Chapter 7 Clara #2
Noelle and Nina whispered back and forth to one another. Nina giggled. “You should come with us,” Lucy said, which made Noelle snort.
“Really, I’ve got to go. Have fun, though.” I hated them, their stupid, perfect, easy lives.
My face burned as I walked on. I turned once to see the girls recede down the boardwalk, their ponytails swinging.
Noelle held up my card and the three of them exploded into laughter.
I stomped to the closest trash can and threw the rest of the cards away, retreated to the shop without raising my eyes from the ground.
Once I was back, I sat at the table, cutting the tarot deck and stacking it again, watching the people stream past, and out farther, to where the waves broke into white foam near the shoreline.
Dark clouds collected in the sky above, and I pleaded for them to break into rain, but they blew past, and we were left with the skin-blistering heat.
The next day I was sitting at the table in the shop again—thinking about those messages I’d seen on Julie Zale’s Facebook page—when I heard the tap tap tap on the doorframe, so faint that at first I thought I had imagined it.
A woman stood behind the beaded curtain.
I called to her to come in. “Are you here for a reading?”
Her face was younger than I’d thought it would be, based on her posture and the slumped, tired-seeming shadow she cast from behind the beads.
She was pretty, petite, with straight blonde hair and big brown eyes that shifted around the room.
In the light, I could see she had dark circles underneath them, like it had been weeks since she had slept well. She held out one of the business cards.
“I found this blowing down the street.” Her voice was soft, with a trace of a Southern accent. The card trembled in her hands. She was afraid. Of what—who? Me?
I stood and pulled out a chair. She sat and fiddled with a silver locket around her neck, working her thumbnail into the charm so it opened just a sliver, then pinching it back into place with a tiny click.
“So you found the card. But you made the choice to visit. Why did you decide to come here today?”
She was quiet for so long that I wondered if she had heard me or if maybe she had only come in because she wanted a place to sit.
I eyed her bag—a tooled leather purse with an oval-shaped piece of turquoise embedded in it—and immediately my mind went to the best way I could snatch her wallet.
The clasp looked like it would slide open soundlessly.
Then it was just a matter of getting under the flap and hoping her wallet was on top.
She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, other than the locket, though I noticed a pale space on her finger, maybe where a wedding band used to be.
She was so distracted that it would have been easy.
But I had a rule: no stealing from clients.
Des might double-dip, but I tried to have a little more integrity, at least in the shop.
I thought it was what my mother would want.
Though I wondered if I had broken my own rule when I took Julie Zale’s bandana.
I was trying to be patient but couldn’t wait too long—that bag was calling to me. I had $200 saved, a long way from my goal. I was restless, watching her sit and stare. “There are benches out on the boardwalk, you know,” I said.
“Huh?” Her mouth parted in surprise.
“If you’re looking to rest. You seem tired.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was wondering. Jesus. I was wondering about … maybe you could help me.” I felt bad about snapping at her. Seeing those girls, Des mentioning that date, had messed with my mood. I made my voice soft again.
“Of course. I would be glad to help you. What are you hoping to find out?”
Her hand closed around her locket again, her fist swallowing up the heart-shaped charm.
“It’s best to have a question in mind. It gives the reading focus. If you can’t think of one, we could ask what you can expect for the next month or year.” I tried to smile, to put her at ease, but by now she looked like she was going to be sick.
“You’re just a kid,” she said. “You’re so young.
” Her hand crept across the table, as though she was going to touch me, but then she got up so fast that the chair tipped over.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but this was a mistake.
” She was almost out the door when she turned around, took a few steps toward the table, then pulled a ten-dollar bill from her purse and dropped it in front of me.
“But I didn’t even do the reading,” I said. “At least let me read your cards.”
“I took your time. I’m sorry. I just … I’m sorry, I really am.” She practically ran through the door and down the boardwalk, jostling a tourist holding a funnel cake, who turned to sneer at her back as she fled.
I felt guilty as I tucked the ten into my pocket, but I still took out my notebook, adjusted my savings: $210.
Why had she run after all that? I was used to people being a little nervous around me, or embarrassed, like Julie Zale’s uncle had been.
But I wasn’t used to people being scared.
I cut the tarot deck, shuffled it three times, and pictured the woman again, the way her hand closed so tightly around that locket on her neck.
It was the second time I had broken the rules—read cards for someone who hadn’t exactly asked.
But this woman hadn’t come to me for no reason—she had found my card, she chose to come to the shop.
And, she paid. Maybe the cards would tell me more about her, or at least I might learn what she sensed in the air, a fate she intuited but didn’t want to see.
I decided that would be my question for the cards. What was she afraid to know?
I chose a three-card spread—our standard reading. The first card represents the past. I drew the Four of Wands. Usually that card meant lovely things: Celebration. A harmonious home life. Family. Peace.
The second card, the present. King of Cups, reversed.
It meant a lack of clarity, a lack of judgment and reason.
“I could have told you that,” I mumbled, and then felt unkind.
The King of Cups usually was a sign that the emotions and the intellect were out of balance, that a person was swamped by their feelings, overwhelmed.
The third card is the future: the Seven of Swords.
I always flinched at this one—it showed a thief creeping away, looking over his shoulder at someone catching him in the act.
It meant you were going to try to sneak away from something, or it could be a warning that there was betrayal waiting for you ahead.
It was a sign to trust your intuition if you suspected someone was going to wrong you.
As far as I saw it, these cards were a warning.
If they were accurate, then this woman’s life had gone from stable to chaotic and was about to get worse.
I was always telling people that the cards weren’t the future, necessarily—they were subtler than that.
The cards were reminders that we could make choices, a reminder to look at your life and parse out how you needed to think about things, how you might act, what options were available to you.
I didn’t believe in fate coming down like a guillotine or sweeping you up out of your life like a hot air balloon.
We were always somewhere in the middle: everyone had obstacles, but we also had free will.
If I saw the woman—I wished that I knew her name—again, I would warn her, but I’d have to tell her that, too: that she still had a choice.
A fly buzzed against the window of the shop, slow and drowsy in the heat.
I realized what the feeling was, the one that had been creeping along my skin for days.
It was the tickle of insect legs. I reached for a magazine, rolled it up, and smashed the fly against the glass.
Its guts left behind a greasy smear. But a second later, I felt it again, the creep of a fly along the top of my ear, and when I reached to brush it away there was nothing there.