“You don’t have to stay, you know, Fitch. I have the recording I need and am paying you handsomely for.”
“Hell, you know money isn’t my motivation. You’re kinda my friend. I think I’ll just hang out for a day or two and keep an eye on things. Can we get take-out somewhere around here?”
I was about to answer when an unfamiliar tinkling sound interrupted us. It was my doorbell.
“Wow, I hardly ever hear that. Wait in the kitchen, Fitch, just in case it’s one of my clients. Though finding me out here…”
Another tinkle and Fitch swore she would stay in the kitchen while I went to the front door, another thing I rarely used since I always came through the garage. The door was stuck, warped from being rain soaked and not opened often. I gave it several sharp jerks, and finally wrenched it open, flinging it back against the wall.
“Sorry about that. The builder warned me a wooden door would stick, but I had to ignore him and—”
The figure in front of me was hooded in a coat of pricey lamb’s wool. When she pulled the hood off, I first saw how severely her hair was pulled into a bun. Her glasses reflected the porch light, disguising her eyes. She had a regal bearing but was trying to disguise herself, if not from me, from people on the road or passersby. Since the road was fifty yards away, obscured by trees, I knew her manner of caution was habit born of necessity.
“Are you Devorah Rosten?”
“Definitely. How did you find this place? I try to keep it from general knowledge.”
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how easy information is to obtain, Ms. Rosten.”
Then I recognized her. The candidate. The candidate. Senator Elizabeth Stratton, soon to be nominated by the far right for president of the United States. Reverend Jerry Greenfield’s wife. I wasn’t happy.
“I won’t pretend I don’t know who you are, Senator Stratton. But my house and my business aren’t places where someone of your, let’s say, philosophies, typically shows up on a rainy evening.”
“I would think it’s always a rainy evening when someone of my so-called ‘philosophies’ appears at your door. More dramatically fitting that way. May I come in?”
“Actually, I’m not sure. I don’t need a witch hunter in my home. Is that why you’re here, to call your righteous troops in to attack me?” She glanced down. I’d hit a nerve.
Her mouth pursed as she formulated her reply. “I would think your line of work, as mine, has left you with few illusions about the public faces of celebrities. Regardless of what my supporters may think, I need your services, and I’ve heard you’re the epitome of discretion. Are you alone?”
“My friend is here, but I’m not sure I want to be involved with any of your motivations. I have a few scruples and aiding the mishegoss of the right isn’t on my to-do list.”
She took a breath and placed a hand on the wall of the porch. “We are far from crazy. I know some Yiddish too. I assure you that any involvement with me will not help my supporters’ campaign to recapture the glory of our country.”
“I’m not sure I believe that, but come in. This is against my better judgment, though. I’ll send my friend away for a while. You’ve got one hour with me, and it will be expensive.”
“If you can help me, it will be worth more than you can charge.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
I led her to the living room, wanting to avoid the mess in the library. While she made herself comfortable on the couch, I found Fitch and directed her to a roadhouse several miles away to pick up some broasted chicken with jo jo potatoes.
“Is that edible?”
“Trust me, you’ll love it and the roadhouse. It’s a cultural experience. Be back in one hour and fifteen minutes. I might have more work for you. Oh, and would you stop at the mini-mart and grab a pack of those vitamin C suckies? I think my immune system needs work. And, Fitch, no picking up women.”
Looking hostile, she stomped out to the garage where she’d parked her vehicle. I heard her mutter something about never hitting on a woman while wearing denim. Everybody has their standards, even Fitch.
When I returned to the living room, Elizabeth Stratton, minus her iconic makeup and chignon, sat on my couch like royalty. I wanted to slap her hypocritical face, but I was inexplicably compelled to carry out this session. It wasn’t the money. Something else drove me forward, probably just dumb nosiness, my perennial Achilles’ heel.
“You’re wondering why someone like me would choose to meet with someone like you, Ms. Rosten. Rest assured. I believe your work is nothing less than Satanism, but it brings results, so my sources tell me. I’ll get in bed with the devil to achieve my goals and, I believe, so have you. Pragmatism accomplishes great things, in my experience.”
“Wrong, Ms. Stratton. There’s nothing Satan-like about my work.” At least I privately hoped there wasn’t. I didn’t know where my abilities came from or even if they were diabolically supplied. But I had the intuition that they were just my legacy, like my wavy black hair and five feet eight inch stature.
As I shuffled the worn cards, I set my usual ground rules. “Please stay relaxed and don’t ask me to perform stunts like naming what’s in your purse or your secretary’s mother’s maiden name. I don’t do parlor tricks. If I remain quiet for several seconds to several minutes, you’ll need to keep still, or you’ll distract me from what I’m learning. Whatever information I give you is yours to do with as you will, meaning I have no investment in the outcome of your life. However, if you need my ‘reorganization’ services, we will discuss what outcome you wish to achieve, and I’ll do my best to make that happen. Just don’t object to my methods. Your ignorance safeguards both of us. Do you have any questions before we begin?”
Typically, at this point in a reading, new clients would become nervous and second thoughts would cavort in their heads. But not Elizabeth Stratton. She remained icy, distant, and annoying. I had to admit, though, she was dangerously attractive. She studied me with an indefinable look that reminded me she had been a renowned attorney before her political life began several years earlier.
“And what happens if your efforts fail? Or you get caught? Need I worry?”
“That’s never happened, and I’ve worked for clients who, believe it or not, are under the media microscope more closely than you. But to set your mind at ease, remember if I do get discovered and reveal who I’m working for, my career ends right along with yours. And I really don’t want that to happen. I enjoy my privileged medical benefits too much.”
“And your fee?”
“Will be refunded in full if you aren’t satisfied. If someone in your position is exposed as my client, you’ll definitely need every penny you can get just to handle the hate mail from your disappointed groupies.” I couldn’t resist the jab. Her constituents were everything that was wrong about our country. I didn’t want her to even consider that I was enamored of her, like the poor souls who thought she was the second coming of the messiah.
She was a poised woman because she didn’t flinch. “Will your distaste for me interfere with your effectiveness? Believe me, any verbal punch you throw is nothing I haven’t weathered hundreds of times before. I’m here for your services. Can you put your misguided politics aside and deliver results?”
For the first time in my career, I had to consider her question. I’d worked with some extremely unsavory clients without feeling any indignation regarding what they did for a living or behind closed doors. But with this woman, someone I intuitively knew was on the wrong side of things, someone who manipulated ignorant, underinformed people with her looks and ability to quip trite motivational sound bites, could I stay aloof from all that? I was disturbed to feel shaking anger and considered calling off the reading and sending her back to her lair. But something, some compulsion, kept me going along with her, even though my emotions were far from serene. In fact, every Jewish pogrom warning bell clanged within me; my heritage reminded me where danger resided.
El
izabeth Stratton had come to me as a client. I had never refused a client, not their assignments and not their money. I wasn’t ready to change what had been a successful formula.
Had I ended the session right then, everything would have been different. All the events that happened after could have been avoided. I should have remembered the wisdom of my people: She who makes a promise runs in debt.
Chapter Five
Something about having the infamous Senator Stratton, conservative presidential candidate, as a client destroyed my usual objectivity. My massive intuitive senses were clanging. I’d always felt the woman was a fraud, but sitting in her presence dredged up emotions I’d never experienced with a client: anger, hostility, disgust, and even fear. But there was something irresistible about the woman, a boatload of charismatic intelligence matched with the allure of power. I was beginning to understand why some voters were swayed by her malicious rhetoric. That made me indignant for the people who really couldn’t see through the manipulation.
When I glanced at the card spread on the table, I saw little that was remarkable except the Knight of Swords card. The picture depicted an armored knight waving his vicious double-edged sword and glaring at me with concentrated hate. A card of intellectual aggression, using one’s mind to attack a problem.
Then it happened: the vision. But this time it was different, more complicated.
I found myself standing at the back of a press conference, all attention focused on an empty podium. The occupants of the crowded room were waiting for someone to make an announcement. I pressed my back into the corner and waited only for a few minutes when the silent crowd parted to let someone through. I saw the back of a blond head move through the reporters to reach the podium. Although her head was lowered, she walked with purpose and strength, and didn’t falter when she climbed the few steps to the small stage that held the podium. It was Laura Bishop.
The reporters were now murmuring. Some spoke into their phones or voice recorders.
Laura was dressed in a rumpled sweat suit. It seemed her arm was injured and there were wounds on her face. Underneath her other arm she held a large book that looked like it held loose-leaf pages. She stood at the podium, her eyes bruised from fatigue, and barely registered the crowd. The reporters began to hurl questions at her. The sound in the vision didn’t allow me to hear the complete questions.
“Ms. Bishop, do you have proof—”
“Miss Bishop, do you expect the American people to believe—”
“Do you really think a candidate of such stature—”
“Our sources reveal that you were—”
I knew she was having difficulty maintaining her composure as she continually swept her hair behind one ear and kept her eyes on her rumpled notes. When she finally looked up, her eyes searched the room and locked on mine.
And with every fiber of my being, I wanted her.
My entire body was smashed into the room’s corner as if I had no skeleton, only soggy flesh.
The High Priestess’s voice rang in my head. “Meddler. Your mission begins now.”
I opened my eyes to see the storybook painted sky of the Theater. Everything hurt, my torso, appendages, and head. Even through the pain, the physical desire for Laura Bishop hadn’t subsided. I had to resist pressing my hands to my throbbing crotch.
To my left was Pento, motionless like a mannequin, but as soon as I made a scraping sound with my foot, he came alive and looked at me.
“Some freako theme park this is,” I said.
“Ah, back again, I see. Good then. I have something to show you.” He wasn’t smiling as before, but I grabbed his dry, gloved hand when he offered to pull me out of the sand.
“Where are we now?” I brushed the sand from my pants. Sand? Well, at least pseudo sand. I felt the whatever-it-was slide into the lamb’s wool slippers that I’d been wearing for coziness during the reading. “I hope you realize I’m not dressed for action, Pento.”
“Your attire is of no consequence to me. You have covering on your feet, a particularly human affectation. Throughout the cosmos, you are the only ones who deem footwear important. The others laugh at you, you know.”
“What others? Why are shoes funny?”
“You are not the only ones trying to get by in your paltry world. There are countless others in countless worlds. You are just the only ones who wear shoes. It is humorous.”
“I’m not laughing, and don’t expect me to do any schlepping without my arch supports.”
“Schlepping? Arch supports?”
“Never mind. What is it you want to show me? I have a kind of important reading going on right now.” I sat back down and emptied the uniform-sized grains of sand from my slippers.
“Yes, your, what do you call it…‘client’? That is why we have summoned you. This is emergency training. The Malignity has made moves we failed to predict.”
“Wait. My client is the Malignity? Elizabeth Stratton? Why am I not surprised? Is she my adversary?”
“For such a handsome human specimen, you ask many questions. You make many assumptions with your questions, so I have difficulty deciding which one to answer first. Therefore, let me illustrate what your challenge is, and you can decide how to meet it.”
“But I thought you would decide and I’d just carry out your wishes.” I stood back up and brushed the manufactured sand off my butt.
“We decide for you? No. We never decide for humans. We may inform them, guide them a little, even place an opportunity within their reach. But we never decide for them. That is not how it is designed for humans.”
“How what is designed?”
“Free choice, of course.”
“You mean all this is a choice?” I waved my hand toward the sand dune that obscured my ability to get my bearings.
“Oh no, we make the Theaters. Then we bring adept humans, those belonging to the correct lines, to Theaters that best suit the humans’ talents. Humans make their choices about how to operate within their particular Theaters. It is the cosmic law, one we agreed upon eons ago. We try to settle differences with the Malignity within a Theater, using the lines. If things are not settled there, then it gets uncomfortable for humans in their world. We try to watch out for you, but your choices often do keep us from helping.”
“So are you going to supply a menu of choices? Or do I make them up as I go? What’s a ‘line’?”
“Oh, you already have the menu. You hardly need my help with a menu.”
“This is too much, Pento. I’m confused. I want to think about all this later. Show me what you need to show me, and I’ll get back to my client.”
He pointed to the top of the dune, and I started to climb it, sliding back a foot for every two feet I gained. I could hear waves crashing somewhere in the direction I was heading.
“I would not go bumbling into plain sight if I were you, pretty damsel,” Pento called after me.
“You can call me Dev,” I said over my shoulder.
When I neared the summit of the dune, I stayed low and peeked over. Spread in front of me, like a vast museum painting, was an ocean beach, endless and loud. But it lacked dimension, like the backdrop of a play. It was lit by unearthly light, not quite sunlight, more like the lamps used to illuminate a movie set, fake but bright. The water stretched to the horizon with sizable waves that looked more artificial the farther away they stretched. In the far distance, the sea was like the work of a delusional impressionist painter. I wondered where Pento was getting his information about what the earth looked like.
Far to my left, a quarter mile down the beach, there was activity. Human forms doing something I couldn’t make out. I decided to stay behind the dunes and move closer to the people on the beach but avoid their spotting me. First, I removed my slippers, deciding that bare feet would operate better in the unstable faux sand than loose lamb’s wool slippers. I placed the slippers on top of the dune, hoping that they would be easier to find when I returned. I looked behind to
see if Pento would follow me. Pento was gone.
Courage was not an aspiration as far as I was concerned. I didn’t want to go it alone in a place created for some vague need that had barely been explained to me. But curiosity was one of my favorite motivators, so I decided to see what had been created there on the beach for my personal enlightenment. At least, I hoped it would be enlightening.
I scrambled along the land side of the dunes, keeping my head below their crests so that I couldn’t be seen. When I determined I had gone far enough to be fairly close to the action on the beach, I slowly made my way up the back of a dune, trying to avoid making noise. Then I remembered that the hollow ocean roar would drown out any sound I made.
It took me several moments to adjust my eyes and believe what I was witnessing. Blades jammed into the sand, eight medieval swords, the kind I can barely lift, encircled a woman bound in ropes. She was blindfolded, dressed in a loose white gown, and tied to a large stake. She struggled against her bondage. Her lips were saying something, but I was too far away to hear. Behind the spiked swords, beneath the blindfold was Laura Bishop. Then my attention was centered on the armored knight lurking outside the ring of standing swords.
As I watched him, he hefted his own lethal sword and swung it around his head, never taking his eyes from Laura Bishop. Even from where I hid, I heard the swoosh, swoosh of his weapon as he wielded it around and around, readying for a strike. He planned to execute her.
Laura cried out, and my attention returned to her. She was wearing the same clothes she wore at the press conference, battered sweatpants and a soiled T-shirt. She was participating in some bizarre tableau of the Eight of Swords, a minor tarot card, but one with threatened violence. The violence could sometimes emerge from one’s inability to change an ethic or philosophy. There was nothing philosophic about the scene before me. It was lethal.
Like a heroic fool, I pushed myself over the top of the dune and bellowed at the knight. “Hey, stop! Look over here.” I skidded on my rear all the way down the dune. When I jarred to a stop, I clambered up and ran toward the knight. He was within a few inches of taking off Laura’s head. Her hair riffled from the air displaced by the swiping giant sword.
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