A Fold in the Tent of the Sky Read Online Free Page A

today—and blue jeans, in spite of the heat. Legs crossed, leaning back in her chair, a white sandal barely holding on to the one foot he could see. She held the pen between her fingers like a cigarette. Long fingernails as red as her dress had been that night in St. Paul.
    â€œYeah, you mentioned that in St. Paul,” Peter said, thinking back—school days, school days. “That was a long time ago.”
    â€œNot so long ago. You did well on that test. Extremely well.” She was using her notes now, tapping her pen at the page, making it spill the beans. “ So well, they brought you back in for a few more sessions. Do you remember that? Your score was off the chart. The second and third run of tests, you were back on track, statistically safe.” Her voice a swerving alto, slow—creamy, like her T-shirt.
    â€œAll I remember was doing the test again, getting it right this time, I mean, not rocking the boat. I was happy about it because it meant more money. I think it was fifteen bucks a session, something like that.” He remembered sitting there in this stuffy booth with this microphone in front of himthat smelled of cigarettes. They had him wear a headset that beeped every time he was supposed to guess what card a grad student in the next room was dealing to himself—“Zener” cards, she called them—one with a squiggle, another with a box—like that. A circle, a star. Five in all.
    â€œWhat would you say if I told you you did even better the second set of trials but in a different way?” He said nothing. “You got almost every card right but out of sync. Your hits were for the card after the one you were aiming for. You were picking up data from the future. Or clairvoyantly reading the cards in the deck before they were picked up by the experimenter.”
    Pete wasn’t surprised at all, really. This kind of stuff had been happening to him all his life; he hadn’t needed some sophomore test to convince him of it. And he didn’t now. What puzzled him was that they felt this gift he had was so important—to him it was a curse. All his life he had tried to hide it, like a bad case of psoriasis.
    â€œDo you remember taking a quiz back then? Around the same time you were doing the ESP trials—a multiple-choice questionnaire?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œNo? Well someone in the psych department gave you what’s called a Myers-Briggs—it’s a personality assessment test. You scored a high ENFP, which means you’re an ‘Extroverted’ slash ‘Intuitive’ slash ‘Feeling’ slash ‘Perceptive’ kind of guy. The correlation between a high ENFP and psychic ability is a statistical fact. It’s no wonder you did so well with the telepathy experiment.” She put down her pen and leaned back in her chair; it gave back a faint, door-hinge squeak. “What we’d like to do is test you again if you don’t mind.”
    â€œWhat? This Myers-Briggs thing? Or the Zener cards?”
    She shook her head. “Something a bit more challenging. A ‘stretch.’ Isn’t that what they call it in your business?” She smiled in that way confident women do, more with the eyes than the mouth. Then again, it could have been something she’d picked up in a salesmanship course—like parroting body language.
    â€œHave you dealt with Eli’s target yet? The little box he gave you?”
    â€œNo, I keep putting it off.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know. ’Cause it’s there, the reverse Mount Everest thing—procrastination.”
    â€œIs that all?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Peter knew exactly what she meant; she wanted him to spell it out—put it into words, confront it, dredge it up just like they say in all those off-the-rack self-help therapies—lure him into something like an AA meeting where he was supposed to get up and