Page 32 of Deja Who
“Yes, but shewillbe. It’s inevitable; she can’t fight her past. It will eventually devour her!”
“I’m not sure that’s—”
“So what are you going to do about it? Huh? What? Huh? You take Blue Cross/Blue Shield, right? Right?Right?”
I think in my baby’s past life I was there, too, except I was Joan Crawford and that’s why my baby is scared of wire coat hangers.
My preschooler has the attention span of a four-year-old! Obviously he had ADHD in a past life, so you’d better get him started on Ritalin ASAP.
My teenage son is moody and hates me, but when he was little he was nice and he loved me. Something has gone terribly wrong in his past life and we have to fix it because it’s not normal for teenagers to fight with their parents like this!
It was a little like patients studying the Internet to diagnose themselves, then telling the doctor the diagnosis and expecting him to fall in line and whip out the scrip pad.
“Nope,” Archer was saying. “I’ve never needed an Insighter.”
“Oh. One of those, hmm?”
“Ah, man,” Cat sighed.
“What, ‘one of those’?”
“Don’t do it, Archer,” Cat added.
“You know what ‘one of those,’” Leah replied. “Are you?”
“It’s nothing personal.You’regreat. It’s just, your job sucks.” He shifted his position. “I think, in general, people can solve their own problems. Or at least be able to try. I think lookingback and having regret after regret, beingremindedof regret after regret, isn’t helpful and... and that’s all, I guess.”
“You might as well finish,” Cat said kindly as Leah stared fixedly down at him.
“Well, basically, most Insighters are delusional snoops. ‘Only I can fix you! Only by beating you over the head with all the fuck-ups you can do absolutely nothing about can you get your life in order, so let’s hop to it. That’ll be $149.72, by the way.’” At the look on Leah’s face, he added weakly, “No offense?”
“We never tell a client to hop to it.” She plopped down on the ground in front of him. “Well. I can’t say I’ve never heard that before. Which explains why I can’t see you. You’rerasa, yes?” Slang fortabula rasa, the blank slate. Or, to put it another way... “I can’t see your past lives because your brain isn’t wired to access them. You’re...” She paused and groped for the appropriate phrasing.
“Pure as newborn snow?”
“You stop mixing metaphors right now,” Cat warned. “Hate that shit.”
“—life-blind,” Leah finished.
“Hey!” Archer was pointing at her. “You can’t use that phrase, that’sourphrase. Also, it’s bullshit.”
“Mmm.” Leah had never met arasa; now there was one right in front of her and there wasn’t much she could do for him. If Archer couldn’t see his past lives, she could not, either. “Am I the only Insighter you’ve stalked? Um, spent time with?”
He flashed her a wounded look. “My cousin’s one. She explained why she gets kind of edgy around me.”
“That’s good, but what does that have to do with Insighters?” Cat asked, grinning. “There’s gotta be lots of reasons peopleget edgy around you. I’m thinking of half a dozen without even trying.”
“Hilarious, Your Honor. Anyway, she told me that Insighters can’t see my past lives and itreallyfreaks them out.”
“Life-blind, huh?” Cat was looking at him thoughtfully. “Jeez. That’s gotta be like... I dunno... missing a limb or something. Sounds wicked hard.”
“It’s actually wicked fine. Suits my personal philosophy pretty perfectly.”
Leah managed a sour smile. This was awfully close to people who weren’t alcoholics being unable to understand why alcoholics can’t control their drinking.Look at me! I just say to myself, Self, don’t have a drink tonight. And I don’t. See? Easy. Now you try.
She had another theory about this puzzling, interesting man, and it wasn’t that he was life-blind. A most-likely ridiculous theory, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up. And she was probably mistaken. But if she wasn’t... she’d never known someone like him before, in all of her lives (that she knew of, at least) and maybe...
Hmm.
