Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

many people as we could before noon the next day— being Saturday, it should be an ideal time for catching them. And Saturday night, there was a wake for Jason— a huge one, with everyone at the Chron invited, as well as everybody Jason knew in the music business and theater. Of course it would be a little odd— Chris’s lawyer showing up, if Chris had been arrested by then— but I was game.
    I went home to find my guest had arrived.
    Normally, I would have been thrilled at the sight of Julio, his elegant body flung casually on my bed, watching some ancient cowboy movie. But I was exhausted with worry, too tired for polite chitchat.
    “Whoa. You look—”
    “Don’t say it.”
    “Why not? There’s honor in hard labor. You look like you’ve been doing some.”
    “Mind if I step in the shower before I say another word?”
    “Yes.” He patted his full lips, lips you could write a poem about— why, I wondered, wasn’t more literary attention paid to men’s lips? “Kiss first,” he said, sounding like Tarzan, looking like a movie star. Or so I thought, anyway. Julio Soto is one of the handsomest men on the face of the earth, even if he doesn’t like my car, which is a white Jeep. In which he looks like a desert prince.
    I kissed first, showered second, came out and lay beside him in a towel, too tired to fossick for clothes. He wanted to kiss third, but I couldn’t even get my lips to work. “Ten-minute nap?” I pleaded, and he offered me a lovely nest in the crook of his arm.
    It was more like half an hour, I guess, before I stirred, and Julio said, “You shouldn’t wear those high heels, you know. You get this way when you do.”
    “Umm. I’ll take that under advisement.” I was still bleary-eyed.
    “Chinese food?”
    “God, yes!” I said, not caring a whit that I’d had it for lunch. It meant no decisions— about where to go, what to wear, how to find parking— and that was like a rare gift; it also meant another half hour of lying about.
    Finally, though, I made it into a pair of white leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and when Julio came back with the goodies, I ingested with gusto. Feeling human, finally, I brought Julio up-to-date— he knew the outline but not the details. To me, there were mind-boggling matters here— my partner of many years was suspected of murder; she’d been leading a secret life; and she was psychic. Which meant, perhaps, that other intelligent, noncrazy people could be psychic, a possibility I hadn’t considered. He was right about the high heels, they did make me tired. But all this new data positively exhausted me. I couldn’t remember when I’d been so overwhelmed.
    Julio had a slightly different take on the whole thing. “I don’t see how you could have been so naive. Why wouldn’t there be psychics in the world? Do you think the only things that are real are the ones you can see?” Did I? I’d never thought about it.
    “Well,” I said slowly. “I’m not exactly an atheist, I just don’t think about it much. But that’s different anyhow.”
    “Right. Because it’s culturally acceptable, and being psychic isn’t.”
    “How come you accept it, then? You’re a scientist.”
    He shrugged. “I just never thought about not accepting it. Plenty of people say they’re psychic and have throughout history. What’s the percentage in disbelieving it?”
    “You mean, who can be bothered?”
    “Right.”
    Everyone I knew, practically. People with college educations who worked in the professions. No, that would include Julio. A phrase came to me: Urban smartasses. Smug people intolerant of other people’s beliefs.
    People like me. This was a new way to think of myself. And yet, there were so many crazies in the world, weren’t there? People into flower essence therapy, live cell blood analysis, iridology, ayurvedic kinesiology, past life readings, feng shui, shamanic counseling, devic gardening. People like my Cosmic Blind Date. I just lumped them together and assumed everyone else I knew did too. And that was why I was having such a hard time now. I didn’t know where Chris really stood in all of this. Had she only pretended she thought Roger DeCampo was crazy? For all I knew she saw ETs herself. Maybe Julio did. I didn’t know the answer because we’d never talked about it. It never occurred to most people, I realized, to bring up socially unacceptable beliefs.
    “Listen,” I said, “where do you stand on ETs?”
    “What?” He