The Glimpse Trade (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 1
There’s a peculiar arrogance to spring.
Winter spends months convincing you the
world is a closed system. Fixed, dim, manageable if you lower your
expectations. Gray skies, wind chill factors, the omnipresent threat of snow (meteorologically
and existentially). Then the vernal equinox arrives like a polite rebellion. Hope
springs eternal, as they say. Equal light. Equal dark. A mathematical
suggestion that maybe balance is possible. I’ve never trusted balance. Like I
said, the universe is always up to something. Or, rather, someone has found a
way to help the universe act up.
As a metaphysical detective, I make my
living in the uneven places. The hinge moments. The almosts. People don’t come
to me because reality exploded. They come because it tilted half a degree and
won’t tilt back without a Herculean nudge.
Spring doesn’t explode either. It
negotiates. It coaxes. It insists that something buried might try again. Hope
is seasonal like that. It shows up whether you’ve budgeted for it or not.
*
The hallway door to my office sticks in
winter but loosens in March. Today it opened with less resistance, which I took
as either mechanical progress or cosmic foreshadowing. Dr. Calico Verde, the wise
and sultry psychiatrist with long legs and a sharp intellect, stepped through
without knocking, carrying that clinical calm that suggests she has already
mapped my mood.
“You look less exhausted than January,”
she observed. Calico is always observing me the way a mad scientist observes the
creature it wishes to raise from the dead.
“Thank you for noticing,” I said. “I
used that mani/pedi gift card you got me for Christmas.”
“Excellent,” she said, helping herself
to the chair across from the cluttered desk she says is the perfect metaphor
for my cluttered soul. Not brain. Soul. Apparently, that is an important
distinction.
“Have you been using the gift I got
you?” I asked.
“Ah, yes. An autographed copy of The
Rapture of the Follies by Guy Haversham. A book I’ve never heard of by an
author I’ve never heard of and a genre I don’t particularly care for.”
“I thought you liked fantasy.”
“I’m more of a reality gal.”
“Reality? You know better than that,” I
teased. “Reality is all too eager to offer up alternatives.”
“Speaking of which.” She removed her
gloves for her delicate hands. “I have a patient.”
“You usually do.” I stood and poured us
both a cup of bad coffee I brewed myself because her tone suggested this
conversation would be a doozy.
“This one is experiencing irregular
renewal.”
That got my attention. Yep. A real
doozy. She placed a slim folder on my desk. I set her coffee on the desk and
sipped mine while opening the folder.
“Avery Bloom.” I read the name aloud.
“She is a social media influencer who teaches
her followers to ‘curate your becoming.’”
“Curate your becoming sounds like a
case I had in Toledo once. Turned out to be a storage unit with dissociative
identity disorder.”
“She preaches intentional living,”
Calico said, starting to taste her coffee but thinking better of it. “No wasted
days.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
The good doctor stood and paced the room.
Her pine green dress hugged her features like that it was its sole reason for
existence. Lucky dress.
“I’ve noticed a few regular
irregularities in our sessions,” she told me. “Avery is grieving things that
have not yet occurred.”
The radiator clicked, as if clearing
its throat. Calico joined me at the desk, leaning next to me as she slid her
notes toward us. The intoxicating smell of her perfume slithered into my nose
like a snake heading toward an unsuspecting rodent.
“She processed the fallout from a
livestream that never aired. She described a rupture in her relationship that
did not happen. She adjusted her public posture in response to backlash that
never materialized.”
“Emotional residue without event,” I
said, maintaining eye contact with the notes.
“I think so. She speaks of days as if
they are drafts or ideas. In one version, the collaboration fails. In another,
it flourishes. In this version, she decided not to step into Thursday.”
I looked out the window. Across the
street, someone had planted tulips too early. Brave or premature. Hard to tell
in March.
“She said she chose not to live that
one,” Calico added.
Spring promises renewal. But renewal
requires decay first. If someone has found a way to skip the rot, to bypass the
frost, to live only the days that bloom. Then something else absorbs the cold.
“She’s processing days she has not yet lived,”
Calico said quietly. “But I don’t know how. I was hoping you could find out for
me, Silas.”
We locked eyes, our faces close enough
to slide a ream of printer paper between us. Her blue eyes match the cloudless sky
out my window. Her lips remained parted enough to catch enough of a glimpse
that told me dental care was a priority for her.
“You know my rates,” I told her. “Two
hundred dollars a day plus expenses.”
“Maybe I’ll thrown in another mani/pedi.”
She stepped back to the chair and pulled her gloves back on. “When you’re ready
to talk some more, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Whenever I try to whistle
it sounds like I’m playing in a jug band.”
Dr. Calico Verde shook her head with a
wry smile and strutted away. Five seconds later I rushed to the door and
shouted after her.
“I mean, yes. Lips and puckering and
blowing!” I attempted to demonstrate and the jug band show started.
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