Chapter 13 Clara #2
“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 use my 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 at the 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 CAME down 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.”
I took a breath, pictured the wad of bills that Peaches had pulled from her purse. The shoes, the tight dress. “Look Des, I’ve saved a little bit, pawning stuff at Zeg’s and all. It won’t cover everything. But I know what we need to do. I think we’ll be okay.”
Before I could change my mind, I told her about Tom slipping me his number, about the offer he had made.
I knew it was our only chance, but still I waited for her to put her hand out, to say no.
To tell me I was too young. That she’d handle it.
That I should go back to school in the fall.
I was always waiting for her to show me something that looked even a little bit like protectiveness.
Instead, she squeezed my arm, excited. “Well, what are you waiting for, Miss Clara Voyant? We don’t have any time to lose.” I felt another one of the phantom flies creep along my shoulder. I rubbed at my skin, shook my hair off of my neck, and still I felt it. My ankle. My earlobe. My left eye.
“What’s the matter with you?” Des asked. “You keep twitching.”
“I don’t know. Nervous, I guess.” It took all my willpower not to rub at my chest as the sensation crawled across my collarbone.
I found the paper with Tom’s phone number on it in the back of my dresser drawer.
I wondered what it had meant, that I saved it at all.
Surely another girl would have thrown it away—had I sensed this coming?
That one day, sooner than I could have thought, I’d be desperate enough to call?
Des handed me her phone, and while it rang I prayed he wouldn’t answer.
For a moment, I let myself think I was safe, but he picked up on the fourth ring.
“It’s Clara,” I said. “From Atlantic City?” My voice was a pitch too high. Des shook her head. I tried again, swallowed the lump in my throat. “Remember me?” Better, Des mouthed.
“Hold on a minute,” he said, and I listened as he muffled the receiver. I tried not to picture who he was stepping away from.
“Well, this is a nice surprise. How are you, my dear?”
“I’ve been thinking about our date,” I said. “About what you said. I’d like to … to stay over with you.”
“I’d like that, too. I suppose I might be able to slip out of town, for a last-minute business trip, if you know what I mean.”
“Great,” I said. Des nodded at me, encouraging me to go on. “I need to make one thing clear first. This is going to be … an investment.” That was the word Des told me to use. “After all, there’s only one first time for everything. If you know what I mean.”
He let out a small groan, like he had just had a taste of something delicious, and I felt the goose bumps rise on the skin of my arms. “Oh my goodness. Well. Whatever you need. I’ll let you know where, what room, as soon as I book.”
An hour later the text came through: a hotel name, and a room number with a winking face.
We would meet on Tuesday—three days away—at 9:00.
Des lifted the screen for me to see, threw her arms around me, and whooped.
I wasn’t happy or afraid. Instead, an eerie calm slid into my gut, where the anger had been.
That night I put the purse on my nightstand.
I would have liked it, if I hadn’t known where it had come from.
If it didn’t make me feel nauseated to picture it on the side of the road—what road?
God, why hadn’t I asked?—and what it meant that it had been abandoned.
Maybe she got mugged, I told myself. It happened often enough.
Des said the girls at the club all carried mace or pepper spray, because thieves targeted strippers, waitresses, bartenders.
The ones they knew would have cash. After all this with Tom was over, I would try to find Peaches again.
Ask her where the bag had come from, how many days it had been since she found it.
Maybe whatever Peaches had to say wouldn’t lead me anywhere.
Maybe whatever had happened to the bag was the betrayal the cards had said to watch out for.
But something told me it was deeper than that.
Me, Peaches, Lily, Julie Zale. And that it wasn’t over yet.