by Gail Cleare
I hugged my painful secret close to my chest all day, trying to act as if nothing unusual had happened that morning. Siri looked at me long and thoughtfully, with those warm sensitive liquid brown eyes, but she didn’t confront me with a question about what was the matter. I know my eyes were puffy when I came back downstairs from crying. She brought me tea and a kiss, then quietly went about her work, finding an excuse to touch me briefly, every so often throughout the day.
Tony called at about four o’clock. The store was loud and busy when I answered the phone and perched on the stool behind the jewelry counter for a minute to talk to him. The two adorable bird-watching sisters were back again, and we had been having cappuccino and brownies together. Several other customers were in the store as well.
“Hello, this is Paradise!” I said, our usual shop phone greeting.
“Hello yourself, I am missing you already, “ he said in a low, intimate voice.
I cringed, then my uncontrollable hopeful heart opened reflexively, like the eyes of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Me too,” I said, smiling. It was noisy in the background where he was too. I heard people talking and horns honking. I guessed he was walking down the sidewalk between appointments.
“How is everything going? How is Henry? How is my cat?” he said.
“They’re fine. Tree is up there sitting on Henry’s lap, right now.”
“Perfect! And how are you?”
“I’m OK. It’s pretty busy today.”
“Things are going well here too.” Tires squealed in the background, and I heard someone yelling, then horns blared again. “I’ll call you later then, OK?” He sounded distracted, busy.
“OK.”
“Bye-bye, sweetheart.”
And he hung up. He used her word, “sweetheart.” Had he ever called me that before? Not that I could recall. I wanted to shout disgusting curses across the room. I wanted to rip the telephone out of the wall and throw it out the door. But then I noticed the two perky sets of eyes observing me avidly from across the room. I went back over to the table where the sisters awaited.
“Everything all right, dear?” said Irene.
“Yes, was it bad news, dear?” echoed Rose, in her wavering voice.
Today they were dressed for a fall day, in wool suits and sturdy brogues for walking. They had stopped in after getting their hair done at the beauty parlor down the street. Their heads were adorned with matching caps of perfectly arranged bluish-gray curls. Their hair did not move when they turned their heads, and looked like it was molded out of plastic. Siri and I had complimented them immediately when we saw them come in the door. They blushed and lowered their eyes, glad of the attention.
“No, of course not!” I said, sitting down and taking up my cup. “Just my boyfriend, saying hello.”
They exchanged glances and looked back at me curiously.
“Tell us about your boyfriend, dear,” suggested Irene. She nibbled delicately on a piece of brownie, which she had cut up with her knife and was eating with a fork.
“Yes, tell us about him!” said Rose. “Have you known him long?”
They both looked at me eagerly, like children waiting for a bedtime story.
“We met at the grand opening of the store,” I told them. They both made O’s of their lips and nodded their heads, their eyes wide.
“Oh, and, that was just last spring, wasn’t it dear?” inquired Irene.
I nodded too, and said, “Yes. Then, over the summer he moved here.”
This set off another round of nodding and exchanged glances.
“Oh, well, that sounds lovely, dear!” said Rose. “Is he living nearby?”
“Just the other side of the park, yes.”
“And what does he do for a living, dear?” asked Irene.
“He trades in unusual art, furniture, rare books, that kind of thing. He used to work for Coca Cola in China. He’s an international businessman.”
The sisters sipped their coffee and thought about that for a minute.
“How exciting, dear!” Rose said, and Irene nodded in agreement.
“So, he travels frequently?” asked Irene.
“Yes, I guess so,” I said in a depressed tone, picturing endless months of wondering what Tony was really up to on the other side of the globe. “Not so much recently. He and Mr. Paradis are great friends. Tony’s been a huge help, taking care of him.” Which was true, I reminded myself. Tony had a heart of pure gold. Of course, other parts of his anatomy might not be quite so inclined to nobility.
“Oh, he sounds lovely, dear!” said Rose.
“Yes, a member of the Jet Set!” said Irene. “Just like Roman Warchovsky, do you remember, dear?” she asked her sister, who nodded in agreement knowingly.
“He was a world traveler as well, dear,” Irene continued, putting down her cup to gesticulate more easily with her frail, translucent hands. “First in the navy, then as a foreign war correspondent.”
“Yes,” quavered Rose, “He was always on the go!”
“Until he met our cousin Margery, that is!” said Irene, and the two sisters smiled and nodded at each other, then at me.
“They married and raised five children,” Rose declared, her eyes twinkling.
“Yes, and one cannot do that while flying around the world, constantly putting oneself in harm’s way,” Irene observed wisely.
“So, he gave up his career?” I asked, curious.
“Well, not really,” Irene answered. “Not entirely. He took a job near home at the New York Times and eventually won a prestigious award for his writing. Which one was it, dear?” she asked her sister.
“The Pulitzer, I believe, dear. Wasn’t it?” said Rose, frowning as she tried to remember.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Irene said, “It involved quite a lot of money, I do remember that.”
“Yes, and just when the eldest daughter was going off to college. What a blessing!” said Rose. Her cup and plate were empty now, and she blotted her thin lips fastidiously with her napkin.
“So, don’t you worry, dear!” said Irene, patting my hand. “Falling in love can change a man, even one who is used to a rather unusual lifestyle,” she observed, reaching into her black patent leather pocketbook to remove a pink lipstick. She applied it without looking in a mirror, doing a remarkable job, and smacking her lips together a few times. Then she handed it to Rose, who did the same. They smiled identical pink smiles at me from across the table.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, “Thank you for telling me.”
They beamed in pink approval, and eventually tottered out the front door and off over the crosswalk, chattering amicably all the way.
That evening, Gupta was scheduled to stop by and play chess with Henry, so Laurie invited me to come over the Green Thumb for dinner. The two elderly men had formed a strong bond in the past couple of weeks, and Gupta had taken to stopping by frequently to sit and talk with Henry upstairs while they drank tea. Henry had traveled to India years ago and was familiar with many of the places where Gupta spent his youth. They enjoyed reminiscing, seemed to have a lot in common, and played backgammon or chess together for hours. Siri and I were happy that the friendship had formed, figuring it was very good for both of them.
Laurie said tonight was our chance to catch up, as we had both been so busy lately and hadn’t had much chance to be alone together. I had been looking forward to it, and wanted to ask her some rather pointed questions. I’d been thinking about everything she told me the night we went to see Starhawk, and I wanted to discuss it without all the other girls around.
I was feeling melancholic when I crossed the intersection after work to meet Laurie at the Green Thumb. The pumpkin-gold sun was just sliding down behind the buildings to the west, turning the sky blood red and making the air itself seem ruddy, like blush wine. The earlier rain had moved off to the east, and the world looked clean and crisp. There were a few early fallen leaves on the sid
ewalks, and three crows cawed loudly from the branches of a tall oak tree that grew out of the sidewalk in front of the patio. It was a stark and lonely sound, and it echoed through the quiet streets. One of the huge black birds looked at me with a red glint in its eye, cocked its head, and threw something down on the umbrella of the table below. An acorn rolled off and dropped to the pavement, bouncing across my path. A man with two dogs on leashes walked by, a big German shepherd and a fluffy little white toy poodle. They pranced along contentedly, very much the odd couple, total opposites unified by a common direction and purpose.
I reached into the pocket of my denim jacket and took out my cell phone, stopping for a minute on the patio, where only two of the outside tables were occupied tonight. Looking down at the phone for a minute, I deliberately turned it off, putting it into my purse. Pushing open the double doors, I went into the bar, which was bright and steamy and humming with life. It was a relatively slow night, only about half of the tables in here were taken. Laurie was waiting for me, straight ahead sitting on a barstool, and she turned to welcome me when I entered the room.
“Hey, girlfriend!” she smiled warmly, giving me a hug.
“Hey yourself! How are you? You look gorgeous!” I returned. Laurel looked beautiful tonight in a long flowing skirt, with her wavy, auburn hair and her leaf green eyes. A silver crescent moon hung at her throat, the profile of a face visible on it when she turned. “What’s for dinner?” I demanded, starving as usual.
“Follow me!” she said mysteriously and beckoned, leading me toward the swinging door into the kitchen. John was behind the bar, and he waved at us with a shooing gesture as we passed by, chasing us along.
Inside the kitchen was a loud world of seeming chaos and heated activity. We walked past the sauté line, where flames roared and shot up toward the ceiling as three cooks rushed around like mad, yelling at each other as they shook handles and flipped things, tossing hot food up into the air. Huge dripping pots steamed and fizzed, and the grill sizzled, smoking. We threaded our way through past the busy dishwashing station and the walk-in cooler, and eventually out a back door onto the private patio that ran across the back of the building.
This was where Laurie and John had their organic vegetable and herb gardens. It was a quiet, peaceful enclosed space, an oasis, complete with a trickling water garden. Willow fencing and fragrant boxwood hedges lined the periphery, and a stone pathway led through the grass to the raised vegetable beds. An arbor at the far end of the yard supported a huge climbing rose bush, where a few last red blossoms still clung to the yellowing foliage. A table for two had been set up on the patio, and two comfortable chairs were pulled up nearby. An ice bucket was on the table, with a bottle of wine cooling in it. The noise from the kitchen was muted here, with only an occasional crash or clink penetrating the quiet. I immediately relaxed and felt relieved.
“This is great!” I said, as she picked up the wine and cut the seal. It was a French Chablis, and looked expensive. I started to cheer up.
“I love it back here, too,” she said, smiling. “But we don’t have a chance to enjoy it as much as I’d like to!” She skillfully pulled out the cork and poured us each a glass. “We got a great deal on some live lobsters today, you’re not allergic are you?”
“No way! I’d love it,” I said.
“Good, they’re already steaming,” she said, and after a few minutes she went inside and came back with a rolling cart, which contained our feast. The cook had already broken out the lobsters and drained the water, so they were easy to take apart. We both ate like pigs, the melted butter dripping down our chins. There were baked potatoes with sour cream, too. I was in high-cholesterol heaven! While we ate, the round white moon slowly crept up over the rooftops and trees until it peeked down into the garden, gilding the lush foliage with silver light. After dinner we put all the debris onto the cart and rolled it away, wiping off the table and ourselves with wet rags and clean towels from the kitchen. We pulled our chairs out into the lawn and settled down with our wine glasses, to watch the moon and talk.
“Laurie, how do you know when it’s safe to trust an intuition? How do you know when it’s real?” I asked.
“I usually ask the Tarot, if I’m nervous. But most of the time I just go for it,” she said, sipping her wine, one arm tucked behind her head.
“You’re so brave!” I said.
“Not really, not extraordinarily,” she protested, looking at me curiously. “What is this about, Emily?”
“It’s about Tony. I don’t know what to think.”
“What to think about what?” she asked.
“About whether or not to trust him.”
“Oh. What makes you think you shouldn’t?” she said, paying closer attention now.
“It’s not just that, it’s really more than that.”
“More than what?”
“I don’t know whether I can trust any man. I think I’m just emotionally crippled, or something,” I burst out, jumping up to pace back and forth on the grass. She sat and watched me, like someone at a tennis match.
“You’d think I’d be able to give the guy a break, but no, just the least little thing like a stupid phone call from some glamorous freaking mystery woman and what do I do? Do I extend the benefit of the doubt like a normal, non-paranoid person? Or do I immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion and turn off my cell phone so he couldn’t even call me if he wanted to? I mean, maybe they’re not having dinner at some intimate little Greenwich Village bistro right now, playing footsie under the table! Oh my god, Laurie, what am I going to do?”
I flung myself back into my chair and clutched her arm, desperately.
“I see,” Laurie said. “You’re really in deep with this guy, aren’t you?”
“I guess so,” I said with a pathetic little sob, as a giant crocodile tear welled up in one eye and rolled slowly down my cheek.
“Shall I get the cards?” she offered gently, standing up.
I sniffed and nodded, and she went inside for a minute, returning with her shoulder bag. She spread out a large square scarf on the grass, then we sat across from each other and she took the cards from their velvet bag. The light from the kitchen windows slanted across the moonlit lawn, revealing the brightly colored pictures as she spread out the cards.
“First of all,” I stopped her as she began to look through them, “How do you know this works?”
“It just does,” she said. “People have been reading the Tarot for thousands of years. It works the way any kind of divination works. The images in the cards are archetypes that help us to access our latent psychic abilities, they open up the third eye so we can see down the road ahead.”
She pulled out the King of Pentacles, and put it in the center of the scarf.
“Now that,” she pointed, “Is Tony. Doesn’t it look like him?”
The card showed a dark handsome man with a star inside a red disk on his chest, and a bull standing behind his right shoulder. She pointed at the pentacle.
“This stands for money, business. When is his birthday?”
“In May, I think. Why?”
She tapped the card. “Taurus, the bull.”
“OK, so that is Tony. What are we going to do with him?”
“He is at the center of the reading, we are asking about his life, what’s really going on with him right now. Isn’t that what you want to know?”
“Oh,” I said, “I guess so. Yes, I do want to know. I want to know the truth.”
“Now we shuffle the question into the cards,” she said, beginning to mix the cards, closing her eyes.
She stopped after a minute and tapped them together neatly, then blew a long, deep breath into them, as I had seen her do before. She shuffled a few more times, and then handed the deck to me.
“Now you do it,” she said, her moon pendant swaying in the silver moonlight.
I shuffled solemnly, trying to picture Tony’s face. It wasn’t hard. His eyes popped right int
o my mind, hovering a few inches from mine, in my imagination. I thought of the way he looked at me when we made love, how his eyes narrowed and flickered when he moaned. I shuffled it all into the cards, stopping when the vision faded to cut the deck into three piles, as Laurel instructed. She picked them up in reverse, the last third now on top. She laid the cards out slowly, one by one, in a different pattern than I had seen her use before. This time she dealt just three cards, and laid them out in a row from left to right underneath the card that stood for Tony.
“Past, present and future,” she said, tapping the three cards.
The first was the Queen of Pentacles, an attractive brunette wearing a stylish white fur hat and cloak. She held a pentacle identical to the one in Tony’s card.
“There she is,” I yelled excitedly, pointing. “She speaks French, she’s rich, and look at those clothes! How can I compete with that?”
“You are here too, Emily, this is you,” Laurie said, pointing at the second card. “She is in the past, but you are in the present.”
The middle card was the Queen of Wands, a woman with long braided light brown hair who held a flowering rod, like a walking staff, with a giant sunflower behind her.
“How do you know that’s me?” I asked, squinting at the card. “She looks like the country cousin, the Daisy Mae type. Well, I guess it is me.”
Laurie laughed and then sobered, tapping the last card. It was the ten of pentacles, and showed a couple with a small child standing before an archway, looking through it at a beautiful castle on a hill.
“The future,” she said. “It means family, home, prosperity.”
“Ohmigod,” I said, “He’s going to marry her! She’s pregnant! Look at that!”
We both stared at the cards. My heart sank.
“Well, it is another pentacle card, which is not very good since that seems to be a quality they share,” Laurie said, “But it doesn’t necessarily…”
