Blind Love

Kasey Lansdale and Joe R. Lansdale

I don’t believe in love at first sight. Lust at first sight, maybe, but love? Not so much. It strikes me as a crock, and because of that, I can’t believe I let my friend Erin convince me to go to an eye-gazing party with her, a kind of modern-day hippie’s answer to speed dating.

What you do is you go into a room with all these other sad, dateless men and women, a timer is set, and you sit down at a table and gaze into each other’s eyes for two minutes without speaking. When you’ve done that with everyone in the room, you’re supposed to choose the person you felt a burning eye connection with, go sit with them for a second round, and this time you can talk, having hopefully made a soulful bond by previous eyeball connection.

I feared the first two minutes might only involve observing distracting mucus and a bulbous, red sty.

Not Erin. She was all in, high as a kite about the whole thing. It reminded me of the phase she went through when she was into massage therapy applied through psychic power. You’re not touched. The masseur or masseuse waves their hands over your body and channels some kind of energy from beyond the veil, or pulls it up from Mother Earth, or some such thing, and sticks it in your back through the enchanted power of healing hands.

I had injured my back once during a sex act with a gymnast. He proved agile but had all the personality of a pommel horse. It was a onetime experience in which I was assured certain positions would bring me unique pleasure, but instead they brought me a bad back and three sleepless nights due to embarrassment and pain. Erin assured me her masseur could pull out the ache, if not the embarrassment. What he pulled out of me was forty-five dollars and an hour of my life. I went home with the pain I came in with.

Bottom line is she’s the kind who reads her horoscope for real, believes there are special numbers in her life, and thinks that constipation is a sign of energy clog instead of pizza, tacos, and an abundance of cheese. We even did nude skydiving once—well, there was the parachute. It was supposed to free our inner selves. She swore to me. We ended up with several seconds of fear, skinned knees, scraped asses, and coming down not in the field where we’d planned to, but in a grocery store parking lot in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon, an episode that led to newspaper prominence, a fine, and overnight jail time.

The problem is she’s my best friend and I feel obligated to support her in her quest for the perfect mate, this time via an eye-gazing party.

We were coming off a light, me driving, when Erin said, “I think it sounds romantic.”

“With a room full of people doing the same thing? I don’t find that romantic so much as creepy. Which celebrity started this trend?”

“I’m just trying to find happiness, Jana.”

“I don’t think you’re all that unhappy. You just think you’re supposed to have a man to make you happy. What’s that old saying? A woman needs a man like a fish needs a motorcycle.”

“Bicycle,” Erin said.

“Well, if a fish doesn’t need a bicycle, I’m going to bet it doesn’t need a motorcycle either. Thing is, you’ll find someone, and if you don’t, well, we can play cards at your house all day when we’re old. You got to stop obsessing about having a relationship. I mean, you got all the tools. You’re smart and pretty, have a good job and all your own teeth, so eventually someone who has all their parts working and isn’t too scary to look at is going to end up with you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, I’m in the same boat here. My last date spent the whole night talking about his Lego collection. Let me say this without meaning to hurt your feelings, Erin. You’re too desperate, and guys can smell desperation the way animals smell fear. Either they feed on it until there’s nothing left of you, or it makes them nervous and they run.”

“You may have a point,” she said as I hit the main highway and honked at a truck that tried to switch into my lane. “Yet, I feel like I’m running out of options. Jordon, girl I work with, she went to one of these events once, met a guy there she’s been with ever since. They’ve even started to dress alike.”

Obviously Erin’s idea of what’s adorable in a relationship is quite different from mine.

“We turn around now, chicken out,” she said, “and I end up with a house full of cats and a passion for macramé, you will be to blame.”

“I’m more than willing to carry that burden.”

“Well, it’s too late, because we’re here.”

We certainly were. It was a long rambling piece of property right in the middle of town. There were hedges around it high enough that you’d have to have a ladder to see over the top, and there was only a gap between them to serve as an opening to a driveway. I wheeled through the gap and along the driveway that wound through a number of tall and well-groomed trees, then parked behind a car in a row with a lot of other cars, all of them so expensive and cool they made my ride look like a hay wagon.

All along the walk were little signs with orange hearts painted on them. Above each heart was a pair of sleepy blue eyes, and at the corner of each sign was a black arrow pointing up the walk.

“This is either the place,” I said, “or an elaborate scam to murder us and sell us for body parts.”

“You’re always negative,” Erin said.

“Experience has been a harsh teacher.”

At the door Erin knocked, and we were greeted by a small, pretty, dark-skinned woman decked out in traditional East India garb, flowing, bright-colored fabric that always made me think of Tandoori chicken and saffron rice. The woman at the door looked the part, but she moved as if she missed her high heels. Thank goodness she kept her chewing gum. I wouldn’t want to have done without all that loud smacking.

Erin showed her a prepaid receipt, and I showed mine, thinking this was two hundred dollars that I might as well have just wiped my ass with.

The place was decorated with photos of exotic spots in India, a few from China. There were shelves containing knickknacks, including a small statue of an elephant with a stick of incense sticking out of its uplifted trunk. The incense smelled like damp earth perfumed lightly with burning silk. Love paid well.

The woman took our coats, put them away in a hall closet, and silently led us down a long hall to a doorway draped with a beaded curtain. When we reached that point, she stopped and said in an accent that had a lot more Texas in it than India, “Go on in, the swami awaits. Watch that step down, though, it’s a booger. I’ve busted my butt there twice today.”

She went away, and we took caution on our asses and made the step. The room was huge, but no bigger than Grand Central Station. There was a series of small card tables all about, a chair on either side of each. There were people everywhere. The men were on one side of the room, the women on the other. They were about as diverse as a jury pool, and I was relieved to see there was no one there I knew, though, come to think of it, had there been, they might have been as embarrassed as I was.

At the far end of the room, almost far enough away a pair of binoculars would have been helpful, was another beaded curtain, and out of it came a man who looked like a badly drawn cartoon character. Midsixties, short and thin, white socks with orange stripes and sandals, a ponytail of gray, frizzy hair. He carried a staff, as if he might later in the afternoon have to do a bit of mountain climbing in search of his goat herd.

I said, “Is he really wearing a cape?”

“I believe he is,” Erin said. I think even she was thinking she might want to go back to her horoscopes and numerology.

“At least he didn’t come in behind a puff of smoke,” I said.

Our swami moved to the center of the room and lifted his staff like Moses about to strike the rock and bring forth water. He said, “I am Swami Saul, and tonight, you will bathe in the sweet essence of each other’s souls.”

I thought, Oh shit. But I must admit he had a very nice voice, deep and resonant, just the sort of thing to lull you to sleep when counting sheep fails.

Gently lowering the cane, he smiled and showed us he had some really nice teeth. “The eyes are the windows to the soul. Humans have known this for centuries. Sometimes we forget the obvious. We don’t always allow them to do the speaking. We look away. We look down. We don’t even make eye contact when we talk. How many men in here really look at women when you speak with them? I mean their eyes, not their bodies. I’m not denying they can also be a treat for the eyes, but think about it, men. How many of you fail to actually concentrate on the eyes, and the soul of the woman?”

There was a bit of a shuffling, and one of the men, an average-looking guy with a comb-over said, “I’m guilty of that.”

“No need to comment,” said our swami. “It was a rhetorical question.”

“Oh,” said the man with the comb-over, and he took a seemingly practiced step that placed him behind one of the other men.

“Today’s society is too fast paced,” said the swami. “Too reliant upon instant gratification. I promise you, after tonight, you will have truly touched each other’s souls, and though I cannot make an absolute promise you will match one another with your internal essence, you are more likely to do so here than through traditional dating, and therefore have a real opportunity to meet your proper soul mate. Is that what you would like? Is that why you’re here?”

No one said anything.

“That question is not rhetorical,” he said.

There were a few murmurs and some words of agreement, but there was still that sensation of being a bunch of cattle trying to decide if we were about to enter the feedlot or a slaughterhouse.

“Erin,” I said. “Later, when we’re out of here, remind me to beat you to death with my purse.”

“Sshhhhh, Jana. Be quiet.”

I thought, Oh hell, now she’s into it.

“Here is how it works,” said Swami Saul. “You are not allowed to speak. You sit across from your partner, and you first gaze into the left eye, then move slowly to the right. This is not a staring contest, so do what feels natural.”

Nervous laughter from the group.

Swami Saul held up his hand for silence, got it faster than a snake strikes a mouse.

“You must do this as I say, not as you want to do it, if you hope to have the results you desire. It is a far better method than just choosing your mate by appearance.”

“He says,” I said.

“Shush, Jana,” Erin said.

“Your left eye is your receiver, and your right the activator,” Swami Saul said. “You do this for a full two minutes. We will tell you when time is up, then you move to the next table and the next person into whose eyes you will gaze. So on and so on until finished with all the tables. When that is done, you will make a note of the number of the person with whom you felt the greatest sensation, and you will then have the opportunity to return to them for conversation. If that works, well, the rest will be up to Mother Nature. But remember, the eyes. The windows to the soul. That is where Mother Nature best reveals herself.”

“That makes sense,” Erin said.

“Mother Nature is also responsible for what goes on in the bathroom,” I said. “And I think this operation has a similar smell about it.”

“You’re always such an old stick in the mud,” Erin said.

We were individually guided to tables by Swami Saul, who I thought had a bit of a heavy hand on my elbow. I was placed in a chair in front of a guy who had had garlic for his last meal and seemed proud of it. The problem was not only the strong aroma, it was the fact my eyes were hazing over with garlic fumes. He was nice-looking enough, though, and I tried to smile and be nice and look him in the eyes without blinking, which made me feel a little bit like a lizard.

I was gazing like all hell when Swami Saul came by and touched me on the shoulder. “Blondie, blondie,” he said. “Relax. Breathe. Let the experience unfold. You are not trying to melt him with heat vision.”

I thought, Oh, yes I am.

“You act as if you’re facing the sun head-on . . . Oh, sir. Let me offer you a mint. I can smell your lunch from here.”

Swami Saul had less tact than I did.

The man was mortified, and I felt sorry for him, but I was glad when he took the mints Swami Saul offered him. By now my time was over, and I moved on to let the next in line deal with his garlic-and-breath-mint aroma.

By the time I was trying to look into my fourth partner’s soul, only to find that I was not sinking down into his essence, but was instead bouncing off his retinas, I was starting to slip looks at my watch. I had been there about fifteen hard minutes. Only an hour and forty-five minutes to go.

As we were changing chairs again, Swami Saul was gliding by. I said, “I don’t think I’m doing this right. Can you give me some pointers?”

“Believe,” he said. “Let faith carry you.”

“That’s it?”

“Okay. Here’s a tip. You’re making crazy eyes at everyone. Relax. Think only of his eyes. Only of his eyes. The left, then the right. Each eye has its own soul-felt story.”

I tried to focus on Swami Saul’s instructions. Focus on one eye, not both, and blink on occasion so as not to appear psychotic. The guy in front of me, mousy in both attitude and appearance, made a jerky head bob, and I couldn’t tell if he was seizing, having a chill, or giving me some kind of signal. Turned out he was nodding off a bit, and it was all I could do not to break out laughing. We kept moving around the tables, and behind me I heard Swami Saul offering calm reassurance in his melodious voice, which reminded me of the narration you hear on crime programs where they’re describing some horrible murder with the same calmness you might use to describe calm weather.

Glancing at Erin, who was seated to my left, I saw she was deep in gaze with her current partner, who was a good enough looking guy her attention was understandable. He’d done nothing for me in the soul department, but I could see why she would find him attractive. I know that’s shallow, but hey, I was at an eye-gazing party, which is the definition of shallow, as well as stupid. Okay, there were a few times when I thought I felt something here and there, though in the end it was more likely a headache from eye strain due to my having astigmatism.

It really didn’t take all that much time to go around the tables at two minutes apiece, but it felt to me like it was about the equivalent of the first Ice Age.

“Attention, attention,” Swami Saul announced to the room. “If everyone would break gaze and return to your place along the wall, and this time, please use the chairs, no need to stand. Be comfortable.”

A beat passed and no one moved.

“Now,” Swami Saul said.

This time everyone moved. Chairs squeaked and scraped across the floor as everyone attempted to get seated. I tried to catch Erin’s eye—I’d had enough training by this point—but she was as dedicated to finding her chair as a workhorse is to finding the barn. I went over and sat beside her, was about to speak to her when Swami Saul spoke again.

“Under your chair you will find a basket containing papers and pens. Please use these materials to write the number of the person with whom you felt most connected. It is not uncommon to have several choices. Place the number given to you at the top of your notations. We will then tally the numbers, make arrangements for another sitting, this time with timed communications with the person of your choice.”

I pulled the basket out from under the chair, trying to think if anyone had really made my eyes twitch, and my heart beat faster, and for the life of me I was having a hard time remembering which man went with which number. I decided garlic breath hadn’t been so bad, and the breath mints had helped, a little, and there was the guy in the blue button-down who had a nice air about him, unless you counted his overabundant use of a cologne that smelled like a horse saddle. I wrote down a few numbers so as not to seem odd woman out, folded the page, and tossed it into my basket.

When I looked up, I was surprised to find that everyone else seemed to have finished well ahead of me and were perched in their chairs like seals expecting fish for balancing balls on their noses. Even Erin was staring straight ahead with the same intensity.

Swami Saul collected the baskets, and his assistant, the gum chewer, came into the room and helped him. The baskets ended up on a table at the back of the room with a large dry-erase board on an easel near the wall behind it. The female assistant, smacking her gum like a dog eating peanut butter, went through the baskets and arranged the numbers in separate piles. After going through the goods, she paused and looked at Swami Saul and said something to him. He went over and examined the slips of paper, carefully, then more carefully. He scratched his head hard enough his ponytail wiggled as if it might swat a fly.

I admit that at this point I was curious if anyone I had gazed at tonight had felt a connection to me. This was only a mild concern, but my ego kept me engaged enough I didn’t get up with a pee-break excuse and leave Erin to fend for herself.

“Interesting,” Swami Saul said. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had it happen quite this way. We have a wide variety on the part of the men, but, except for one woman, all of the women here have chosen the same man. This is a first.”

The women in our row against the wall turned and looked first left, then right, except for those on the ends of the row, of course. They just turned and looked. They all had that deep country-fried look that seemed to say, Was you lookin’ at mah man?

I smiled, wishing to appear neutral, which I was. Even the men I had listed had about as much connection to me as a mollusk, if those things could wear button-down shirts and too much cologne and had a taste for garlic. I was more than willing to forgo my pick in lieu of anyone else’s interest, lest I end up with one of my soul-gazing eyes scratched out.

“As all but one woman will know, as she did not choose him, that number is lucky thirteen.”

I held my breath tracking the numbers hanging on the bottom of the seats across the way, waiting to see who this stud muffin was, the Adonis that I had somehow overlooked, and then, there he was. Number Thirteen.

I had to rub my eyes and take another look, just in case my pupils had glazed over. But nope. Number Thirteen. I could see him clearly.

“You got to be shitting me,” I said without really meaning to.

“What is wrong with you?” Erin said, turning at me in what I can only describe as anger. “Jealous? You want him like everyone else.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do.”

“I didn’t pick him,” I said.

“Oh, bull,” said Erin, actually good and mad now. “You came here with me and now you want him and you don’t want to see me happy with him.”

“Say what?” I said.

She turned away from me, her face as red and shiny as a wet tomato.

I gave him another look. He was an uninteresting fellow of indeterminate age, could have been thirty-five or fifty-five. Pudgy, with his few straggly hairs arranged as if by a weed eater. The suit he was wearing was thin and too large for him. It was cuffed unevenly at the sleeves and was either blue or gray; the color seemed undecided. He had on a stained white shirt and a wide tie with palm trees on it. I didn’t really remember him, but I remembered that tie. After a few moments of trying to concentrate on his eyes I had decided I liked the tie better, and believe me, I had to split some serious hairs to make that decision.

“This is certainly a first,” said Swami Saul. “A real first.”

By now all the men had turned to look at Stud Muffin. The looks on their faces were akin to having just been told they were about to be electrocuted for the good of humankind. I didn’t blame them. I don’t want to be tacky. I mean, I know, it’s not about looks when it gets down to what matters. I do know that. But come on. This is the beginning, when it’s supposed to be superficial and being shallow is all you have. And as conceited as it may sound, Erin and I are something to look at. I know. It’s egotistical sounding, but there you have it. I wasn’t the kind of girl that upon chance meeting was going to give a damn about a sweet personality. Of course, I was also the kind of girl whose last boyfriend, though handsome and clever, turned out to be married and have two other girlfriends on the side and a website that had something to do with farm animals. I never had the courage to examine it in depth, but one of the sections I saw before I turned off the computer was titled “The Happy Goat.”

“I think the women have chosen, gentlemen, sorry. Only one lady here has picked a variety of numbers, and she now has the opportunity to visit with some of you.”

“Pass,” I said.

“What?” said Swami Saul.

“I’m that woman, and I’m going to pass. If anyone picked me, sorry. I’m passing.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, okay.”

It was rude, but I really didn’t want to spend a lot of time hanging out with people I didn’t really want to hang out with and had only written their numbers down so as to not be such an outsider. What I wanted to do was follow all the other women over to see Number Thirteen and decide if I had missed something or if the others would get close up and realize he wasn’t really such a hot number.

The throng of giggling women beat me over there, but I was able to peek between the teeming masses and get a closer look at Thirteen. He had looked better from a distance. I went over to Swami Saul and his assistant.

“So, one man, huh? And that man? All the women here, except me, are attracted to him? Really?”

“Really,” he said.

“What kind of racket is this?”

“Do they look displeased?” he said.

I turned and saw they did not. They were mooning all over him, pawing at him, and shifting in closer and closer. He stood in the middle of them, smiling and still like a pillar of salt.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Me either. And you and I and Mildred here are the only ones that don’t.”

“You two didn’t look into his eyes. I did. There’s nothing there. I don’t get it.”

By now my head was pounding and my eyes were watering. My astigmatism had been given a serious work out, eyeballing all those men, and I felt I needed a new set of contacts, something I’d been putting off doing for a year. Maybe with contacts Thirteen would look like an Adonis.

“Maybe all them women have brain tumors,” Mildred said smacking her gum. “I wouldn’t take that little balding fucker to a dogfight if he was the defending champion.”

“Now, now,” Swami Saul said. “Remember, you are enlightened now.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“So what’s the answer?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Swami Saul said, and his voice had lost that deep down-in-the-well resonance. He sounded now like a regular southern cracker. He shook his head and watched the women clamoring after the little man like he was a rock star.

Standing there, looking first at the women crowding in on the little man, then back at Swami Saul, I got a real sense that he had not rigged a thing and was as confused as I was, as Mildred was. Of course, Mildred struck me as having come into the world confused and having gone through the years without noticeable improvement.

I noticed that the rest of the men had started filing out, dejected and anxious to go.

It took some doing, but I finally got Erin pried loose from the crowd. To facilitate an end to the evening, Swami Saul had started gathering up chairs and carrying them out, and Mildred was gathering the baskets. She stored them away somewhere, came back, and flipped the light switch a couple of times, blinking them in warning.

It took another fifteen minutes to pull Erin out of there, and when she left, she had an address for the little man, but so did every other woman in the room, excluding me and Mildred.

Erin and I didn’t talk as I drove her home. It was obvious she had yet to forgive me for my lack of agreement on her pick, and frankly, by the time we were out of there and on the highway, I had begun to feel guilty, but also a little spiteful.

“Look,” I told Erin. “I don’t see it. But I think I could be wrong.”

“Could be?”

“Well, you don’t know if something works until it works, do you?”

“Oh, it’ll work. He told me so.”

“He told you that?”

“With his eyes,” she said, “with his eyes.”

WHEN ERIN WAS dropped off and I was nearly home, I realized I had forgotten my coat. I wheeled the car around and headed back, hoping Swami Saul and/or Mildred would still be there.

By the time I arrived, it was dark inside and the door was locked, though I kept trying it, tugging like a fool until my arms hurt.

Of course the right thing to do was to go home and find out who owned the place, see if I could get them to let me in tomorrow, because I was pretty sure Swami Saul, who traveled across the country with his little circus act, had rented it for a night and had decamped for parts unknown with his cape, Mildred, and a small crate of chewing gum.

It was a good coat and I wasn’t ready to give it up. I went around back and tugged on a door there with the same lack of results. I looked around then, felt the place was tucked in tight by hedges, and decided it wouldn’t hurt anything if I went around and found a window open. In and out, and no one but me and my coat would be the wiser.

Circling the house, I tried the windows. They were firmly locked. I considered knocking out a pane, undoing the latch, and pushing one up. I liked the coat that much. This was an idea I was floating when the last window I checked moved up with a surprising mouselike squeak.

I hiked my dress and stepped through the opening without breaking the heel off my shoe, then edged around in the dark. My hip found a piece of furniture that hurt bad enough I made a sound like a small dog barking. I waited until the pain subsided and my eyes were accustomed to the dark. There was the desk I had run into, a few chairs folded and leaning against the wall, and a bit of illumination from the streetlights shining through a window near the front door.

Able to navigate now, I made my way to the foyer where we first met Mildred. All the knickknacks that had been on the wall were gone. All that was left of them was a kind of dry stink of incense. The closet where Mildred had hung our coats was empty too, which didn’t entirely surprise me. Somewhere tomorrow she would be wearing one of our coats, the pockets full of gum wrappers. I was fit to be tied.

I had started back toward the open window when my foot banged into the trash can. Nothing serious. No toes were lost. But it made me glance into the can. It was full of papers. I recognized them. They were the pages we had all filled out before the event on the Internet. They had been printed and, after serving their purpose, dumped upon Swami Saul’s and Mildred’s exit.

I pulled them out of the can and tucked them under my arm for no good reason outside of curiosity, then went out of there through the window and walked to my car. Coatless, I drove home.

AT HOME I put on my pouting pajamas, which are large enough that I can jump in a full circle inside of them. I sat at the table and had a bowl of cereal and four chocolate chip cookies. I moped around for about thirty minutes, picking crumbs off my front, then decided it was time for bed.

I tried to go to sleep, but lay in the dark, twisting and turning as if the mattress were made of tacks. I finally went to the kitchen and picked up the stack of papers I had taken from the trash can.

I felt a little guilty, because at the bottom of each we had been asked to tell something about ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, what we were hoping for in love, and so on, but I didn’t feel so guilty that it stopped me from reading.

I found mine near the top. I glanced at it. It read: I think it’s everyone else that is messing up. I’m a real catch. Anyone would be damn lucky to have me. I’m handy with a glue gun, can spell like nobody’s business, and some people say I look like that movie star that everyone loves so much right now. Oh, and I got good teeth.

I always had been proud of my teeth.

I felt mildly conceited for writing such a thing but still considered the comments accurate. I thought about calling Erin, but as it had passed the midnight mark by now and she had work in the morning, I decided not to. I had work too, but I wrote romance novels, which is ironic, and I was able to set my own hours. I wrote under a pen name and was just waiting for that free moment when I could write the great American novel. Susan Sontag didn’t have anything on me. Except true success, of course.

I decided I’d keep thumbing through the pages, maybe even get some material for one of my books. The women’s pages were on top. I read all the comments at the bottom of each one. Some of them were really sad and desperate. I felt sorry for those women. Only material I was getting was for a suicide letter.

The papers had everyone’s address and phone number on them except mine, as I had given a false address and my old boyfriend’s work phone number, the one with the animal website. I hoped they’d call. Asking for Jana was bound to make his wife or mistresses unhappy with him.

At the bottom of the stack I came across the forms the men had filled out, and there it was, Number Thirteen. His address was a place well out of town. I didn’t know the exact spot, but I knew the area. It was pretty backwoods out there, though still within driving distance. Occupation was listed as MIKE TUTINO’S JUNKYARD. Was junkyard an occupation? I guess so.

Oddly, the man’s name was listed as John Roe, not Tutino. The name was not too far off from John Doe. Either he had an unusual last name, or he thought he was way too clever. The rest of the information about him was vague, and there was a notation that he paid for his eye-gazing service with cash.

I thought in circles awhile, finally took a sleeping pill. and went to bed.

WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, I was still irritated about losing my coat. I went to Erin’s workplace, a coffeehouse that has a kind of touchy-feely atmosphere about it and a very good Café Americano, as well as books for sale. You could drink and read and buy a book if you took the urge, though some of the books had chocolate biscotti fingerprints in them, and I admit some of them were mine.

Erin wasn’t there, and no one knew where she was. She was supposed to have come to work. A friend of hers, another barista I knew a little, said the boss was mad at Erin and she wasn’t answering her cell and she had better show up, and with a good excuse or the best damn lie since Bigfoot.

I tried calling Erin on my cell but got nothing. I left a message and drove over to her place. It was a condo, which was essentially an apartment traveling under an assumed name. I had my own key that she had given me to feed the cats when she was out of town, and after knocking and ringing the doorbell and noticing her car wasn’t in its spot, I went in.

Funny, but the minute I was inside I could feel the place was empty as a politician’s head. I looked around. No Erin. I got a Diet Coke out of her refrigerator, and knowing where she hid the vanilla cookies, I had one of those. All right. I had four or five.

I ate them and drank my drink while sitting on her couch. I tried to figure where she was, and I won’t kid you, I was becoming a little scared. After a bit I had a brainstorm and went to her computer. I used it to examine her search history. And there it was: MIKE TUTINO’S JUNKYARD. I assumed she already had the address from Mr. John Roe, Number Thirteen himself, but she had looked up directions. Could she have gone out there last night and gotten lucky? If you could call bedding down with that little dude lucky. I’d rather have a root canal performed by a drunk chimpanzee.

I searched on the computer a little more and saw the junkyard was no longer in operation, and that struck me as an odd thing unto itself, an abandoned junkyard for a home. I probed around some more but didn’t find anything spectacular.

I went home and tried to write, but all I could think about was Erin, and the rerun marathon of Friends. I figured that was just the thing to keep me from thinking silly thoughts.

It wasn’t. I watched about five minutes of an episode and began to channel surf. I hit a local channel airing a news alert about a missing woman. Then another. And another. I was about to surf on when I thought I recognized one of the photos as a woman at the eye-gazing party, but I could have been mistaken. I hadn’t really paid that much attention to everyone, being more interested in myself, which some might say is a failing. But it could have been her.

Calling the police was a consideration, but since what I had going for me was that we had all been at the same place last night, and it was an eye-gazing party, it was hard to believe at this stage I would be taken seriously. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed about asking them to go out and harass a junkyard owner who might have acquired a harem of eye-gazing groupies due to inexplicable optical powers, and that I was immune to his loving gaze because of astigmatism. This was a thought that had started to move about in my brain quite a lot, that I was immune due to a natural malfunction. I wasn’t sure how true it was, but I had started to embrace it, started to think maybe Thirteen was something a little different, and for his particular talents nothing could have been more perfectly made for him than such an event.

I mulled around all day, and just before dark I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided I’d drive out to the junkyard, just for a look. No big deal.

At least that’s what I told myself.

THE JUNKYARD WAS way out in the boonies off the main highway, down a narrow road crowded by pines. As I came to a hilltop—the moon up now and bright as a baby’s eye— I could see it. It lay in a low spot, and the junk cars spread wide and far. Fresh moonlight winked off the corroded corpses of all manner of automobiles and the aluminum fence that surrounded them. Behind all those cars was an old house that looked like it needed a sign that said HAUNTS WANTED.

I coasted down the hill until I came to a barred metal gate that made a gap in the aluminum fence. The gate was about twelve feet wide and six feet high, with a padlock no smaller than a beer truck.

I sat there in my car in front of the gate, then decided to back up and turn around, and for a moment I was heading safely back to my house, feeling silly and knowing for sure Erin was probably home now, that she would have some logical explanation, like an alien kidnapping.

I activated the phone on the car dash and called Erin’s number, got her answering machine again. I didn’t leave a message. I got to the top of the hill, turned around, and went back down, but this time not all the way to the gate. I was dedicated to the mission now.

I parked on a wide spot off the road under a big elm, got out, and took a deep breath. It seemed I had begun a new career in trespassing, and possibly breaking and entering. I hoped I’d find Erin, or the only thing I was going to get was prison time and a close relationship with a tattooed lady with muscles and a name like Molly Sue who liked it twice on Sundays.

I walked slowly, staying close to the side of the road where the tree shadows were thick, glad I had worn comfortable tennis shoes and a warm sweatshirt parka and loose mom jeans. I pulled up the hood on the parka, and for a moment I felt like a ninja.

I went along the fence toward the gate but found a gap in the aluminum wall and decided that would be the way to go. I pulled the aluminum apart, slipped through without snagging anything, then crept along between rows of cars that looked like giant metal doodlebugs. The cars were really old, and if there had been any activity in this junkyard, it was probably about the middle of last century. Grass had grown up between the rows of cars and died, turned the color of rust; it crunched under my feet like broken glass.

Sister, I thought to myself, what the hell are you doing?

No dogs with teeth like daggers came out to get me. No alarms went off, and no lights flashed on. There wasn’t the loud report of a rifle shot, so I soldiered on.

The cars were like a maze, and at one point I wound myself into the metal labyrinth and came out near the front fence again. I climbed up on the hood of one of the cars and got my bearings, studying my situation carefully. I did everything but break out a sextant and chart the positions of the stars.

Finally, with it all firmly in mind, I tried again, and this time, after more trudging, I broke loose into a straight row that led directly toward the house.

STANDING AT THE foot of the porch steps with only the moon and a dinky key-chain flashlight as my guides, the latter of which would have come in real handy earlier had I remembered it before now, I crept up along the side of the railing, careful of my footing. I had intended only to peek through the windows, where I was sure I would see Erin laughing and sitting on the couch, drinking a soda and having a hell of a time with Thirteen, but before I could, I heard something.

There was a clang, and when I looked, a possum was hustling away from a pile of old hubcaps it had upset among the death camp of vehicles, and that brought my attention to the side of the house. There, its nose poking out from behind the side, was Erin’s car. I was certain of it. I went over for a closer look and saw the miniature dream catcher she had made the summer before last hanging from the rearview mirror. That served as a final confirmation.

Glancing around, I saw a number of cars that I had seen at the eye-gazing event. I took some deep breaths to try to calm myself. I could call the police, but it would take them too long. Erin could be in serious trouble right now, and I couldn’t afford to wait on the cops to get off their asses and mosey down to this side of the tracks, and the truth was, the cars were here, but that didn’t guarantee there was a problem. Maybe Thirteen’s appeal had led to an orgy of epic proportions and no one was harmed. I decided I should at least check out the situation a little before throwing myself into a panic.

I fumbled through my pockets, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. I had an old paper clip, a pencil stub, and the keys already in hand, and that was it. Maybe if I found a rubber band somewhere, MacGyver would appear and help a lady out.

Looking through the windows proved useless because upon closer inspection, I realized they had been blacked out with paint. I was left with no other option. It was time to go in.

I pushed at the front door to no avail. It groaned a bit, but it didn’t budge. I backed my way down the rickety old steps and shined my light around the base of the house. Near the far left end, behind the overgrown and twisted-up hedges, I spotted a broken window close to the ground that looked just big enough for me to crawl through if I sucked in tight and thought about celery while I shimmied. I pulled back the limb of a bush, gently kicked out the remaining fragments of glass, and in a feet-first motion I slid inside the basement with one swift, effortless move.

Despite the off-putting appearance of the outside, the inside looked pretty normal save for large amounts of a superfine, sparkly dust covering every surface. It looked as though nothing had been moved or cleaned in years and, ironically, could use a woman’s touch. Unless it was my touch. All that would get you was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner and enough drain hair to create a rope doll.

I left my tiptoe footprints in the shiny dust like a mouse tracking over a snow-covered hill. After several minutes of searching, I started to feel the churn of my gut lessen. I was pretty sure I was alone in the house. Still, I opened the basement door that led upstairs and connected into the kitchen with the stealth of a hired assassin, just to be sure. I bobbed my light around and once again found nothing but that dust. It was all over the house and where there were cracks and gaps in the old rotten roof, the moonlight shimmered on the dust and made it glitter.

I coasted out of the kitchen and into a large room with bulks of cloth-covered furniture, backed myself against the wall, and leaned there in the shadows. I let the weight of my thumb come off the button of the light, causing it to go black, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I was really nervous now, and since I had not found Erin, or anyone, in the house, but had found her car and recognized the cars of some of the other women from the eye-gazing party, I assumed I had enough material to take to the police. I could leave my suspicions about Thirteen’s magic eye and my astigmatism out of the explanation when I spoke to them and would probably be the better for it.

It would certainly be smarter than wandering around a dark house and having the squeaking floor give way and drop me into the basement faster than green grass through a duck’s ass to lie in a heap of lumber, broken bones, and if I knew my luck, my mom jeans hanging on a snag above me.

It was then that one of the pieces of furniture that I had taken for an ottoman stood up with a sound like cracking walnuts and a dislocation of sparkly dust that drifted across the room and fastened itself into my nostrils tighter than in-laws at Christmas.

The dust, however, was my least concern. I was more troubled by the fact that the ottoman was not an ottoman but a moving wad of clothes and flesh that, though I couldn’t see it clearly, I felt certain was Thirteen. How he had been bundled up like that on the floor, I have no idea, nor did I have the inclination to ask him, but I can assure you, the sight of him coming into human shape that way was enough to make my legs go weak.

I wondered if I had been seen, or if the shadows concealed me, but that was all decided for me when the dust in my nostrils decided to exit by way of a loud sneeze. It was like a starter’s pistol being fired, and here came Thirteen, shuffling through the dust, coming right at me. Track had never been my sport, but right then I wished it had, because I broke and ran. Behind me I heard the floorboards squeal and the pitter-patter of feet, and then Thirteen had me.

HIS HAND CAME down on my shoulder, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I let out a scream that would have embarrassed a five-year-old girl with its earsplitting intensity. I was yanked back and it caused me to wheel about on my heels, and I was looking right into the shadowy face of the little man.

I clicked on the key-ring light in my hands, lifted it quickly for a look. I can’t explain it. It was just a reflex. Thirteen’s eyes were still flat and uninteresting, but then something moved in them, and I actually heard a crackling as if a fuse had shorted, and for a moment it seemed as if his eyes had slipped together and become one. I blinked, and then he looked the same, bald and doughy with ugly gray eyes.

We held our places.

I swear I smiled, and once more, the light went off and I dropped it, along with the key ring to my side, said, “Have you seen Erin?”

Really. I did. He didn’t respond, just leaned forward giving me the hairy eyeball, and then I got it; he was waiting on me to swoon. He couldn’t figure why his evil eye wasn’t working, why the hoodoo didn’t do whatever it was supposed to do, and that’s when I brought my keys up again and raked him across the face, cutting his flesh in the way a knife cuts paper. I shoved him and raced past, into the big room.

Glancing over my shoulder, I was horrified to see he was pursuing me, but on all fours, moving fast and light as a windblown leaf. Now I was in a hallway, and there was moonlight creeping in through a rent in the roof. I had a pretty good view of everything, and one of those things was my reflection in a huge mirror with a small table next to it supporting a pitcher of some sort. I grabbed the pitcher, wheeled, and struck Thirteen on the forehead, causing him to stumble back and fall. It was a short-lived victory. He rose to his feet and came at me with his doughy arms spread wide, making a noise like a cat with its tail caught in a door.

I turned, took hold of the table, and saw in the mirror that his image was contrary to what I had been looking at. Now he was little more than a skeleton topped by a bulbous head centered by one big eye, but when I turned, he looked just the same, a stumpy, balding man in an ill-fitting suit, his mouth open wide and his arms outstretched, ready to nab me.

By now adrenaline was running through me like a pack of cheetahs. I swung the table as he lunged. It was a good shot, resulting in the table coming apart in my hands, but I had caught him upside the head, and his head moved farther to the side than I thought a head could move. He did a little backward hop, dropped to the floor, lay there shaking his head like he was collecting his brain cells one by one. On the floor the shards of the mirror winked fragments of my reflection. It was not a happy face.

I darted down the hallway, figuring the jammed or locked front door might be more trouble than I had time for. I came to a stairway, decided on the closest port in a storm, hurried up it silently, pranced along until I saw a hall closet with sliding doors. In my great wisdom as one of the world’s worst hide-and-seek players, I carefully opened one of the two wide doors, slipped inside, and snicked the closet shut, plunging myself into total darkness.

IT WAS A choice a two-year-old might make, but until you’ve been chased by an unknown creature, a supernatural being, an alien from the planet Zippie, or whatever Thirteen was, don’t judge me.

I lifted my key-chain light near my face, not yet having released my grip from attacking Thirteen, clicked it on, and flashed it around. There were clothes on a rack, and I pushed in among them. At my feet were piles of shoes, and I must admit I spotted one really nice pair of high heels that I thought I might take with me when I finally decided to depart my hiding place, jump through a second-story window, and hope my legs didn’t get driven up through my ass. Most likely I would be found with the high heels clutched tight in my teeth. They were that cute.

The cuteness factor faded, and I made a little noise in my throat when I realized that the clothes hanging in the closet looked familiar, or some of them did. They were outfits the women at the eye-gazing party had been wearing—okay, I’m shallow, I take note of those things—and one of those outfits belonged to Erin. There was something odd about the clothes. They were all pinned there by ancient clothespins, but drooping inside of them were what at first looked like deflated sex dolls (I’ve seen them in photos), but were in fact the skins of human beings. One of those skins belonged to Erin. I couldn’t control myself. I reached out and touched it, but . . . it was not what I first thought. It was her, but all of what should have been inside of her had been sucked out, leaving the droopy remains, like a condom without its master in action.

How I felt at that moment could best be summed up in one word: ill. That’s when I heard the squeaking steps of Thirteen on the stairs, then the shuffling sound of feet sliding down the hallway. I pushed back behind the hanging clothes and skins, feeling weak and woozy. I clicked off the light and held my breath.

After what had to have been a world-record time for breath holding, I heard the steps make their way back to the entrance on the hall and heard the squeak of the stairs again.

Flooded with relief, I cautiously let out my breath. At that moment there was a rushing sound in the hallway and the doors slammed open, and there I was, glancing through the skins and clothes, looking Thirteen dead in the eyes once more.

There was no question in my mind he saw me. I did my squeal again, ducked down, grabbed the high-heeled shoe, and came out from under the hanging rod, right at the dumpy, little man. I was thinking about what I had seen downstairs in the mirror, his true image as a bony creature with a big head and a single gooey eye in its center. That’s where I struck. I was on target. It was as if his forehead were made of liquid. The heel of the shoe plunged into his skull and went deep. There was a shriek and a movement from Thirteen that defied gravity as he sprang up and backward like a grasshopper, slammed into the wall, and fell rolling along the hallway, the heel still in his forehead. No sooner did he hit the floor than his body shifted and squirmed and took on a variety of shapes, which included a paisley-covered ottoman (nothing I would buy) and finally the shape I had seen in the mirror.

I pushed against the wall, trying to slip along it toward the stairs, taking advantage of his blindness. He staggered upright on his bony legs, weakly clawed at the shoe in what was left of his eye, jerked it loose, and began waving his arms about, slamming into the wall, feeling for me. He stumbled into the open closet, knocked the clothes rack down, scattered the clothes and deflated bodies all over the hallway. When I got to the edge of the stairs, I turned to look back. He lifted his blind head and sniffed the air, then shot toward me. I wished then I had not had the vanity to wear the perfume I was wearing, but I bought it in Paris and had made a pact with myself that I would use it once a week, even if I was merely shopping at Target.

He had smelled me, and now he was springing in my general direction on all fours, and before I could say “Oh shit,” he was nearly on top of me. But, smooth as a matador, I stepped aside and he went past me, scratching the air and tumbling down the stairs with a sound like someone breaking a handful of chopsticks over their knee. He hit just about every step on his way down, finally tumbled to the base of the stairs, and came apart in pieces.

The pieces writhed and withered, then turned into piles of blackened soot. No sooner was that done than the house was full of an impossible wind that sucked up the sparkly dust that coated the interior, whirled it in a little tornado, and started up the stairs. Quite clearly, even in the dim light, I could see the faces and shapes of women in that dust. I saw Erin, whipping around and around, her long hair flying like straw.

The black soot piles that had been Thirteen did not move, no matter that the wind went right over them with its dusty passengers. As the dust twirled neared the top of the stairs I stepped back, watched it hit the upper hallway with a howling sound and smash into the closet.

I followed and watched the dust dive into the mouths of the deflated women lying on the floor of the closet. It filled up their bodies, and they filled up their clothes. They tumbled out of that closet and lay in the hallway blinking their eyes, unaware of what had just happened.

“What the hell?” one of them said, and then I saw Erin, rising to her feet from the pile of women, looking blankly around, gathering thoughts slowly, her hair in a knotted clump around her head and shoulders.

I laughed out loud at their confusion, laughed too because I was alive and not an empty skin dangling on a clothes rack by a set of grandma’s old clothespins. I began to weep a little with delight, mixing laughter and tears. I grabbed Erin and hugged her tight.

“What happened?” she said. “Where are we?”

“You were eye-gazed by a monster of some kind and all your essence was sucked out and turned to sparkly dust for no reason I can figure and you were a skin hanging in a closet inside your clothes and I rescued you by killing the monster with a shoe to the eye, causing the dust to crawl down your throat and fill you up again.”

“Oh,” Erin said. “Wait. What?”

“I think this is going to take some time,” I said, watching as the women scrounged through the closet looking for their proper shoes, knowing that one would be hobbling her way downstairs, “but I prefer we talk about it somewhere else.”

As we descended the stairs, the others following, chattering among themselves, I saw that the black piles of soot, all that remained of Thirteen, had turned gooey and were sinking unceremoniously into the pores of the wood like ink into soft paper.