Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [59]
She was in the television studio. On the sofa.
Michael Diamond’s palm was warm and moist against her forehead, and he was whispering something to her…no, not to her. To the others. The audience. To the world.
Some secret about her. Something she had harbored.
“You want him to be alive,” Diamond said. “You feel guilty because you stopped loving him. And then, when he was killed, you wanted more than anything for him to be alive because…because it meant that you could leave him. But now, you are stuck remembering only love. You’ve forgotten the winter that settled between you both. The fighting. The arguments. The dislike. The indifference. The lack of trust. You were in love with him for two years, and then you caught him in too many lies. You stopped trusting him. You were planning on leaving him. One day. One day soon.”
Michael Diamond’s face shone with sweat. His eyes had gone from a beautiful deep blue to gray, and the whites seemed bloodshot. It looked as if—in the few minutes he’d been doing the reading of her, that he’d been up for nights. “I’m sorry,” he said, under his breath. Then, more loudly, “Love and Death are strange companions. Those whom we were conflicted about in Life, we now are tied to in Death.”
Julie felt as if she had been invaded. As if someone had crawled inside her, and taken, forcibly, things from her. She felt icy inside, and burning on the surface of her skin. “What the hell did you just do to me?”
She pushed herself up from the sofa, but felt the room—the watchers—the cameras—spin around her.
Her knees buckled beneath her, and she collapsed.
6
Julie lay on the couch in the Green Room—which was not green at all, she noticed, glancing around at the pale walls—and finally took a sip of the orange juice that had been offered by the assistant who had rushed in after they’d helped her out of the studio’s auditorium.
She looked up at her mother, who stood nearby. “Why did you set this up?”
“Honey, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I’m sorry,” Toni said. Her mother’s eyes were red from crying.
Julie closed her eyes and tried to push away the conscious world. She had to force herself to breathe more slowly. Counting to four seconds in, four seconds out. For the first time in her life, she understood what a panic attack might be.
7
After her mother left to go sit in the car, Mel sat with her awhile, once Julie felt strong enough to sit up in a chair. They brought some sandwiches in, and Mel cajoled her sister into taking a bit, “for energy.”
“I can’t believe he’d…he’d lie like that,” Julie said. “That’s show biz,” Mel said. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe a word of it. He’s a con-artist. Cute, but still a con-artist.”
“Did mom set this all up?” Julie asked. “Did she?”
Mel shot her a harsh, unforgiving look, as if Julie had just said something terrible.
8
When she was feeling better, she demanded to see Michael Diamond, and Diamond’s assistant rushed her into his office, which was a suite of rooms down the long corridor.
He looked different to her than he had in the studio. He seemed older, and perhaps exhausted, as if he’d been up for several nights in a row. His hair was slicked back and his forehead had speckles of sweat. Something about his face reminded her of a hawk. She remembered the cover of his book, where his face seemed geeky-sexy. Now, it just seemed tired. He sat on the edge of his desk, his arm extended for her to shake.
She kept her arms crossed.
“If you’re so psychic, tell me what I’m thinking,” she said.
“I’m sorry that was so harsh,” Michael said. “I know you’re in pain. Look, we’ll cut the segment. Don’t worry. It won’t be televised.”
She said, “What did you do to me in there?”
“You don’t believe in psychic ability, Julie. I’m not here to change your mind. I’m sorry what I said hurt you in some way. I can’t take it back. It happened. It’s what I picked up from you,” he said. “You know, sometimes, I feel things that are terrible. I pick up images and words from someone—on the show—that I couldn’t possibly