Murphy’s Luck

by Benjamin Laskin

  “If what you said yesterday was true then I should get the same cards today, right?”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Mr. Parker. You can’t step into the same river twice.”

  Johnson, still dreamy-eyed, repeated Freya’s words, “You can’t step into the same river twice. Cool…”

  Parker gave Johnson the fisheye.

  Freya clarified, “You aren’t the same man you were yesterday.”

  Parker snorted. “You can say that again, and I want you to change me back.” He finished shuffling and cutting the cards. “Deal,” he commanded.

  Freya said serenely, “I didn’t change you, Mr. Parker. Only you can do that.”

  “You did,” Parker insisted. “You used some kind of hypnosis on me. I’m a cop, remember? And I’m willing to bet you’re operating without a license. Do you pay taxes on this gig? I doubt it, and I can find out.” He pushed the deck towards Freya. “Deal!”

  Unruffled by Brock’s threats, Freya dealt three cards in a line: the two of cups, the four of cups, and the ten of cups.

  Freya said, “My, my… Congratulations, Mr. Parker.”

  Parker squinted at Frya. “What do you mean congratulations?”

  “Ting-a-ling-a-ling, Mr. Parker.”

  “Ting-a-what?”

  “Wedding bells. You’ve met the woman we spoke about, and the wheels are in motion.”

  “What?! No way. Forget it. You’re messing with me again.”

  Johnson slapped Parker excitedly on the back. “The bank lady,” he said. “That Wanda Tarrow chick. I knew it!”

  Parker said, “You don’t know shit, Johnson, so shut up.”

  “Smile, man,” Johnson said. “Wanda Tarrow is hot!”

  Freya laughed. “Wanda Tarot? Seriously? Isn’t that funny? Life cracks me up sometimes.”

  “That’s what she said!” Johnson exclaimed. “Her exact words, Parker! Wow…”

  “Up yours, Johnson,” Parker said.

  Freya pulled the top card from the deck, glanced at it, chuckled mischievously, and placed it face up on the table. It was the Queen of Wands. “Did ‘Wanda’ Tarot look anything like this?” She smiled, and added, “I love my job.”

  “No!” Parker said. “You’re doing it again. You’re putting a suggestion in my head. Hypnosis. You’re giving me the whammy!”

  Johnson slapped a twenty on the table. “Do me! Do me!”

  Parker said, “Johnson, what the hell is wrong with you? An hour ago you were telling me all this stuff is superstitious nonsense.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not as narrow-minded as you, Parker. Maybe I’m not the same man I was an hour ago. The river, you know? I’m stepping into a different river, man. Freya here is the real deal, I can tell.”

  Parker said, “And I’m telling you it’s not the bank lady, okay? It’s Joy. She slipped me a note and that counts.”

  Johnson turned to Freya. “Yeah,” he sniggered, as if he and Freya were now best friends and confidants, “a note that said, ‘go away, I don’t want to talk to you!’” He laughed and slapped his knee.

  “Shut up, Johnson. That counts.” Parker shook his head in frustration. “I can’t believe I’m having this stupid conversation. This is all BS and I’m going to prove it. Come on. We’re going back to Joy’s.”

  “I haven’t had my reading yet,” Johnson said.

  “For Chrissake, Johnson. You want this charlatan to mess your life up too?”

  “Well, to be honest, it’s really not all that great to begin with.”

  “Johnson,” Brock growled.

  Johnson handed Brock the car keys. “You go. Come get me when you’re done.” He grabbed up the cards and started shuffling. He looked at Freya and said, “Like this, right?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Parker grumbled. He got up and stomped off.

  Back on the sidewalk, his head down, lost in his anger and frustration, Brock didn’t see Joy and Murphy walk right past him.

  Murphy said, “Isn’t that—?”

  Joy threw her hand over Murphy’s mouth. She peeked over her shoulder and saw Brock disappear around a corner.

  “Uh-oh,” Murphy said, his murphometer going off. He winced. From around the corner came a crash, followed by a burst of cursing. A lone skateboard rolled from around the corner and into the street, where it was promptly run over by a Shamrock Dairy delivery truck.

  They heard Brock Parker shout, “Hey, dumbass! Watch where you’re going!”

  Smiling and curious, Joy peeked into The Parcae Cafe. “What could he have been doing in there?” she wondered aloud. “He hates that place. He only goes there because I like it.”

  Then she did a double take, recognizing Brock’s partner, Johnson, in the corner getting his cards read by the tarot lady.

  “Johnson?” she said with further surprise.

  Joy knew Johnson well. Brock had often regaled her with Johnson’s stories of his off-duty exploits, and she had spent many enjoyable evenings of pizza and beer with Brock and his loquacious partner. The two men often ribbed her about her “flaky, New Agey” beliefs, and her gullibility for all things mystical. But it was mostly in fun, and Johnson was otherwise kind and generous towards her, almost in a brotherly fashion.

  As for Johnson, he appreciated that Joy was the only person he knew that didn’t poke fun at his enthusiasm for horse racing. She would clap when he reported having had a good day at the races, and push out her bottom lip in commiseration when he had had a bad day. Her interest and sympathy was genuine, and it endeared him to her.

  Despite Johnson’s teasing and displays of know-it-all arrogance, Joy liked Johnson. His loyalty to Brock touched her, and she recognized a soft side to the handsome detective; a side he’d show only when Brock was not around. To have spotted Johnson with a tarot reader was delicious, and she looked forward to confronting him with it the next time he decided to mock her for just such a thing.

  ···

  Frya turned over four cards in front of Johnson: the Knight of Swords, the Knight of Cups, the Knight of Wands, and the Knight of Pentacles. Each card showed a knight on top of a horse.

  “My goodness, Mr. Johnson,” Freya said. “You certainly have a thing for horses. Either that, or…” She winked at him. “Quite the stud, aren’t you?”

  Johnson said, “Man, you’re good!”

  Freya’s aura returned in all its radiant glory. He didn’t know what to make of it, and he no longer cared. He felt he was participating in something extraordinary, miraculous even.

  “Keep going,” he said. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  ···

  Back on the sidewalk, Joy chuckled and said, “Johnson getting his cards read? Will wonders never cease?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Murphy said. “Let’s go back before it’s too late.”

  Joy took Murphy’s hand and led him onward. Murphy marveled at their intertwining fingers and felt a strange fluttering in his chest. He had never held hands with a woman before.

  “Murphy,” she said teasingly, “your palm is sweating.”

  They approached the boardwalk, and Murphy balked. Distraught, he said, “So many people.”

  “Just a typical boardwalk afternoon,” Joy said.

  “There’s no such thing,” Murphy replied bleakly.

  Double Whammy

  Joy tugged Murphy forward like a reluctant dog. “Come on,” she said. “I’m going to prove to you that this phobia of yours is all in your head.”

  No sooner said, Murphy’s murphometer went off and he snapped to attention like an alert Doberman, ears pressed to the ether, searching for the incoming trouble.

  He spotted an inattentive elderly couple strolling closely behind a small child with a loose shoestring. Murphy tore his hand from Joy’s and sprinted towards the perilous scene. He intercepted the couple a split moment before the child stopped suddenly to bend over and tie his shoe, preventing what certainly would have made for a painful collision.

  Joy l
ooked on in astonishment.

  His murphometer having already triggered again, Murphy didn’t wait around.

  Joy, more fascinated than puzzled, followed him. She saw Murphy take off towards a little girl tagging behind her parents. She watched him scoop up the little girl into the air an instant before a longhaired, iPod-wearing bicyclist zoomed around a corner and flew across the spot the girl had just been occupying.

  Gobsmacked, Joy said, “It can’t be…”

  Murphy put the girl down, breathed a sigh of relief, and patted her on the head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pink rabbit’s foot key chain and handed it to the girl. The little girl smiled and ran to show it to her parents.

  Joy started to jog over to Murphy, but she halted when she noticed that he seemed to have picked up more trouble. She looked about. To her, everything appeared perfectly normal.

  Murphy observed two shirtless guys playing frisbee on the lawn that separated the boardwalk from the beach. Uncertain where the next catastrophe would strike, he looked urgently about, stretching all his senses. “And the worst would be…?”

  He noticed an old woman leaning on a cane. At that moment, the frisbee slipped from the thrower’s hand. To Murphy’s eagle eyes, the frisbee seemed to soar in slow motion, threading miraculously through the crowd, headed right for the old lady’s cane.

  Joy, who was keeping an eye on Murphy, saw him bolt like a sprinter from a starting block. She watched in wonder as he dashed towards a tottering old woman. The next thing she knew Murphy was diving through the air with arm outstretched to snag a wayward Frisbee. It was a spectacular catch, and one that clearly saved the old woman from what could have proved a hip-breaking fall.

  Murphy went rolling and came up with the Frisbee in hand.

  “Nice catch, dude!” yelled the Frisbee player.

  Murphy grinned weakly, and fired back the Frisbee.

  Joy ran up to him. “Are you okay?”

  Murphy dusted himself off. “I’m always okay. That’s how it works.”

  “How what works?”

  “It. My life.”

  “But-but how? Why? I don’t understand.”

  Murphy shrugged a shoulder. “Can we go home now?”

  “Yeah…sure.”

  Murphy and Joy walked back to the bustling boardwalk in silence. Joy wanted to ask him questions, but she didn’t even know where to begin. She wasn’t sure if she should admire Murphy or pity him. She snuck a glance at his handsome, boyish face and saw his alert, darting eyes, clearly on the lookout for the next threat. Did the man ever rest? Did he spend his whole life in a constant state of preparedness?

  Trying to skirt the crowd, they passed a street musician, a long-haired, bearded man in a cowboy hat and wearing a Charlie Daniels Band T-shirt. He held a fiddle, and on the ground in front of him sat an open fiddle case with a few dollars and some change in it. The paltry sum was the fiddler’s own money, put there in the hopes that it would induce a charitable impulse from passersby. He had been playing for two hours already, but the only impulse to manifest was the urgent need to go to the bathroom.

  “S’cuse me, friend” the fiddler said to Murphy. “S’cuse me.”

  Murphy and Joy stopped.

  “Hate to trouble you,” the fiddler said, desperation in his voice, “but I got to go to the john something bad. Could you just watch my stuff for a couple of minutes? I trust ya.”

  Joy said, “We’re kinda in a hurry ourselves…”

  “I’d be much obliged,” the fiddler pleaded. “I’ll just be a minute, I promise.”

  Joy said, “I’m sorry but—”

  “It’s okay,” Murphy said. “When you have to go, you have to go. So go ahead, mister.”

  “Thank you, pardner!” He handed Murphy the fiddle and bow and scampered off.

  Joy said, “What about, you know…it?”

  “It comes in waves. I think we’re okay for a few minutes anyway.”

  “I’m surprised that guy would trust a complete stranger with his stuff.”

  “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Murphy said again, examining the fiddle.

  “No,” Joy said, “I think it’s you. You look…harmless.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” he said.

  A group of ten Japanese tourists walked up and stopped in front of Murphy. They looked at him expectantly.

  ···

  Detective Blake Johnson was not happy with the currents of the river he had stepped in at The Parcae Cafe. Freya’s flattering insights had taken a disturbing turn. And although he still had to admit that the woman was a real beauty, for Johnson, the heavenly aura that enveloped her earlier had vanished along with his good humor.

  Johnson said, “Then either the cards are lying, or your intuition sucks.”

  Freya smiled. “Don’t look so gloomy, most people think love is a good thing.”

  “Well, it’s not,” Johnson said. He scooped up the cards, formed them into a stack, and slammed the deck back onto the table. “Do it again,” he commanded.

  Unperturbed, Freya reshuffled. This time, however, instead of repeating the same ten-card Celtic Cross reading, she spread the cards face-down across the table in a semicircle.

  “Pick one,” she said.

  Johnson sneered, but he did as told. He moved his hand back and forth across the line of cards with deliberation and chose one, sliding it out from the rest. Accustomed to the rules of casino blackjack tables, he waited for Freya to turn over the card.

  Freya smiled and flipped the card with a ruby-red fingernail. “The two of cups,” she pronounced.

  “I can see that,” Johnson snipped. “Looks good to me. I’d say it cancels out all that other crap you were feeding me.”

  “There is really no good or bad card, Mr. Johnson. That distinction is up to your vanity. The cards are unbiased narrators. Look closer.”

  The card depicted a man and a woman gazing into one another’s eyes. In each one’s hand was a large, golden chalice. Between the couple was a staff with two intertwining snakes forming something similar to the caduceus, the modern symbol for medicine. Atop the staff was a winged lion’s head. The card suggested romance and a sexual attraction between the couple.

  Johnson leaned closer. “Gold cups,” he said. “Clearly a big win at the races is in my future.”

  “That might suit your wishful thinking but not the message your cards have been communicating for the past thirty minutes. Like it or not, it only underscores what I have been telling you. Two forces drawn together, the potential for bonding. The staff with lion’s head suggests an indomitable obstacle—a third person, most likely. The card stands for the union of two entities. In your case, Mr. Johnson, partners. This is a card that would-be lovers would like to see, not a horse racing aficionado. Of course,” she added with a puckish, half-jesting smile, “perhaps there is something to your intuition and this new partner also likes horses?”

  Johnson glared at Freya. “Screw you,” he said. “It’s all BS. You’re messing with me, just like you did Parker. No, lady, I think what the cards are really saying is that maybe you have something against cops.”

  Freya ignored his accusation. “Mr. Johnson, you knew the day would come eventually, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head furiously, “No, no, not like this. Parker was right, you’re just planting a suggestion in my mind.”

  “It’s your heart that’s doing the suggesting, Mr. Johnson, not me. The cards often speak what we are afraid to.” She pushed the card to him. “Keep it. There will be a time when its message becomes evident to you.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Ready?” Freya picked up the card, reached across the table, and slipped it into Johnson’s shirt pocket. She gave it a little pat for safekeeping. “Sure you are,” she said.

  ···

  The Japanese tourists encircled Murphy in anticipation.

  Joy chuckled and said, “I think they want you to play.”

  “P
lay?” Murphy said, incredulous.

  One of the Japanese said in a thick accent, “Yes, pray!”

  The rest of the group lit up and said, “Yes! Pray, pray!”

  Murphy waved the bow and said, “No, no, it’s not mine, you see.”

  The Japanese tourists didn’t understand. Then one of the men nudged his friend and pointed to the fiddle case.

  “Ah so, wakatta!” said the friend. The Japanese man fished out some bills and dropped them into the case.

  “Naruhodo,” said two others, and they did the same. A couple of elderly Japanese ladies dug into their purses and added some more bills.

  “Okay!” said the first. “Country music!”

  Joy looked at Murphy and laughed. “Looks like you have a disaster on your hands that you can’t prevent. Let’s see how you get out of this one.”

  Murphy plucked a few strings and looked at Joy, who was thoroughly enjoying Murphy’s embarrassing situation. Murphy shrugged, raised his bow, tucked the instrument under his chin, and started fiddling. A rousing bluegrass tune streamed from the fiddle, and everyone began to clap along.

  Surprised, and then thrilled, Joy began clapping too, beaming at Murphy in admiration.

  A large crowd quickly gathered, more and more people clapping to the rowdy tune.

  Murphy finished his piece seconds before the cowboy returned from the john. Murphy handed him back the fiddle.

  “Thanks pardner, you’re a lifesaver, you know that?” He took in the large crowd. “Man, a lot can happen during a dump,” he said.

  Murphy and Joy walked off.

  “Hear that, Murphy. You’re a lifesaver. I told you!”

  The cowboy looked down into his open fiddle case and saw that it was spilling over with bills and coins. He stared after Murphy in wonderment. Then he put bow to fiddle and played with an exuberance he hadn’t known in years.

  Joy gave Murphy a playful shove. “You are full of surprises.”

  “It’s just a hobby.”

  “Fiddling or surprises?”

  “Both, I’m afraid.”

  Joy slid him a suspicious glance. “You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. You might think I’m crazy but—”