A Taste of You Read online

  I wonder what that whispering voice is offering the spider.

  Okay, that’s weird enough. I get up, brush myself off, check my fanny pack, and head back for the car.

  Agent Nick does not turn up to scold me while I am taking off my gear and storing my skates in the back. Either Nick is learning something about me, or his creepy-voiced boss wants him to stay out of my sight.

  o0o

  My hands shake only a little bit as I drive over to Dr. Katterfelto’s seventies-era one-story office building. I don’t try to lose Agent Nick. He’s probably put a tracer on my car by now anyway.

  To play it safe, I leave my purse in the car, which was in the car while I was on skates in the blue, and which may also be bugged by now, and I bring the fanny pack with me.

  Dr. Katterfelto is accepting a heavy backpack from a wino on the front steps.

  The wino smells fierce. But when he turns to leave, stuffing some cash into his pocket, he smiles at me, and I smile back.

  Katterfelto sees me and smiles at me. They have the same smile.

  “That guy a relative of yours?” I say as I came up the sidewalk.

  “Vot makes you say that?” Katterfelto says.

  “I dunno, expression, I guess.”

  “We are brothers in spirit only.” Katterfelto looks me over. I wonder if the skin around my new tattoos looks pink. “You have news.”

  How does he do that? “Yes. Let’s go inside.” Nick may not have vampire ears, but he could certainly have conventional spying equipment. If he can afford it.

  In his office, Katterfelto says, “Vill you haff coffee?”

  “No thanks. And why don’t you drop the cheesey mad scientist accent with me? It sucks anyway.”

  He smiles at me again. “Some people find it comforting. And frankly I’ve been using it so long, it feels natural.”

  I can’t see why, with a smile like that, he needs to comfort people extra.

  I say, “I’ve been in the blue zone, at the foot of that power tower.”

  “Alone? That’s very dangerous.”

  “I believe you.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I heard a voice. It wasn’t loud. But I don’t think it was coming from anyone. Oh, and yeah,” I add, “the power tower bent down and looked at me. Scared the pee out of me.”

  “Wait, wait, slowly,” Katterfelto says, and I tell him about everything except Nick’s conversation with the man he calls Boss.

  Dr. Katterfelto looks somber. “You have exceptional hearing.”

  “I do.”

  “But this voice did not speak aloud.”

  He looks almost scared now, and I make another decision. “Dr. Katterfelto, that Federal agent I mentioned? He’s looking for a coin.”

  Katterfelto’s eyes widen, and he stands up as if he doesn’t notice he’s doing it. He blinks through his little wire-rimmed glasses at me.

  “This is a very dangerous enterprise,” he says.

  I know he is seeing a teenager in my chair, in spite of my tattooed-on crow’s feet. I roll my eyes.

  And then I remember when I have heard that voice before.

  When I was seventeen. Living in our ratty apartment in Rogers Park. Standing in the darkened living room with my mother’s tip apron in my hand, fishing for quarters, touching something larger than a quarter, heavier and warmer. A coin that whispered wonderful things.

  Katterfelto pulls at the lapels of his lab coat as if feeling them for rough spots. “Perhaps I should tell you. Yes.” He looks over the tops of his glasses. “You see, it is my fault that the blue zone is here in Chicago.”

  I feel my eyes bug out. “Okay, didn’t see that coming.”

  “That man you met on my doorstep. I fund my work through men like him. They have taken the elixir, as I have, and no longer want for anything. But they understand the importance of my work. So they beg for me, and I convert the change into bills, and share the money with them. My vork—” He stops and takes off his glasses and rubs his round little face with an actual handkerchief. “I’m sorry, I cannot talk any other way. The habit of many years is strong.”

  I shrug.

  “Eleven — no, twelve days ago, a man brought me a bag of change, as this one just did, and in it I found a special coin. A magical emblem, such as I have read about in texts from the Latin. This one looked like the work of Pseudo-Honorius.”

  I nod. I’ve read enough real magical history to recognize that name.

  “This emblem, it was freaky. Warm, you understand. Alive.”

  A prickle ripples over my skin.

  “I translated two of the four words on it, and I took some photographs. I studied the figures. Some I could identify. But all the time,” he says to me, “it vas — it was speaking to me.”

  I clear my throat. “That is freaky. What did it say?” I remember that my coin, the one in Jilly’s tip apron, was covered with tiny writing, lots and lots of words. Not just four words.

  “It said, ‘Vot do you want?’”

  “That’s what the voice was saying when I was inside the blue. It knew my name, too.”

  He nods. “As did my coin.” He fidgets. “I finally answered it.”

  I hold my breath. “What? What did you say?”

  “I said that I wanted to know what its purpose was. And it told me, ‘To give you magic.’”

  I blink. “Really.”

  “Really. Fortunately, I was protected by the elixir. I have no more wants, not of the kind it meant. But I was very afraid. Such a thing could be terribly dangerous. So I took it to a place where many factory have been closed, very underpopulated, and I buried it under the parking lot at the foot of an electrical tower. I came back two days later to make sure that it had not been discovered yet, and there is the blue zone.” He gives a mad scientist titter. “At that point, I would have hired a boat and gone out on the lake and thrown it in, only I knew vot would be the likely result.”

  I blink. “What result?”

  “Oh, a fish vould gobble it up, and der fish vould come to shore and be caught and eaten, and lo, the coin vould be found in its belly. Or something foolish like that.”

  I say, “What do you think it meant, when it said ‘what do you want?’” After a pause, I add, “And why don’t you want anything?”

  Katterfelto says, “I have taken the elixir. I am happy with myself. All those who vork with me have taken it. We must vork with very volatile things, you see. Human emotions. Magic. To have left desire behind is the first step in the successful vorking of magic, and yet almost no one hass ever done it. Because once they have achieved desirelessness—” He shrugs. “They no longer want to vork magic.”

  “But you do,” I say, struggling to keep up.

  “It is not for myself I do this. But you see what has come of my hiding the coin. Within days, the blue zone grows. It has gobbled up the power tower. There is no telling vot can come of that.”

  I frown. I remember the power tower bending over with its hands on its knees to look at me. “Oh. Did the blue stuff make the power tower come alive?”

  “No. Yes. Perhaps. Something else makes it alive. It, and potentially all the other towers.”

  Now I see that Dr. Katterfelto is nuts. His mad scientist thing is no fake. He believes every word of this.

  On the other hand, it would not be funny if all the power towers in the city started bending over and looking at people. “What makes them alive?”

  “Prana.” he says.

  The hairs stand straight up on the back of my neck.

  “Chi,” he explains. “Life force. The phlogiston. The substance of life, of being, of desire. Sexual energy. Élan vital.”

  That’s my derby name, Hélan Vittle. The “vittle” points to how I eat life force. That’s me, Helen Life Eater. Now I’m regretting putting my big secret on the back of my derby shirt. I gulp. “Those wacky power towers.”

  “It permeates the power grid somehow. I discover this only last year. I had a
mbition then, base ambition that I am relieved to say I have left behind me,” he says, his specs flashing as he throws his head up, “but I have learned this much. For many years the power grid has been filling up with prana. It is a vast reservoir of human energy.”

  I’m silent. My heart is beating fast.

  He says, “How it gets there, I do not know. Why it does not leak out, I do not know. How to release it for human use again, I do not know. But I am committed to learning all these things, and I vill return this energy to humanity, vich has somehow been robbed of its vital essence.”

  He doesn’t sound at all fakey, in spite of the mad scientist act. If nobility comes in a tubby little human shape and wearing a spurious lab coat, Dr. Katterfelto is noble.

  “Huh.”

  “You,” he says, looking at me with those searchlight specs now, “you have a special interest in energy.”

  I’ve been silent so long, I don’t know what to tell him. My throat has seized up.

  “Vork wiz me,” he says, leaning forward. “Even your Federal agent, he has something to contribute, if he can be brought to see this.”

  “Uh, he won’t,” I say. “That guy is solid wood.”

  Dr. Katterfelto raises his eyebrows. “Wood is a noble element. But I see you do not trust him.”

  “Heck no.”

  “Very well. Ve proceed as best we can.”

  I’m blinded with a brilliant thought.

  What if the coin can fix me? Change me back? What if it can turn my chakras around, or make me not a vampire, or just kill me?

  So far I don’t know if anything can kill me, and, in spite of all my sulking and whining, I’ve been too afraid to experiment with suicide.

  The world seems alive with possibility.

  I know somebody who is working on the magic problem.

  Weird, wild magic is infiltrating the whole world. Our government is forming secret agencies and thrashing around. The City of Chicago has declared that magic doesn’t exist in the vain hope that denial can achieve what paranoid scrutiny cannot.

  But I can do something about it.

  Because I know something.

  Not very much.

  But I know something. More than most of these clowns.

  I say, “What do you want to do, if you don’t mind my asking? Are you going to try to move the coin?”

  Katterfelto puts the tips of his fingers together. “The coin must stay where it is until ve haf a safe place to put it. But the blue is chaotic. It must not be permitted to absorb the power grid. Who knows what could happen then? I think the answer must be—” He hesitates. His head shakes. “Something has bridged the gap between the human power system and the power system of the nation, its energy life blood, if you vill.”

  I don’t say anything.

  He looks at me over the tops of his glasses. He may not be as ignorant about me as I hope. I’m not confessing anything.

  “How is the prana moving into the grid? How can ve get it out?” He leans forward now, his face deadly serious. “And how can ve keep it from falling into the wrong hands?”

  At this I blink. Katterfelto is such a sunny soul that it comes as a surprise to me that he can be paranoid, too.

  “Whose?” I say.

  “Not every magician has taken the elixir of self love,” he says portentously.

  I remember something Dr. Springe said about Katterfelto, that he’d taken an elixir of some kind, and yet he desired something. I’ll be going to see her tomorrow. I’ll ask her what she meant by that.

  I say, “Look, I have to get going.” I have to see my shrink again. And Agent Nick is no doubt waiting to ream me a fresh one for venturing to the blue zone on my own. If he admits to following me. Should be interesting to see how he finesses that one. I feel warm at the thought. I look at my watch. “Can I come back soon? I’d love to talk about this some more.”

  “I vas going to ask ven you would be so kind,” Katterfelto says. “There is much I vant to show you.”

  Oh goody. More wackness.

  Yet I am so ready. I have my leave of absence. Much as I love the boys, it’s a relief to get a little vacation. And I am betting that in spite of every wack notion in his noggin, Dr. Katterfelto will not ask me to change a pull-up full of pee-pee.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’m early for my session with Dr. Springe. As I open the door to her building, a woman comes out whom I recognize. She’s middle-aged, scruffy, a little funky-smelling, wearing an expensive track suit that has seen better days, a giant diamante brooch with “Beulah” written on it in sparkles, and a seriously expensive pair of sneakers. There are no laces in the sneakers. Their dirty tongues flop as she walks.

  “Oh, hello!” she says, smiling a familiar, warm, irresistible smile. Now I have to admit I recognize her. She’s Dr. Katterfelto’s receptionist.

  “Have you been seeing Dr. Springe?” I say, thinking, she can’t be crazier than I am.

  “Yes. I’m Beulah,” says the scruffy lady.

  “Hel.” We shake hands.

  “I remember.” She smiles again and steers me down the sidewalk, away from the building. “Dr. Springe will need just a few minutes of solitude,” she says serenely, as if she just left our shrink in a state of collapse.

  I don’t think I can handle seeing Dr. Springe in a state of collapse. I let Beulah lead me a few steps away.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say, “Have you known Dr. Katterfelto long?”

  “About a year. He invented the self-love elixir, you know.”

  “Did he.”

  “I helped convince him to try it,” Beulah says, not bragging, just setting the record straight. “He has saved so many. Ah, and here’s one.”

  A bum is crossing the street to where we stand. He looks clean but manifestly homeless. When he spots Beulah, the bum’s face lights up. It really does. I’ve never seen anybody look so happy to see another person. He looks halfway normal.

  “Dave,” Beulah says warmly, shaking hands with him. “This is Helen, who is working with Dr. Katterfelto.”

  Dave turns to me and lights up again. Now I think he’s homeless again, and I can tell why. He’s happy, so freakin’ happy he must be crazy.

  “Isn’t the doc something?” Dave says.

  Dave hauls a fanny pack out from under his many layers of clothes and hands it to Beulah. She pulls something out of her industrial-size purse, a plastic sandwich bag full of tiny little bottles. The bottles are way too small to contain enough hooch to satisfy a man in his situation.

  They exchange these objects and stow them away. The fanny pack goes chink! as it hits the bottom of Beulah’s purse. I picture Dave panhandling for change to get his fix from this woman, his connection to Dr. Katterfelto.

  The kindly old doc seems a little less kindly.

  “I’ve been telling Helen about Dr. Katterfelto taking the elixir,” Beulah says.

  Dave laughs. “Lucky guy.”

  I look at him, a question in my eyes.

  Dave explains. “The day you take it, that day is lucky, whatever day it is. He was this close,” Dave holds up thumb and finger, “to running for mayor. He dodged that bullet, though.” He shakes his head. “Lucky guy.” He looks me over with shrewd eyes. “You haven’t had it yet, have you?”

  “Uh.”

  He nods. “The elixir’s not for everybody.”

  “It certainly makes having teenagers easier,” Beulah says.

  I’m getting a little freaked out. Dr. Katterfelto seemed like such a nice old duffer. Now I’m picturing Beulah with a kid, a kid who is no doubt trying to pretend her family is normal.

  And good luck with that, you poor schmuck. My mom’s a head case, too.

  “And here are the others,” Beulah announces, while I contemplate bolting.

  A whole gaggle of homeless guys comes swarming toward us from all directions. They are not all as sweet-smelling nor as tidy as Dave, but they are all, to a man, happy. They greet one another and Be
ulah and me in glorious good humor. They all hand over what I have to assume are troves of panhandled coins, and receive more plastic bags of the little bottles.

  “How much does it street for?” I say, finally unable to pretend I’m not watching this.

  “It’s not for sale,” Dave says. “We give it away, when we can. Not everybody wants it.”

  “But what does it do?” Besides make you all bughouse.

  Of everyone here, I am the only person who isn’t in a perfect mood.

  “It lets you love yourself,” says Beulah.

  Then I notice something else. The prana right here is incredibly tasty. It’s like being surrounded by Jillys, only presumably not all drunks.

  Amazingly, these guys haven’t been drinking. I would know, I would smell it in their blood, in the pee on their clothes.

  One guy smells like cigarettes, but not his breath, just his jacket.

  I breathe deep. I want to wallow in their grand, happy energy. I feel a bit like a virgin at her first pot party.

  Beulah and Dave and their homeless buddies exchange glances, as if I have answered a question they were waiting to ask.

  “Well,” Beulah says, patting my arm. “In case you ever think you might try it.” She fishes one tiny bottle out of her purse and balances it delicately on her palm.

  I should get out of here.

  I put the bottle in my backpack.

  I should run.

  “And this is you loving yourselves?” I say.

  “Everyone has a lot to forgive themselves for,” Dave says solemnly. He looks at me, his eyes moist with sincerity.

  I shrink inside. I can never forgive myself.

  “I don’t have a job,” one of his buddies says, not seeming to care.

  “I have poison ivy,” says another, “but I don’t scratch. That way it gets better.”

  My eyes widen. “That’s spooky.”

  “I know,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Every other time I got it, I had to get cortisone from the free clinic.”

  “We let go of blame,” Beulah says.

  I look them over. It really is very like being surrounded by Jillys. Jilly who never blames herself. Jilly who may itch, but she doesn’t scratch.