I wondered how long she would keep her bakery shuttered and Em out of school. I worried she’d get antsy after a while, refuse to stay at Lou’s, and go back to her life despite the danger to her and her daughter.
She’d overcome a lot of things in her life by facing them head-on: our mother’s addiction, her own addiction, the absence of her father, the death of our sister, having a batterer for a husband. She fought. That was what she knew. And now I was asking her to hide.
Lou lived in the hills above McKinleyville, down a secluded gravel road, behind an iron gate, surrounded by forest. He had a huge, box-shaped house, two stories tall and eight windows wide, with a wraparound porch. The front lawn was the size of a soccer field, and it was green, weed-free, and encircled by the driveway.
“You’re rich,” I said.
“Ha,” Lou said. “You should have seen me before my second divorce.”
As I walked through the front door, a stench like ripe roadkill assaulted my nostrils. “Do you have a dead body in here or something?” I said.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “May and Em went out to dinner and a movie so I had the house to myself. I’ll get rid of it.”
“Get rid of what?”
“Durian. It’s an exotic fruit. Puts off a smell like rotten meat. All halamites love it. Strong smells are intoxicating to us. We’re like dogs that way. That’s one of the reasons I like your sister so much.”
“Did you just say my sister stinks?”
“Parts of her stinks. “ He had an innocent look on his face. “To me anyway. But in a good way.”
My mouth dropped open as I considered his statement, and a moment passed before I was able to form words again: “You don’t have a thing for my sister, do you?”
“What if I did? You don’t think I’m good enough for her?”
“I think you’ve been divorced three times.”
“Yeah, but guys like me settle down at this age.” He waved at the air as if he could physically wave away my concerns. “My next wife’s gonna last me till I die. Trust me.” Then he turned his back on me and walked away through the living room.
I called after him: “You should use those exact words when you propose to my sister. She’ll love it. Trust me.”
After Lou discarded the durian outside and opened a few windows, he gave me a quick tour of the house. He was one of those clean and tidy bachelors. The floors and surfaces were clean. The furniture was sparse and utilitarian. And there was no clutter that I could see. He had a home gym, a library, and a room dedicated to his collection of guitars and concert posters. Hanging in the hallways, stairwell, and other shared spaces were large photographs of Manhattan landmarks and framed eight by ten glossies of Liza Minnelli, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, and other celebrities I assumed were also from the east coast. All of the glossies were signed. Lou boasted that he’d rescued Frank Sinatra’s son from his second kidnapping, the one the public didn’t know about because it had been masterminded by a powerful wanda.
There was one framed photo of family on the wall, what looked like a senior portrait of Lou’s son, Frank DiStefano, named after “Ol’ Bue Eyes himself.”
After the tour, we went down to the kitchen, where Lou prepared a small antipasto plate of prosciutto, Asiago, French bread, and pepperoncini. Lou was half Italian on his mother’s side. I avoided the cheese, afraid it would somehow trigger another metaphor fit.
When we’d finished, I asked Lou if we could start my training tonight, which surprised him. I think he was a little tired from the day’s activities, but he agreed to at least get my assessment out of the way.
He took me to the basement—which had not been a part of the tour. He had a training room here. Mirrors were everywhere, hanging and free-standing. Small, clear spray bottles filled with different colors of liquid were arranged on a Lazy Susan on a desk in the corner. A freezer chest, a table, and a utility sink were in the other corner. Between them was an old TV on a stand. In front of that, two chairs were separated by a small table, and to my right was a punching bag. To my left was a shelf full of Kaliah’s totems from the case we’d gotten from Kmart: shoehorn, oil can, pocket purse, toy boat, candy dish, antique spectacles, small stuffed fox, and short samurai sword.
I spotted the shower curtain, neatly folded, on the bottom shelf. Its patterns were unmistakable. I walked over and grabbed it. “Do you have any bloom?”
“You’re not ready for that,” Lou said as he came over. He took the curtain from me and placed it back on the shelf.
“I’ve been in its whorls before.”
“Kaliah told me. And I bet you left plenty of corruptions behind. You’re not ready. One step at a time. Here.” He pulled out one of the chairs. “Take a seat.”
I sat down and looked over the shelves of totems for the shampoo, but I didn’t see it. Lou went to the freezer, cracked a tray of ice, dumped the cubes into a pink tub, filled the tub with water, then brought it over and set it on the table next to me. The cubes clinked against each other and crackled as he said, “The mind distorts reality to avoid pain. It can be insidious, even genius with how it does it. When a shaka discovers a totem, their cackle goes crazy. It should be very painful, but the mind somehow avoids some of that pain by making you feel disgust for the source of it. Sometimes, rarely, a shaka will find a totem that gives them a mystical experience as a distortion. This is called gleaning the ghost, and the totems found while doing that are
