did you and Danny have a nice reunion?”
        “It’s got two buttons. The remote.”
        “The black one detonates. The white one disarms the bomb.”
        The device lay closer to her than to me. If I rushed to the table, she would seize the remote first.
        I’m not the kind of guy who punches women. I might have made an exception in her case.
        I was restrained by the suspicion that she would slide a knife in my guts even as I cocked my fist to throw the punch.
        Also, I feared that, in a flush of perversity, she would press the black button.
        “Did Danny tell you much about me?” she asked.
        Deciding to play to her vanity, I said, “How does a woman who has so much going for her wind up selling phone sex?”
        “I made some porn films,” she said. “Good money. But they use up women fast in that racket. So I met this guy who owned an on-line porn store and a phone-sex operation that’re like faucets you open and cash pours out. I married him. He died. I own the business now.”
        “You married him, he died, you’re rich.”
        “Things happen for me. They always have.”
        “You own the business, but you still take calls?”
        This time her smile seemed more genuine. “They’re such pathetic little boys. It’s fun, turning them inside out with words. They don’t even realize how completely they’re being humiliated- and they pay you to make fools of them.”
        Behind her, still without a toothy edge, storm light fluttered like veils of radiance cast off by luminous wings. But the subsequent thunder cracked hard and rumbled rough, the voice not of angels but of a beast.
        “Someone must have killed a blacksnake,” she said, “and hung it in a tree.”
        Considering her frequent inscrutable statements, I thought that I had been holding my own pretty well in our conversation, but this defeated me. “Blacksnake? Tree?”
        She indicated the darkening sky. “Isn’t the hanging of a dead blacksnake certain to bring the rain?”
        “Could be, I guess. I don’t know. It’s news to me.”
        “Liar.” She sipped the wine. “Anyway, I’ve had money for a few years. It gives me the freedom to pursue spiritual matters.”
        “No offense, but it’s difficult to picture you on a prayer retreat.”
        “Psychic magnetism is new to me.”
        I shrugged. “It’s just my fancy term for intuition.”
        “It’s more than that. Danny told me. And you’ve given me a convincing demonstration. You can conjure spirits.”
        “No. Not me. You need Moses for that.”
        “You see spirits.”
        I decided that playing dumb with her would accomplish nothing except to anger her. “I don’t summon them. They come to me. I’d rather they didn’t.”
        “This place must have its ghosts.”
        “They’re here,” I admitted.
        “I want to see them.”
        “You can’t.”
        “Then I’ll kill Danny.”
        “I swear to you, I can’t conjure.”
        “I want to see them,” she repeated in a colder voice.
        “I’m not a medium.”
        “Liar.”
        “They don’t wrap themselves in ectoplasm that other people can see. Only I can see them.”
        “You’re so special, huh?”
        “Unfortunately, yes.”
        “I want to talk to them.”
        “The dead don’t talk.”
        She picked up the remote. “I’ll waste the little shit. I really will.”
        Taking a calculated risk, I said, “I’m sure you will. Whether I do what you want or not. You won’t risk going to prison for Dr. Jessup’s murder.”
        She put down the remote. She leaned against the window sill: one hip cocked, breasts thrust forward, posing. “Do you think I intend to kill you, too?”
        “Of course.”
        “Then why are you here?”
        “To buy some time.”
        “I warned you to come alone.”
        “There’s no posse on the way,” I assured her.
        “Then-buy time for what?”
        “For fate to take an