by Rose, Rhea
“Madam Leonard looked a lot like you,” I said to Maisie.
There was no reaction from Maisie, but Emilia laughed at my comment and Maisie gave her a killer look; Emilia decided that her sword needed another quick polish.
I watched Emilia for a second longer than I should have, I guess, because she looked up from where she was stroking her sword with a shammy and smiled at me for a moment, like she maybe wanted to date me or something.
Suddenly, she couldn’t keep her eyes off me, and I realized I was staring overly long at her. She gave me the once over and when her eyes met mine again, I saw she definitely approved of me.
Emilia finally broke the tension between us when she asked, “Yeah, Maze, who's Madam Leotard?” Then she awkwardly polished her sword some more.
I corrected her. “Leonard.”
“Leon-dard, then, who is that?” Emilia asked again.
“That’s what the sign on the fortune telling machine said. Ask her.” I pointed to Maisie.
I tried to peek beyond Emilia to see if the fortune telling machine, normally kept in the shop, was still in the back. I stood on my toes, but that was useless.
Maisie ignored us both. “I have a gift for you, Jane,” she said.
Maisie seemed to know how to push all my buttons. I was a sucker for gifts, even ones I didn’t like.
“What? What gift?” I asked, maybe a little too eagerly; behind me Emilia chuckled like she knew something was up. I turned and gave her a dirty look and she got up from the box and walked away from the two of us.
Maisie stopped dusting and came over to the front counter where I stood and where she kept the cash register. She reached down behind the counter and pulled up a fancy, black shoe box. I moved in to get a better look.
Emilia’s curiosity got the best of her because she also decided she wanted be a part of this. She left her sword behind and moved in closer than me to get a better look.
Maisie stood there with both hands resting on top of the lid of the box. The gold bracelets and jeweled rings on her wrists and fingers sparkled and danced under the halogen light. That jewelry might have paid for my mortgage for a year, if I’d had a mortgage.
I waited anxiously for her to remove the box lid, but I sensed there was going to be a little ceremonial speech before that happened. At least I hoped it would be little.
But Maisie didn’t say a thing. She just looked at the two of us like she expected us to do or say something.
Emilia and I looked awkwardly at each other. I wondered if Emilia was supposed to speak, but we both looked back to Maisie who stood with an air of royalty. She seemed over dressed for a store clerk, and I saw, too, that she’d had at some time weaved subtle shinning extensions into her dark, shoulder length hair. The glittery extensions also caught the light. She sparkled like a disco ball.
Finally, she took the lid off the box.
I stood in uneasy anticipation as I looked deeply into the cardboard container which seemed to be filled with small, but beautifully sparkling and jeweled, spray canisters. I looked to Maisie for an explanation and saw Emilia doing the same.
Maisie looked right back at us and said, “Hairspray.”
“Hairspray?” I said, feeling very disappointed. I’d half hoped that Sia would pop out of that box.
Emilia fondled the tips of the dreads hanging free from the band at the top of her head.
“People use that stuff?” Emila asked, and she looked truly perplexed. I grabbed a canister, fluffed my short, sassy blond hair and sprayed. My action got Maisie very animated. She quickly came out from behind the counter. I thought she was going to grab the can from me and help me style my tresses, but if that was her intention, she quickly changed her mind. She tried to grab the can from me, but I was quicker.
“It weakens the soul to all compliments,” she said, sounding all mysterious and then gave Emilia a look, as if Emilia should understand what she was getting at. “Don’t waste it,” she said, turning back to me and she glared.
The can stopped spraying all on its own, or maybe it got a little help from Maisie.
Once again Emilia and I shared a look of confusion. “If you spray it on someone,” Maisie continued, “give them a compliment and you'll be able to lead them anywhere –”she seemed to be talking more to Emilia this time. So, I held the can toward the sword fighter. I was going to give her a little zap of the juice, but she put up both hands to block the spray.
“Un, uh, no way, José,” she said. So, I didn’t, but the can seemed to have stopped working anyway.
“If you spray someone, you'll be able to lead them anywhere—especially if you make them think they're going to look in the mirror, but remember to compliment them first, before you try to lead them to a mirror.”
“Oh, that’s handy,” I said with huge sarcasm, hairspray that turns anyone into a narcissist, and I looked to Emilia for backup. Then I had a thought. I grinned like my little Cheshire cat, Sia. My mood lifted and a warm sunny feeling filled my head. I guess I was grinning at Emilia because she smiled back at me. Oops, am sending her the wrong message once again? “I get it,” I said turning to Maisie. “The spray will help me capture the escaped tarot characters.” I felt hopeful.
Maisie gave me a terse smile and an accompanying nod. “It will help,” she added.
The can of hairspray was working again. I was down with that, so, I sprayed my own hair a little more to see what it might feel like and how quickly it might begin to work. I tried to see my reflection in the window glass and wondered if all the other cans in the box were the same, or if they all did something different. Then Emilia said to me, “Cool. You wanna see how beautiful you look in a mirror?”
Omg, how beautiful I looked. Those words were like water quenching a huge thirst that seemed to reside deep inside me. I felt like a hermit who’d found his missing lantern. How beautiful I look. I didn’t realize it at the moment, but I was well and truly under the spell of the hairspray.
“Mirror? Where?” I said, breathlessly. I began a desperate search for a mirror. I saw Maisie give Emilia an 'I-told-you-so,' look, but I didn’t give a fig. I wanted a mirror and I wanted it now! Then I spied Emilia’s polished sword. I grabbed it, and twisted it to see my beautiful, beautiful reflection in its flat surface. I wanted to put all her swords together and get a bigger picture of me.
“I don't look any different. How's it gonna make me more attractive?” I said, sounding like a wounded child.
“It’s not all about you. Besides, any male that smells your hair after you spray it will become putty in your hands.”
But Maisie was wrong, at the moment it felt like it was all about me. I lifted the can and sprayed more of that stuff in my hair until she snatched the can away from me. I began to see that Maisie was all work and no play.
“Everyone else can be led back here with a compliment and the promise of a look in the mirror. Then you can capture them. Enough,” she said.
She put the can back in the fancy shoe box.
Well, I guess the effects of the spray wore off because I found myself right back in my cranky mood. I decided that I’d probably had enough for the day, after all, it had started pretty early: Madame Leonard and the robbery by Devon, and now the crazy spray by Maisie, not to mention the human pincushion, Emilia, who actually wasn’t so bad, except for the swords she insisted on packing around made me want to get out of there.
I grabbed my purse and then remembered that Maisie had offered to pay me for this gig she wanted me to do at the bank. I was curious to know just how much cash she wanted me to pull out and how much she planned to pay me. I began to wonder how much wealth this glamorous older woman had tucked away and why had she selected me to get so much cash.
My thoughts were cut short by Emilia’s snickers. I turned. Emilia sat back on the unpacked trunk load of store goods laughing quietly to herself, like an insane person, muttering about enchanted hairspray. Maisie had once again ducked below the sales counter.
> The box of hairspray canisters was gone.
“Maisie, do you expect any of those escaped tarot card people to be at the bank? Cause I wanna start catching these guys. No offense, but I want to be free of you all, if you know what I mean?”
Maisie stood up from behind the counter and said, “I do.”
“Expect tarot people?” I asked, as I spun around in her direction.
“Know what you mean.”
“But, tarot people, will they be there?” I repeated. I felt like I had to spell it out for her.
“Likely, but they're hard to spot. They've all used their glamour spells by now to fit in. Remember Glendie? She was taken over by the sun spirit, and will be again, no doubt. They have their favorite people in town and they like to possess them. You’ll have to learn how to recognize them. We refer to them as majors from the major arcana. You should refer to them that way, too.
I shot a look to Emilia. “Really? I mean, they -- you want to be called majors?”
“Call me Emi,” she said. I gave her a quick smile and her look once again lingered on me.
Emi, I liked that. That was the name I’d given her when I first met Emilia.
And I did remember Glendie, my bff. She had taken on the spirit of the Sun card and now, even thought she was no longer possessed, she was somebody that was super happy and positive and just overly up all the time. That was hard to take for any length of time.
As I contemplated Glendie’s predicament I caught my reflection in the shop window and an uncontrollable urge to fix things about myself took over. I played with my hair trying to make it look better. My hooped earrings weren’t exactly perfect. But when I touched them, hair and earrings, to make them more perfect, I became enthralled with myself. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I guess I said so because Emilia was laughing at me. Maybe the effects of the spray hadn’t quite worn off. Emi was shaking her head at me like she seen it all before.
“Get focused girl,” she said. I ignored her. She tapped her sword on the counter and it made a strange angelic hum that almost made me turn away from my reflection, but I shook the feeling off.
“How long's that shit last?” Emilia asked.
“Jane!” Maisie screeched at me.
Much as I wanted to I wasn’t able to ignore Maisie. She commanded something in me that insisted on obeying her. That was going to be frustrating. I turned away from my gorgeous window reflection, to look at Maisie.
“What do you want?” I said irritably. “Why send me with this hairspray, if you don't expect any escaped tarot people -- I mean majors.”
“I do expect majors, but I don't know for certain. Take the hairspray in any case.” She held two small canisters out to me. I thought that was pretty generous of Maisie, so I took them and pushed them into my purse.
“Emi, you should try this stuff. It makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself.”
Emi smiled politely but continued to polish her sword. “I don't have your insecurities, sweetie,” she said, a little smugly, I thought. Then, without any provocation from me, Emilia got up and started to ‘show off’ as Maisie liked to call it, with another demonstration of her sword fighting abilities. Emilia did a few quick moves with her sword in the cramped shop, a thrust and then another, as if she stabbed at some invisible spirit. She twirled and swung, stopping short of Maisie’s candle display. I looked to Maisie who looked horrified.
Then Emi did something I wasn’t expecting. She lost her balance in the narrow aisles and brought her sword down sharply to correct her misstep, its blade slammed down on the sales counter, which was an old oak door placed on its side.
My purse was still there, on the counter, and Emi’s sword sliced through the handles of my five hundred dollar Gucci. The two sleek handles fell to the floor like a couple of dead snakes.
I screamed, “No! Oh-my-god!” I screamed again.
“Oopsy,” said Emilia.
I guess I’d lost it for a moment. When I saw the state of my purse something kinda mean rose up inside me, and I grabbed a canister of hairspray from my purse and walked over to Emilia and gave her hair a shot with it. “Go find a mirror and look in it. Go look at your beautiful self.” I don’t know why I did that to Emi. It was a spur of the moment anger reaction to the death of my Gucci. I wanted her out of the room; I wanted to hurt her.
To my surprise Emilia hurried away to the back room. Where, Maisie informed me, there was a mirror in the bathroom. The hairspray stuff really worked. In a moment I, too, became filled with the urge to look in a mirror, and began to follow Emilia, but Maisie grabbed me by my wrist. She grinned so hard I thought she might bust a cheek dimple. Clearly Emi and I were keeping Maisie amused.
“You've got the idea, Jane. Don’t use the spray on yourself at the same time you spray a major. Or you’ll be looking in mirrors together.”
“Why are you sending Ms White belt with me?” I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb in Emi’s direction. “She's way more dangerous than any black belt. She doesn't know what she's doing.” I was still really angry about my purse.
“She’s scarier than you may think, and I don't want Devon robbing you of my cash.”
“Will this spray work on Devon?
“Spray him in the eyes. It stings like hell.”
“Good to know, but isn’t that kind of nasty? I mean isn’t he your sidekick and all? Anyway, why don’t you just do an e-transfer yourself?”
“Electronic trails. I want as few trails as possible,” she said.
Maisie went over to the counter where my purse sat with no handles. She retrieved the handles from the floor and pressed the handles to the purse and chanted. “Quick fix, make it stick, works like magic crazy glue, bond together just like new.”
I hurried over to have a look. The handles seemed to be back together with the rest of the purse. I swung the purse around for effect and knocked a lovely empty perfume bottle from the shelf. It, of course, smashed to the floor. Maisie gave me a killer look. “That – was a Swarovski! You break it, you buy it. Store policy,” she said.
The nerve, I thought, her minion cuts my purse up and then when I check to make sure it’s fixed as good as new and accidentally break her store bauble she gets all Cujo on me. For some reason I got sarcastic with her and imitated Maisie’s voice and the little poem she had recited to fix my purse. I recited the poem to the broken bottle on the floor.
“Quick fix, make it stick, works like magic crazy glue, blah, blah, blah.” I thought I was funny, but when I looked at Maisie she looked extremely annoyed. But the storm in her eyes cleared immediately when we both heard a very happy tinkling sound, a sound worthy of a Disney fairy, come from the broken glass on the floor.
Together, we looked down at the smashed bottle and before our eyes we watched as the bottle magically repaired itself. Unfortunately, the lid remained shattered and I wondered if that was because I’d finished Maisie’s chant with blah, blah, blah instead of the correct words. “Not bad,” I said, hoping to elevate the moment, feeling quite proud that I was able to imitate Maisie’s sleight of hand.
Maisie gave me a careful reassessing look. If I felt uncomfortable with her stormy angry looks, I reeeaaally didn’t like the way that look made me feel. It was time for me to get on with this charade. I noticed that she actually hadn’t put away the box full of the beautifully, sparkly and jeweled canisters of hairspray. I picked up two more; after all, a girl can never have too much hairspray. I dropped them into my purse, did a quick purse handle check by hefting the new weight in my bag and looked at Maisie. I held my purse out to her. “This purse gonna be big enough for the pile of cash I'm bringing back?”
Chapter 2
King of Pentacles: A Reversal
Maisie’s little bank job wasn’t t so bad after all. The teller inside Koldwell counted out hundred dollar bills to me for a long time. A huge line up waited patiently behind me. They all waited for the teller to finish counting, even a Sikh police woman stood in lin
e waiting! I guess cops needed money too, but why don’t they open another wicket, damn banks are so cheap.
Emilia’s sat in a chair near the exit. I’d convinced her to leave all but one sword back in the shop. I didn’t see it, so I guessed that she placed it on the floor, or put it somewhere discrete. I can’t believe that police woman didn’t check out her weapon, but I did tell Emi not to be obvious, banks don’t take kindly to any kind of weapon.
I’m sure if that policewoman saw the sword she’d confiscate it. That’s fine by me. It can’t be legal to walk around with a sword, and if it was, I still didn’t think Emilia should walk around in public all sworded up.
Then, Devon walked in, hoodie up, backpack in hand, and he pulled out his toy gun, the same one he used on me in the back of the shop only two days ago.
Was he nuts?
“Reach for the sky, peons,” he said, as if he were Johnny Depp in a pirate movie. I nearly laughed. That was almost exactly the same line he used on me in Maisie’s shop. Still I couldn’t help but admire how strong and in charge he looked. I hoped he didn’t get killed. I gave the female cop a quick eyeball. Cool and steady. She checked him out. Maybe I’ll have a glass of wine with Devon once this all blew over. I’ve got to admit, at times the guy is my kind of crazy. That is if the cop didn’t blow him away first.
“I said, reach for the sky peons!” This time he yelled it out. The teller stopped counting hundreds. There were still two stacks to be counted. I reached in and swept them down into my purse, and the teller didn’t even notice. They were mine anyway, but I gotta say I felt positively ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ for a smidgen of a moment while I collected the rest of Maisie’s money.
The people all looked sleepy, as they slowly began to put up their hands. The tension in the bank became thick; I don’t think anyone wanted to make a move.
Then a mother grabbed her child and put the kid behind her. An old guy on a cane began shaking so badly, I thought he’d fold like an origami, but he managed to slowly pick his way over to some chairs and eventually sat down.
