Chasing Rainbow

  “Advice?” Roxy interrupted. “My dear Rainbow, you don’t know enough about the subject to handle this, and nothing I tell you over the phone will give you enough information. So I’ll do you one better. I’ll be there tomorrow night.”

  Rainbow was astonished. “Tomorrow? But the cruise … your contract…”

  “Hang the contract. I took this job only because I wanted to take a cruise. I thought it would be exotic and romantic. Instead I’m locked up in a place smaller than the average prison with a bunch of codgers who are even older and more senile than I am! I can’t wait to get off this boat, and I don’t care if they don’t pay me a dime.”

  “But you’re at sea!”

  “We’re docking in San Juan early in the morning. I’m going to jump ship and fly home. You need me, Rainbow, and I’m on my way. Dawn and I will call you from the airport when we get in, but don’t worry about picking us up. I’ll take a limo.”

  “But—”

  But Roxy had already disconnected.

  Rainbow stood with the receiver to her ear, listening to the dial tone, and wondering what she had just unleashed.

  Nine

  Rainbow was actually glad when she saw the airport limo pull up in front of her cottage the next evening. She’d spent the entire day brooding—except for a scheduled reading and a walk-in—and thinking about the time she’d spent with Jake the preceding evening.

  Something had happened when he had taken her hand while they walked on the beach, something that had left her feeling warm and happy and maudlin all at once. It was as if she’d tasted something she wanted and knew she could never have. Which was, of course, exactly what had happened.

  Most of the time, she didn’t mind living alone. There were advantages, of course. She was free to do as she chose, and she was responsible for no one but herself. Cooking for one was the pits, but she’d even gotten used to that.

  But sometimes—sometimes she ached with loneliness, the kind no friend or relative could assuage.

  Today had been one of those days, and she’d found herself trying to recapture the feeling she had had last night when Jake had held her hand. She had felt excitement and yearning, of course, but she had also felt acceptance.

  Which was absolutely ridiculous, she kept telling herself. Look how Jake had reacted to the whole idea of her psychic powers. He would never accept her.

  At least he was more honest than Walter had been. Walter had initially greeted her assertion of psychic abilities with an indulgent smile. Later, when she always knew what he wanted for dinner before he even got in the door, he dismissed it as coincidence, and “thinking alike.”

  But finally there had come the day she told him he was going to receive a job offer from a major brokerage firm. He’d laughed it off, telling her not to take herself so seriously. He hadn’t even applied for a job there.

  When he got home that night, he hadn’t been laughing. He’d taken the job offer, which had been exactly what she had predicted, but he had also ended their relationship.

  “You’re too creepy, Rainbow,” he’d told her, among other unkind things.

  But the sight of her mother sailing up the walk with her purple caftan flying and the matching turban askew on her orange hair brought the first genuine smile of the day to Rainbow’s lips. Her sister Dawn was right behind their mother, her chunky body clad in the customary mannish business suit. Dawn had gone even more overboard than Rainbow in trying to dress conservatively, so much that she was as odd looking in her own way as their mother.

  “My baby,” Roxy said, reaching out to embrace her and surround her in a cloud of lavender perfume.

  Rainbow felt tears prickle her eyes as her mother’s arms closed around her, holding her tight and rocking her gently. It occurred to her that she was never going to be too old for her mother’s love to comfort her.

  They moved inside, lugging the luggage, and Rainbow started making the inevitable pot of tea. Dawn doffed her jacket, revealing a surprisingly pretty beige shell. Roxy ditched her turban and finger-combed her thinning hair.

  “It was awful,” she said forcefully. “Just awful! The seasickness was bad enough, but being cooped up with a bunch of people who think the height of excitement is dining at the captain’s table was more than I could take.”

  “They’re just not our kind of people, Mother,” Dawn remarked.

  “Certainly not! Look at me. I’m nearly seventy-three, but I only feel fifty. I always say you’re as voung as you feel. These folks should have been decaying corpses years ago!”

  Rainbow smothered a laughed. “Don’t be unkind.”

  “I’m not being unkind. I have nothing against the elderly. A lot of people would put me in that class. But this group—well, it was a wonder they didn’t all have nurses to help them around. One woman came to me for a reading and then had chest pains— chest pains!—when Mustafa spoke to her. What did she think was going to happen if she asked questions from a trance channeler?”

  “It can be shocking, how different you sound and look when one of your guides is speaking,” Rainbow said.

  “Well, of course! That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  “The woman was rather frail, Mother,” Dawn said.

  “If she was that frail, she shouldn’t have been on that ship! Good heavens, they had to have a helicopter come get her and take her to a hospital.”

  “It could have happened to anyone,” Dawn argued. “These things can’t be predicted.”

  “Hmph.” Roxy scowled at her and looked over at the stove. “Is that tea ever going to be ready?”

  “The water will boil eventually,” Rainbow said.

  Just then her doorbell rang. Excusing herself, she went to answer it.

  Jake stood there, hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. “Hi,” he said, looking as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there.

  Then, behind her, Rainbow heard her mother say with great satisfaction, “Aha! I knew it!”

  With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Rainbow looked over her shoulder. Roxy was grinning like a cat that had just caught a canary.

  “Introduce me,” Roxy said, marching forward, her caftan billowing around her like the sails of a Roman galley. “I knew there was a man in the picture somewhere.”

  “Ah,” said Jake, in a tone that made Rainbow’s head swing around to look at him. “I take it this is your mother.”

  Rainbow stood between them, thinking that this was going to be one of those terrible collisions, like the ones that happened when atoms crashed in a linear accelerator. There would be an explosion, and pieces would fly everywhere.

  “Rainbow’s apparently lost her voice,” Roxy said. “I’m her mother, Roxy Resnick.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Rainbow’s told me a lot about you.”

  “None of it very flattering, I bet. I’ve always embarrassed her.” Roxy stuck out a plump hand and Jake shook it.

  “I’m Jake Carpenter,” he said. “Rainbow and I are working together on the haunting over at Paradise Towers.”

  Roxy frowned. “You don’t have a psychic’s aura.”

  “I’m not psychic,” Jake said, looking uncomfortable, “but I’m the guy with the chair on his ceiling.”

  “How apropos,” Roxy said. “I can’t think of a better place to put a chair on a ceiling than in the home of a nonbeliever.”

  Jake actually grinned. “It does seem to make a statement.”

  “Loud and clear, I should think.” Roxy favored him with a smile. “Come in, come in. We were just about to have tea. And afterward, if you’re a very good boy, I may read your tea leaves.”

  “That would be … interesting.”

  Life was tough enough, Rainbow thought with a sinking heart, without bringing Roxy Resnick, medium extraordinaire, into contact with Jake Carpenter, realist extraordinaire. She could already see storm clouds on the horizon.

  Jake and Dawn exchanged pleasant greetings, then everyone gathered at
the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Rainbow poured boiling water into the teapot and set it on the counter to steep. She had bought a box of the glazed chocolate doughnuts her mother loved, and she placed a half-dozen of them on a plate, passing out napkins to everyone.

  “Now, sit while the tea steeps,” Roxy ordered, “and tell me what’s been going on.”

  Jake and Rainbow looked at one another, each clearly hoping the other would begin the tale.

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Jake said, proving he had more guts than Rainbow. “Odd things have been reported. Items flying through the air, mainly. I haven’t ruled out human inducement, or even the building settling.”

  “But then,” said Roxy, “there’s the chair on the ceiling.”

  Jake looked rueful. “Yes,” he said, “there is the chair on the ceiling.”

  “You’re sure it’s not bolted there?”

  “It moves when I push it, but it won’t come down.” He shrugged a shoulder and looked at Rainbow. “I tried to work today, but every few minutes I had to come out of my office and look at that chair, to be sure it was still there. At one point I found myself lying on the couch looking up at it, just waiting for something to happen.” He shook his head. “I must be losing it.”

  “Actually,” said Roxy in her best I’m-giving-a-lecture voice, “that’s a perfectly normal response to a miracle.”

  “I’m not ready to label it a miracle.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Roxy favored him with an indulgent smile. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Mother—”

  “I’m a petroleum geologist,” Jake answered.

  “Ah! A scientist. Well, of course this is giving you serious difficulty. It seems to fly in the face of all known physical laws.”

  “Exactly!” Jake looked like a man who’d at last found another sane person on the planet.

  Rainbow looked at her mother, wondering how Roxy managed to do it. Even Walter had liked her and had never felt “creeped out” by her. Now Jake appeared about to become another Roxy Resnick conquest.

  “Have you ever been married?” Roxy asked.

  “Mother!” Rainbow was appalled. Surely Roxy wasn’t going to vet Jake as a potential mate.

  But Jake suddenly grinned, as if he were enjoying himself hugely. The wicked sparkle in his eyes made Rainbow uneasy.

  “No, I’ve never been married,” he said. “Have you?”

  “Once, long ago,” Roxy said. “Morris Feldman, the novelist.”

  “Really?”

  “He was a dear soul, but we just weren’t meant for one another. And after Morris, well… no one else could quite measure up.” Roxy looked at him sharply. “Are you too critical?”

  “I like to think I’m a clear thinker.”

  She stabbed a finger at him. “You’re evading my question, young man. You called my daughter a fraud. Is that your usual method of dealing with people?”

  “Obviously not. I haven’t called you one yet.”

  Rainbow held her breath, sure that her mother would erupt, but Roxy startled her with a hearty laogh.

  Xeeding something to do, Rainbow poured tea for everyone and passed around the milk and sugar. Roxy bit into a doughnut with obvious relish and a few comments on the rubber chicken that seemed to have been a staple on the cruise. Dawn looked at Rainbow and rolled her eyes.

  “I saw that,” Roxy said to her.

  Dawn shrugged. “From the moment we set foot on that boat, all you did was complain.”

  “There was plenty to complain about. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay hundreds of dollars to have such a miserable time.” She turned to Jake. “Don’t ever take a cruise.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  Just then Rainbow heard her front door open. Moments later Gene, wearing a purple T-shirt that said, my other shirt is in the wash,” entered the kitchen.

  “Gene!” Roxy shrieked. “Rainbow didn’t tell me you were here!”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Roxy.” He smiled at them all, dropped a kiss on Rainbow’s and Dawn’s cheeks, and gave Roxy a hug that she claimed wasgoing to shatter her spine. Then he shook hands with Jake.

  “Well, well,” he said, “isn’t this cozy?”

  “We’re just getting to know Jake,” Roxy said.

  “Cross examining him, you mean.” He took a doughnut and looked at Jake. “Did she ask you what you do?”

  “Yes.” The corner of Jake’s mouth lifted with humor.

  “And whether you’ve ever been married?”

  “We got to that.” “And how much you make?” Jake shook his head. “We haven’t discussed that yet.”

  Gene clucked his tongue and shook his head at Roxy. “You’re falling down on the job, Rox. You should have had that out of him by the third sentence.”

  “It’s none of my business,” she replied with a sniff.

  “Mm. I never knew that to stop you.” “Besides,” she said airily, “Mustafa already told me.”

  Jake looked startled.

  “Mother,” Rainbow said swiftly, “please don’t…”

  “Why not?” Roxy demanded. “He may as well know us, warts and all, right from the start. It saves misunderstanding later—which you should have learned from Walter.”

  “Please,” said Jake, “will somebody please tell me about Walter?”

  Four pairs of eyes fixed on him. “Why?” Roxy demanded.

  “Because he’s been mentioned to me several times, and my curiosity is killing me. I’m envisioning a cross between Genghis Khan and Dracula.”

  Rainbow wanted to die. The last subject she wanted her family to discuss with Jake was Walter.

  Roxy ignored her daughter’s pained expression. “Is this just idle curiosity?” she demanded.

  Jake grinned. “Probably. How could it be anything else when I don’t know Walter?”

  Roxy laughed, and Gene looked amused. Dawn and Rainbow exchanged glances of commiseration.

  Rainbow spoke. “This really isn’t appropriate, Mother.”

  “Mothers know best,” Roxy replied with a dismissing wave of one plump beringed hand. “Walter,” she said, in a disapproving tone that might well have been applied to a mass murderer, “was Rainbow’s fiance.”

  “Was?” he asked.

  “Was,” Roxy repeated.

  Jake looked at Rainbow, and she was surprised by the gentle sympathy she saw in his face. “I guess,” he said, “that Rainbow should be the one who tells me about him, then. And only if she wants to.”

  Rainbow gave him a grateful smile.

  “Nonsense,” said Roxy. “She can’t possibly be objective.”

  “Neither can you, Mother,” Rainbow said.

  “Yes I can. I wasn’t nearly as distressed by the breakup as you were! In fact, I wasn’t distressed at all. That man was no good for you. The only thing I wonder about is why you were never able to see that yourself! Love is blind, I suppose.”

  Rainbow sighed and looked down into her teacup. There was no stopping Roxy, once she got rolling.

  Gene tried to intervene. “Really, Rox, you shouldn’t embarrass Rainy this way.”

  “How could I possibly embarrass her by saying that her former fiance was a toad? It’s not as if Rainbow did anything wrong!”

  “Certainly,” Gene said, “but…”

  Roxy waved him to silence. “The man was a toad. Of course, that wasn’t immediately apparent. All his warts were hidden in his mind. On the surface he appeared to be quite a nice young man. Well-mannered, handsome, successful.”

  “A stockbroker,” Gene said.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Dawn, who had a tendency to be a stickler for details, probably as result of her experience in the courtroom. “He worked for a large brokerage as an analyst.”

  “Whatever,” said Roxy, with a frown at Dawn. “He made money with other people’s money. I personally think that can lead to a certain weakness of character in some people, you know. They are perfectly willi
ng to take risks with other people’s assets. There’s something about that that troubles me.”

  “People in Walter’s profession are often very ethical, Rox,” Gene said mildly. “They tend to lose their jobs and go to prison if they aren’t.”

  “There are ethics, and then there are ethics,” Roxy said. “Be that as it may, this young prince was certainly a toad in disguise.”

  “Toad,” Dawn agreed with an emphatic nod.

  “This toad,” Roxy continued, “wooed my daughter with great determination—until he had her where he wanted her. Reminded me rather of a predator, now that I think of it. Toads don’t lure their prey, do they?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Jake said, the faintest hint of a laugh in his voice. He looked at Rainbow, and she saw the amusement there, warm and friendly amusement, as if he were really enjoying her mother.

  Resigned, Rainbow sighed and waited for the rest of the tale to be told in Roxy’s inimitable fashion, with detours every few paragraphs as she digressed into conversational byways.

  “Well, I still think he was a toad,” Roxy decided. “This toad, as it were, got engaged to my daughter and then proceeded to take advantage of her.”

  Rainbow looked sharply at her mother, wondering what the woman could possibly be thinking. Walter hadn’t taken advantage of her.

  “As soon as the ring was on her finger, he moved in with her. Now, I didn’t object to that. After all, that’s what people who love each other do, and I’ve never been very impressed with all that crap about waiting for marriage. In fact,” Roxy said with a flourish of her hand, “I simply can’t think of anything more appalling than putting two virgins into bed together on their wedding night! The blind leading the blind, if you ask me.”

  Rainbow flushed and stared fixedly at her tea, unwilling to see Jake’s response to that pronouncement.

  “All right,” said Gene drily, “we understand that you didn’t object to Walter simply because he moved in with your daughter.”

  “Certainly not,” said Roxy. “What I objected to was the way he used her. Rainbow had her own business back then, too, you know. She saw clients all day, and quite often in the evenings and on weekends. This… this toad didn’t seem to mind her working, but he contributed absolutely nothing to the household expenses once he moved in—I told you, Rainbow, that that wasn’t right!”