Chapter 15: Concordance Therapy
“Come on down!” Jill bellowed. “I can fit you in between my four o’clock and my four-thirty.”
“Thanks, I’ll be right over.”
I crossed the 101, turned down Cortez and headed toward the real estate office. So, this is what it felt like to have your life spiral out of control. Nothing, not even the hell-years with Burke, had prepared me for this disaster, this utter low. Everything I’d known had been turned inside out and upside down.
What would the Doctor do?
I shook my head, bitter at my innocent, naïve self who used that as a mantra. The Doctor couldn’t do a damn thing about a situation like this. Or, he’d use some magical, make-believe, science powers to put everything aright—some “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” I half-smiled through almost-tears. God, what had they done to my mom?
I came to a red light and stopped at the intersection. A low, late sun sent out bright rays that set my windshield sparkling. For once, somebody stepped into the crosswalk. A small town, our foot traffic is minimal. This was a big guy too, buffed as a bodybuilder, tan as a surfer. No, tanner than that. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.
As if sensing my thoughts, or just curious, he looked straight in my windshield as he passed by. His dark, angular face looked familiar.
I sat bolt upright in my seat. Colin had showed me that photo on his phone. “Omigod, that’s Xerxes Braden!” I rolled down my window. “Hey, hey you!”
He kept going.
I honked the horn. “Xerxes! Xerxes Braden!”
The man had reached the other sidewalk by now and looked back over his shoulder. A flicker of recognition crossed his face.
“You’re Xerxes Braden, right?” No question about it.
Panic flashed over his features and he took off running down the street!
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I made an illegal left on the red light, driving in hot pursuit. To our left was Saint Katherine’s, a Catholic church surrounded by broad sweeps of well-watered lawns. Xerxes bolted up the sidewalk, running alongside the church.
Hearing my car, he stole another glance over his shoulder. The he made an abrupt beeline through church property, darting between the rectory and some outbuildings. There was no fence and nobody around.
Damn, he was getting away! I pulled to the curb, leaped out of the car and chased after him. “Xerxes, wait! Please, wait!”
His heels kicked across freshly cut grass. Sprinklers swished back and forth across the lawn, despite the seasonal rains. He reached the end of church property, headed straight toward a wrought-iron fence that separated St. Katherine’s from a Val-U-Mart parking lot. The fence stood twelve feet tall with no more than four inches between the bars.
No way could he climb over or around that thing. No way. He would be trapped. I picked up speed, conserving breath by not shouting. We must look a ridiculous pair, a buffed-out bodybuilder sprinting away from a small, jet-lagged woman in a crumpled Parisian pantsuit.
Xerxes got within eight feet of the fence and without breaking stride took a mighty leap skyward. He cleared the fence in a single bound, like, like … like Superman.
I pulled up short, jaw hanging open. My head swiveled left, right. But there was nobody around. Nobody saw. Rushing up to the fence, I grabbed two bars and put my head through in a desperate attempt to squeeze past. This failed, and I caught only a glimpse of Xerxes dashing between two rows of parked cars before vanishing behind a van.
I could run all the way around the church and enter the parking lot on the next block but why bother? It was too late. He’d gotten clean away.
But it confirmed one thing. I didn’t imagine the Bradens. They existed!
“You look like hell,” Jill said. “When’s the last time you changed your clothes?”
“I don’t know. A day, day and a half ago.”
“Is that a Chanel two-piece?”
I still wore Paris high couture, crumpled, stained and travel-worn. I’d slept in my $2500 pantsuit, ate in it, crossed the half world in it and it showed. “Yeah.”
“How can you even afford something like that?” Jill asked, baffled.
“It’s a long story.”
“Meth is a hell of a drug.”
“I’m not on drugs, Jill.” The small, plastic chair facing her desk dug into my back. I shut my eyes, fending off a migraine.
“What happened to that obnoxious Brit who whisked you off to Australia?” Jill asked. She had her feet up on her desk, hands clasped behind her head. She was, without a doubt, enjoying my misery. “He left you high and dry down at the kangaroo well?”
“Something like that,” I said. I didn’t know what Jill was talking about and I did not want to talk to her about Colin. At all. That she couldn’t tell a Mick from a Brit or an Aussie didn’t surprise me. Whenever I talked about watching the BBC, she made fun of the Queen. “Tea and crumpets!” she’d shout in a little old lady voice. “Anybody seen my tea and crumpets?” It made no sense but that was Jill.
“So now you’ve come crawling back,” she said. “There’s no room at Jill Thorman Real Estate for quitters, backsliders, and kangaroo dumpsters.”
“It’s not like that. I only need a place to stay for a night or two.”
“Why not ask your best friends forever, Amy or Maria?”
“I don’t know them well enough to impose.”
“You know them well enough to treat them to a farewell brunch.”
I winced. “I didn’t invite you because I was mad at you. I’m sorry, Jill.”
“And now you want to crash on the Jill Thorman couch? I charge Air B’N’B rates, you know. Twenty dollars a night, an extra twenty if you want shower and fridge privileges.”
“I have a better idea.”
She glanced at her watch with impatience. “Shoot.”
“Can’t I sleep at the Concordance Therapy gym?”
To my surprise, she grinned and clapped her hands. “That’s a great idea, Rowan. Go sit in the waiting room and I’ll call Super-Mike, set it up. His afternoon session should be almost over.”
“Thanks, Jill.”
“What are friends for?” She winked.
“One other thing. You had Burke working out at the Murder House?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is it still on the market? Is it Maria’s listing?”
She snapped her head up, suspicious. “Why do you want to know?”
“That place is not safe. Don’t send Maria out there by herself. I saw—scary stuff.”
Jill shook her head and waved her fingers, a dismissal. “Nobody’s showing anything until Burke gets that dump cleaned up. He needs two weeks, at least.”
Jill shut her office door and made some calls. I sat in the lobby and thumbed through a copy of Trail & Fitness, staring at the pictures without seeing them. Amy had already left for the day and Maria was out showing that condo that could have been my next commission. Fifteen minutes later, Jill stuck her head into the lobby. “Go over, Super-Mike is waiting.”
“Great, thanks.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Evening C.T. training, did you forget? You must participate if you’re going to crash there.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll see you there.” I waved and left.
I’d only just stepped outside when my phone rang. It read ‘Caller Unknown’ without an area code. It could be anyone from Port Selkie to Paris, France. My heart jumped. “Hello?”
“Butterfly.” It was Colin! “We’ve got to talk.”
“Where’s my mom?”
“I don’t know! We’re trying to get her back, but you’ve got to keep clear. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? What do you mean dangerous? Is she in danger?” Well, duh.
“I have to go. Just keep your head down and out of sight.”
“Did Xerxes talk to you? Is that why you called?”
“I have to go. Take care, Rowan. I love you.”
Before I could reply, he hung up.
He said, I love you.
No you don’t!
I raised the phone above my head, ready to smash it on the concrete. My chest heaved up and down. A moment later, I regained control. I did not need to lose my only lifeline to the outside world. I tucked it back into my purse and walked behind the mini-mall. Out of habit, I’d parked Mr. Reliable behind the office, near the dumpster.
I crept around the corner, half afraid that Burke, Cherise, or even the Lotomaw Monster would jump on me there. But Mr. Reliable waited alone, glinting in the sun.
Concordance Therapy takes a holistic approach to wellness. According to C.T., mind, body and spirit form an interconnected power triangle. I don’t remember the metaphysics involved, but imagine yourself as a three-legged stool. If you put too much weight on one leg, the others get out of whack—or something like that.
To address this, you exercise in a spiritual manner. We jogged and stretched while listening to Eastern music and mind-expanding lectures by New Age gurus and various conspiracy theorists. The idea was to exercise all three stool-legs at once.
It’s one of those things that sounds great at first, something with the potential to improve your life. But the deeper I got into it, like almost everything else in life, the more I saw it for what it was: just another human construct, fluff and lies designed to take your money. The three-legged stool analogy worked in one respect. It prepared you for a life of other people sitting on you.
The C.T. Gym operated in a dingy storefront in a strip mall not far from Jill’s office, between a karate studio and a Salvation Road Reading Room. It used to be a kid’s shoe store back in the day. Mom used to take me here to buy Hush Puppies. Mom.
I parked, walked in. The shop-bell tinkled, but nobody was home. Evening Pep had yet to begin.
“Mike?” I called out. I always had a hard time calling a grown man ‘Super-Mike’ no matter how excited he acted about Concordance Therapy.
No answer.
Old mats covered most of the floor, with a few benches running along one wall, a ballet bar on the opposite. Dirty, discolored mirrors lined that wall, as the building had once been a ballet studio too. The backroom offered two changing rooms for the clientele and the woman’s room had some benches that might work as a cot in a pinch. That was my plan.
“Mike?” The doors to the changing rooms were both shut, so I stepped into the woman’s room. A dark-haired woman stood there with her back to me, changing into her sky-blue C.T. track suit. Could it be Cherise?
I took a step backward, dreading cold green eyes.
The woman turned around. Maria’s warm, round face looked surprised then pleased to see me. “Hi Rowan. How was Australia?”
“Maria!” I said, overjoyed. “Great, great, just so great!” I stammered. We chatted for a few minutes. She caught me up on the real estate world while I made up lies. It made sense for her to be here at C.T. Jill didn’t require her employees to enroll, because that would be illegal, but she strongly suggested it. Maria, Amy, and I were all members.
Amy soon joined us and she loaned me one of her C.T. track suits since mine were locked away in the U-Stor-It. It was a snug fit but I didn’t mind and she had a lot fewer Shame Badges than I did: Coffee Fiend, TV Junkie, Ditz, and Slut. That last one wasn’t fair to Amy—you earned the label ‘Slut’ if you went through boyfriends faster than Jill. If you went slower than her, you got one called ‘Prude.’ The less said about Shame Badges, the better.
A whistle summoned us out of the dressing room and into the makeshift dance studio. Super-Mike stood there, along with Jill, Popcorn Jeff the tow-truck driver, and a couple other C.T. regulars. But no Burke—thank God. Someone must have told him to stay away tonight. Or maybe he’d dropped out, now that he’d become the boy-toy plaything of an undead mistress.
Is that what I’d almost become? The arm-candy of Colin Braden, a man who’d lived more than a hundred years and claimed to have never met the right one—until me?
“Sparks!” boomed Super-Mike. He was a big guy, not fit like you’d hope your fitness instructor to be, but big, as in Chris Farley big. But that didn’t stop him from commanding a room. He had that same sort of overpowering charisma as Jill. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He whistled again and everyone formed up on their marks, yellow X’s taped onto the gym mats. Then he fired up the Tibetan temple music on his portable DVD player. We began our yoga stretches and bends, loosening up for the main routines.
The chimes and gongs put me in a relaxed state and I let my cares slip away, one by one. The familiar rhythm of physical exercise put me back in my place. Even Super-Mike running up and down the line, berating us with his bullhorn didn’t faze me. I’d stared down death in the form of a sluagh, seen vampires bend steel flashlights and leap over fences. An overweight man with a megaphone couldn’t rattle me now, even if he planned on Group-Shaming me.
Every session, one C.T. member is Group-Shamed. This is done to break down ego barriers and allow our inner selves to rise like phoenixes from the ashes. It’s brutal yet effective. Having half a dozen people scream the vilest names imaginable at you for over an hour breaks down your resistance. Your ego cracks but afterward you feel renewed.
But not today. Our regular exercise routine kicked off as Super-Mike switched the music over to something New Age-y, a soundtrack for astral travel or lucid dreaming. At the same time, he played one of his lecture tapes. These varied from Eastern gurus to motivational speakers. Today’s speaker was a woman. She sounded on the young side over the gongs and chimes.
“Five million years of human evolution,” the woman said, “argue against veganism. There’s not a hunter-gatherer society in the world—in the world—that doesn’t eat the meat and drink the blood of beasts, fish, birds, and other living things. Not a one.”
The voice chilled me—the words seemed alien, cold, distant, and far from the usual spiel we heard in our sessions. At the same time, my neck tingled to a feeling of déjà vu.
“We, with our factories of death,” the woman continued, “have bureaucratized meat and institutionalized predation. We put a mask over blood and deny our inner natures.”
It should not have taken me so long to recognize the voice of Cherise Braden.
“There are two forms of beasts within human skin,” she said. “Wolves and sheep—”
I broke ranks and dodged past flailing arms and legs. Reaching the DVD player, I hit stop.
“What are you doing?” Super-Mike shouted. Everyone froze and stared at me with dumbfounded expressions.
“Who’s that?” I demanded. “Who’s on that recording?”
“That’s the founder of C.T.,” Mike said. “If you hadn’t missed the last few lessons, you would have met her by now. She’s taking a more active role in leading the group.”
“Cherise Braden founded Concordance Therapy?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Her name is Saint Cherise,” said Super-Mike. “She’s a great guru, a reincarnation of Madame Blavatsky, the great 19th Century spiritualist.”
“You people are out of your fucking minds,” I said and ran out the door.
Super-Mike gave chase but proved too slow and stumbled. Jill almost caught me. She grabbed at my sleeve but I tugged free and took off down the sidewalk. She bellowed after me: “Sparks! Get back here this instant!”
I ignored them all. What a fool I’d been! Jumping around to that nonsense while my mom—my mom!—remained in danger!
Right then, I knew where to go and what to do.