Reach for the Sky

Reach for the Sky

Christopher Church

No one had ever tried to whack Mason before. He’d scrupulously avoided the more dangerous psychic investigator jobs, but now here he was, sprawled on the sidewalk, knees and elbows banged up and bleeding, the front wheel of his bicycle mangled beyond repair. In the intensity of the moment, he blamed his boyfriend—it was Ned and his damn AA meetings that had gotten him into this.

Wednesday

Sitting on a barstool at the kitchen counter, Mason pried the lids off a couple of containers of leftovers from last night’s dinner. Ned usually cooked, and even though Mason could have made something, or at least heated up this stuff, he couldn’t be bothered and decided just to eat it cold. White bean chili and herbed carrots; he could do worse. Ned got a lot out of his AA meetings, so he couldn’t feel too put out about having to fend for himself. Their roommate, Peggy, was a good backup cook, but her social life kept her out several nights a week.

He was halfway through the carrots when he heard the garage door opening and closing again, and soon Ned walked in. He had dressed up for his meeting, Mason saw, in a fitted shirt and dark pants, and he looked sharp. Ned’s polished appearance always seemed effortless, and Mason had begun to think it might be genetic—Ned was Latino. Even his dark hair and coloring seemed smooth compared to Mason’s forever pasty Anglo complexion and shock of red hair.

Hey babe, Ned called to him, walking over and kissing him on the neck. Just having dinner?

Yeah. Your chili is even better today.

Ned walked into the kitchen and pulled a spoon out of a drawer, and as he leaned over the counter Mason pushed the container closer to him. How was your speech? Were you nervous?

It wasn’t really a speech. It’s called a long share, and I talked for a few minutes. I had a bit of performance anxiety, I guess, but it went really well.

You seem happy.

I feel energized. And I met someone who might want to hire you.

Seriously? Mason said. How did that come up?

I mentioned your work in my share, and this guy, Mike, came up to me after the meeting. He and his wife were going through her grandfather’s stuff and they found something implying that her grandfather had hidden something valuable.

Mason frowned. What, like a treasure map or something?

He didn’t say. Will you meet with them? He seems very nice. I told him that most of your achievements have been through grunt work at the library, rather than psychic power, but the psychic part was what got him interested.

I’m glad you cleared that up, Mason said, feeling his cheeks reddening. Ned was a committed nontheist, and even though Mason had had some demonstrable success making a living as a psychic investigator, it was still too similar to religious thinking for Ned; his root assumptions in life were solidly skeptical.

Ned put the empty container and their spoons into the dishwasher, and asked, So you’ll meet these people?

Sure. I’ll take a look at whatever they’ve found, and we’ll go from there.

Later in the evening, Ned was already settled in bed when Mason climbed in beside him.

Why do you go to straight AA meetings? Mason asked, as Ned clicked off his bedside light. There must be lots of gay ones in LA.

He felt Ned roll toward him in the dark, and slide his hand around Mason’s waist. There are. I go to those too.

Is the vibe different?

Yeah, of course. But we’re all addicts, we all have that in common. I think I benefit from getting support from all different kinds of people.

I guess that makes sense, Mason said.

Ned’s enthusiasm about this new friend, and about finding work for him, seemed odd, since he hadn’t really been supportive of Mason’s career switch. He wouldn’t know whether the new job was legit until he met with Mike. In the meantime, maybe he could pull something out of the ether. One of the psychic tools he had developed was lucid dreaming, where he’d try to control the course of a dream to obtain extrasensory information. Often he didn’t get anything meaningful, but sometimes there was a useful image or a clue. He gently moved Ned’s hand away and turned onto his back. He cleared his mind as he drifted toward sleep.

Wake up inside the dream, he said under his breath.

Sometime later he became aware that he was dreaming. Sometimes even that realization would make everything evaporate, but he held on to it, and it stabilized. He was in the woods, or maybe it was a park, with big old trees and broad lawns. Running across the grass, playfully chasing after him, was a guy with curly dark hair, wearing an old helmet, like the soldiers in World War I that they called doughboys, and nothing else. He had a great body, Mason saw as he chased him in turn, like a game of tag. Was this his mind’s version of Mike? Maybe subconsciously he was jealous, and he’d conjured an image of someone Ned would be attracted to. The image faded, and he willed himself to wake up long enough to make notes. It seemed more like just an erotic dream than anything meaningful, but maybe there was something in it. He pulled his pen and notepad out of the nightstand drawer and scribbled park—doughboy—built—running around. Jealousy?

Thursday

L ook who’s joined the land of the living, Ned said when Mason came down the hall from their bedroom. Ned was pulling things out of the refrigerator, the late-morning sun streaming through the French doors and the windows that lined the living room.

It’s not that late, Mason said. He fiddled with the espresso machine and got it started.

It’s not that early either. I’ve already worked half a day. Do you want some lunch? I was going to make a sandwich before I left.

I think I’ll stick with breakfast. Where are you off to?

Downtown. I have meetings. Ned worked with bankers on some aspect of arranging mortgages that Mason had never figured out. He worked at home most of the time but occasionally went in to their offices; he was dressed for that today, Mason saw.

When the espresso pot had filled up, Mason poured the whole thing into a cup, and after a few gulps he started to feel awake. He assembled some fruit for his breakfast and sat at the bar with Ned as he ate his sandwich.

So I’m going to call your friend Mike today and see what’s up with his mystery.

Great. He’ll be happy.

I appreciate you finding a lead for me, even though you don’t really believe the psychic thing.

It doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. If you believe it, and Mike believes it, that’s all that matters. I’m just the middle man.

After Ned left, Mason went to the bedroom to get his phone, and then into the office he shared with Ned, where he took a yellow notepad and a pen from his desk. He pushed open the glass doors to the balcony and got comfortable in one of the chairs. Their house was on a hillside overlooking a crowded little Los Angeles neighborhood, and the balcony got full sun in the afternoon. Even in mid-winter it was warm enough to sit outside.

It was a little intimidating to phone this guy. Even with the successes he’d had in this business, Mason still felt like a psychic poseur sometimes, especially with straight people he didn’t even know. He cleared his throat, so he’d sound calm, and dialed the number Mike had given Ned.

A man’s voice answered with a terse Cullen.

Uh, hi, I’m looking for Mike? Mason said tentatively.

That’s me.

My name is Mason Braithwaite. I’m a psychic investigator. My boyfriend, Ned, asked me to call you.

Of course, Mike said. It was really serendipitous to hear Ned talk about you last night. He’s a great speaker.

I should sneak into the meeting next time he does a share, so I’ll know what he’s saying about me.

Mike laughed. It was all positive.

So you’ve got something that you might need my help with?

Indeed. My wife and I live in a house that her grandfather built in the 1930s. We found a trunk in the garage, up in the rafters, and when we opened it up, we found something … provocative.

What did you find?

It would be easier to show you. But before we do that, can I ask how much you charge?

I couldn’t really give you a quote until I know what the job is going to involve, Mason hedged. It was mostly true, but he also didn’t want to scare the guy off right at the beginning.

Fair enough. I’m at work now, but I’ll be home after six. Maybe you could swing by, and meet my wife, and we can all talk.

I can do that. Where do you live? Mason asked.

In Los Feliz. Do you know where the Barnsdall House is?

Yes, but that’s in Hollywood.

OK, sure, but once you cross Vermont, that’s Los Feliz.

Mason wasn’t sure that was an accurate distinction, but as Mike recited the address, he scribbled it down on his notepad. Above it he wrote Mike Cullen.

That’s not too far from where Ned and I live, Mason said.

They decided Mike would text Mason when he got home, and Mason would head over then. He hung up and went back inside to make another pot of espresso, and then took his cup into the office, where he sat at his little desk, dwarfed by Ned’s sprawling home-office setup, and pulled open his laptop.

A Web search for Mike Cullen with his phone number immediately brought up a string of hits. Mason quickly learned that Mike was vice president of a video game startup in Venice. The company hadn’t been around long, and it seemed like the guy had been an early hire. Mason got the impression that it was a small outfit, and guessed that Mike ran the business side while the creative types focused on the software. That didn’t mean he wasn’t well paid, but it probably meant he wasn’t a founding entrepreneur, but rather did their bidding. The product itself looked mindless—guns and explosions and gore.

Another page had a photo of Mike at a product launch, standing with three other corporate types, smiling at the camera. Because they were in the tech industry, they were wearing jeans rather than suits, but everything about them was corporate—the haircuts, the glassy-eyed smiles. Mason had been caught up in that world once, and still resented it. He reminded himself to stay objective about this guy. Mike couldn’t have been much over thirty-five, and like the doughboy in his lucid dream, he had shaggy dark hair. He wasn’t bad-looking, but he certainly wasn’t someone Ned would swoon over. Mason decided he had no reason to be jealous of this guy, consciously or otherwise.

He tried searching for Mike Cullen without the phone number, and came up with hundreds of people all over the world, then refined it with Los Angeles and dug through the results. Someone with that name had been sued by a lender a few years back; the suit was dropped within a couple of months, but if that was the same Mike, he might have some seriously screwed-up finances. Mason considered running a credit check on him, but decided to wait until he knew whether that info would even be pertinent.

Next he searched for the home address Mike had given him. The name associated with the property was Gardner, rather than Cullen, which made sense if that was his wife’s name. A street view showed a decent-size house, definitely prewar but in good shape. It would have been a substantial sprawling home when it was built, but by today’s standards it was pretty ordinary.

Now that Mason had some idea of who the guy was, he closed his laptop and jotted down some notes.

- VP at video-game maker

- corporate, not creative

- in AA

- money trouble? lender lawsuit

- house owned by L. T. Gardner (wife’s family?)

- Mike married into wife’s family

Not long after 6 he got a text from Mike—Home now. Come on over. He folded the top page with all the notes he’d made about the guy out of sight, stuffed his notepad into his backpack, swung it over his shoulder, and jumped on his bike. It was an easy coast down the hill to the boulevard, and then just a few minutes’ ride over to Mike’s neighborhood.

They lived on a lovely street with old trees and well-established landscaping. Part of the magic of Southern California’s climate was that even in the depths of winter, everything was green. The house had some nicely manicured foliage in front, a broad lawn to one side, and two newish cars in the driveway, both sparkling clean. The house looked 1930s, right down to the period windows with dozens of individual panes. Someone had taken good care of this place through the years.

He locked his bike to a parking sign and rang the bell.

You must be Mason, Mike said when he pulled open the door.

Yes. And I take it you’re Mike, Mason said, even though he knew the face from the photos he’d found online.

Mike waved him inside. The foyer and the hall had lots of dark wood, probably original, Mason thought, and the front room, just off the foyer, had windows on two sides. Farther back he could see a dining room through a set of open doors, and beyond that a glimpse of the kitchen. A lanky woman walked in from the back of the house. Expensive haircut, Mason noted, and she definitely lightened it; she looked like she was dressed for an office job, like her husband. He realized he was underdressed in comparison, in khakis and a short-sleeved shirt, but he brushed the concern away; surely they wouldn’t have expectations around that.

Stephanie, she announced, extending a languorous hand, which Mason grasped and gave a delicate shake. You must be the famous Mason.

I hope I’m not famous. Although I guess that’s better than being infamous, he said, and grinned. He couldn’t quite get a read on her yet—she seemed moneyed, perhaps, but there was more going on.

She smiled, then gestured to the front room and said, Let’s sit.

Mason took an easy chair and Stephanie sat on the sofa near him. The daylight was fading, and Mike switched on the room lights before sitting down next to her.

So, Mason, Stephanie began, what experience do you have as a … what’s your job title exactly?

Psychic investigator. Well, I worked on a missing person case recently, and I was able to find her. Later on I worked a burglary—an inside-job situation—I found out who had done it. I also helped a woman reconnect with her biological father’s family. She didn’t even know who her father was until I found him for her.

Impressive, Stephanie said. I’m not a big believer in all that stuff, but Mike is. I think he spends too much time in those fantasy video games.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, Mason said, feeling his face reddening, trying to keep his voice even. I use psychic information to get results.

"Ned said you