The Big Kiss Off

There was a large woman sitting at the fortune telling table when Zem walked in. To call her fat would have been unfair. In fact, there was absolutely no way to tell what her weight was, or whether her formidable dimensions might be due to bone structure, or possibly some rare glandular condition, or even just a supremely weird fashion sense. She was swathed in fabric, layer after of layer of paisleys cohabiting with checks and solids. A few lurid strips had come along for the ride. Her head was wrapped in something fringed and lacy, wound round her crown so many times there was no telling what sort of hair was underneath. She might have been bald. She might have been a stick figure, although her broad, round face made those odds low. She might have had huge breasts, a stomach like a sumo wrestler, or a conjoined twin hidden within her wrappings. Zem admired her for one entire, silent minute, then stepped the rest of the way into the storefront.

He stood across the table from her and smiled.

“I thought that Lilith would be here. But now I see you, perhaps I’m lucky.” He allowed his eyes to crinkle at the corners. In his old days, up on that mountain, he had only occasionally had use for eye-crinkling. He’d found since landing here how that sort of thing opened doors and exerted influence. Zem was a quick study. After a couple weeks in Las Vegas, his eyes could throw their weight around in any company.

“She’ll be back soon. Are you her customer? You’ve been in before?”

Her voice was higher than he would have expected. And she sat, not like Lilith tended to, fiddling with the cards or smoothing out the inch-deep shawls thrown over the table, but still and staring off into the distance. She might have been contemplating the infinite, but Zem suspected it was more boredom, a mind emptied and waiting for some catchy amusement to come along.

Every one of her fingers was covered with rings. Zem looked at them, considering a compliment, then he looked again. The thick metal almost matched the pattern of an embroidered shawl, which showed itself between those fingers.

“This is your place,” Zem said. “Not Lilith’s. Does Lilith work for you?”

She smiled, pressing her lips primly tight in the middle of her face. They looked lost there, so far separated from any of their fellow features that they must have felt like pioneers in a vast and featureless plain. “We work together. We’re co-owners. But I did the decorating. Oh, that girl– no style at all. She brought nothing– you should have seen her apartment when we first met– oh–”

She realized, apparently, she’d been talking. Chatting, letting slip privacies rather than bargaining or drawing him in. “I mean–” she began.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said. He did the eye thing again and watched her relax.

She smiled, more naturally this time, and sat back. “Is Lilith expecting you?” she asked.

“Oh no,” he said. “She never is. But she’s always,” a pause. He waited for the right word, “... interested to see me,” it came.

And Lilith came in. The door had a bell which rang.

Zem turned. “Good evening.” He sketched a bow.

She carried a bag of groceries. “Hello. Are we doing high society tonight? Very genteel.” She brushed past him, to a cupboard on the wall behind her business partner.

“I always try to be a gentleman. I’ve just been talking to your–”

“Cheryl.” The woman stood up, turning to Lilith over her shoulder. Zem watched, entertained by the fall and ripple of her fabrics adjusting themselves, re-layering and draping her new configuration. “I’ll go and let you see your client, dear.”

Lilith wouldn’t look around. “Oh, don’t bother. We won’t be doing a reading. I’m not sure what Mr. Zem wants, actually.” Then she did turn to gaze at him, as she said his name, and he watched and waited, while Cheryl looked back, and forth again.

“Well, honey,” she started, obviously at a loss.

“I did come to hear my fortune,” Zem announced.

“No you didn’t,” Lilith contradicted. “You came to spar, and joust, and play with me. But I’m not in the mood tonight.”

“Oh, honey–”

“Surely you won’t throw me out? I’ve truly come to seek your wisdom.”

Lilith shut her eyes, as definitive as mother cleaning up the games for the night and thunking shut the toy box. “Mr. Zem,” she said, “We both know–”

“If he wants a reading–”

“I’m not angry,” Zem told Cheryl. “I’ll even pay for your time. Both of your time.” He gave a breezy smile. “But perhaps Lilith and I could discuss things.”

He put no emphasis on her name. No warning suggestion, no hinting inflection. But Cheryl pulled her skirts closer.

“Oh, of course. Well, I’ll just leave you then. Honey, you know where to reach me. I have my beeper.” She stuck her hand amidst some lace and some paisley, demonstrating a pocket or merely a worn seam, Zem wasn’t sure. “Then I’ll just go... out,” she said. “I mean– if you’re sure it’s all right.” She looked at Lilith, and her expression amused him. Half worried, half beseeching. The partners approached business differently, to say the least. He laid a bit more pressure on, just for fun.

“We’ll be just fine.”

Lilith turned and faced him. Faced them both, her anxious partner, her sometime client. “Yes, we’ll be fine,” she agreed. Resigned, rolling her eyes. “You go. Take a break. It’s a slow night. Go home, even. It’s silly to stay here like this. Nothing’s going on.” She peered out through the windows. “There’s hardly a crowd waiting.”

“Well, honey,” Cheryl paused. She inspected Lilith. “Do you want me to?” It was heavy with meaning. But she’d taken one step, and was reaching for the door.

Zem laughed silently.

“Yes, go. I’ll close up.”

“All right, then. I’ll go. Call me. If you– nice to meet you,” she turned, stuck her hand out at Zem, “Mr. Zem. That’s a very unusual name.” She smiled at him, all her professional wattage gathered and in force. Now that her partner was behaving, and her own path was settled, she seemed to have gained back some confidence. Or salesmanship.

“It was nice to meet you. Perhaps we’ll see each other again.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Everyone who comes to Lilith wants to come back. I mean–”

“Yes. She’s very, very perceptive, isn’t she?” A smile, a hint of a simper. “Well. It was– well, I said that, didn’t I?”

Cheryl looked back once more at Lilith, but she was looking at the table. She’d stepped up behind the empty chair where Cheryl had sat, and gripped its back. “I’ll go then. Enjoy your reading,” she said.

“I will.” The door tinkled.

“You know this is useless,” Lilith said. “I see nothing about you. Time after time.”

“And you don’t like that.”

She looked up at him. “Of course I don’t like that. I’m a seer, for god’s sake. I’m supposed to see. But you’re a blank. It’s bizarre. I’ve never met anyone– I can read anything. I can’t help reading, it gets annoying. The lights on every sign up and down the Strip show the future, when things are really rolling. Everywhere I look. But you– there’s nothing. A big, flat blank. It’s—”

“Frustrating,” he finished for her.

“Well, yes. But more than that. It makes me doubt–”

“Your vision? Oh, no. You shouldn’t.”

But she wasn’t finished. “... the wisdom of talking to you at all,” she completed her sentence. “Really, it seems pointless.”

“But it’s not pointless to me,” he assured her. He leaned over the table to reach for her hand.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she pulled it back. “I know you’re not so smitten. You find me amusing, and that’s all right for a little while. But now I may not be in the mood.”

“You have a headache?” he queried solicitously.

“Ha, ha. Yes, if you must know. You give me headaches.”

“I am sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’re pleased with yourself. That’s been your goal, hasn’t it? To fend me off. Well, you’ve done it. You can sleep peacefully, knowing that I’ve looked and I’ve learned nothing. The cards are silent in regard to you. As are the crystal, the tea leaves, and the stars at night. Even the moon. And she’s infamously chatty.”

“What about the coffee grounds?”

“The coffee grounds aren’t any more helpful. And I still use the same roast, which you certainly didn’t enjoy the first time around. Don’t even suggest we try that again.”

He sat back, leaned away in his chair, studied her. “Well then,” he started. But he didn’t go on for several seconds. He waited till Lilith looked up, met his eye.

“Yes?” she mocked him.

“Will you at least let me buy you a drink? To make up for the headaches? I had no idea I was causing you pain.”

“Of course you did,” she discounted that. “But what the hell. I’m not doing anything here,” she said, sweeping her hand across the table to indicate the room’s emptiness. “It’s been a slow night.”

“Then?”

“Okay, fine.” But she reached down and began fastidiously straightening the cards that lay there.

“Coming?”

She sighed. “I suppose.”

He smiled and reached for her arm. “Allow me to squire you to some much finer place than this, my fair lady.”

She glanced at him sidelong. “You mean, let you take me away from all this?” She laughed, sharply. “Fine,” she said again. “And I’ll give it one more shot, taking every opportunity to try to get any insight into you or your mind, and you’ll kick me out, over and over, and then we’ll go our separate ways, never to annoy each other again. Right?”

“I’ve never been annoyed.”

Lilith sniffed in thought. “Well, neither have I, exactly,” she admitted. She looked at him, staring and pensive. “But there’s something...”

“Careful,” he cautioned. “You don’t want to make that headache worse.”

NEXT POST: THE COMING OF THE SUITOR (Friday 9/4)