Created By Read Free

up by that one. He’d figured she was going to tell him something really horrible. Something monstrous that psychics tell doomed souls. Some cursing finality.
    But this was good news. Why the dread?
    Then, it hit him the way the punch line of a complicated joke suddenly goes from gas to solid in your thoughts—ka-boom: the genie appears with subtitles. He realized everyone in L.A. was too damn melodramatic, that was why. They all wanted the kleig-rub, and Mimi was just stroking the histrionic gloom.
    The ones who weren’t trying to act were trying to model. The ones who weren’t trying to model were trying to write screenplays. Or produce. Or write jingles. Or produce jingles. Or act in jingles. Or be a jingle. People talked about pilots not feelings, unless it was how they felt about pilots. The box-office bloodstreamers were leaking everywhere you went. Ideas or creative notions were regarded as signals from deep space if they were good. If they were bad, they were treated like bad dogs.
    L.A. didn’t need a mayor. It needed a director.
    “Then I really don’t have anything to worry about …”
    Mimi stood in the cramped bedroom-converted- to office, went to her bookshelf. Squeezed fingertips along books, found a musty hardcover. Slid it out, undusted a semicircle on the cover. Handed it to Alan.
    “Depends.” She’d lowered her voice and Alan tried not to feel her sawing him in half.
    “I want you to have this. Keep it, Alan. Read it if you need to. If not, it’s still yours.”
    He glanced at the book, accepted it. Grimaced at the odor: old bookstore smell.
    He rested it on the lap of his blue jeans, cleared a bitmore of the semicircle of dust. The title looked him in the eye.
M IND P OTENTIALS
    Written by some guy named Seth Lawrence. First chapter, “Dwellers in the Mirage.” Second chapter, “Shadows Move.” Third, “Man as Slave.” Fourth, “The Divine Terror.” Fifth, “No Way Out.” Sixth and final chapter— “One Way Out.”
    I love it, thought Alan. Big laughs.
    “Thank you,” he said, politely.
    Mimi nodded, looked at her watch. Another appointment outside. They could hear him, in the living room, popping his ballpoint.
    “Alan, do you understand when I say your show is going to be powerful?”
    “I’m comfortable with the idea of success if that’s what you mean.”
    She shook her head sternly, suddenly angry. “Not success.
Power.
Incredible power. You have to be cautious.”
    “I don’t plan to let it go to my head. I’m not a kid.” He was thirty-four. He
was
a kid.
    The other appointment coughed.
    Mimi took Alan’s hand, gripped it tightly. But something was different. Her hands were cold.
    “Be careful. The next six months are going to change your life. Money. Power. And something else …” She shook her head, troubled beyond words. “… not sure. I see two—no, three people. The third is very bad for you. Very bad. You must …”
    Her breath stopped, face drained white.
    “Am I going to be all right?”
    Mimi made a groaning sound, pressed nails into his palm so hard he tried to pull away, seeing bloody slits. “Say the title to me, again. I need to hear it.”
    He spoke in a tense whisper, repeated it three times. She seemed to be crying yet no sounds issued, no tears. She saw the blood on his palm, quickly wiped it with her sleeve.
    “Stay in touch with me, Alan.”
    Oh, yeah, I’ll stay in touch with you, he thought. Every morning I’ll give you a buzz and—
    “Don’t make this into a joke.”
    Fuck.
She was reading his mind again.
    “Well, what do you suggest? I let it keep me up nights?”
    “I have no doubt it will.”
    “What will? What are you talking about?”
    “Something inside you. Something that … wants out.” She looked off, trying to describe the borders of a grotesque Rorschach. “It will come out.” She seemed confused by more disconnected images. Lost but continuing to try, stricken, swirling in some awful place. “… it