Hoping that something would settle his stomach, he ordered one of each and sat down at a small bench off to the side. A beautiful little garden was beside it, where the aromatic scent of the roses should have been overwhelmingly strong, but instead all he could smell was the vomit from his bathroom, a bathroom he was no longer in. His gaze wide, he stared at the surroundings, wondering what the hell was going on and how he could stop it. Was it a psychic thing? Like Kate had asked earlier?
If he connected psychically with live people, why the hell couldn’t he connect with dead people? That would be the best thing. Then at least maybe he could talk to his grandmother. Although, if she hadn’t wanted anything to do with his own psychic visions on this side, Simon highly doubted she would want to deal with it there on the other side either. But then why should she get a choice, when he apparently wasn’t getting one?
Realizing he sounded like a whiny little bitch, he groaned and focused on the coffee, trying hard to bring the aroma of the fresh ground brew into his nostrils and into his system. But it was not to be.
All he could smell was vomit.
Thankfully it seemed to ease up the longer he sat there, so he waited a little bit, hoping something would completely remove the horrid vomit odor, but, even though that didn’t happen, it was reduced enough that he could breathe again. By the time his coffee was gone, it was safe to stand up and to walk around a little bit. He did so gently, in case it all came rushing back, but it seemed like whatever it was had passed. He glanced around him and realized the coffee guy was looking at him sideways.
Simon walked back over, smiled. “I’ll take a second one of those.”
“You okay, man?”
“Yeah. Bad night.”
The cart owner snorted. “You know what? If you’re drinking hard, those nights just never get any better.”
Realizing that almost everybody who saw him during one of these psychic events would think he was completely hungover, he just shrugged, accepting that as the better reaction. “Sometimes it’s hard to get out of it.”
“Looks like it’s time for you to kick a bad habit.”
He agreed, but no way Simon could explain to this guy that the bad habit was this nightmare of smells.
With his second coffee in hand, he slowly turned and walked to one of the buildings he had to check on today. He didn’t have his notes with him; he didn’t have anything. He’d left it all on his dining table at home. Thank God he had his phone.
Still, as he wandered through his morning’s visits of his properties, nobody seemed to make any comment about his appearance or his actions, so he figured maybe it was fine. Only as he headed toward a sandwich shop around the corner did that overwhelming sense of smell came on again. He stopped warily at the edge of an alley, but it wasn’t too bad, at least it didn’t seem to be too bad. He crossed the alleyway and moved forward. And then the wind seemed to pick up and race around him, but he stopped because nobody else’s jackets were blowing. Nobody else was leaning into the wind, like he was.
He realized just how bizarre this new sensory issue was. He leaned up against the wall, trying to brace himself, as if buffeted by a hurricane. It was weird. He ducked into the nearby sandwich shop, but the psychic assault didn’t stop. Seeing a full crowd inside, he ducked back out again, using that as an excuse for his actions. He sat down on a bench around the corner. Thank God benches were everywhere. Convenient places to sit and hopefully to look a little less of an idiot. Or at least an idiot who blended into the rest of the world who strode quickly by.
When his phone rang, he looked down to see it was Kate.
“Hey,” he answered, his voice strained.
“What’s up?” she asked, her tone sharp. Of course she noticed. It was pretty damn hard to get anything past her.
“Just another weird symptom,” he said quietly.
“And you can handle it or no?”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked, his voice stronger.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He had to love that about her. There was empathy but not an overly large dose of sympathy. As if he would figure out how to handle it. As he thought about it, maybe he would. Hell, maybe he had somehow brought all this on himself, and it wouldn’t stop until he’d paid a penance for whatever it was that he’d done. Again his grandmother’s voice came to mind. What the hell had she ever done that she’d had such a rough life herself? Because, damn, some things in the world shouldn’t have happened, but they did,… right before his eyes. It drove him nuts to think about it.
“Is it anything you can stop?” she asked, surprising him that she was still on the line.
“Nothing has worked so far,” he said.
“What reaction?”
He explained quietly.
“Oh. Okay, that’s gross.” He burst out laughing. “At least you’re laughing about it.”
“Only since you called,” he said quietly.
“Is it somebody? Are you connecting with somebody who might have gone out, like, was partying too hard last night?”