"I love you," he said, putting on white linen pants. He selected a golden silk shirt, not bothering to button the top three turquoise buttons after he drew it on. He selected a mood charm in the shape of the astrological sign of Taurus and dropped it over his neck. When the charm touched his bare chest, the bull turned blue.
Shane Billiken smiled. Blue was a good augury.
"You didn't say it as if you meant it," Glinda complained.
"I'm a fully Evolved Being. I don't have to sound like I meant it. I exist in a state of perpetual sincerity."
"Say it again."
"I love you." Under his breath he added, "You nimnoid."
"Sometimes I think you just love me for my body."
"No," said Shane Billiken. And this time he really sounded sincere. "I love you for the money you make for me," he whispered.
"Or because I'm the psychic conduit through which Princess Shastra, High Priestess of Atlantis, has chosen to speak. "
"You're very special," Shane Billiken said, taking a hit of rhubarb wine from a green glass jug.
"You know, I was reading that Shirley MacLaine book last night, and it got me thinking."
"With what?" Shane Billiken asked his image in the mirror as he primped his hair.
"I mean, what if I'm channeling so good because, like, I really am the reincarnation of an Atlantean girl? I don't mean a priestess or princess, but I could have been a lady-in-waiting or something. Or maybe an Atlantean atomic scientist. Oh, yuk!"
"What?"
"I just found this really gnarly pimple on my tush." Shane Billiken rolled his eyes behind his impenetrable sunglasses. He would have preferred mirror shades, but Roy never wore mirror shades. Maybe he should send the guy an anonymous note suggesting that wearing mirror shades would be a boost for his image.
"Yeeowch!"
"What now?" Shane sighed.
"I squeezed the pimple and got blood. It's, like, all over my legs. What do I do?"
"Think coagulation," said Shane Billiken, opening the sliding glass doors and stepping onto the redwood sundeck. He closed the doors on that sissy mood music. That was the one drawback to this business, he thought. The music sucked.
The sunlight danced on the Pacific. Shane Billiken eased into a deck chair. He flipped through his appointment book. At two o'clock Mrs. Paris was due in for her monthly Aura Replenishment. Better make sure the ultraviolet lamps were working. At three the McBain twins were due to be Rolfed. Shane smiled. Rolfing them wasn't exactly what he had in mind. Maybe he could send Glinda off on an errand before they arrived. Then that yuppie stockbroker, what's-his-name, was coming in to talk about opening a major-city chain of biocrystal generating stations.
Not bad, thought Shane Billiken. By five o'clock he would have pocketed over seven thousand dollars, and that still left his evening free. He took another hit of rhubarb wine.
It was a long way from telling fortunes out of a house trailer at carnivals and psychic fairs all over the country, thought Shane Billiken. And really, he wasn't doing much different. Instead of servicing all comers, he saw only a select clientele of wealthy patrons. They paid fifty times for the same line of patter Shane had been dispensing in his curtained-off trailer cubicle. But they weren't just paying for the patter now, they were paying for bragging rights as one of the select clients of the exclusive Shane Billiken, world-renowned Doctor of Positivity, author of The Elbow of Enlightment, Soul Commuting, Crystals and Your Cat, and his current best-seller, The Hidden Healing Powers of Cheese.
It was a sweet deal, lately getting sweeter with the channeling bit he was doing with Glinda.
The wind coming off the Pacific sent the Tibetan prayer wheels positioned at each corner of the redwood sundeck to spinning, and Shane Billiken adjusted his shades. He settled back to enjoy the rays.
He was almost into an Alpha state when the sliding glass door grated open.
"Hey, who's that?" Glinda demanded, toweling her hair.
"What?"
"There. In the ocean. Someone in a boat."
Shane Billiken sat up and looked across the water.
Out in the surf, bobbing in buoy, was a tiny boat. A ragged sail fluttered from a twisted crosspiece.
"What kind of a boat is that?" Glinda wondered aloud. "Looks homemade. Probably some idiot teenager's." Shane Billiken rolled to his feet and leaned on the rail.
"Hey, you!" he called. "This is a private beach. Better not try to land or I'll have to call the cops."
The boat drifted toward shore.
"I think that's a girl in it," Glinda said.
"Didn't you hear me? Private beach. It's posted." Shane Billiken pointed at the signs.
The boat kept coming.
"You'd better stay here," he told Glinda.
"Be careful," she called after him.
Shane Billiken pounded down to the slapping waves. The heat cooked the bare soles of his feet, but he shrugged it off. He had learned to walk over hot coals back in the late seventies when the psychic thing looked to crash and he was considering a lateral career slide into a straight carnival act.
"I said turn back, whoever you are."
The boat was very close now. It was not made of fiberglass, which it would have been had it been some pampered Southern California teenager's boat. Nor was it wood. The hull was dark and ratty like dry vines. They appeared to have been braided. The sail was a faded gold rag. There were holes in it. The boat had taken a terrible pounding, as if it had made an ocean crossing, which Shane Billiken realized was impossible. It was too small. Obviously unseaworthy.
As it drifted in closer, Shane Billiken saw water sloshing at the bottom of the boat. It was not much from being awash. The sole occupant was huddled on a shelf in front of the tiller.
It was then that Shane Billiken got a clear look at her. It was a girl, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two. She wore a faded kirtlelike garment that had been discolored by salt and sun. Her hair was all over her face. It was long and black and lustrous, in spite of the flecks of dried salt that clung here and there.
"Speak English?" Shane suddenly asked. It was her face that made him ask the question. At first he thought she was Asian. There was something about her skin-a golden brown like poured honey. But her eyes were not slanted. They weren't round like Caucasian eyes either. They were exotic, and as black as hot little balls of tar.
"I said, do you speak English? Speakee English?"
The girl didn't answer. She was too busy at the tiller. It was obvious that she was trying to beach the boat before it swamped. Shane Billiken plunged out into the surf.
"Whoa," he said as he grabbed the shattered bow. It felt like a basket in his hands. Reeds, he thought. This is a reed boat.
"Lemme help," he said. The girl shrank from his voice. She looked at him in a curious mixture of fear and wonderment.
"Help," he repeated, "Me help you." He pointed to himself and then at the girl. He worked his way along the hull. The girl retreated to the other side. The water was up to Billiken's waist.