by R. E. Rose
The conversations with past guys generally started with, “What are you wearing?” I wondered how he’d offended Maisie so much so that she’d captured him and placed him for an indefinite period in the tarot deck. But I didn’t feel we knew each other well enough, yet, to go straight away to inquiring. Maybe after dinner, we’d uncover the darker secrets of Shane Apollo, tarot prisoner.
*
The fanciest restaurant in town--The Gotham Gourmet needed a three-week in advance reservation to get in. A busy place. We struggled to find parking because the valet didn’t operate that night. But the low-lit, posh restaurant gave its clientele a sense of quiet intimacy that made all our effort worth it. They made us feel like only we existed.
An open bottle of a pricey Cab Sav sat breathing at the table, waiting for us. The waiter came over right away and poured Shane a taste. After we relaxed into our wine, Shane reached over and took my hand. A sweet gesture that led to some serious eye locking until I noticed someone familiar walk by our table, presumably headed for the washroom.
I don’t know why she caught my attention, but she did. I pulled my stare from Shane and did a double take on the walker. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In fact, I stood up and craned to be sure.
Maisie!
“That was Maisie!” I said, sounding accusatory even to myself.
“Who?” He looked genuinely perplexed.
“Maisie Price, from the curio shop; the sorceress that does the tarot readings and ruins people lives and has cast you forever into her tarot deck.” I caught myself. “Well, I don’t have to tell you who Maisie is.”
“Oh, yeah, she recommended this place to me,” he said.
I went silent. “Excuse me for a minute,” I said and felt my lips become two annoyed straight lines. I walked back through the rows of tables to see if I might identify where she was sitting. It wasn’t hard, once I started looking. Emilia Darkiness was sitting at her table, sipping on a glass of water, no doubt waiting for her boss to return. I made sure she didn’t see me, and I went back to my table.
But I tried to walk back to my spot as unassumingly as possible; I noticed a few stares. From the corner of my eye, and as discretely as possible, I looked at the restaurant’s clientele. Justine Day sat, out of uniform, eating French fried potatoes and drinking a tall beer; across from her, a date; a slim woman I swear I’d seen in the High Priestess card in the tarot deck. They wore civilian clothing and looked regular, except the High Priestess wore her royal jewelry. Justine nodded at me. I gave her a quarter smile and the very regal High Priestess gave me a look of approval.
As I rounded an aisle, I noticed Cassandra Baranova and her nasty boyfriend, Drake, enjoying steak and lobster. Cassie wouldn’t look at me, but he did, giving me a sinister smile, although I don’t think he was able of produce any other kind of expression. His half locket caught the candle light and flashed at me. I looked away.
Yet, if that didn’t do me in, the next sighting surely did. Christian Whitman and a woman I didn’t recognize appeared to be enjoying a fancy desert of crème brûlée. My mind whirred like a Magic Eight Ball in the hands of a bartender shaking up a drink.
I walked quickly around the restaurant and then around once more. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Gottschalk, a.k.a., the Hierophant and the Empress. Plenty of folks looked unfamiliar, but most came right out of Maisie’s deck! The real shocker came when I’d nearly made my way back to my table and spotted a woman that stopped me in my tracks.
I swore Glendie sat at a table with Barkman Moore, the tattoo artist from the Strength card. She, the Sun card, and he, the Strength card from the deck, looked to be a very a cozy couple. I walked right up to the table and looked the woman in the face.
It wasn’t Glendie, but in a pinch passed for a close sister.
“Sorry, I mistook you for—a friend.” The woman smiled at me and made me feel warm and happy. I tried hard not to catch Barkman’s eye. But he took my hand, and I recognized the snake tattoo on the back of his knuckles; his grip grew so strong, I had to stay until he let go. He squeezed so hard I winced, but then he did release me. I quickly walked away.
I slumped into my seat. Shane smiled at me unaware of my mood.
“I ordered appetizers for us,” he said.
“There’s some strangeness happening,” I said. Shane smiled at me. I don’t think he heard me.
I stared at him. Behind him, I saw the man from the Hermit card get up and go to the men’s room. It became more and more difficult to concentrate on Shane’s conversation because all of me wanted to scream, “Why the hell are you ALL here?”
“I need to find a bigger town to work in if I’m going to be the kind of fireman I want to be,” Shane said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Oh, what kind’s that?” I asked and hoped I sounded interested.
“The heroic kind.”
“Oh, oh, I get it. Not enough action in Meadowvale,” I said, and sipped my wine. It tasted delicious.
“Yeah, a bigger town. I want more work, you know, fighting fires. I want to be loved as a hero!”
“Mmm, I understand that. What about being loved as a man?” I asked, as my gaze wandered round and round the restaurant. I tried to focus but found it impossible. He took my hand.
“I especially want that,” he said, looking deeply into my eyes.
Shane talked about himself. Normally, I hated it when a guy did that, but tonight I don’t think conversation from my side of the table could have happened.
My head spun from trying to figure things out. He also told me he’d noticed me around town and wanted to date again. I did manage to ask him if he was married and how many other “Jane’s” he was dating. He gave the correct answer to both those questions, no and none; although, if he’d admitted to having other love interests it would have been hard to say goodbye to this one.
He said if I thought he was worthy, he’d like to try being a “sometimes” boyfriend, and I thought, yikes, I’ve already got one of those! William.
For a girl who likes no commitment, I was suddenly confronted with a bunch of them.
After Shane admitted that he didn’t like Meadowvale, and he’d like to leave for a bigger city, I wondered if he realized that he was the Chariot character in Maisie’s deck and so, couldn’t leave.
There seemed to be a disconnect as some of the characters from the cursed deck didn’t realize their predicament. Glendie also didn’t remember being possessed by the Sun spirit. If Shane didn’t know what he was, then he was in for one uncomfortable surprise when he tried to leave Meadowvale.
“Don’t you know that majors can’t leave?” I asked.
“I’m not a major,” he said, “Only a minor fireman. One day, I may make chief.”
“You’re a character in a tarot deck. You’re not really a fireman. At least not anymore. Maisie controls you” I said, and then took a long drink of my cab sav’ and looked cautiously over the rim of the goblet at him to catch his reaction.
He stared at me and appeared to contemplate my words. I couldn’t tell if he knew what I was talking about, and maybe he didn’t want to go there, or if he thought I was a crazy.
“You need to accept the fact that you’re attached to the tarot deck and can’t ever leave town,” I said, downing another few gulps of wine. “Maisie controls you. She told me so herself; even if you’re not inhabited by a tarot spirit of some kind, she’s in control.” He poured himself a glass of wine. He swirled the wine, sniffed the wine and then raised his glass to me, clinking our goblets.
“Those are Maisie’s rules. If guardianship changes, then so can the rules,” he said, and drank deeply from his glass.
Well, that was news to me.
And I began to wake up to the fact that Maisie set up this date at this restaurant with all her crew in attendance. It dawned on me that she might be showing me off, garnering approval from her captives. Was this a dinner night for the majors? Shane a carrot dangled for me to desire?
She’d fin
ally found some way to make me doubt my own decision about staying a hundred miles away from that deck. She’d told me to stay away from Shane, but she knew that reverse psychology would make me want him more!
We made it through our dinner, but seeing Maisie and the rest of her cast at the restaurant took a lot of the romance out of it for me. I still couldn’t tell if Apollo truly didn’t know how much he was a part of the tarot deck, or if he was lying.
“How much money do you owe her?” I asked him. I needed to get to the bottom of this.
I learned that night that Maisie owned horses and Shane oversaw the stables and the animals.
“She didn’t know it, but I took insurance out on the animals and the stables,” he confessed. After insuring the stable and horses, he’d burned them. He didn’t mean to harm the animals, he said, only the building, and eventually he’d collected on the insurance money meant for Maisie. So, she lost her horses, buildings and the insurance money.
“I didn’t want to keep the money after I saw what I’d done – to the animals and to her,” he said looking deeply into his drink. “I tried to make it up to her, but nothing could ever make up for that.”
I agreed with him.
He’d tried to redeem himself by donating all the insurance money to an animal shelter, but Maisie still hasn’t forgiven him.
“Do all the majors in the deck have a story as horrific as yours?” I asked.
“Yes. Some are worse than mine – some not so catastrophic. But I can’t think of one person in that deck that doesn’t deserve to be there – and for quite awhile, if not forever.”
After he told me his story, I contemplated the golden horse charm around his neck on a heavy chain; he’d been playing with it the whole time he told me his tale –
“Why do you wear that?” I asked taking the chain from his fingers and fondling the charm.
“I wear it,” he said. “Or else. I might start a fire.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
Start a fire! Those words rang in my head.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and smiled sweetly at Shane as I quickly left the table and headed for the restaurant’s kitchen.
9.
Tut,Tut
It was really Devon’s idea to set the Duck à l’Orange on fire, but I helped him with a little bit of my magic. He poured alcohol all over the tiny beast, but Chef Tut caught him.
As I crept into the kitchen and hid behind a freezer I heard, “Ay, you lazy fuck, get that duck plated and out. It’s gettin’ colder than your heart.” Just as I suspected, Devon worked among the kitchen staff.
“Yes, Chef,” Devon said contritely, but in his heart, I’m certain his fury grew, and he probably knew he needed to calm down because a horned and hoofed demi-demon running amuck in the kitchen, alongside Chef Tut and staff, wouldn’t please Maisie.
Chef Tut was British, and worst of all, rumor had it, that he was Maisie’s boyfriend. Although, at the time of Devon’s mishap, Chef and Maisie were having a lover’s quarrel.
Chef was as abrasive as a bag of rattlesnakes. He stood about five-feet-seven-inches tall, and if Maisie wore heels, she was a little taller than the chef. He had a head of thick blond hair chopped in different layers which made the hair look like the working end of a mop. He had thick, meaty hands and powerful fingers. Rumour had it that if kitchen staff didn’t work fast enough, or annoyed the chef (which was easily done), they’d be on the receiving end of a Tut-tap which was a painful pinch.
Setting the kitchen on fire went something like this:
“You fuckin’ bag of insect droppings. Don’t you use your fuckin’ devil’s magic in here, or I’ll have your fucking demon balls in my spaghetti!” said the Chef, and he started to move very quickly across the kitchen toward Devon, carving knife in hand.
Devon didn’t have much time. He heated the alcohol with the tip of his finger, and the duck exploded into flames. It looked lovely. The rest of the kitchen staff thought it was meant to be on fire and began clapping.
At that very moment, Devon dumped the pan full of hot, burning duck and fat onto a pile of napkins, thinking (I found out later) that he’d set the kitchen on fire. He tried to fan the fire into a rage, instead it fizzled out. Then he took out a cigarette and lit the end of a cloth and tossed that into another part of the kitchen, hoping for more fire. All this because Chef Tut treated him like the scumbag he was, and because he wanted to take a smoke break and the chef had refused.
When no one was paying attention, I muttered a little spell over the potential fire hazards Devon had created, “Fire and flame, duck and game, burn and blaze till Devon’s shamed.” I fanned the flames.
Then I lit out of the kitchen before anyone saw me!
But I didn’t go right back to my table with Shane, I quickly but stealthily made my way to Maisie and Emi’s table and hid behind a decorative curtain near their table. I kept an eye on the kitchen and one on Maisie and Emi who weren’t aware that the restaurant kitchen was on fire; moments before all hell broke loose, I spied on the two of them and was glad I did:
“Stop texting Jane!” Maisie commanded. Emi was trying to text me. She turned her cell off. “I find it hard to believe and a little hurtful that you’d be texting her while you’re at dinner with me!” Maisie said. She hated the fact that Emilia enjoyed texting me more than working a shift as Maisie’s bodyguard, even if she provided a great meal.
Only Maisie knew for sure what business she was up to that night. I’ve come to realize, she doesn’t do much for pleasure, she’s all business. When she’s out with Emi riding shotgun, someone’s gonna die. Emi knocked back a few glasses of wine and settled down. While Maisie ordered the restaurant’s specialty, the duck. I snickered too loudly. My laugh made them pause a moment in their conversation and look in my direction.
“Why are all the majors out dining tonight?” Emilia asked.
“I forget how new you are to the deck, Emilia,” Maisie said.
“So?”
“The carnival – I always gather all the carnies for the carnival. I invite them all to dinner. The majors all work the circus when it comes to town,” she said, sipping her gin and tonic.
“They all work for the circus?”
“Of course. Their origins began in the carnival.”
“What about Devon does he work the carnival?” Emi asked.
“Of course,” Maisie said.
“What? What’s his role?”
“I wouldn’t want to ruin the fun,” Maisie said, coyly.
“But Devon? He’s so—”
“So, what?”
“Unpredictable,” Emi said.
“Don’t act so surprised. Even I work the carnival. I’m the fortune teller,” Maisie said, pulling apart a small piece of bread and buttering it.
“What would I do?”
“We could put you in the Oddities and Eccentricities tent. You could do some fancy sword work. Wait, I know, the Death Deifier. Kill yourself and come back to life,” Maisie said, and chuckled around the bread in her mouth.
“I don’t think so,” Emilia said.
“Well, we’ll think of something.”
“Oddities and Eccentricity? What does that mean?” Emi asked her, but Maisie looked annoyed that Emi was continually interrupting the enjoyment of dinner.
“It’s the politically correct term for Freak Show carnies,” Maisie said, around a mouth full of duck.
Emi didn’t know what to say. She looked once again around the restaurant.
But Maisie wanted to change the subject. “Jane will make a fine sorceress and guardian of the tarot. I only wish you’d brave up a bit when it comes to advancing my cause.”
“Brave up? Brave up? What’s that supposed to mean?” This comment set Emilia off. Maisie had triggered Emi into a rare rant.
“If you bring a death-dealer like me out of the deck --be prepared for a few battles, some fights will be worse than others, at least that’s what I’ve learned in the shor
t time I’ve worked for you,” Emi said, then sipped her wine nervously.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“If you try to get rid of me, I may come back to haunt you in more than one way.
“You mean, ‘in more ways than one,’” Maisie said.
“Maybe that is what I mean. What I mean is you can’t keep me locked up in that deck. You need me. And Jane will never take over for you. Maybe Jane and I will work together without you!”
Emi went on and on, “You’re not as powerful as you think!” she caterwauled, “You --you’re nothing more than a, a, fancy old witch. A sorceress is no match for a death-dealer. That’s what I’ve learned,” Emila said, then chewed on the ice in her glass and got hot around the cheeks.
The wine had really loosened her tongue.
“Oh, I get it,” Maisie said. “You’re in love. In love with Jane. Well, well, who isn’t? We all love Jane. Think of this, Emi. If Jane became guardian, you and she would be together for —hmm-oh, I don’t know—FOREVER!”
“But Jane doesn’t want to be Sorceress.”
“We don’t get to do what we want in this world. People do what they don’t want all the time. You think people want to die?”
“I didn’t make the rules. It’s part of living. There’s no choice. I do my job. Jane has a choice.”
“Remember that I made you. Jane wants to be a sorceress. She just doesn’t know it yet. And believe me, it’s my job, like it or not, to find my replacement.”
“Why did you create that stupid deck?”
“It’s an oracle. It knows all. And it makes me a shit load of money. You don’t believe I have the power to stop a death-dealer and lock you in permanently, just try me. Believe it,” Maisie said, and sipped her gin, scanning the restaurant to see if their voices attracted any unwanted attention.
At some point during their dinner, Maisie confessed to Emi she knew Emilia had a special relationship with me, and she needed Emilia’s friendship to help convince me.
