She could hear the other girls laughing and whispering and scuffling around as she went down the steps. When she entered the candlelit playroom, however, they were seated in the middle of the floor, looking up at her expectantly. They had pushed the table out of the way to clear a space. The room was still dark and shadow-flickered, and the Daisy scent remained faintly. The ouijanesse had abated considerably by the time she sat down, but Andromeda’s feet and fingertips were still cold from before and her skin was tingling. Daisy had often talked about being “frozen out” by spirits and entities, a phenomenon Andromeda had never experienced with anything like the same intensity. How strange to think that Daisy might well be the one doing the freezing.
“Siiri and What’s-his-face and their dear little Jesus friend What’s-her-name had to go,” said Rosalie. “All this devil worship is against their religion.”
Hermetic divination was hardly devil worship; quite the contrary. The exploration of the Universe was a holy thing. Even if there was a dark reality on the nightside of the bright tree, how could anyone object to seeking to understand these balanced processes? That was why Siiri had been so cranky and agitated, and it figured. Mizmac and the other steak antlers in the Community Bible Center Church had been the same way about tarot cards and Ouija boards, one reason Daisy had had to hide her tools and materials so carefully. Unlike the dad, Andromeda did not despise the steak antlers. There are certainly worse and less understandable things in this world than to be dazzled by Tiphareth.
Andromeda’s usual method of interpreting tarot spreads involved several books scattered around the room and a notebook and sometimes even a calculator with which to make sketches and diagrams and to test the astrology and the gematria and other correspondences. She would bound from book to book and page wildly through them. It could take hours. In Rosalie’s playroom she had none of her reference books with her, no Agrippa, no Master Therion, no A. E. or Frater Achad or Mrs. John King van Rensselaer. This would be more like a game, more like a performance, or a stunt, a test of how well she could fake it, unless the ouijanesse returned and took over. She would have to make do, all alone, with the rudimentary little white booklet from her Pixie deck, whatever she could remember of the Tree of Life and the Hebrew alphabet, and the broad structures and analysis of the as-yet-unwritten Liber K, the concentrated, unexpanded raw material of which rested somewhere in her deep mind, like a dense unhatched egg.
Andromeda got out her cards and, sitting cross-legged and keeping her elbows at her sides, conducted a quick, discreet library-style LBRP with slight movements of her index fingers, inclining her head to the compass points, and wordlessly speed-incanting in her head. Just in case.
“She’s having a fit,” said Bethany.
Rosalie assured her that Andromeda was “always like that” and told her to come on and to get with the new age. AAK resurfaced in order to say a single syllable before dissolving again. “Ugh,” it said.
“Now, what is your question?” said Andromeda, handing Rosalie the cards. Rosalie had been unaware that she needed to have a question. Can’t you just tell my future, she wanted to know.
“A question is traditional. The idea is, you think of your question while you shuffle the cards.”
“And what, the cards absorb my vibes? Is that how it works? Okay, then,” said Rosalie. “Um. Will I be rich?”
“You’re already rich,” Andromeda said, and the Wicker Girl was nodding. The van Genuchten household was loaded, even after the divorce. No need to consult Thoth Hermes Mega x 3 on that one.
“Okay,” Rosalie said, and paused. “Oh, how about this: is Charles cheating on me?”
“Yes,” said Andromeda, and so did Bethany and Amy, in unison. “Yes,” came Theo’s voice from over in the other room. This was easy.
“Gah, you guys.”
“Ro,” said Bethany, “he’s in a band. He’s on tour. He’s the singer. You only ever see him on video chat, and when you do all you do is yell at him. He goes to Cal State Long Beach. Plus, all guys cheat, and plus, you’re kind of cheating on him, right? You do the math, babe.”
“Ow, harsh,” said Amy.
It was true, common knowledge, that Rosalie had messed around with quite a few guys since Charles had moved away to go to college in the last year. She didn’t even seem to like him very much, but evidently still wanted to keep him in her orbit, somehow. She was a genius at keeping people in orbit around her.
“She just feels,” said Bethany, turning to Amy and repeating a line they’d all heard Rosalie say umpteen times, “that if he is going to accuse her of things all the time, she might as well just go ahead and do it, since she’s going to be blamed whatever she does. I’m just kidding.”
Gods, where did this girl come from? Andromeda thought. She’s kind of my hero.
“Oh, ha ha,” said Rosalie, stretching out the “ha’s.” It was a good imitation, however, especially the swift delivery of “I’m just kidding” at the end, and even Rosalie herself was kind of ruefully smiling. But then she said, “Don’t wanna play no more.”
This Bethany creature was like Rosalie’s own Rosalie, and that was wondrous to behold, just to show that it could be done, that somebody could Rosalie Rosalie. Something about the way Bethany was sitting and looking at her gave Andromeda the impression that the barbs at Rosalie were at least partially meant to encourage Andromeda. This is how you do it, was the message. Just say “I’m just kidding” afterward and with the right attitude you could get away with saying anything, even to the world’s bossiest person. If Andromeda knew she could never pull that off, it was good to know someone could.
But as much fun as it was to see Rosalie van Genuchten with windless sails, Andromeda still felt bad for her, and knew that if Rosalie did in fact have a soul that could cry, it might be having a rough time right around now. If she were Rosalie at this moment, put on the spot, the focus of attention, she would have been strongly tempted to curl herself tightly into a little ball and roll right into her box. But Rosalie wasn’t like that. She got mad all the time but never seemed to get sad at all. Like she was inhuman. Or superhuman, rather.
Which would make Bethany beyond superhuman. She was actually beautiful when you stopped to look at her, the most beautiful thing in the room next to the candle flames. Not even hot or sexy or pretty, but distantly beautiful, like the sky at night, like the dark body of Nut stretched over the earth, spangled with uncountable gems. Andromeda felt herself blush in the dark, she felt it in her ears, embarrassed by the excess, by the degeneracy, of her own thoughts. Thank gods no one can hear them, she thought. I’m just kidding, she said to herself, trying it out.
In the candlelight Bethany’s hair looked fire-red and a neat golden flame was reflected in each of her wide, glossy, dark pupils. A person could scry in those eyes, thought Andromeda.
The wonders continued as Bethany actually sent Rosalie to the kitchen to get more drinks for everybody, like she was nothing but a more voluptuous Andromeda. How did she do it?
“Do me,” she said, “while we’re waiting for Her Majesty.” She shuffled the cards and handed them over, smiling prettily. “I’m not going to tell you my question.”
Andromeda drew Bethany’s significator at random rather than choosing it and it was a synch: Key 20, called Judgement in A.E.’s deck. (Crowley had renamed this card for the Thelemic Aeon, and Lady Frieda Harris’s painting had the starry-bellied Nut arching across the top, with flipper hands and feet.) And even within the rudimentary Celtic Cross spread, Bethany’s cards seemed almost too perfect. Andromeda didn’t even have to thumb through the little white booklet to know that it was the most favorably composed Celtic Cross she had ever seen. There was a hint of strife and possible treachery in the recent past with the reversed Ten of Wands. Otherwise the spread was so incredibly balanced elementally and drenched with promise and good fortune that there wasn’t much to say about it. “The outcome” was the Ace of Cups, for gods’ sake. After everything Andromeda sai
d about each card, Bethany said, “Oh, I know what that is.”
“Well, basically,” said Andromeda, “your life is completely perfect and you can do no wrong and everybody loves you and it’s all going to turn out great for you.” Then she added: “Fucker.” Then she added, deadpan: “I’m just kidding.”
“You fucking whore I’m just kidding!” said Bethany.
Amy said one that Andromeda couldn’t catch and added, “I’m skidding.” It was clear what she meant to say, and of course skidding was instantly added to the lexicon.
Maybe it was because they were all still a little wasted, but saying ridiculous insults and immediately following them up with Rosalie’s trademark “I’m just kidding” was the most hilarious thing in the world at that particular moment. The three of them were laughing like crazy when Rosalie came back in with another tray of cocktails and said:
“I made old-fashioneds. What the hell?”
“Andromeda was just telling us how Beth is going to be the ruler of the world, and how her outcome is pure, true Love,” said Amy.
“Ew. I very much doubt that,” said Rosalie sourly. “Skidding.”
They tried to hold back, but they lost it after a second. Andromeda couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed till her stomach hurt. Even Rosalie laughed a little, not realizing why—at least, Andromeda hoped she didn’t.
When they finally did get around to doing Rosalie’s spread, it was confusing and chaotic and negative and difficult to read and un-Bethany-like, just like Andromeda’s own spreads tended to be. The Two of Swords was even there, a synch, to be sure, but it was no easier to interpret than it had been in the girls’ vacuum the other day. Andromeda had to draw more and more cards to supplement the spread, to afford some semblance of resolution, but still it didn’t make much sense. There were more than the average number of trumps, but other than generally implying action and movement it was hard to interpret. She held one of the candles above, moving it from card to card, as though more flickering light would make the meaning clearer, trying to think of something impressive to say about it all. The Bethany reading had gone so well, and maybe, she had to admit, she felt like showing off a little, even though the cards weren’t cooperating.
A drop of wax hit the Two of Swords girl, right on the blindfold, and Andromeda winced slightly in spite of herself. Andromeda’s cards had all sorts of wax drippings and stains, so that was nothing to be alarmed about; she often had to use a fingernail to scrape dried wax away in order to read the scribbled notes underneath. The overall thrust of this spread was duplicity, tragedy, confusion, chaos, and false hope, and Rosalie didn’t seem to be enjoying hearing about it very much. The little white booklet wasn’t of much help, and neither were the distracting questions and comments from Rosalie herself.
“Wait, is that Empress?” Rosalie said, pointing to the Empress card, which had turned up reversed in the crowning position. “No way. That’s actually kind of spooky.” She explained to Bethany that Empress was the Clearview High candy dealer.
“It’s the Empress,” said Andromeda, trying to explain how sometimes cards can turn up as actual people in the querents’ lives, but they are more usually symbols for forces and processes that affect people, or categories and groupings, sometimes quite abstract rather than literal. “She’s the letter daleth, which is a door; she goes from Two to Three, from Wisdom to Understanding. If she is a person she’s usually a mother or someone very womanly. You know, she’s Venus….”
Rosalie was staring at her like she was a crazy person.
“Yes,” Andromeda finally said, giving up. “You’re right. It’s Empress. There she is. Hello, Empress. How are you doing down there?” Andromeda began to point sarcastically from card to card. “She’s going to wear a flowing dress covered with flowers and sell some candy to this guy on a horse, and then she’s going to use a chisel to do some carvings on a cathedral arch and hang someone from his ankle and give some coins to some poor people, and then she’s going to go on Wheel of Fortune.” She pointed to the Death card, and added, “And then she’s going to die.
“I’m skidding,” she added, as deadpan as she could make it.
“But how do you know if a card is a person or a force?” said Bethany, as though she really wanted to know. “Like, is there a card for me? If I were in this, what card would I be?”
Andromeda could have said “I audaciously identified you moments ago with Key Twenty, the Aeon or Judgement, because you reflect the terrible beauty of the star-encrusted night.” But she didn’t.
What she said was: “Actually, you could be on here. The small cards are numbers and the trumps are letters, so sometimes they can spell out names or other words. So, here’s the Magician, who is the Hebrew letter bet, so that could maybe be you, depending.” Thoth speaks in riddles and puns and games. “But see how the letter bet looks like a house? So it could also refer to a house or an enclosure, maybe, either something small like a person or this room, or something really big like space, everything there is, anything you can put something in.” Andromeda thought of her Language Arts notebook and its symbols and added: “And the Five of Cups here could even maybe be Amy, because that card can represent the first decan of Scorpio. That could just mean a date, but half of that decan is ruled by the angel PAHLIAH, whose Goetic counterdemon is called AMY.” It was so much easier to look like a hotshot when you had all your notes written on the faces of the cards. And once she had explained that the zodiac, like any circle, is divided into thirty-six ten-degree segments known as decans, three for each sign, they were looking at her like they were almost interested. She felt herself blush again and looked down at her knees. But the way she would write volume X of Liber K had become infinitesimally clearer.
“There’s actually more to this than I thought,” said Bethany, and Andromeda beamed in spite of her best efforts not to. But Rosalie was not impressed.
“So basically, everyone but me is in my reading.”
“Maybe this reading is for when you were in the kitchen getting the drinks,” said Amy, who really didn’t seem to mind at all that she shared a name with a demon who comes first as a flame and next as a man. “Skidding.”
“But just say what’s going to happen. Give me one thing. And who is Charles cheating with?”
“That was your question? Who’s Charles cheating with?” Rosalie nodded, which seemed pathetic enough that Andromeda started to feel sorry for her again. This was going to be a cheap trick, and not the most elevated or valid interpretation, and she silently said a prayer of apology to Thoth-Hermes and to A.E. for what she was about to do. But Andromeda took a breath and looked at the trump pairs that by position or by relation to the other cards seemed to relate to social interactions in each spread. The Magician (bet) and the Empress (daleth) in one; and the Hanged Man (mem) and the Wheel of Fortune (kaph) in the other.
“If that’s what you want. Okay, if I had to guess, and I wouldn’t necessarily put money on this, but I would say that there are probably at least two. One might be named Deb or some other form of Deborah like Debby. And the name of the other one might be Kim, or something else with a K and an M. Possibly Mickey or MacKenzie or something, or if it’s a guy it could be Mike.” She ignored Rosalie’s scrunch-face over the “if it’s a guy” comment and continued: “I’m not sure about Kim or Mike, but if I had to pick, I would guess that he got together with Deborah on—” She looked at the date on her watch. “Either today, or sometime in the last week or so.” This was because of the Seven of Swords, representing the third decan of Aquarius; the following day the first decan of Pisces was to begin.
“I could be wrong, though,” she said.
“Holy fuck,” said Rosalie. Then she said, “Oh, sorry,” because she had knocked her drink over and it splattered and soaked several cards before Andromeda could pick them up and dry them. Wax was okay, but hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps would leave a stain. Her notes were running and a few cards were limp and waterlogg
ed.
“You’re kidding, right? That’s really in those cards?” said Amy. They were all staring at her with “No way, dude” expressions on their faces.
Rosalie said, “I’m calling him.”
Charles was evidently not answering his phone, and Rosalie had left a whispered message that Andromeda couldn’t hear. It was hard to see what the point was—it was easily denied.
“Just don’t tell him you heard it from me,” she said.
Pulling out names from the trumps in what Rosalie had already begun to call Andromeda’s Whore Spread, not to mention the guess about the date, would probably not go down as Hermetic-Qabalistic divination’s finest hour. Like the god it invoked and to which it was dedicated, the Book of Thoth was fluid, tricksy, as difficult to grasp as the moon, especially when used as an oracle. If Andromeda knew Rosalie, Charles was not going to enjoy his next chat with her. But Andromeda had to admit to herself that she loved the effect the reading had had on the audience. That effect would only last till the prediction failed to come to pass and she was revealed to all the world as a charlatan. Or at least to Amy, Bethany, and Rosalie, three six-billionths of the world.
As they were straightening up the playroom and calling it a night afterward, Rosalie said:
“So basically, Gypsy Woman, what you’re telling me is that someone is going to die, and Empress is not involved, and it could be in a house, or somewhere out in space, and it could involve somebody’s mom, and my boyfriend is doing it with a guy, and Bethany Stone is superwoman and is going to be the ruler of the universe.”
“Pretty much,” said Andromeda Klein.
Amy remarked that she had had no idea that tarot cards were so Hebrewcentric and asked how Andromeda knew so much about Hebrew. “Is it because—or are you—I mean, I wasn’t even sure if you were—I mean, you don’t really look that Jewish.” As though having a Jewish parent automatically means you are fluent in Hebrew. If only.
Andromeda Klein Page 18
