Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

you’ll be with him or her, I can’t tell which it is. Wait a minute! It’s a kid, isn’t it? Does Julio have a kid?”
    “Esperanza.”
    He nodded. “I see her now. He doesn’t want her to get hurt. He’s afraid if you two get any closer and you dump him, the kid’ll be hurt. And you’re not sure you’re ready to be a mother. Is that it?”
    I wasn’t ready to be a mother? I hadn’t even thought about that aspect of it. Would I be Esperanza’s mother? A lot of the time I would. A scary thought.
    I saw what Ivan meant.
    “Listen to the man,” said Tanesha. “Relationships are his thing.”
    They haven’t told me anything I didn’t know , I thought. But I had to admit they’d given me some new ways of thinking about things. I liked the relax-and-enjoy-it theory.
    “Come on, let’s do Chris,” said Moonblood.
    Chris said, “Yes. Now or never.”
    “What’s the question?”
    “Let’s do two. First, let’s just look at some names and see if we can get anything on whether they killed Jason. Then let’s do, ‘How can I get out of this mess?’”
    “Are you going to read?” I was puzzled.
    “I can look at the names, but I don’t really trust myself. Everybody ready? Adrienne, Tommy, Vanda.”
    “Just first names? Why is that?”
    “Who knows? But usually it’s all you need.” Moonblood said, “Adrienne’s turning black on me. Is she black?”
    “No.”
    “Well, something’s wrong. She’s not well.”
    “She tried to kill herself today.”
    Moonblood and Ivan nodded. Ivan said, “I can’t tell if she killed him, though. Just that she feels really bad about it. Almost like she’s guilty, but when I ask the question she doesn’t light up.”
    “How about Tommy?”
    “Shit, girl, good thing this one’s not your partner’s boyfriend. Know how I get those stupid songs sometimes? I get ‘Mack the Knife’ on Mr. Tommy. This dude is nobody to mess around with. I don’t see him in that car, though. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him and a sharp object.”
    “Anybody else?”
    Rosalie said, “I don’t think it’s any of them.”
    “Okay, Felicity.”
    They got nothing on her either. Ivan said, “Come on, this is Mickey Mouse. Let’s do the other question.”
    “Okay. What can I do to get out of this?”
    This time they sat with their eyes closed a long time, nearly five minutes, I thought.
    Finally, Tanesha opened hers and said, “It’s funny, but I don’t think you’re in any danger except from the cops. I don’t see any enemies. But how can that be?”
    Moonblood said, “I’m getting one of my weird advice things. Go home and look in your kitchen. Does that mean anything?”
    “Dirty dishes.”
    “Could ‘kitchen’ be a metaphor?” I asked. “Let’s see. A place where there’s food. A restaurant. A sort of back room in a house— maybe in the head? Something on a back burner?”
    Moonblood shook her head. “My stuff is much too literal. If I got kitchen, it probably meant that. So do me a favor— go home and look in your kitchen, okay?”
    Chris smiled. “I’m so depressed I was going to have some ice cream anyway.”
    Rosalie said, “Chris, I get the feeling the answer is connected with something in the past.”
    I was disappointed. How smart did you have to be to figure that out?
    Chris said, “You mean like a fight with someone? Something like that?”
    “I don’t think so.” She closed her eyes again. “It’s not the distant past, either, but it’s long past in your mind.”
    Ivan nodded. “I’m getting, like a floor under a bed with dust mice all over it. And maybe one old shoe.”
    “Like I swept it under the rug?”
    “More like you just forgot about it.”
    “Oh, great. So my right course of action is remember it.”
    Everyone looked downcast.
    “You mean that’s all .”
    We were quiet. Disappointment filled the room like the buzzing of a fly. Finally, Rosalie spoke, looking at me. “This stuff is bits and pieces, like mosaic tiles. If we could get a whole picture…”
    “…we could win the lottery,” Ivan and Moonblood said together. I gathered Rosalie had mentioned this notion before.
    “I just want to say one other thing,” Tanesha said. “I asked if you needed to look out for danger. And I got that whoever set you up wasn’t really malicious.”
    “They murdered somebody!”
    “I mean toward you. You know … at least you don’t have to worry about anything from that