The Fortune Teller's Daughter

by Lila Shaara

  “Serge wanted to meet you,” Harry said softly so that his voice wouldn’t carry into the house. “I thought you’d like him. Dan’s not usually such a jerk.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Amelia called them back in from the wide doorway into the house. “Frank Milford’s here, Harry. He’s got someone with him he wants you to meet.”

  Frank Milford stood next to a large, nervous woman who was introduced as his wife; Harry knew he should remember her from a previous meeting but didn’t. Behind her stood Jonathan Ziegart. “Look who I managed to snag,” Milford said jovially to Harry as he and Maggie walked into the living room. “I got us a celebrity.”

  Harry hung back, Maggie at his side, while Milford introduced Ziegart to the other guests. The newcomers slowly approached them through the small crowd, stopping every minute or two while Amelia Olnikoff facilitated the introductions. When Ziegart saw Harry, he lifted his arm in a wave, a happy smile on his tan face. When he saw Maggie next to him, his smile widened.

  When Jonathan Ziegart saw Maggie Roth, she took his breath away. She’s luminous, he thought. I’ll bet no one else here can see exactly how luminous she is. He had to bring himself to full mindfulness in order to break his gaze upon her and saw Harry Sterling looking at him with no friendliness whatsoever. Ah, Jonathan thought, at least one other person here really sees her. He made himself smile at Harry, saying, “We meet again. Nice to see you, Harry. Is this your date?”

  Harry said, “This is a friend of mine. Maggie Roth. Maggie, this is Jonathan Ziegart.”

  Ziegart bowed and said, “Son of Charles. Have you heard of him?”

  Maggie said nothing, just stared at him with a cold, blank expression. It was obvious that Harry didn’t want to have to talk to him, which Jonathan found perplexing. He couldn’t imagine what he had done to irritate the man.

  Harry said, “Why are you here, Jonathan? I thought that you’d be back in Lucasta by now.”

  “I wound up meeting old friends and staying in Gainesville longer than I expected. I thought I’d drop in on the way back to check out the physics department here. Frank took me to lunch, and when he told me about this party, I was grateful for the invitation. Fireworks are one of my favorite things.” He laughed as he added, “I met your sheriff. Nice man.”

  Harry’s eyes were still not friendly. “Why would you have met our sheriff?”

  Jonathan said, more laughter in his voice, “Relax, Harry. It wasn’t in the commission of a crime.” He accepted the glass of wine that Amelia brought from the bar. Then he turned back to Harry. “I’m interested in law enforcement. Frank called him for me and set up a tour of the courthouse.” He looked at Maggie. “I was glad to be invited to a party where there are people other than scientists. Our hostess tells me that you are a waitress?”

  Maggie paused for a moment before saying, “I’m a cook.”

  “Ah,” said Jonathan. “An honorable profession. Food is such a basic need. My mother would say that eating in company is the social glue that binds us all together.” I’m so happy I could spit, he thought. “Someone also said that you were a fortune teller’s daughter.” I’d love to get you alone, with candles, have you tell my future, he thought, but knew that this wasn’t someone to use flowery language with. She looked prickly, like a blond sea urchin. Go slow, Jon, he thought, take it easy.

  It didn’t appear as though Maggie was going to respond to him, so Harry stepped in. Jonathan found it interesting that Harry seemed worried about covering for the woman’s possible rudeness. “Her mother passed away. But Maggie’s aunt is a professional psychic.”

  “Ah,” said Jonathan. “That’s it. I heard that, too. I just got the details wrong.”

  Harry wasn’t sure how the second drink had gotten into his hand. The first had been put there by Jonathan, who had said, “Hey, Harry, you’re empty-handed. It’s always better to be a little loosened up when you’re on a date, right?” Harry had been watching Maggie as she stared unbelievingly at Dan, swaying next to her, putting an unsteady hand on her arm. Harry wondered if he was trying to persuade her that people were more wonderful than pileated woodpeckers. Jonathan had leaned in close and said softly, “Is she yours, Harry?”

  “Mine?”

  “Your girl.”

  Harry hadn’t expected the raw jealousy he would feel when others approached her. The magnitude of his mistake made him so nauseated that he had to sit down. The beer Ziegart handed him seemed like the only thing that would settle his stomach down from the mess he’d gotten it into.

  He is good-looking and charming, he thought. Harry suspected he was like his father. But when Jonathan asked Maggie to show him where the food table was in the backyard, Harry was surprised that she went with him out the French doors. Harry went to the kitchen to find another beer.

  Ziegart came back in alone ten minutes later. Harry was talking to Serge and an attractive couple, the man in a suit and the woman in peach chiffon. Serge had introduced them, after a whispered apology about Julie Canfield’s presence. “Blame Amelia, although I may have forgotten to tell her that Maggie was coming.” The couple was married and shared a last name; it was something like Parks or Banks, and Harry had lost it as soon as it was uttered. The discussion centered on finding a reliable contractor, and Harry’s interest had long since waned to nothing. Jonathan disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with two bottles in his hands. He approached the little group; Serge and the pretty couple wafted away, leaving Jonathan and Harry alone. Harry couldn’t think of a thing to say, but he took the bottle when Jonathan offered it to him. He wanted to ask Jonathan if he’d made a date with Maggie but knew that it would come out wrong. Jonathan said, “So, how’s the book coming?”

  “It’s not. Not really. I don’t know.”

  “Huh. A shame. Maybe I’ll write a biography of my father if you don’t. I’d be interested to know what you’ve uncovered. I assume you’ve talked to people other than the ones I know.” He stretched his shoulders back and took a breath as though the air tasted good. “I like this town. I like this university and I like the people I’ve met. I’m thinking about where to relocate after I get my degree.” He looked at Harry and smiled. “I’m getting a little tired of Pennsylvania winters. Florida sounds better and better.”

  “It’ll all probably be underwater once global warming really hits,” Harry said.

  “We’re inland here, Harry. Besides, I hear there’s no income tax.”

  Maggie came in a moment later, and Harry pried himself from Jonathan’s happy company to join her. She was hugging herself and looked miserable; Harry was about to tell her that they could leave when Amelia announced that the fireworks would be starting any minute. “I should go,” Maggie said quietly, her whole body radiating tension. But Amelia was upon them and pulled on Harry’s arm, talking beyond him to Maggie, saying that they had to come outside. Harry grabbed Maggie’s hand with his free one. Amelia kept pulling on him and he kept pulling on Maggie till they were by the folding chairs in the backyard that were lined up to face the sky where the fireworks were about to be launched. He wondered how obvious it was that he was drunk. Maggie didn’t struggle and didn’t comment; they both wound up on a pair of canvas seats on the far right of the yard, Harry on the end. Julie Canfield sat on the other side of Maggie, smiling as she ate buffalo wings with long pink fingernails. Jonathan leaned forward as he sat down next to Julie, giving Harry a wink and a grin.

  The fireworks started ten minutes late, but the view of them was perfect. Harry caught Maggie’s eye and tried to smile at her, but she wouldn’t return it. Dinwiddie made a comment about how the people who packed the explosive canisters had to know what they were doing. “Burn your ass to cinders,” he said.

  “How do they get things that explode to look like that?” Julie said, wiping the barbecue sauce off her mouth with a napkin. “It’s like magic.”

  Serge said, “They ignite different chemicals to get different colors. All I know is c
opper, which makes blue.”

  Jonathan said, “Sodium is yellow and orange. Strontium makes red. I can’t remember what makes green. You know, Maggie,” he said, leaning forward again, “my father was a famous physicist. I learned all about fireworks from him,” but she didn’t look at him, or at anyone else.

  34

  NINE OF WANDS

  REVERSED

  Bending under adversity

  “You’re drunk,” said Maggie. She’d never seemed angry at him before, and he was surprised at how erotic it was, her eyes hard and dark and shiny. She pulled on his arm, saying, “I’ll get you home.”

  She led him to Amelia, to whom he made slurred thanks. Harry stopped short when they were halfway to his house, in front of the large brick home of the fat Dinwiddie, causing Maggie to be pulled back slightly as her grip on his arm forced her to stop as well.

  Harry looked at her razor-sharp eyes and her tight mouth, and for once she didn’t look that young, she looked like no age at all, just angry and tired. Harry said, “I love you,” and put his hands on either side of her face, kissing her deeply, opening his mouth, then moving his hands to her back, around her shoulders, kissing her and kissing her and feeling almost sober for a moment, until she jerked away from him with a force that made him realize how drunk he was. Harry heard a whoop from the porch next door and saw Dan Polti bent over the railing, waving a beer bottle at him. “You the man, Harry!” he said before throwing up into Amelia’s gardenias.

  Maggie muttered, “Josie would tell me to let you get yourself home.”

  “She’s one to talk,” he said, regretting the words as soon as he said them. “Don’t leave me, Maggie,” he added, hating the gushy way his lips curled around the simple words. “I’m sorry. Please, coffee, you know, or something.”

  She walked in front of him, not waiting for him to follow, no longer touching him. I love her, he thought. I’m such an asshole, and I’m so fucking drunk, and I love her.

  She waited on his front porch while he made his way carefully up the steps. The door wasn’t locked, so she opened it as soon as he was at the top, and held it open for him. “Can you get yourself into bed?”

  “Come with me,” Harry said, hating himself again. That separate sober part of him was at it again, the part that peeled away whenever he got himself into such a predicament, that watched him and judged him and in a strange way, took care of things, making sure he didn’t destroy his car or his house. Usually it kept him from saying anything too horrible, anything that would slap him later with mortification or with something worse. But that function of it seemed to have gotten drunk as well, and he could hear how inane and pathetic he sounded.

  “I’ll help you with your shoes,” she said as soon as they were in his bedroom. Her face was white with anger. “I can practically hear Josie screaming at me that this is demeaning.”

  Harry lay down on his bed, and the world began to move in an unpleasant way. He fixed his eyes on Maggie’s face as a sort of linchpin, to keep him from throwing up. A stable point in a moving universe. What Frank Milford or Charlie Ziegart or Emily Timms would call a frame of reference. “Get in with me,” he heard himself saying. I wish I could stop making such an ass of myself, he thought.

  She pulled off his other shoe and jerked the cover over his clothed body. “You’re not in any shape to fuck anyone.”

  “Oh, man.” Shock thrilled through him. “I’ve never heard you use language like that.”

  She leaned forward and said softly, “There are a lot of things you haven’t heard.” Then she straightened, looked toward the door as though she expected someone to walk through it. She said, “I’m getting something out of my car and then I’ll stay in your kitchen for a while, just in case.” She moved toward the door, then turned back and said, “I won’t steal anything.”

  He must have passed out, although he didn’t know for how long. He heard something in another part of the house, raised voices, a door slamming, voices again. He felt sober and drunk at the same time, and sore, as if all his bones had been rammed with something hard. He pushed his feet off the bed, wishing he didn’t feel so drugged and dizzy. He got himself upright somehow and worked his way to the bedroom door, one foot in front of the other, hearing the voices, quieter now, Maggie’s and someone else’s. A man. Jealousy shook him, although his separate brain told him not to be an ass; Maggie was the last person who would be having a tryst in his house while he was sleeping in another room. Although, that part continued, this evening he’d seen something in her he’d never seen before, some sort of fire and anger that he both feared and found arousing.

  His bedroom door was partly open, so it made no noise as he pushed through it. He was more graceful than he had a right to be, staggering a little but managing to stay on his feet and to move forward without knocking into the walls. He got to the end of the hall and stopped, seeing Maggie in a clinch with Jonathan Ziegart.

  When his eyes refocused, he realized that that wasn’t exactly true; Maggie was backed against the far wall of the living room, Jonathan inches from her, his arms on either side of her, hands pressed to the wall, boxing her in. He was saying something low and firm. Maggie’s face was dark, her mouth compressed, her eyes sparkling with emotion. Harry was frozen in shock, and then he could hear Jonathan’s words: “You think you’re better than me.”

  Maggie said, as softly as Jonathan but crisp and clear, “Of course I’m better than you.”

  Jonathan gave a hiss of something, probably rage, and Maggie ducked under his arm and ran to a small table by the sofa. Jonathan grabbed her arm and spun her around, but not before she’d taken something from the table with her free hand that looked like a long flashlight, and then there was a bright flash of white light and a popping sound, like an exploding lightbulb. Harry’s bleary brain couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing; Jonathan’s arms flew up and sideways and his head whipped back. He seemed to move backward without taking a step and then he was four or five feet away from her, propelled against the front door. He hit with a smack, the door rattling in its frame; then he collapsed and lay on the ground. He didn’t move again. A smell filled the room, something between burning rubber and roasting chestnuts.

  Harry told his legs to move, and after a second or two they did, jerking him forward into the room. Maggie looked up, a terrible expression on her face.

  “Is he dead?” Harry asked.

  “No,” she said. “No, no.”

  He checked Jonathan’s pulse. The beat was strong and regular, so Harry and Maggie hoisted his inert form onto the sofa. His face was slack, eyes halfway open, only whites showing, and a thick line of saliva threading from the side of his mouth down to his chin. “We have to call an ambulance,” Harry said.

  She nodded and said, “You do it. I’ll make some coffee. Tell them he had a seizure.”

  “But he didn’t. What the hell did you do to him? That flashlight is some kind of stun gun?”

  She nodded again. “But he’ll be okay. Don’t worry, I didn’t murder him.” She wiped her hands on her jeans as though they were badly soiled. “If he has an EEG, it’ll look like a seizure.”

  “But when he wakes up, he’s going to be mad as hell, and he’s going to tell them what happened, and we’re both going to be in deep shit.”

  “No, we won’t. He won’t remember a thing.”

  “They’ll find the burn mark.”

  “There isn’t one. Make the call, okay? I can’t do it.”

  Harry called 911 and told the dispatcher that a guest had had a seizure in his living room during a visit to his house after a party. The dispatcher asked him a number of annoying questions: Was he breathing, was he in any danger of hitting his head on anything, were there any drugs involved. Harry said that, as far as he knew, Jonathan had had a few drinks at the party, but he didn’t think he’d ingested anything more sinister, though of course he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t particularly interested in preventing Jonathan Ziegart from having to
defend himself against drug charges. The dispatcher wanted Harry to stay on the line until the ambulance arrived, but Harry cut her off and hung up the phone. He went into the kitchen, where Maggie was opening and closing cabinet doors. “I can’t find the coffee,” she said, her voice hitching. Her hands were shaking, and tears were running down her face. Harry put his arms around her, making sure that there was nothing in her hands. Her whole body was trembling, so he pressed her to him more tightly, trying to warm her up.

  “You’re in shock,” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Where’s the stun gun?”

  “I put it in that drawer,” she said, pointing to one by the refrigerator that contained screwdrivers and spatulas. “No one should know about it.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Someone gave it to me. To Josie and me. Protection. You know.”

  “Who?” he said. He tried to imagine Emily Timms giving them such a thing, and couldn’t.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “And you carry it with you? Were you planning on using it on me?”

  “No!” Her face scrunched up as though something hurt her. “No, I put it in the car sometimes. When I’m out at night by myself.” She put her head on his shoulder, leaning her weight into him as though her legs weren’t working too well. “Josie worries about me.”

  Harry was about to say, but that doesn’t explain most of this at all, when the sound of sirens derailed his thoughts. He sat her down on a kitchen chair. “When you can stand up,” he said, “the coffee’s in the freezer.”

  Two policemen arrived a few minutes before the paramedics. The cops were bored, and the paramedics were satisfied that Jonathan Ziegart had had a seizure. While uniformed men worked on Ziegart, Harry called Serge, relieved that he was still awake. To his surprise, the party still seemed to be going on. He gave Serge a cleaned-up version of events and asked if someone there would go to the hospital to handle whatever paperwork was needed. Serge was understandably surprised by the whole affair, but after a quick conference away from the phone, he told Harry that Frank Milford was still there and had volunteered to go. Harry thanked him, told the police about Milford and that he himself barely knew Ziegart.