Rent Rx

The Mex Mysteries, Book 9

Chapter 1          

I couldn’t help it. Honest. Really. Sometimes it happens that way. One overcast Saturday morning, I was on the phone with Angelo, my ex-husband, chatting over nothing, and something he said or something I said made me dissolve, but dissolve into Humpty Dumpty-sized pieces.

One minute I was laughing with him and the next I was sobbing. Sobbing, crying, weeping, wailing, keening, letting out the ongoing, deep, throbbing ache of loneliness that had been looming, threatening to annihilate me.

It had become environmental for me, a miasma of longing I couldn’t fulfill no matter what I did.

I’d gone mad in the upstate New York Pink House after we’d returned from Boston, and decided that every single surface of wood lovingly installed in the 1890s needed to be polished equally lovingly with that eternal scratch cover, Old English, by none other than moiself.

I didn’t know when I started what I was attempting to rub out, but after my meltdown with Angelo, I thought I might.

Damn, damn, dammit to hell.

Mex! Language.

That’s Spirit, the innermost aspect of me who runs my life. One of her aliases is intuition. I sacrificed swearing for Lent a hundred years ago and she’s never let me forget it.

You know that AA saying, right? H.A.L.T.

Never let yourself get too hungry (never), too angry (rarely), too lonely (bingo), or too tired (sometimes.)

I cried non-stop. Or, rather, I’d cry, then I’d blow my nose and go do more Old English until the next time I fell about faint with weeping, which usually wasn’t too far distant from when I’d stopped crying.

There was nothing for it.

I missed Veronica.

I missed Mama.

I missed Granny.

I sort of missed Seraphim.

Full disclosure: I missed the life I thought I was supposed to have by then.

I kept crying, crying myself to sleep, crying upon waking, crying when Xennie and Gareth were nice, crying when someone on the streets of the City crossed their eyes at me, crying into my Old English. Then I’d admonish myself, swipe the stained cheesecloth over another swathe of bead board, lintel, or picture rail, and crash into weeping again. I hadn’t cried like this in decades.

It had been going on for weeks. Weeks, I tell you, and I was not in control of it.

There, I said it.

I was not in control, I am not in control.

I told myself I’d begin at the beginning, cry till I was done, and then stop, something of a variation on The King from Alice in Wonderland. Or, the actual path of real grieving. I wasn’t done, not by a long shot.

What I was, in actual fact, was smack dab in the middle of my second Saturn Return, a notoriously painful astrological occurrence roughly between fifty-six and sixty, still mourning my beloved fiancé Veronica (yes, female, and yes, with only one é), sad because Seraphim and I didn’t work out together, revisiting my father’s death, the end of my marriage with Angelo, Mama’s death, Granny’s death, and my son’s death. I didn’t know what to do with the sadness or the loneliness but cry.

So that’s what I was doing.

Angelo wasn’t the first one to catch me at it either.

My Gypsy housekeeper and assistant Xennie caught me.

My associate Gareth caught me.

My main squeeze on the NYPD and surrogate Daddy Sergeant Michael Ryan Kelley caught me.

A New York State trooper caught me when he pulled me over for speeding, which I never do! He took pity on my tear-streaked face, and did not give me a ticket.

My longest time companions, the kitty girls, white long-haired Prudence and black short-haired Money caught me; they sometimes veered away from me so I wouldn’t dampen their fur.

Shall I go on and on and on? I could.

Mexicali Rose Stone.

Mama’s modulated contralto spoke although I smelled Granny’s lavender. I raised my face from my hankie and gulped. Standing in front of me were Mama and Granny. Both were on the Otherside at this point in Earth time, and talk about rare—no, come to that, nonexistent—for them to appear at the same time. But there they were.

I blew my nose and prepared to be told what for.

“Oh, my baby girl,” said Mama softly.

I came unglued.

“Mama,” I said. Maybe I was five, at the very least nowhere near my late fifties.

Mexicali Rose, she murmured.

“Mama,” I sobbed.

She was humming, something she only did when she was supremely pleased.

“Mama?” I asked.

She started to sing full out. The song that started everything.

Mexicali Rose, goodbye. Mexicali Rose, don’t cry.

She’d named me for her signature song (yes, that terrible lament made famous by singing cowboy Gene Autry), signature because my parents had honeymooned in Mexicali, and no one was alive any more who was allowed to call me by my full name, although Gareth got away with it occasionally. Come to that, Kelley probably could, too.

“Mama.” I was hiccoughing I was crying so hard.

Baby girl, she said, cry, sweet one. Cry it out. You have to feel the loneliness to tell it goodbye.

It’s near to over, Mexy girl, added my beloved Gypsy granny. Cry it out.

So I cried me a river on the woodwork as they faded to their Spiritwork.

God, I missed Veronica. When my relationship with Seraphim fell apart because we cottoned onto the fact that we were so different we couldn’t marry one another, because we shouldn’t marry one another, then and only then did my real, true, anguished, undisguised longing for Veronica, my Veronica, finally rise to the surface of my consciousness.

What caused my tears was that longing, but also my mind’s bleak Greek chorus telling me that, no matter what, Veronica was dead, and my future would have to go on without her. I couldn’t see how, or if, or whether that was possible.

To be sure, it couldn’t with the full-body bruising ache that had become my constant companion. I wasn’t positive I wanted to live without her, that’s how bad it had gotten.

And, no, I was not suicidal. But I couldn’t see my way as to how to live without her, and that’s what hurt. I was never going to figure it out by demanding that I know either; I had to live into it. I knew that. Spirit knew that. Spirit knew that I knew that. I made temper-tantrumy, juvenile demands anyway.

I knew better than this.

Your point would be?

I returned to my stand-by Old English, and intermittent weeping, until I wept myself into a nap as I was polishing the windowsills in my lonely bedroom. I stayed awake long enough to divest myself of my stained latex glove and grubby clothes and pull the heavy quilts over my naked shoulder.

I wakened with a plan. Well, a ghost of a plan, a concept for a plan, and one small piece of insight. I was intent on polishing every bit of woodwork as a form of clearing both Seraphim, and sadly, Veronica, in order to begin anew.

Once I’d arrived home from Boston last fall, I’d settled in to Temenos. My favorite interior and exterior designer, Susannah, had done one helluva job after I’d, in genuine desperation, opted out of The Decider role.

I only exchanged two things. Two, out of a whole house. I swear she channeled me. Temenos was both gorgeous, and at long last, done. I let out a moan of relief that I hadn’t known was pending.

I had let myself mourn through the holy days (which most Americans spell: holidays.) I’d had a quiet Thanksgiving in the Hudson River Valley O.M.O., on my own. Gareth and Thom had driven to Ohio to see Thom’s family.

Xennie had had puridai duties; she was slated to become the next Gypsy matriarch once our ancient puridai slipped off this mortal coil. I didn’t have so much as a turkey sandwich.

Instead, I’d sat on the red velveteen sofa in The Pink House, and begun my lachrymose vigil. Then I’d bawled through a solo Christmas, and a lonelier, damper, rainier New Year, and now spring, spring, spring was springing forth all over and all I had in me was polishing woodwork. No ’splaining some things.

The other inkling that had arisen from within was to do ritual, personal ritual, to build a threshold that would lead me from an old life and its old expectations to a new life and its new expectations. The number three floated in my third eye. Three days, it had to be.

Ever just know stuff? I do. This is what it is to live by one’s intuition, and since I make a living using mine, it only makes sense to use it in my daily life, no?

Three signified three days of ritual. I can’t exactly explain to someone else how I know that, but I do.

Three always, first and foremost, connotes past, present, and future. It’s the fastest and dirtiest tarot card lay-out. I was to take my past, mine it for gems, keep what was valuable in the present, and toss the rest. The first day of the rite was to focus on the tossing. I would start immediately.

Between bouts of rubbing and bouts of sobbing, I made a list of everything I wanted to leave behind. A particularly nasty client (very rare in my biz.) A health challenge that I’d just as soon give a miss. Seraphim and our relationship except the good parts. Worry concerning various and sundry details. You know the sorts of things.

At dusk, I got out a blood red bowl, doused it in some essential oils including Valor, breathed deep, lit a candle, and burned the list. As I watched the paper twist and transform, I thought …the past, no, my past, … transformed by fire. I got lost in my obsessive reading and next thing the clock read post-one in the morning. I went to bed, and slept like a corpse till I wakened.

* * *

I guess I’m going to have to ’fess up, aren’t I? You know that I read without morals, right? Anything, everything … my heart desires. Mama never had any limits or rules on what I read. Whatever struck my fancy, made me curious, I wanted to learn, et al (as the lawyers say.) I’m delaying my confession here. Doubtless, you can tell. Here goes.

I was voraciously reading Harry Potter fan fiction. Like a starving woman. Couldn’t get enough of it. Stay up too late, get up too early to keep reading. It’s taking me some time to figure out why. Except that I was enjoying it tremendously. I’ll keep you posted.

That morning I’d wakened with swirling thoughts of Seraphim, knowing what went wrong, and not knowing, or, better, pretending not to know, at the same time. The human psyche is a fascinating labyrinth, and I mean labyrinth, and not maze. They’re different, you know.

A maze is choice, deliberately designed to confuse. A labyrinth is trust, and is a unicursive winding path with an unmistakable destination—the center, wherein you are intended to receive divine information on whatever you are seeking.

Walking the labyrinth has been an honored spiritual practice since the Mesolithic. There’s an absolutely stunning one in The Park behind The Pink House made of potted herbs of every stripe. It smells divine.

Most of my thoughts that morning centered on the wedding we hadn’t had. I know that sounds odd, but recently there’d been an article in that venerable chestnut, The New York Times, detailing what to do when you cancel a wedding.

My memory, assisted by my always-outré imagination, was serving up beautifully printed invitation-y things with words like Delete the Date, and We Invite You to Celebrate ... Something Else other than so-and-so and so-and-so’s wedding.

I also bizarrely recalled the article citing a 2013 survey that thirteen percent of engagements do not end in marriage. Had I been engaged to Seraphim? Not in fact.

See, she’d never formally asked me to marry her, and, for me, it would have had to be her who’d done the asking. So, no, we’d never been engaged. We’d been … sort of … promised.

Or maybe promised to be promised. Or, we had … an understanding … that the road we were walking was going to lead to marriage eventually, or, as the kids today say, what-EV-errrrr.

But it didn’t matter because whatever we had been, we weren’t anymore, plain and simple, and that was that. Except, was it?

Argh.

So I’d started to default to crying when—what else?—the phone rang, and Sergeant Michael Ryan Kelley, NYPD Blue extraordinaire, started without the usual civilities.

Oh. I don’t mean usual for him. In fact, for him, they’re not usual, but for the rest of our socialized masses, hello and how are you usually come relatively close to the onset of a phone conversation. For Kelley, not so much; he prefers to start in the middle.

“Mexy, we gotta get you outta the dumps.”

“Michael.”

“We do. I gotcha a case, Mexy girl,” he announced with glee.

“Really.” I couldn’t even get it up for a question mark.

Kelley gentled me, dropping his voice, “Mex, sweetie ….”

“I know,” I whispered.

“A case’ll get you in the swing of things again.”

“Alright, Michael, sock it to me.” Thank you, Joanne Worley. I sounded to myself like it would feel like a sock, too.

“Don’t drown me with enthusiasm, Mex.”

“I’m sorry, Michael. I—”

“No worries, Mexy girl. I’m calling Gareth.”

And, as usual, he hung up on me.

Some things are so regular they’re comforting.

I showered, junked my unruly red curls on top of my head, put on my grubbies, and went to acquire more Old English. I hoped Xennie had bought a case of the stuff.

Rent

Words and Music by Jonathan Larson
Copyright © 1996 FINSTER & LUCY MUSIC LTD. CO.
All Rights Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP.
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

© 2018-2022 by Susan Corso
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