“People make that mistake a lot. The cards aren’tyou—they represent elements of your life. There’s a difference.” She raised her eyebrows, which were over-plucked, and the skin around them was still pale where the hair used to be. “The Fool represents a journey. Maybe you are about to go on a trip, about to leave town. It can be a real journey or a metaphorical one. That you’ll start something new, a project, or start thinking in a new way.”
“I like the literal journey. Wanna get outta this dried-up town as soon as I can.”
“Me too,” I said, before I could help myself.
“All right, babes. We’ll carpool, then.” She smiled. At first, I thought she might be mocking me, but then I realized she was just being nice.
“And this one, the Five of Wands, represents conflict—a lack of connection or failure to communicate. Stubbornness or resistance to change.”
“And what about that one?”
I paused. There was no way not to talk about it. I wished like anything I could tell her it was something good. Especially now that she had just started to like me. “That’s the Tower.”
“Jesus. There’s people jumping away from a fire inside of it. That can’t be good.”
She was waiting for me to offer an explanation, to say something comforting. But there was no getting around the Tower when it showed up. You could try to soften it, to say that something was about to be ruined, in order for growth to take place. But it was a brutal card. No spin would change its essential meaning: the recipient’s life was about to be torn apart.
“It usually means destruction. Turmoil. Upheaval. Change that will force you out of your own ways. For some people it’s divorce or the loss of a loved one.”
She looked at me pleadingly. She wanted me to offer her any kind of consolation, deliver a caveat.
“The cards don’t predict the future, necessarily. They offer guidance. I like to think that their meanings can shift, depending on how you act, the choices you make. It’s up to you to put yourself on a path where the Tower takes on a different meaning, something that’s potentially good.”
“Ha. You’ve been talking to my mom, huh? She wants me in rehab. Twelve-stepping it with all those fake-ass losers. Avoiding trouble isn’t my strong suit. There’s something bad—well, I pretty much run smack into it.” Her eyes started to water, and I looked down at the floor. There was a pair of shoes in her bag, stilettos with laces that must have climbed up her calf like vines. It was only then that I remembered where I had seen her before, her face contoured differently in the shadows, her mouth traced with red lipstick. Waiting in the dark corner of a casino bar until a man came and sat down next to her, angling herself toward him, arranging her legs so her ankle pressed against his.
I tried again. “These cards are a warning. I can’t see what they are warning you about, exactly. But you should be careful, I think. Take care of yourself. Maybe the journey you need to take is back home. Back to your mom.”
“Maybe. Maybe you’re right.” Her voice had changed, and the hardness in her face seemed to break apart. A few tears rolled down her cheeks. When she wiped them away, I noticed one of her fake nails had come off, and the real nail underneath it looked tender and pink.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that everything feels so … fucked.”
I didn’t need to pretend to know what she meant. The eviction notice. The memory of Tom’s tongue in my mouth. I understood.
“How much do I owe?”
It felt wrong to charge her for such a harsh reading. But then I pictured the yellow notice again. I knew I would need to usemy California fund to save the shop. That I would have to start over. “Twenty.”
She reached into that big bag, underneath the high heels, and pulled on a strap, produced her purse. It felt like déjà vu, at first, my brain jumping and skipping through time, but it was the same bag that the other woman, the one with the locket, had. A tooled leather purse with an oval of a turquoise stone at the center, right above the clasp. She took out a fat roll of bills and held out a twenty. I hadn’t noticed before that she had small, almost childish hands.
“Where did you get that?” I said.
“The cash? Ha. You don’t wanna know, sweetie.”
“No … no. I mean the bag.”
“What? You like it? To be honest, I found it on the side of the road. No wallet in it, unfortunately. Here. It’s yours. Easy come, easy go, and all that shit, right?” She shook the bag upside down, sending a collection of lipsticks and lighters and mints, matchbooks, loose change, and compacts clattering across the table. One of the eye shadows popped open and left a sprinkling of green dust on the tablecloth. She raked them all into her big bag and tossed the purse into my lap. I thumbed the clasp. Just like I thought—it would have slid out easily, without a sound. “Actually, that’s how I found you. Your card was in that little pocket on the inside. Whoever got to all the goods left that behind, I guess. I took it as some kind of sign. Stupid, right?”
“No, I’m glad you came.” I meant it. I liked her, this woman with her sarcastic smile, her sad eyes. And I didn’t want to tell her, but it felt like I was meant to know about the bag, about her.
“Well, catch ya later. Thanks for … well. Thanks.”
She slipped her feet out of the slippers and pulled the heels from her bag. She wrapped the straps around her calf with an expert quickness, and by the time she tied them into a bow her face was hard again. Before she left, she stood in front of the statues atthe counter, their pious eyes all glancing upward like they could see God hovering just above their heads. Maybe she was thinking what I always thought—that for saints, their mouths had been painted such bright, voluptuous reds.
DES CAMEdown the stairs after she left. “What was that about?”
“Just a reading.” I wondered if the woman really went by Peaches, or if she sometimes used her real name. We were alike that way. Another person with two names, one for each version of our lives. Clara Voyant and Ava. Peaches and whoever she had been.
Des pinched the twenty from the table. She still looked tired, and the lines between her eyebrows seemed like they were painted on. “Well, at least it’s a start.”
