― Alix E. Harrow
Crossing Over
I watch other people and envy them. Their lives seem safe and predictable. Not mine. I’m always at the centre of a storm.
Mind you, it’s a storm of my own choosing.
Sure, I was very nearly killed in an auto accident—drinking far too much and popping pills—so, I suppose there’s a reason why I long for an ordinary life, just as there’s a reason why I obsess about dead people.
I look at Elias and he’s smirking—of course, he’s a shrink and doesn’t buy half of what I say, especially statements that begin with ‘because’ and end with a contrite look on my face.
“You tend to see yourself as a victim, Leon, but everything that’s happened to you is the result of choices—your choices—Maya included.”
I don’t know why he always keys on Maya. Yes, she’s the storm in my life, and yes, my lifeboat is swamped in a maelstrom, so I guess he figures he’s a lighthouse. But he’s not—he’s not a light to me—more a foghorn continually emitting warning blasts.
And maybe that’s why whenever I see Elias, it rains.
It’s past five when I exit his office and head back to my Rosedale manse—an Art Deco home formerly owned by Jessica Skye.
Jessica was a Thirties’ actress with Harlow looks who haunts me continually—partly because of her huge dark eyes staring at me from her portrait above the mantel—and partly because she inhabits a virtual wing of my house.
I know it sounds crazy but the closest I can get to explain it is to compare her ethereal abode to Wonder Woman’s airship—partly invisible, but nonetheless real.
I access this wing through a portal in my basement that outwardly appears to be a wine cellar, but actually conceals a Thirties’ speak-easy. Behind some swing-out shelves lies a second door that leads to a part of the house that is not of this world.
I still can’t quite wrap my mind around my surreal experience but when you live in a Cubist house once owned by a Thirties screen star, I suppose anything is possible.
Besides, Einstein said the Past still exists, around a bend in the river of Time—so, I’m not crazy and I believe it’s true, and not just by taking the word of a genius, but because I’ve been inside Jessica’s shadowy apartments.
Yes, I’ve seen the Mobled Queen and she’s haunted me ever since.
I picture her extant wing of the mansion as a Cunard liner from the Thirties ran aground on a desert island.
The ship’s crew and waiters, all in white, wait upon her while she throws elaborate island parties replete with exotic fruit and serves drinks the colour of water.
She and Emilia Earhart live on in a perpetual sunny afternoon beyond the ken of the world at large.
I know—I sound insane, but as I sit here in the rain outside my manse, it all seems so clear.
Somewhere in time, there is a sunlit garden where beautiful people are whiling away a June afternoon—it’s not something I hallucinated—I’m inner-directed and know what I know.
That sunlit garden party is real. I stumbled upon it once, and fully intend to go back and prove it exists.
But just how I’m going to do that, I have no idea.