Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

“Pay?” I still wasn’t wild about the idea of being put under a microscope. Wasn’t wild meaning that my spine twitched uncontrollably at the thought, but my traitor palm itched almost as much. I ignored it.

“You couldn’t mention it to the other subjects. They’re doing it for the academic good,” he pointed out with a slightly critical air.

“Doing it for the publicity, you mean.” Naivete, thy name is Chang, except it wasn’t… on so many fronts. And whatever was lurking behind those pale eyes had not even a passing acquaintance with gullibility.

“There won’t be any publicity. This is a serious study. It will be years before anyone besides other researchers see it.” He stood, too, although he was obviously reluctant to leave, while I couldn’t wait to see him go. I thought I might treat myself to that beer after all in celebration.

“Do my fellow psychics know that?”

“Ah… no,” he commented blandly. “Not exactly.”

“Yeah, thought so.” I indicated the door with one dark gloved finger. “You can ponder the selfless quality of human nature on your way out, Dr. Chang. And if that gets you too down, Luther makes a killer apple pie at the coffee joint three doors over. Best you’ll ever have. It’ll fix you up, right as rain.” I changed my mind about hearing the exact cash offer. It would only tempt me in a stupid, stupid direction.

He could’ve been a professor with nothing more than knowledge as his goal. Could’ve been, but he wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. I wasn’t a rat in a maze; I wasn’t a subject. And I wasn’t going to be under anyone’s thumb again, no matter for how short a period of time. Look at this, show me that. No, thanks.

“You get a percentage there, don’t you?” he said without surprise. “For every slice of pie sold, I’d guess.”

“You know it.” It was free meals, actually, but I didn’t mind some shining of my reputation. “Watch the door, Doc.” I didn’t mention the glass. “The spring’s loose. Wouldn’t want it to hit you in your academic ass, now, would we?”

He left. He didn’t want to. I expected him to argue further, but he didn’t. He either read my set expression correctly, or it was the saliva dripping from Houdini’s muzzle as it edged out from under the desk and around the corner to flash bared teeth. One of the two did the trick.

The rest of the day was spent doing what I liked best: making money. And I made it with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling or even suggesting to me what to do. I made it without owing anyone or depending on anyone for anything.

Just the way I liked it.

Home.

If you’d asked me when I was fourteen what my perfect home would be, it wouldn’t have been this. And I’d thought about it then-a lot. A mansion with a manicured lawn pampered against the heavy-handed Georgia summer. Not that I would do the pampering. I’d leave that to the professionals. After all, didn’t they come with the big house? People to take care of the outside, people to clean the inside. Surely they were part and parcel when the bank handed over the keys. The neighborhood would be as fancy as they came, with towering gates, paved roads, and not a single kid selling half-fermented berries from a four-board stand. The dreams of a fourteen-year-old. A place like that would’ve driven me nuts. Associations, rules, fees for anything and everything… hell, they probably even had one against scratching your ass after ten P.M. No, once I grew up, that dream wasn’t for me.

My reality now was better than that. Worlds better. My house was average-sized but paid for and was outside of town, north. It sat directly on the Chattahoochee River. The road was paved, barely, but my neighbors were out of sight around a bend in the shoreline. I saw them only rarely. Most likely they rented their cabin out to tourists the majority of the year. Many river folk did. It was all right. I valued my solitude. After delving into the private lives of people all day, every day, the quiet, the stillness, was welcome. Sitting on my deck with a frosty beer and watching the undemanding river flow by, it was the closest thing to heaven I was ever likely to experience.

The house itself was nothing to look at, not from the outside. Weathered cedar siding worn to a nondescript silver blended into the surrounding yellow poplar and sweet gum trees. You could be a hundred feet away and almost not see it, if not for the betraying sun-spangled glitter of a window. The inside, however, was more eye-catching. The ceiling was high and paneled in poplar, reddish brown wood with mellow streaks of gold. There was a lofted area edged with a banister over which were thrown two blankets of red, black, and gold. The walls were painted the same gold, the color of the late-afternoon air.

There were two leather couches-one for me and one for Houdini. I was willing to share, but he wasn’t as agreeable. Evil dog.

The kitchen was just that, a kitchen. When I cooked, I tended to try to burn the place down. Spending money on shiny new appliances would be a waste. The oven had been singed but good on only its second day, and it had only been downhill for it from there. The refrigerator was defrosted on a nearly daily basis. Houdini would sneak in the middle of the night to open it and root his big nose in the cold cuts-drawer. In the morning, I’d find a puddle on the tile floor and the stink of spoiled milk. I’d tried blocking the door with a chair. That lasted about two seconds. Then I’d tried securing it with a chain and padlock. That morning, I woke up to another puddle, and this one wasn’t water or melted ice cream. It was yellow and pungent, and it soaked through my socks before I saw it.

Houdini won that battle. As a rule, he won them all. A brain the size of a fist, and he outmaneuvered me every time.

The bedroom was in the loft, which made nighttime bathroom breaks a bitch of stumbling stairs and stubbed toes. But it was worth it when I woke up every morning to the green, yellow, and blue explosion that lay outside six-foot windows. Earth, sun, and sky-it was all that was eternal. In comparison with the rest of us, at any rate. In my business, you saw everything that was fleeting, you were shown that most things pass. It was nice to be reminded of the few exceptions. Abby had helped me with decorating the entire place. I might cultivate my personal look, but when it came to decking out the house, I was like most guys. I bought what was functional and closest to the checkout counter, so to speak. If I could sit on it or sleep in it, that’s pretty much all that mattered. Or at least so I thought. Abby straightened me out quick on that front.

I’d liked what she did with the rest of the house. It was bold and masculine and comfortable. The bedroom had been a different story. She and Gemma, her British girlfriend at the time, had wanted to do the room in white. For peace and moral purity, they’d said, Gemma in all her feng shui seriousness and Abby with a naughty wink. I think Abby was under the impression that I got more action than I actually did. I’m not saying I hadn’t gone through my share some years ago. After a while, that kind of tomcatting had gotten old, but not for the more noble and mature reasons most might eventually reach. I simply had gotten tired of the trying to tune out women’s life stories-stories they’d be horrified to find out I knew. Some guys, dumb-asses usually, bitch that their dates won’t shut up. Try multiplying that by a thousand, a million. I’d learned over the years to hold things off to a certain extent in my day-to-day life, keep it at arm’s length where it was a persistent whisper instead of a loud, constant drone. I’d gotten good at it. But during sex, all bets were off. All that skin-to-skin contact combined with the usual brain shutdown, arm’s length was hardly an option. Try doing your business with a person shouting her life story in each ear. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, but it’s a challenge, no doubt about it.