by Lila Shaara
“Did that college man come to the restaurant?”
Maggie nodded. “Just to say thanks.” She smiled at Josie. “You don’t have to worry. He talked to Shawntelle.”
“You don’t listen to her. That trash. Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah.” Maggie got a glass from a cabinet over the sink and filled it from the tap. “I think he was surprised that we didn’t take his money.” She started laughing, looking at the glass as though it was talking to her. Josie always found this startling shift in affect, this ability to find joy in water or a lightbulb or a cool breeze, disorienting, vaguely sinister. She looked at Maggie laughing and thought, He’d better never see her like this. But she knew he’d be back.
5
KING OF PENTACLES
REVERSED
A slow man. A mean man
Darcy Murphy was an unhappy man. He had hemorrhoids, and they bothered him on hot days, which in north Florida was three hundred days out of the year. With global warming coming, he figured it would soon be three hundred and sixty-five. The hemorrhoids didn’t hurt, they itched, a burning, slow, relentless itch that made him long to rip his pants off so he could scratch his ass at the worst possible times, public times, sitting in his truck in traffic or while reading the meter at a school during recess, with screaming kids and tired teachers staring at him, worrying that he might be a pervert. Sometimes he hoped global warming would just drown the whole goddamned boiling, itching state of Florida. The whole goddamned thing. A mercy killing.
It was Monday morning and he had an inspection. Just a drop-in, no appointment. He had a personal interest, but he had a professional one as well. People supposedly off the grid, as if that was likely. They had to be thieves, stealing electricity from their neighbors, therefore from the company. He imagined brightly lit parties with outdoor air-conditioning and speakers braying loud music from a four-hundred-watt music system, all powered by ill-gotten juice. His ass burned at the thought.
When he passed the shrine in the company van, Darcy said out loud, “Great God Almighty, what in the name of Jesus is that?” His van slowed, but a big pickup behind him blatted its horn, and he put his foot back down on the accelerator. When he saw the big wooden hand, he almost ran off the road. The truck was still behind him. As soon as Darcy saw the pickup move across the center line with the intention to pass, he pressed the pedal into the floor of the van. “Think you’re such a goddamned hotshot, fucking asshole.” The big white van rattled up to speed, then Darcy swore again when he saw a ramshackle beauty shop ahead with the street number painted squarely across the front glass window, telling him that he’d passed his target. He swerved left into the miniature parking lot of the Babyface Salon, his tires screaming and the van tipping up onto two of them, then landing back on all four with a metallic crunch. The pickup roared past with a burst of acceleration, a thick hand waving an uplifted middle finger out the driver’s side window. Darcy tried to reciprocate, pushing the button to lower the window so hard that it made the top knuckle of his index finger ache, but by the time the window was down far enough to get his arm out, the truck was small on the receding road. Darcy swore again.
He made an awkward three-point turn and pulled back onto Highway 21; there was no one approaching from the south, so he could take his time with the numbers. “Shit,” he said as he realized that the persons of interest lived behind the grotesque wooden hand. “It figures,” he said, although upon seeing the double-wide, he revised his mental image of poolside parties.
· · ·
Josie’s first thought as she opened the door for the inspector from the electric company was that his aura looked poisonous. She didn’t like him, not only for that reason. He smelled bad, the humidity making the sweat on him thick, its odor waving long, pungent flags. She was glad it was’t really hot yet, or she imagined he’d smell like a dead cow. “Not again,” she said. “You’re the third one. We’re not stealing anything. I wish you people would get that through your big fat heads.”
Darcy Murphy liked the look of this one. A little on the heavy side but tasty, buttery all the same. Her looks took something out of him for a moment. But he reminded himself that she was a godless fake, taking the money of housewives with straying husbands and whiny teenage girls worried about whether or not their boyfriends would ever marry them. Que será, será, in his opinion. “I’ll just have a look around,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” Josie said.
6
TEN OF PENTACLES
REVERSED
Beware of embarking on a risky journey
On Monday, Harry taught a class on First Amendment law. It was half his teaching load, which he thought was embarrassingly light. He knew they expected his new book to be as successful as his previous ones. If there actually was a new book, he thought, and not just a huge, toilet-shaped hole in my brain. He got to his office, a small, unremarkable cube of beige textured wallpaper and scuffed green linoleum. At least it had a window; his office was underground, and a large rectangle looked out into a cement window well. Harry had wondered whether or not to be offended at where they’d placed him, but it didn’t actually bother him. He had been mildly irritated that the window didn’t open, but as soon as he’d gotten a sense of the local weather, his irritation had faded. He preferred the scent of the antiseptic air-conditioning to the lingering mildewy funk of the Florida air. He’d been told at his first faculty party that the Law School had been constructed on top of a dredged swamp; Harry believed it.
He looked at the half-filled shelves, the bare beige walls, and wondered as he had many times before how long he was going to stay here. He hadn’t invested much in the place; no pictures hung on the walls, most of his books were at his house, which was still furnished largely with boxes. He’d been here eight months. The dean of the Law School seemed to like him. He could stay for two years, maybe even work his job into a permanent position. He couldn’t decide if the prospect beckoned or sickened.
The door was open, but Serge knocked on it anyway as he peeked in. Tall, good-looking, and fit, Serge was his oldest friend. Harry had gotten him through law school and they both knew it. Serge was wearing a gray suit that looked expensive; Harry’s was dark green and was’t.
“You want to get some lunch?” Serge said.
It was’t hard for Harry to persuade his friend to drive to a place twenty minutes away from campus, neither of them having another class until midafternoon. “I’ve seen this place,” Serge said, “but never once thought of stopping to eat here.” Harry was’t surprised. It was’t the kind of place Serge’s wife would ever set foot in.
“The eggs are to die for,” Harry said. “I don’t know if anything else is good.” He was happy to see that Shawntelle of the bad teeth didn’t seem to be working that day. The fat man showed them to a table with a nod of recognition at Harry. Dottie gave them menus without a word. The selections were unsurprising, sandwiches and hot meals of the normal variety. “Nothing with portobello mushrooms, I gather,” Serge said. They ordered sandwiches and coffee while Dottie wrote on a small pad with no expression, gathered their menus, and walked away. He added, “She doesn’t seem to like us.”
He hadn’t mentioned Harry’s drunken foray into this part of town after delivering him to his car two days before, and Harry saw no reason to bring it up now. Instead, he said, “Do you know anyone in the physics department?”
“Yes.” Serge said. “You do, too. Frank Milford. You met him at our Christmas party. Big fellow. Quiet wife.”
“Oh,” Harry said, having no memory of having met such a person at any party at the Olnikoffs’ house.
“Why do you need a physicist? Planning a trip to Mars?”
“Funny. Research. Does the name Charles Ziegart mean anything to you?”
“The discoverer of the Ziegart effect?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Yes.” Serge shifted in his seat, trying to keep the green vinyl from permanently wrinkling
his trousers. “We get Popular Science. It has something to do with electricity. That’s all I can remember.”
Harry said, “I looked it up on the Internet. There were over a hundred and sixty entries, articles, a lot of academic websites, even a few physics blogs.”
“What an age we live in. Not long ago, blogs were all about porn and family photos. Now even Judd Lippman has one.”
“Keep up, Sergei. Ziegart was a big name in superconductors.” At Serge’s expression, Harry added, “When you supercool certain metals, they conduct electricity with virtually no resistance.”
“I’m trying to remember my high school physics. That’s good, right?”
“Bet your ass it is. It increases the efficiency of the transmission of electric current geometrically. The science is beyond me, but the point is, it’s extremely profitable for the university where he developed it, and presumably for him as well.”
“Okay,” said Serge. “I can see why this might interest you from an intellectual property perspective. I imagine a Nobel laureate gets more of the royalties from his work than more plebeian instructors.”
“Ziegart never won a Nobel Prize, but that’s not the point,” Harry said. “I heard a rumor that Ziegart didn’t invent it, or discover it or whatever. I don’t know why, but it’s got my insides prickling.”
“You’re way out of my depth.” Serge paused as Dottie slapped an oval plate full of food in front of each of the men, then walked away without asking if they wanted anything else. “Is the source credible?”
“I doubt it. But for the moment I can’t let it go. Don’t ask me why.”
Serge took a bite. He chewed for a minute, then said, “The sandwich is fine, but it’s no better than half a dozen places near campus serve.” He chewed some more. “Why are we here?”
Harry ate some of his roast beef sandwich and said, “Like I said, the eggs were great.”
Serge waited, then said, “Where is Ziegart? Which university?”
“Cantwell. In central Pennsylvania.”
“Can you call him directly? Get started that way?”
“I’d like to, but he’s dead. That makes the subject a little delicate. I could be slandering the name of a Great Man.”
“You love slandering the names of people.”
“It’s not slander if it’s true. His widow’s still on the faculty at Cantwell. I’ll talk to her eventually if I keep at this, but I thought I’d better be more certain of my footing before I dump all over the presumably beloved deceased.”
“Talk to Frank,” Serge said. “He’s the department chair. If he doesn’t know Ziegart, he’ll know someone at Cantwell besides the wife, or know someone who knows someone. He’s also a nice guy, and likes gossip as much as anyone.”
“Thanks,” Harry said. “I will.” Dottie came back to ask if they wanted anything else. Harry debated for only a second, then decided it didn’t matter what Serge thought. “Is Maggie here today?” he asked.
“No,” said Dottie, laying the check on the table, then walking away again.
“Oh,” said Serge. “Who’s Maggie?”
“Stop it,” said Harry. “Get that smirk off your face. It’s not like that at all.”
“Like what?”
“Stop it,” Harry said again.
Darcy Murphy couldn’t find anything amiss, no misplaced cables, no untoward connections. The windmills were so dainty and stupid they made him want to spit on the ground, but his mouth was too dry. He got an extension ladder from his truck, dragging it with difficulty to the double-wide. He levered it awkwardly when he was close enough so that the top of the heavy ladder swung through the air and hit the roof with a loud clank. The fortune teller opened her door and leaned out. “What the hell are you doing to my house?” she yelled.
It ain’t a house, he thought, it’s a goddamned glorified tin can. “Just puttin’ up a ladder. Gonna take a look at what you got on the roof.”
She gave him a disgusted look and said, “You break it, you bought it,” before slamming the door.
He tried to spit again, with the same result as before. He was more concerned with not breaking something of his own but managed to make it up to the roof without doing anything worse than scraping the skin off two knuckles. “Shit,” he muttered and stepped carefully onto the edge of the roof. Good thing about trailers, the roofs had almost no pitch to them, so taking a look was’t as death-defying as it was on real houses. He looked over the surface of the roof, not having to take another frightening step to do so. You never knew on these cheap-shit tin cans where the weak spots were. The mortification of falling into the fortune teller’s lap through her cardboard ceiling was almost worse to contemplate than the injuries he’d sustain. Almost.
No way, he thought, looking at the green and black shingles. No way. They can’t make me believe that those would do it.
7
QUEEN OF CUPS
REVERSED
An intelligent woman of dubious integrity
He got to see his son only one weekend a month, occasionally two, and on alternating holidays. He hated it so much that thinking about it made him sweat with anger and made his stomach hurt. So he did his best not to think of it, an effort that was only occasionally successful. The last visit had been canceled because of a trip to Cancún with his former in-laws for his son’s spring break. Harry had spent the week trying not to miss his boy, teaching his classes, and reading a number of articles he found online about the Ziegart effect and its author. His research was interrupted by frequent evening phone calls from Dan Polti. The younger man was miserable and chatty, and Harry hadn’t had the energy to put him off altogether, although he’d managed to avoid joining him at the Brew House. He’d let Dan crash on his couch twice that week after long conversations fueled by coffee and soda. By the weekend, Harry had decided that he never wanted to speak to another human being again. But Serge had demanded that Harry help him finish the patio on his beautiful house, and Harry again hadn’t been able to find the strength to let his friend down. By Saturday night, he was exhausted.
Harry woke up at nine a.m. on Sunday, having fallen asleep about four hours before. He’d been awakened by a horrific dream in which he had been captured by someone he couldn’t see and been unable to get out of the tub of water where his faceless assailant had imprisoned him. The tub had a sheet of Plexiglas stretched over its entire length, and there was only an inch or so of air between it and the water’s surface. He had pushed his lips and nose into the tiny sliver of air, gasping and holding his breath, terrified that every breath sucked the volume of oxygen out of the small space, the shrinking of the air bubble making the Plexiglas bend toward the meniscus of the water, killing him slowly and cruelly. He awoke to sweat and panic and lay in damp sheets, grateful for the dusty light streaming through the window above the bed.
He slept only a few hours a night these days, and he deeply resented any of it being tainted by nightmares. He gave up on sleep, got up, emptied his bladder, and washed his face. He made himself a cup of instant coffee, which he loathed, but he didn’t have the patience to load the coffeemaker. Cup in hand, he went to the phone and dialed the number of his ex-wife.
“What is it now?”
“Just a Sunday morning call. To Dusty. Can I talk to him?”
“He’s getting dressed. We’re on our way out the door to church.”
“Can I talk to him for just a minute? And since when do you go to church?”
Ann sighed. In his mind he could see her nostrils pinching in irritation. “A lot of my friends go to this place. It’s Unitarian. Even you shouldn’t have a problem with that.”
“How does Dusty feel about it? Better yet, let me ask him myself.”
“We’re going to be late as it is. Call back later.”
Harry was’t sure why he went back to Crane’s. The breakfast he’d had the week before had been excellent, and at first he thought that was what he wanted. Stoweville was’t that big, and even though t
he restaurant was to the south, in the poor part of town, far away from Shively Street and Fairford Avenue, the streets where professors and lawyers and doctors had their stately historic homes, on a Sunday it still took less than twenty minutes to go across town for the best breakfast he’d ever had. He was almost there before he remembered the objectionable Shawntelle and hoped that he was’t put in her section. He wondered if there was a diplomatic way to make sure of it.
The restaurant was crowded, full of large people speaking in boisterous southern accents, the women in bright dresses with wide hats and the men in suits. He mentally slapped his forehead as he realized it was just after noon on a Sunday, which in this part of the world meant just after church. Worship, he gathered, made a lot of people hungry.
He waited in a long line, undecided. He didn’t want to be in a crowd, he just wanted some nice, fluffy eggs, some crisp toast, some quiet. The place was roaring, and he could feel a small pain beginning at the base of his skull, radiating up the left side, tenderly caressing his temple. When the fat man who had seated him before got to him, a clipboard in his thick fingers, and asked in a wheezy voice for his name and the number in his party, Harry said, “Is Maggie working today?”
The fat man wheezed some more. “No,” he said. “She’s got Sundays off.” Harry mumbled, “Sorry. Never mind,” and left.
· · ·
He drove farther south on Highway 21 toward the giant hand, stopping at the massive concrete shrine. He pulled over, made sure the car was far enough off the road that a passing semi wouldn’t pulverize it, and got out. There was no other car as far as the eye could see, so he walked casually across the two narrow lanes of asphalt. He climbed one of the cinder-block staircases that flanked the great purple heart, rising on either side like a small pyramid, and for the first time noticed there was a woman sitting on a pink lawn chair perched on the platform at the top of the inverted V made by the stairs. She was very old and very small, short gray curls atop a tiny bobbing head, a vast purple shawl around her shoulders, making her blend into the painted stone behind her.
