The Perfect Stranger

By Rick Hartford

Ricardo Blackbird waited in the empty lobby. Glancing at his iPhone. Putting it away. Looking at the magazines: Mens Health, Cosmopolitan, Field and Stream. And, look at this! Readers Digest!.

That magazine always had some out-there articles, like the time ball lightning came down a family’’s chimney and floated around the living room as everyone sat in horror, afraid to move, lest it would invite, like a macabre parlor game, the ball to electrocute somebody in the room.

He looked at his watch.Thought about leaving. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He stuffed them in his pockets. Pulled them out. He resolved to get up and leave. He didn’t need help, he told himself. But then he looked at the pattern in the door leading to the hallway and froze.

There it was again.

Just then another door opened behind him. He jumped, startled. He turned to look at the person in the doorway.

A tiny woman stood there with a tentative smile. She looked to be in her early 30s, with a long white dress which clung to her body, tangled Raven black hair down almost to her waist, a pencil behind her left ear and glasses held in her mouth by a temple tip.

“Mr. Black?”

“It’s Blackbird. Ricardo Blackbird. Call me Birdie.”

He rose to shake her hand but it was awkward as she had a stack of magazines cradled in both arms. She lifted the stack and stuck out her pinky finger in lieu of a handshake. He did he same. So now were they in the same secret society.

“I have no idea who ordered these,” she said. She held up a copy of Shredded, with a photo of Lisa Lyon on the cover with washboard abs. “Do I look like the type who might order this magazine?” She asked him. He looked at her taut stomach under her clinging dress.

“‘’I’d say yes and I’d say no,” Blackbird said.

“And look at this one, Birdie,” displaying Six Feet Under, the magazine of the American undertaker. She rolled her eyes. “Enough! Come on in. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”

“Only long enough to consider running away,” Blackbird said. “I’m not too good at this sort of thing, I”m afraid.”

“And what is this sort of thing?” She asked.

“Talking about my problems to perfect strangers,” he said.

“All strangers are perfect, Birdie! “Didn’t you know that? That’s our strongpoint! Grab a chair. Sorry, no couch. Had to sell it last week to a client. She said that she was really after the couch, not the chit chat. it was SO soothing! The chair. I offered to throw in a year’s supply of Hoarders Anonymous, but she said she already had a lifetime subscription.”

The chair that took the couch’s place was a comfortable black leather lounger, but Blackbird sat on the edge, trying not to wring his hands.

“My name is Julie,” she said. “Now I”m not so strange, having a name and all. But rest assured. I’m still perfect.”

Blackbird relaxed, a little. But then he remembered why he was there and the walls were suddenly closing in. He could feel the sweat gathering at his temples.

“Mind if I smoke?” Julie asked.

“Go right ahead,” Blackbird said.

She lit up a Pall Mall menthol 100 and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“So what’s going on, Birdie?”

“Well, to be honest, I’m seeing things. Sounds nutty, right?”

She didn’t laugh.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

Blackbird looked at her office door. Relief. It wasnt there, staring back at him.

“Well, I keep seeing a face. In objects. Like in a gnarled trunk of a tree. In a reflection in a puddle. In the patterns of a wooden door. “Like that one.” He pointed behind him, without looking. Julie leaned into him, just a little, looking past him at the door.

”Ever hear of pareidolia? It’s a common phenomenon. The ability to see faces in every day objects,” Julie said. “They used to think of it as an affliction, but now it’s just recognized air a common occurrence. There’s nothing to it. It’s just human nature to put faces on things.”

“But this is the same face, over and over again,” Blackbird said. “It began to happen occasionally, but now it’s happening all the time: a face that I swear that I know, but I really don’t. You know what I mean? When it began it was just like a photograph. But now that same face is moving. Talking to me. I can’t quite make out the words, but it is trying to tell me something. Warn me of something before its too late. I’m sure of it.”

Julie put out her smoke. Blackbird for an instant thought he saw a face in the swirling grey and white cloud. His mind drifted like the smoke.

He looked at Julie. She was saying something.

“Can you draw it for me?”

“I’m not sure,” Blackbird said. “I’ll try.”

She got him paper and the pencil behind her ear and continued to ask questions while he drew. “You say that this face is trying to warn you. So it’s trying to help?”

“I don’t know. I just think it’s trying to tell me something is coming for me.”

Blackbird put the paper and pencil down.

Julie looked at the paper. It was a stick figure with a circle for a head, two dots for eyes, another for a nose and a lazy U for a smile.

“Terrifying,”Julie said.

Blackbird shrugged.

“I flunked art.”

Let’s take a different direction,” Julie said.

“Tell me about any traumatic things that have happened to you, either recently or in the past.”

Blackbird was silent for a while. Thinking back.

“Maybe it was so bad I blotted it out,” he said. “I can’t think of a thing.”

“What do you do for work, Birdie?”

“I find people,” Blackbird said.

“What kind of people?”

“Mostly bad,” Blackbird said.

“Ah,” Julie said.

“What do you do when you find them?”

“Bring them to jail, mostly.”

“So they are criminals. On the run.”

“Mostly. Sometimes I find lost people. Sometimes people who don’t want to be found.”

“Runaways. That sort of thing,” Julie said.

“That sort. Yes.”

“I think we’re getting somewhere. Maybe this face is trying to point you in the direction of someone you are looking for.”

Blackbird got up and started pacing around the room. Julie could see that he was sweating.

“Talk to me, Birdie.”

“I just saw it. In the mirror inside your restroom.”

Julie looked over at the mirror.

“You know it’s not real,” she said.”

“Feels like it,” Blackbird said.

“Would you consider being hypnotized?” She asked.

“Not a good subject,” Blackbird said.

“Speaking of subject, how many cases do you have pending?”

“Maybe a dozen. It changes from week-to-week,” he said.

“You have partners?”

“One. A female prize fighter. Part time.”

“Do you have any enemies that you know of?”

“I’ve stopped counting.”

“This could be a case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Birdie. “I’d like to do some research before our next session.”

She looked at her watch. “Can we meet next week same time?”

“I’ll be there,” Blackbird said.

He drove his car home to the Colt building where he lived on the top floor. He parked his car and went for a walk. He ended up at the makeshift shrine put up in honor of the Virgin Mary at Colt Park across from the old Harley Davidson shop. There were candles everywhere. Rosary beads hung from the trees. Tiny statues of angels. All brought by the faithful.

There was an old woman there lighting a candle. She was bent over with age with a wart on her long nose. She looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaning on a cane with a bony claw. He asked her about the shrine and she explained that people often saw Mary in the sky above them, right here at the park.

It is a miracle, she said. People kneel in the dirt and clasp their hands together as she hovers above them, answering their prayers.

He looked up into the late afternoon sky. Cotton candy clouds drifted overhead.

Mary In the sky, Blackbird thought.

The ultimate Perfect Stranger.

Maybe she would answer his prayers.

He looked around.

The old lady was gone.

He put a buck in a donation basket and walked back to his home, thinking of Julie and their secret handshake.