A Turn of the Cards

One block West of the Strip, along an oversized alley called Industrial Road, shadows and stillness hover all day and night, rain or shine or sun or moon. The backs of all the hotels and their parking garages loom over it on one side. Warehouses and cheap businesses are scattered on the other: gentlemen’s clubs hang by industrial suppliers, electronics repair stores by upstart video companies. And, in one small, threadbare strip mall of five storefronts, two of which were empty, a fortune teller’s parlor lit up its three parking spaces in a blaze of fluorescence and neon.

Zem stood in front of the storefront and considered it. He liked gypsies. And Vegas, he had realized, was really little more than a gypsy encampment. It was a bunch of wagons all pulled up into a circle, each louder and more garish than the last, and all dedicated to keeping the marks from thinking clearly for just as long as it took to empty their pockets.

“I will read your fortune,” the gypsy woman announced, when he stepped through her door and flashed some money. She was young and pretty, in contrast to her surroundings, with lots of glossy, dark hair and large black eyes and narrow brows that framed her expression into something slightly amused and quizzical. She wore jeans and a burgundy, button-down shirt, but she also wore a loose shawl and huge hoop earrings that glittered with a gypsy promise. And her manner was as businesslike as her wardrobe. She hadn’t wasted time on melodrama or affectations, but simply directed him to sit, to relax, and then made her announcement.

“I will read your fortune.”

As if she were the one deciding whether to hire him.

Zem smiled and sat obediently. Fortune tellers often got confused when they met him. Or else they got scared. Sometimes, they burst into flames. But he thought it was worth the risk, this time. He’d had no luck yet finding his priestess.

The young woman surprised him by not pulling out cards or uncovering the enshrined object that was patently a crystal ball in the center of her table. She poured him coffee, instead. Then she poured some for herself, looked down into it, and nodded once.

“Good. Now you will drink, and I will drink, and then we trade cups.”

All right. Zem looked down into his cup, as she had, and saw black liquid with a slight oily film. He shrugged, picked it up, and took a sip.

“Blech!” he exploded, swallowing. It tasted like hot water drained through compost. The gypsy smiled, Zem scowled at her. She nodded at his cup.

“Drink up!” she told him.

“It’s terrible!” he accused.

She shrugged extravagantly, her shawl shifting into new folds off her shoulders. “Insight isn’t easy, brother,” she informed him.

He gave a single shout of laughter and looked into the evil cup again. The oil swirled as if it were leering at him. He scowled down into it and took another swallow, vaulting it right past his taste buds. He looked in again and saw he’d finished half the cup. Half would have to be enough. He set the cup down.

“That’s right,” the gypsy told him.

What might her name be? He’d make a point to ask her. He gave her his most piercing look, and wondered if she might offer other client services besides fortunes. She watched him right back.

“She smiled and took his cup in her hand,” the woman intoned, doing so.

His head hurt. He waited. What the hell had been in that foul coffee? He stared hard at her.

“You’re a mystery man,” she said before she even took a sip.

“Is that what the coffee says?” he taunted.

She allowed one side of her mouth to bend upward. It was a lazy, summer-day smile like you would see on the heated bank of a pond where children swam nude and a tire hung on a rope for swinging. She tapped the cup with one long finger, and he noticed her nail: clean, unvarnished, short enough to deal cards without splitting the edges.

An honest fortune teller. Who could have guessed the wonders of Las Vegas?

“No, that’s just a comment,” she said. “You’re not what you seem.”

“What do I seem?” he growled.

She shrugged. “A man. Ordinary. Strong. You’re large and gruff. You reveal very little. You came in here ten minutes ago and you’ve been observing things, making judgements, all that time. Yet, from your face, I’d never know you’d had a thought at all.”

“Then how do you know I’ve been having them?”

She touched a drop of coffee that he’d spilled and drew it across the table. “I can observe, too.” She went on, tracing a pattern. “You’re broad-shouldered, strong, an impressive physical presence. You look like you’ve spent your life constructing buildings,” she said, “or tearing apart plumbing. People probably get out of your way in a crowd,” she added. “But you’re graceful, too. You have an awareness of your body. You move sensually, deliberately. Not like a plumber.”

“Plumbers can’t be sensual?”

She looked directly at him. “Are you a plumber?” He shook his head. “Well then,” she continued. “Perhaps we’ll get to what you are.” She smiled again, then lowered her eyes to look down into his coffee cup. “This is the good part,” she added. She took a sip.

Zem leaned back, watched her face as she swallowed. She stayed silent, considering as carefully as a sommelier identifying an unknown vintage.

“Interesting,” she commented. And then she said something that truly made him laugh. He burst out with a sound that could only be called a guffaw.

“You’re a spiritual ma–” she began.

Guffaw. A gunshot in the sunrise hush of a forest. Zem’s gypsy medium reacted, startling like an early-rising deer. Then she relaxed again, a deer that sees the sound was just its mate stepping on a tree branch. Then, when he kept laughing, she looked suspicious. Maybe it was a hunter stepping on a branch.

“Is something funny?” she asked, not-quite frostily. Fortune tellers have got frosty down to an art. It’s part of the lore they learn, along with all the things the King of Cups can mean depending on where he falls in a Tarot spread. A fortune teller’s pride is like a little pet curled up next to her feet underneath her fringe-covered table. It looks sweet and affectionate– it is, to her– but if you wake it rudely by insulting it, it uncurls and turns out to be a Rottweiler with teeth the size of machetes. It leaps up in less time than your brain can catalogue all that and goes straight for your throat.

Her tone, asking the question, was not-quite frosty, though. Not quite insulted. Considering and waiting. Judging. Offering Zem one last opportunity to prove he hadn’t been insulting. Ready to release the hound.

“Is something funny?”

Zem had met other pride-Rottweilers. He thought that tonight there was no need for a tangle with one. He gasped, gulped, and caught his breath. He stopped laughing, in other words.

“Not really,” he informed her. “There are people who’d find that amusing– calling me spiritual, that is.”

She turned her head a little. Looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Are there?” she allowed. “Let’s go on.” No more laughing! her tone said. No more guffaws! And pay attention!

Zem composed himself to listen more respectfully. She was a very lovely fortune teller, after all.

“Forgive me,” he bobbed his head to her.

She nodded back to accept his apology. He smiled, but was careful not to make a sound.

There were also those who would have been shocked to hear Zem apologize. To anyone, at any time. There had been times when he’d have flown into a rage if anybody had so much as asked for an apology. And, of course, no one had. They’d known.

But now... well, what the hell? A pretty girl, a little misunderstanding... He hadn’t meant to mock her with his great guffaw. He hadn’t known that it was coming. So what? He apologized. The world went on. He waited.

“There’s something strange here,” she said.

“Yes?”

She met his eyes. “You’re hungry.”

He let a little grin creep onto his lips. “I haven’t had dinner yet. Would you–”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she cut him off sharply. “You’re hungry for...” she looked down into the dark cup again, “people? Love?” She shook her head at the words. “I’m not sure yet. But it’s a force in you, something that’s been growing till it’s become insatiable. That’s why you’re here. You’ve been... alone for a long time. In fact–” she stared into his face again, “Have you been a prisoner somewhere? It looks like–” her voice drifted off.

“A distant place? An unknown country?” he filled in, balancing his tone on the fine knife-edge between jesting and mocking. He watched to see if any pride-Rottweiler eyes opened.

“More like solitary confinement,” she retorted.

It was his eyes that opened wider. “You think I’m a convict?” His grin was full of delight at the notion.

She shrugged. “We get lots of men just out of prison. The state penitentiary’s just up the road, and Vegas is the land of opportunity, didn’t you know?”

“And they all want to know what their future holds, I’m sure.”

“They all think they know what their future holds. They think it’s up to them.”

He nodded. “I’m not just out of prison.”

“I know.” She looked down again, but not, this time, as if she were inspecting his cup. “But you’ve been away. You’ve been... lying low, incognito.” She shook her head and frowned. “Those aren’t the right words. Give me your hands.”

“My hands?”

“Don’t act as if you’re afraid,” she frowned. She reached toward him, resting her elbows on either side of the covered crystal.

“I was only concerned for your safety,” he assured her.

“Very solicitous. Give me your hands.”

“All right.” She waited as he slowly sat forward and deliberately lowered his hands to meet hers.

This gypsy was not old, but she was an old hand on hands, and all the things they could say. The lines in the palms, the length of the fingers, the weight and firmness of the flesh in general– all these spoke to her. All these attributes, and others, formed a chorus, loud as clapping, banging away at the message of the hand’s experiences, its path through the world. Its owner’s life, and his future.

She looked at Zem’s hand, and was stumped.

There were none of the signs she looked for. Where she should have read of childhood, she saw war. Where she looked for love, she found conquest and diversion. She looked up into her client’s eyes.

“Interesting,” she said.

He chuckled. “I’m glad. What do you see there?”

“That you’re a man of... unusual passions. You feel no shame, do you? There are people who spend thousands of dollars on analysts to achieve this.” She tipped her head at him, quirked one side of her mouth up, and waited for his response.

He chuckled back again. “A good way of putting it. What else?”

She blinked, and then looked down again. “Again, this isolation,” she read. She ran her own fingers lightly down the length of his palms. There was something unused about them. The creases, even where they ran deep, were faded like old ink on thin parchment. “Where have you been?”

He smiled. He seemed pleased. “Going where the wind blows. Waiting for the world to catch up to me again,” he said.

“Hm...” She stared some more. “You’re hungry,” she said again.

“Everybody needs a little love,” he put in. She looked up to find him watching her intently. He wasn’t blinking.

“I’ve always thought so,” she hazarded. “But there’s a kind of... sustenance, for you, that I’ve never run across before.” This is ridiculous, she thought.

“And the future?” he asked.

She blinked, hard, to clear her mind, and looked back at his palms. Tried to place a few of the strange puzzle pieces in order, come up with some readable picture.

The future, at least, was a little clearer.

“I see you,” she said. “Standing in a high place. Here in Vegas.” She frowned at that. There weren’t high places in Vegas. But she went on. “I see people all around you, many people. There’s a woman by you– not me, you can wipe that smirk off your face–” she didn’t bother to look up at him, “She’s standing by your right shoulder. She seems–” she furrowed her brow, “familiar to me. Like an actress, maybe. A celebrity.”

“How exciting.” His same smooth, untouched tone.

“Yes, very glamourous,” she agreed cynically, breaking her gaze at his hands to frown at him. “I don’t think you’re the type to get excited about cheap fame.”

“Probably not. The thrill fades,” his voice lilted into humor just for one second. “And what are the people doing? The ones you see around me?”

“I– they’re standing there, but I can’t– Waiting for you, maybe...” She frowned deeper. The Tower card from her Tarot deck flicked through her thoughts. A vision of cataclysm, bodies tumbling from a lightning-struck fortress. She felt that same weight, that same foreboding, looking at this man’s blank hand.

There’d been something strange in the air, and underneath the air, for weeks now. Every palm she’d turned, every fortune she’d told, every message she’d read in the stars or the cards or the pattern of reflections in her dinnerware, had all spoken of something coming. Something big. And dangerous.

She concentrated. She could almost catch it, see the force that she’d been feeling, pin it down like a name she’d half-forgotten...

“Ah.” He pulled his hands away, sat back, and beamed at her. The beam came more from his eyes than his quirked lips. The air trembled around him. “You’re wonderful.”

She sat back, too. She found herself breathing harder than normal. “You’re satisfied? I didn’t tell you much,” she said.

“No. But you said the right things.”

“Nothing that surprised you.”

“I’m not here looking for surprises. I came to Las Vegas looking for...” he considered, rolling thoughts around on his tongue before swallowing one and speaking, “fulfillment. And you’ve told me what I wanted to hear. You’ve confirmed the future.”

“Have I?” she asked drily. “Would you like to explain it to me? I seem to have failed in this reading.”

He laughed. Ebulliently, almost musically. But low. A kettle drum sharing a joke with the thunder.

“If I can do it over dinner, perhaps,” he suggested. “As you pointed out, I’m hungry.”

She folded her arms, cocked her head to consider him with her gaze narrowed. “More like insatiable,” she corrected. “Hm, dinner...” she mused. “Is that a good idea? With a stranger?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I meant for me. I think I might be walking into the lion’s den if I accept.”

“In the lion’s den, at least you get a good look at the lions,” he grinned. Which was true. She’d already thought of that.

“You’re twice my age, you know,” she said, considering.

His lips began to spread into a grin. “Much more than that, my dear.” It was a wolf grin, a Great White Shark grin.

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not quite as young as I look.”

His teeth sparkled at her. “Oh, neither am I, my dear. Neither am I.”

It was a grin to take down that Rottweiler without so much as a whimper.

NEXT UP: VENUS RISING (Friday 8/14)