A Fold in the Tent of the Sky: A Novel

By Michael Hale

Struggling actor Peter Abbott is about to land the biggest role of his life. His audition for Calliope Associates—a clandestine private investigation firm made up of men and women with highly developed psychic abilities—requires only proof of Peter's psychic skills, no dramatic monologue.

Business is booming until members of the group begin disappearing at the hands of fellow psychic Simon Haywood. His genius is matched only by Peter's, but Simon alone discovers a unique way to use his extrasensory skills to travel back in time, committing crimes without any trace. Simon's mind grows warped and paranoid as the universe strains against his tinkering. Terrified that his extracurricular voyages will be curtailed, he plans to "erase" his colleagues. But Simon's methods are not exactly cold-blooded; instead he goes back to the moment of his victims' conception and prevents them from being created. Because no one in the present day recalls he or she ever existed, he's not caught . . . until Peter realizes what's happening. Now time is running out as Simon's sociopathic travels are disrupting the universe, folding and twisting the constraints of matter to a near-breaking point and threatening to spin the entire cosmos out of control.

A Fold in the Tent of the Sky takes murder into a new dimension as it races toward its electrifying, time-twisting climax.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9780062413116

Michael Hale

Michael Hale was born in Liverpool, England, and at the age of seven he emigrated with his family to Canada. He lives with his wife, Esther, a singer-actress, in Elora, Ontario.

Book preview

1

F. Scott Fitzgerald schlepped here . . .

There was a break in the second act where Peter got a chance to go outside for a breath of air—not fresh air, outside air. Just after the scene where he has to make a quick cross from stage left. As Penny ends her patter song about all the men she’s had in her life he breaks in with a line—something about the mileage on a used car—that usually got the house laughing. Tonight it just nose-dived into the orchestra pit. Not a chuckle, not even a cough. An audience is like that: a thing unto itself—a single creature with a mind of its own. Like a beehive.

So when his chance came Peter Abbott wasted no time in getting to the stage door and out on the steps to take a few deliberate, deep breaths—closing his eyes and doing what you’re supposed to do: the relaxation response, or whatever it’s called. It was one of those hot midsummer nights and with Ed’s cigarette sticking out from under his fake mustache—Ed played Penelope’s recently jilted lover—and the diesel fumes from the tour buses lined up along Kellogg waiting for the show to end, he was beginning to wonder whether the deep breathing was doing more harm than good.

The air started to churn all of a sudden and the dense sky out over the state capitol building started flashing to the steady rumble of thunder off beyond the horizon. Then the rain—huge drops of it exploding on the cars in the parking lot. The hiss of traffic over the wet pavement was like crashing cymbals.

‘The Mother Nature Show’—that’s what I tell the kids—‘Let’s go outside and watch the Mother Nature Show,’ one of the tour bus drivers was saying above the racket, the sudden storm and the shelter of the stage door entrance confederating them all against a common enemy. He was telling anyone who cared to listen how he entertained his kids on a stormy night like this—he liked to take them out on the porch and show them the lightning. I know all about lightning. It makes your hair stand on end—not many people know that; it’s the current—the electrons, whatever, flowing up, not down. If you’re out on a golf course, say, and you start to feel your hair stand on end, you’re gonna get hit.

One of the dressers came out then, saying she just heard over the radio about a tornado warning for the Twin Cities area, that one or two had touched down already out near St. Cloud. The announcer had made it plain that it wasn’t a watch but a warning, which meant they should all take cover. She stood there for a second or two blowing her new smoke out into the rain along with Ed’s and now the bus driver’s—he had opened his coat and was lighting the cigarette in the cup of it. It was as if all of them were trying to ward off this new threat with an old one they understood. Lung cancer.

Peter couldn’t figure out smoking. He’d tried it once when he was twelve or thirteen, somewhere round there—a cigarette he’d taken out of his aunt’s purse. The smell of them in the package was like coffee or smoked meat—that kind of appeal. But setting fire to it destroyed all that. And sucking in the smoke just burned his throat and made him want to throw up.

The bus driver pointed to where he lived on the other side of the river, where all the thunder and lightning was happening—flashbulbs at a rock concert—just as the siren began to wail, the air-raid siren that was supposed to be a tornado alert telling everyone to find a solid basement wall away from plate glass windows. But it was like car alarms going off—a nuisance. At best, just another part of the Mother Nature Show.

They all went back in for the rest of the second act and when he came outside again at the end of the show Peter had forgotten all about tornadoes. Andrew, the guy who played Howard, had tripped over something and pulled a hamstring; a missed lighting cue had thrown off the stagehands bringing down a fly. It occurred to Peter that it would have been a good night for a tornado, looking back on it now. Deus ex machina. It probably would have saved tonight’s performance; every performance. A show about Howard Hughes and the Spruce Goose needed a tornado in there somewhere.

Two performances left to go and they’d be out of there. A three-week hiatus and then on to Denver. Peter wondered if they would have gotten paid for a performance interrupted by a tornado, whether the fine print of his contract made allowances for such things.

The rain had stopped and the audience crowd filing along the street seemed mystified by the cool air. The women clutched at their programs and hunched their shoulders under suit jackets; their men in shirtsleeves whistled to themselves and refused to be cold. Every now and then Peter, dressed up as himself—after a Sunday matinee, say—would walk through the crowd on purpose and eavesdrop on what they had to say about the show; he wondered sometimes whether all that applause and the standing ovations were part of the act too, something people thought they were expected to do. The crowd always had a sweet smell about it—a conflation of best clothes and aftershave; good grooming and new leather—that always reminded him of his grandmother, the times she used to take him to the theater when he was a kid.

Back when the voices were still with him. It suddenly occurred to him how he took the silence for granted now. Over the years Peter had learned to shut out the voices, smells, and images he picked up in crowds of strangers—like now, walking along the sidewalk against the flow with people brushing past him. He had grown another set of eyelids, somehow—if that was the word for it; he couldn’t think of a better one—eyelids for his internal eyes, ears, and nose. And he’d learned to keep his hands away from things he had no business touching.

Other cast members were coming out the door now: women in leggings, baseball caps, and baggy shirts, the dancers with wet hair from the shower, dressed down next to the milling audience, which was the effect some of them were looking for.

One of the cars out in front of the stage door steps had that dark, luxurious, hired livery look about it. Muzak-bland, blue-black, neutral interior, definitely nothing hanging from the mirror, the engine running of course, and a guy standing beside the driver’s side, nice double-breasted—young, no more than twenty-five, twenty-six. Not unusual in itself—to see a limo like this one. Most of the leads took cabs, but Sandra (the woman who played Penny) being who she was, or thought she was, insisted on a stretch; so her dogs had room to breathe, she said, after a long night in her dressing room.

Ed came out and slapped Peter on the back. Sandra was with him and as he flashed by he looked at Peter for a meaningful moment and raised his bushy gray eyebrows twice in quick succession. Ed with scrawny, mouthy Sandra. Her two little yappy dogs were nowhere to be seen. For a fleeting moment Peter pictured them swirling in a shaggy helix up into the sky on their way to Kansas. Part of the Mother Nature Show.

The driver opened the back door with a certain professional flourish. (It was the kind of thing actors were supposed to watch for and analyze and afterward mimic in front of a mirror.) He had it right down: a subtle but deferential briskness. But at the same time he didn’t let go of his dignity; he held it high across his shoulders. Maybe he was an actor. A chauffeur/actor hoping one day to become an actor/chauffeur.

Peter was in for a less eventful night than Ed: a meeting with a couple of people from an outfit called Calliope. They’d called a few days ago and arranged to meet him after the show at the St. Paul Grill in the hotel near the theater. They wanted to talk to him about a job. A job that had nothing to do with show business, the man on the line had said; and after a night like the one he’d just had Peter was ready for something like that.

He suddenly realized how little he had to show for the ten years of his life he’d spent trying to make a go of it as an actor: a few spots on second-rate TV dramas and game shows; a clutch of demeaning commercials; the sporadic and frenetic hare of an income that would never catch up to the relentless tortoise pace of his day-to-day expenses. The tortoise would win in the end, just like in the old fable.

He walked around to the front of the Ordway Theater and crossed the street into Rice Park. It wasn’t much of a park really, a patch of trees and grass the size of a city block with a fountain in the middle and a few park benches; and it occurred to him that if he were to be mugged as he made his way to the St. Paul Hotel his assailant would probably piss himself laughing when he looked in his wallet—the twenty bucks in fives and ones; his credit-depleted MasterCard; and tucked behind his driver’s license, a crumpled clipping from The New York Times: Peter Abbott provided us with a more than passable ‘Mercutio,’ even though his talents would better lend themselves . . . etc.

He was directed to a booth in the corner, and at first glance the people he was supposed to meet looked like adoring fans, a couple from the audience, people with money from one of those big houses up on Summit Avenue, where F. Scott Fitzgerald had lived for a while. He noticed the woman first—she was young, attractive, and wearing a red dress—which made him think of his ex-girlfriend; she had been wearing a dress very much like it the last night they had been together. A celebration, she had called it—the night she had told him it was over—a celebration of what, he still had no idea. Something about the future, he remembered her saying, and some shit about how it was going to open doors for him instead of lock them tight.

Her companion, an older man with short gray hair and the beginnings of a wattled neck, stood up as Peter approached and said, This is Ms. Franklin and my name’s Thornquist. Elijah Thornquist. Most people call me ‘Eli,’ by the way. He extended his hand and Peter shook it. Ms. Franklin did that little hop thing women do as she slid over to make room for him.

Well, it’s good to meet you at last, Mr. Abbott, Thornquist said. I really enjoyed the show. I’ve never been to one of these mega-musicals before and I must say I was quite impressed—your character, if you don’t mind me saying so, was a little over the top—

Mr. Abbott was only doing his job, Eli—‘Peter.’ Can I call you Peter? Ms. Franklin turned in her seat to look straight at him. In the overhead light he could see a glint of scalp between the cornrows of her braided hair. There was a tiny cultured pearl in each of her earlobes.

Pete, he said looking down at her hands; she had the program from the show in front of her. It was open at the page with his bio on it. She—or maybe Thornquist—had underlined some of the text.

‘Pete,’ then. We’ll call you Pete. Her chin came up as she said it, making it sound like the moss, peat moss, the way the t-sound came out. It made him think of the Irish—how all the ends of their words came out finished, sharp edged. Or it could have been just the notion of peat. Bogs and peat fires in stone cottages that overlooked the crashing Irish Sea; a glass of tepid Guinness in a smoky Dublin pub.

They made small talk about the show: the stuff people always asked about—the size of the cast, what Penny was really like. Thornquist was curious about the special effects, how they got the Spruce Goose to look as if it were really flying.

The waitress brought them their drinks. Ms. Franklin had ordered a martini with something in it—cranberry juice maybe—that made it go with her dress. Peter’s beer matched the dark wood paneling. Thornquist was still waiting for his decaffeinated coffee.

It’s the weekend for you now, isn’t it, Mr. Abbott? Thornquist said, taking a small notebook from his breast pocket. A ‘dark day,’ isn’t that what you call it? When you get a whole day off? He placed it on the table where his coffee cup should have been.

No, not this week. Two shows tomorrow and that’s it for St. Paul.

Well, when you’re free we’d like to fly you out of here if you don’t mind. Someplace quiet. Warm. He said this as if Minnesota in the middle of July wasn’t warm enough. That’s if you like what we have to offer you of course.

. . . fly you out of here; that was probably supposed to impress him. Peter was sick of flying. He was planning to take Ed’s new Saab to Denver for him. He was looking forward to a leisurely drive along back roads between cheap motels.

Something about a job, you said on the phone.

Yes, a job. A very good one. Starting— He actually looked at his watch. Immediately. There was a slow, tight-jawed drawl to his voice, a sort of a Boston, William F. Buckley thing that in a younger man might have marked him as gay. "We’re putting together a team of people much like yourself—a team of sensitives, for want of a better word—psychics, I guess, clairvoyants—we have a dowser or two on the short list, I think—"

Are you sure you’ve got the right person? Sounds like you’re putting together some kind of a—circus act. He was tired all of a sudden; he wanted nothing more than to get home, kick off his shoes, and fall asleep under the blare of marginal television.

Maybe we should start at the beginning, Ms. Franklin said, giving Eli a look that said Let me give it a shot. Her voice was an alto milk shake. Calliope’s main focus is private investigation. We work for multinationals—mining interests, insurance cases, bank fraud—things like that. We deal in information, basically. The way we go about it is a little unorthodox but—

Eli shifted in his seat and folded his arms, noisily breaking in with We’re sort of the Pinkerton’s of the twenty-first century, if you know what I mean. His eyebrows went up after that one, then the little smile, as if he’d studied tapes of Firing Line till he got it just right.

I get the feeling this has nothing to do with my . . . career. Am I right? Peter said, watching Ms. Franklin take a sip of her martini. "Nothing to do with movies, acting—unless you’re into stuff like Mission Impossible."

"Acting? In a way I suppose it has a lot to do with acting. Eli again. Have you ever heard of ‘remote viewing’?"

Someone dropped a tub of dishes somewhere in the back and the people at the table by the window gave it a round of applause.

Is that like channel surfing on someone else’s TV? He had heard of it—on one of those tube tabloids—all jumpy camera work, Karloff voice-overs and pre-millennium goose-bump music—but he was playing dumb; he was trying to get a cheap laugh out of Thornquist, a smile from the other one, if she was paying attention at all. Look. I’ve never done anything like that—when I was a kid, sure, there was a time when I was—I guess you’d call it ‘psychic.’ But since then— His mouth closed tight and he shook his head.

We’ve done our homework, Pete. She had the program in her hands again. You took part in a grad student’s telepathy experiment back when you were in college. Do you remember that? You did exceptionally well, by the way; that’s how you made our shortlist. So we know you can do it.

The party of clappers by the window was now turning an order of bread pudding into someone’s birthday cake. Peter and the people from Calliope paused for a few dutiful seconds while some of the staff scurried through a version of Happy Birthday.

Look. The bottom line is I already have a job, and I’m locked in for another six months.

We’re willing to buy out your contract, Eli said. If that’s what’s holding you back. Pay you five times what you’re making now. He looked at Ms. Franklin as if he were waiting for her to contradict him.

Yeah? Five times. For how long? It sounded like some of the fairy tales his agent liked to spring on him, usually in the middle of the night (the concept of time zones was beyond her). Bedtime stories.

As long as you like. You can stop, quit, whatever—anytime you want, no questions asked—go back to the show if you’re so inclined, finish out the tour, Thornquist said.

You could fix it so I could get back in the show, just like that?

As a matter of fact, it’s already been arranged, Ms. Franklin said.

And I’m supposed to believe all this.

Give Earl a call when you get home, Thornquist said.

Earl Phillips, the company manager. It had to be—there were no other Earls in his life.

A car was waiting for them when they got outside—not as fancy as the one Ed and Sandra had driven off in but cut from the same formal cloth. It was cooler now and a wind played games with the trees in Rice Park. He was going to let them drive him to his apartment. As the car pulled away he opened the window a crack and took a breath of relatively clean Minnesota air, then thought about the tornado siren going off and nobody doing anything about it.

Peter was playing the messages on his machine while he emptied the fridge—dumping milk down the drain, cramming perishables into a plastic bag for the garbage shoot: "Calliope’s faxing me the fine print in the morning. It’s Celia, by the way; it’s about tenish. Give us a call when you can. Cheers . . ."

His agent—everyone thinking it was a movie, for some reason. Earl and now Celia.

Earl had told him all about the arrangements they had made—they being Thornquist’s superiors at Calliope Associates—the buyout, the guarantees, the compensation fee to smooth out the transition period if he was going to be gone for an extended length of time. Earl saying, Your ship’s come in, buddy.

Something about it made Peter want to keep the true nature of it all to himself. He realized then how ashamed he was of his so-called special gifts. And he couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t last, that he’d be back onstage doing his passable knockoff of Danny Kaye meets John Cleese in no time at all—that his trip to some place warm (Calliope headquarters, wherever that was) would be nothing more than a well-paid vacation. What did he know about remote viewing, psychometry, clairvoyance—and what had Ms. Franklin called all those voices that used to run through his head when he was a kid? Clairaudience.

But it would be more than just a vacation, he knew that. More than just a job if it actually worked out. He was starting something that reminded him of the day in grade school when he stood up in front of the class and told a story—one of his own, a shtick about an astronaut seeing a UFO outside his space capsule, something like that—and realized he could get them all to follow every word he was saying. He could see it in their eyes; he had them trapped in the web of what he was spinning out. And right then he knew that one day he would be onstage making people laugh and probably getting paid for it.

He had been sure of it the way he knew about restaurants sometimes, just from passing them on the street—how the chef was feeling that day; the pedigree of the crab salad; the E. coli count on the washroom door handle.

Where’s all the money coming from to fund something like this? Peter said. People like me don’t come cheap, by the sounds of it. They were in an airport shuttle this time—all three of them again—rolling down 35E through the bushy fringes of St. Paul. They skirted the Mississippi for a minute or so before heading west along 494 through the suburban sprawl of Minneapolis—airport hotels and car dealerships and big brown official-looking signs sucking traffic into the Mall of America. Eli turned around from the seat in front, his face less severe than last time; he looked younger in the daylight. Well. Like any other new enterprise we rely on venture capital. We’re listed on the stock exchange. We have people working on that end of things in New York. If you want to see the prospectus, I can get you a copy of it—

No, no. It’s okay. I was just curious.

Believe me, in a couple of years there’ll be all kinds of copycats chasing our tail. They’ll have a new category on the nightly business report: ‘Psi stocks,’ or something like that. Eli’s bottom lip came out; he was haggling with himself. —or ‘Psi Technologies’—listed right after ‘Pharmaceuticals.’ He smiled, and looked over at Ms. Franklin, yearning for her approval. Thornquist’s legs were crossed and his pant leg had ridden up, giving Peter a view of hairless white flesh, Wonder bread white.

The airport was busy, even for a Sunday, or typical for a Sunday. Peter didn’t really know—it just seemed busy. Ms. Franklin walked ahead of him to the American Airlines counter. She had his almost-expired passport in her hand; a porter followed along with the bags: his duffel bag and her expensive-looking matched set. Eli was nowhere to be seen. Ms. Franklin was wearing a neat little business suit today—dark green with a white blouse, a pearl brooch at her throat. She handed him the ticket: an open return through Miami, first class. He was heading for the Caribbean: St. Martin. Definitely warmer than St. Paul.

Ed had taken a woman to St. Martin—or was it St. Kitts?—on a last-minute three-day package tour; he’d tagged a personal day on to his weekend. He’d met her in the Mall of America. In a store that sold only shoelaces, all kinds of shoelaces. Personalized shoelaces. It boasted the longest shoelace in the world. Pete remembered this because when Ed got back, he had given Peter a blow-by-blow, so to speak, of his lost weekend, of what he had done with this pair of shoelaces he’d bought in the store the first time he’d met her—the ones with Tie me up! woven into them—over and over again, from aglet to aglet. That’s what the little plastic things on the ends of a shoelace were called—aglets. This too Ed had brought back with him from St. Martin.

St. Paul to St. Martin. Peter wondered if there was some kind of pattern building already. The Lives of the Saints. He was being either blessed or cursed, or maybe to be a true saint you had to be both.

Later, when they were in the air and the flight attendant was coming by with the pretzels and the trolley of drinks, it came to him that he would probably never do another performance of Howard again. He was never going back—to St. Paul, or New York. A show like Howard, or any other show for that matter. He would never get the so-called big break, never win a Tony or get a three-movie deal in Hollywood (Emerald City, some of the kids in the show called it). And he realized he didn’t really care one way or the other anymore—no more Yellow Brick Road. Tornadoes, yes. Lots of wind and water, rain—a few munchkins. He kept seeing a tornado for some reason—a big swirling funnel cloud like the one at the beginning of the movie—a cheap special effect made out of metal hoops covered with fabric. He’d always thought it looked like a spinning circus tent with no roof doing a hula dance, an undulating tube stretching all the way up into the black sky over Dorothy’s farm.

2

Sometimes a squiggle is just a squiggle . . .

Peter woke up to the scent of the place first, the hint of chlorine and mildew, coconut suntan lotion. The air conditioner blotting out anything like real sound. A high stucco ceiling, exposed rafters, a fan, terra-cotta floor tile, white wicker furniture, lurid floral fabric on the cushions—the whole place tricked out with a time-share show-suite kind of flamboyance.

He rolled out of bed and pulled back the curtains, his eyes slowly turning the dazzle into blue-green, full-cream beach, then blue again, the sea turquoise-brown where it cut into the rocky shoreline, palms right there outside the window. He shut off the air conditioner and opened the French doors. Thornquist was right; it was warmer than St. Paul—a balcony, a breeze, a real one, genuine tropical air blowing across his chest; hibiscus, lizards darting like floaters across his field of vision. There were real sounds now: the rustle of the growing things working with the breeze. No smoke. Ed’s cigarette was on the other side of the world.

We want you to relax for a few days, get your bearings, the feel of the place, Thornquist was saying—this was later over breakfast. If you want to do some sight-seeing, we can let you have one of the cars for a day or two. He was wearing a suit at ten o’clock in the morning, twenty yards from the beach. The waiter brought him orange juice and a coffee and he sat there taking alternating sips of each as Peter finished his omelet.

There’ll be more of you trickling in over the next few weeks—but don’t feel compelled to introduce yourself. It’s not a Shriners convention. His straw fedora was in his lap; his hair looked thinner in sunlight.

‘More’?

The others, new recruits like yourself. He smiled. "Not quite like you, all different really. Thornquist turned in his chair and gazed off toward the pool—a kid about sixteen was moving beach chairs around, swiping at them, brushing them off with the towel he kept draped over his shoulder, lining them up in the morning sun. All alike, but all different. He pulled his gaze back and smiled, tipping his head to one side—Peter thought of the actor Anthony Hopkins for a second—a false smile, something salesmen are trained to do. Like I said: get your bearings first, relax. He looked out toward the beach. Enjoy the amenities. He slid his chair back noisily, draining his orange juice glass at the same time. His hat was on his head now. His bottom lip came out to tell the world he was thinking. He stood up and said, If you need anything—" then nodded the rest of it.

His hand was in his pocket; Peter thought he was pulling out money—a tip for the waiter, maybe; but he came up with a small metal box. It was a dull, filing-cabinet gray, about the size of two packs of cigarettes side by side. If you don’t mind, Mr. Abbott, when you get a minute, today or tomorrow, a quiet time in your room—see if you can tell me what’s inside. No pressure. We’ll talk about it in a day or so. The smile again. Over coffee. He placed it gently next to Peter’s egg-smeared plate. There was a notarized seal along one side, and a little sticker on the lid, like a price tag—with the number 16 written on it.

Peter spent the next few days waiting for something to happen, for these other recruits to show up so he could start earning his keep. He strolled along the beach and explored the small town about a twenty-minute walk down the road. It had a Shell station selling Robbie’s lottery tickets and Coke. He found a place on the waterfront that served jerk chicken, rice and peas, Jamaican beer. As he walked back toward Calliope a flock of kids in uniforms came out of their school, running past him, gangling and graceful all at once.

The ruins of an old mill on the craggy hill overlooking the bay was something he decided to leave till later. Peter steered clear of it as he always did with old abandoned places. He sensed, however, that it had something to do with why they had hired him; that they wanted him up there listening, smelling out the dank past of the place. He still hadn’t touched the metal box Thornquist had given him. It was where he’d left it that morning: in his room on the shelf above the hookless coat hangers.

You’re a very gifted man, Mr. Abbott. Ms. Franklin—her first name was Jane, Peter had discovered; she called him Mr. so he kept calling her Ms.—was interviewing him in a part of the place he’d never seen before. The terrace beyond the French doors faced away from the ocean; it looked out on a scrubby hillside scarred with power lines; a microwave relay tower poked through the green crown of the hill beyond it.

When you were in college you volunteered for an ESP experiment, do you remember? Guessing Zener cards? Your psych prof suggested you do it. A plain cream cotton T-shirt today—and blue jeans, in spite of the heat. Legs crossed, leaning back in her chair, a white sandal barely holding on to the one foot he could see. She held the pen between her fingers like a cigarette. Long fingernails as red as her dress had been that night in St. Paul.

Yeah, you mentioned that in St. Paul, Peter said, thinking back—school days, school days. That was a long time ago.

Not so long ago. You did well on that test. Extremely well. She was using her notes now, tapping her pen at the page, making it spill the beans. "So well, they brought you back in for a few more sessions. Do you remember that? Your score was off the chart. The second and third run of tests, you were back on track, statistically safe." Her voice a swerving alto, slow—creamy, like her T-shirt.

All I remember was doing the test again, getting it right this time, I mean, not rocking the boat. I was happy about it because it meant more money. I think it was fifteen bucks a session, something like that. He remembered sitting there in this stuffy booth with this microphone in front of him that smelled of cigarettes. They had him wear a headset that beeped every time he was supposed to guess what card a grad student in the next room was dealing to himself—Zener cards, she called them—one with a squiggle, another with a box—like that. A circle, a star. Five in all.

What would you say if I told you you did even better the second set of trials but in a different way? He said nothing. You got almost every card right but out of sync. Your hits were for the card after the one you were aiming for. You were picking up data from the future. Or clairvoyantly reading the cards in the deck before they were picked up by the experimenter.

Pete wasn’t surprised at all, really. This kind of stuff had been happening to him all his life; he hadn’t needed some sophomore test to convince him of it. And he didn’t now. What puzzled him was that they felt this gift he had was so important—to him it was a curse. All his life he had tried to hide it, like a bad case of psoriasis.

Do you remember taking a quiz back then? Around the same time you were doing the ESP trials—a multiple-choice questionnaire?

He shook his head.

No? Well someone in the psych department gave you what’s called a Myers-Briggs—it’s a personality assessment test. You scored a high ENFP, which means you’re an ‘Extroverted’ slash ‘Intuitive’ slash ‘Feeling’ slash ‘Perceptive’ kind of guy. The correlation between a high ENFP and psychic ability is a statistical fact. It’s no wonder you did so well with the telepathy experiment. She put down her pen and leaned back in her chair; it gave back a faint, door-hinge squeak. What we’d like to do is test you again if you don’t mind.

What? This Myers-Briggs thing? Or the Zener cards?

She shook her head. Something a bit more challenging. A ‘stretch.’ Isn’t that what they call it in your business? She smiled in that way confident women do, more with the eyes than the mouth. Then again, it could have been something she’d picked up in a salesmanship course—like parroting body language.

Have you dealt with Eli’s target yet? The little box he gave you?

No, I keep putting it off.

Why?

I don’t know. ’Cause it’s there, the reverse Mount Everest thing—procrastination.

Is that all?

What do you mean? Peter knew exactly what she meant; she wanted him to spell it out—put it into words, confront it, dredge it up just like they say in all those off-the-rack self-help therapies—lure him into something like an AA meeting where he was supposed to get up and testify: My name is Peter and I’m an actor, but