abilities had their limitations. He couldn’t imagine how mundane life would be if he could know every event before it happened, read every thought, foretell every move. A life without anticipation, wonder, hope and even confusion just wouldn’t be a life worth living.
Only one new email came through—a quick message from his mother who was an entire country away and living the renewed life of a happy divorcee. He’d read her email later, once he’d had a chance to eat, digest and mentally prepare himself. Only God knew what she was into now, or even worse, who. After discovering his father’s lifetime of affairs, she had ceremoniously kicked him to the curb and was going through boyfriends like a high school cheerleader. Eddie was happy that she was finally happy, but he really didn’t need any details about her blossoming love life.
Conversely, since the divorce, his father was, for the first time in over twenty years, not seeing someone and wallowing in his misery. The Home House of Dysfunction was yet another reason he took the scholarship from The Rhine to attend Duke and move three thousand miles away. The year before he’d left for Duke had been an absolute nightmare and one he would like to forget. Jesus, the fighting was epic. Both made vain attempts to recruit him to their side, even resorting to bribery. How many kids were given hotel money on prom night by their parents? Just thinking about it gave birth to an incessant pounding in his temples.
There’d been enough other things that caused his head to ache. Connecting with spirits could be unpleasant. Parental jockeying for position far exceeded psychic brain strain.
He made a mental note to call his dad after he emailed his mother. Eddie often wondered if his father’s prolonged depression was brought on by the divorce or the rapid decline of his own psychic abilities. Was this a glimpse at his own fate? The thought kept him awake many nights.
He grabbed a slice of pepperoni pizza and a paper towel and sat at the table to go through the books he had purchased at a used bookstore on Fordham Road that specialized in, of all things, New Age and mystery paperbacks. His one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx was a short bus ride from the various shops that dotted the multicultural landscape of Fordham Road. He’d never experienced anything like it. His first week there, he’d sampled cuisine from Jamaica, India, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Morocco until his stomach, unaccustomed to the assault of different spices and sauces, threw up the white flag. Hence the pizza, made with a chewy, thick crust that laid waste to anything he’d ever had before in North Carolina or back home in San Francisco.
Most of the books were crime novels by Robert Parker, Robert Crais, Richard Stark and Elmore Leonard, along with a handful of paperbacks dealing with various forms of meditation. Dr. Froemer had introduced him to the practice as a way to not only hone his abilities, but also to strengthen them enough so he didn’t experience the same withering away of talent that almost every psychic eventually suffered. Daily meditation practice helped him in more ways than he’d ever dreamed it could.
After gobbling up three slices, he moved into the living room with one of the books, a yellow-paged, moldy-smelling text about transcendental meditation, and sat on the living room floor. The sun had set and an unexpected cool breeze drifted into his window.
His mind wandered and he recalled the very first time he had summoned the courage to speak to the dead. He’d been seeing spirits since he was a baby, but lived in terror of the daily visitations until he turned eight. On the night of his eighth birthday, his stomach filled with ice cream cake and cheese puffs, an old woman hovered over him as he lay in bed. Her long, gray hair fanned out around her deep-lined face as if she were floating in water. Her trembling, matchstick arms reached down to