Lilith Spreads the Cards

Lilith Lucia Papameletiou, Gypsy by persuasion but Greek by heredity, sat in the storefront fortune parlor she shared with her friend Cheryl, and thought of Zem. She couldn’t get him out of her mind, even though she’d said goodbye and officially stopped thinking about him six months ago. Reminders of him turned up, in her mind, like reruns of a bad sitcom from her childhood, one of those shows she’d never liked, but which now seemed to be syndicated on every channel, at every hour of the day, annoying her with its theme music and its laughtrack.

This was the very table where she’d tried to read his fortune, and where, later, she’d told him to stop coming. She riffled and sorted through the cards, sitting and staring into space. Cheryl bustled behind her, sweeping a huge, bright pink feather duster over her massive collection of arcane chotchkes.

Lilith had bought Cheryl her first Tarot deck years ago, when they’d been neighbors in a tiny apartment building facing a cement courtyard and a cracked pool. Cheryl was depressed over losing her weird job as a female female impersonator, and Lilith, twenty and at a loss to cheer up this oversize and overwrought woman she barely knew, told her that fortunes were sort of like show biz, and she’d teach her the trade. A few years later, Cheryl had talked Lilith into opening a shop with her, which they’d share, trading off shifts. And now, Cheryl possessed more Tarot decks, crystals, and jangling jewelry than a whole Romany caravan combined. There was barely room to move in here.

She’d created a monster, Lilith reflected.

Lilith leaned back in her chair, thinking. Business was slow. She shouldn’t have come in at all tonight.

Cheryl heaved her bulk around the crowded room, occasionally wiping her damp, jet black bangs back from her forehead. She was one of those 300 pound women who never quite seem to be in contact with the floor. She moved as if held up by wires, the world’s largest hummingbird flitting busily to anything that looked like it might possibly be a flower.

“You want a reading, honey?” she asked, uncurling a hair from her cheek.

Lilith quickly squared the cards off, put them down, and stood. “Give me a break, Cheryl.”

Cheryl looked offended as she repositioned her three crystal balls and re-wound the astrolabe.

“Don’t you ever do a reading for yourself, honey?”

“Sure, I spread the cards sometimes,” Lilith said.

“Well? Then why not?”

“For myself, Cheryl. I’ve never asked anybody else to–”

“Honey,” Cheryl began, her voice rising another octave. But they were interrupted. The door tinkled open and three people walked in. Cheryl whipped around and instantly assumed her fortune teller’s simper. One shoulder was thrust forward, and one low-heeled shoe, and she flipped her sweaty bangs over her forehead and lowered her gaze to make a show of inspecting the newcomers.

“Welcome,” she said.

Lilith took a half step back. If she wanted to go home early, she’d missed her chance.

While Cheryl was upselling the three clients, Lilith let her own gaze rest on each one briefly. They were a woman and two men, all around thirty. The two men, she could see, were best friends. The woman was one’s sister, the other’s fiancé. They could have been in a movie about a tragic triangle, a threesome marked for some highly icky, sentimental end, she thought.

Except their ending wasn’t sentimental at all, she realized. They had another future. She looked harder. The woman had sharp features, and she did most of the talking. She laughed a lot, and she was also the only one of them who’d really noticed Lilith. As Lilith looked at her, her glances in return grew more and more frequent. The two men were embarrassed. They laughed a lot, too, whenever their sister or lover did, but they also fidgeted, folded their arms and then stuck their hands in their pockets, then pulled them out again and started over. They looked at the paraphernalia surrounding them with grins, but also as if some of it might sprout wings and descend upon them like harpies at any moment.

I’m with you there, fellas, Lilith agreed silently.

A price was reached. A full reading, for all three, combined, concentrating on how their lives interacted.

“And I want her to do it,” the woman finished.

She meant Lilith, of course. Lilith frowned. This chick couldn’t be gifted, herself, could she, and recognizing talent in the room? She narrowed her gaze, then shook her head. No.

Cheryl misunderstood her head shake. “Of course Lilith will read for you,” she cooed. “Come on, sit around the table. You here, and you… here,” she steered them, “And Lilith at the head.”

The table was round, but no one noticed. Cheryl had put the woman at Lilith’s right hand, the two men next to each other at her left.

“Now, choose a deck.” She spread at least half a dozen in front of the female client, all but ignoring the men. Everybody seemed to know who was in charge here, Lilith thought. She pulled out her chair, settled herself.

“That one,” the woman said. She pointed, extending her long finger and longer nail elegantly. She smiled at Lilith.

“Ooh, a dark deck, miss,” Cheryl breathed. Lilith twisted her head slightly. It was a modern version of the cards, painted in bold colors and geometric forms. She waited.

“And now shuffle three times,” Cheryl instructed. She took away the other decks and set them somewhere on the crowded shelves. “Concentrating on your question.”

All this was useless, really. The subject determined the reading, and the reader, not the choice of cards or how they were shuffled. This isn’t blackjack, Lilith thought.

“And now, we must all take a moment of silence, and breathe deeply, all together. Ready? Breathe in... two, three... and out... two, three. And one more time.”

Really, Lilith thought, Cheryl can be such a fortune telling nerd, sometimes.

“And now, we’re ready. If Lilith feels all the energies are aligned.”

Lilith nodded ever-so-slightly. At least she didn’t ask me if the spirits were ready. And speaking of spirits, I could use a drink. Barkeep!

She took the cards, squared them, and started to lay them out.

“Honey,” she heard Cheryl’s faint voice over her shoulder. She shook her head and kept on dealing.

The layout was a strange one, a circle of twelve cards with five single ones face down in an X in its center. Lilith had happened on it in an old woodcut once, and tried it a few times. It had been used, she’d read, to discern patterns of blood and lust, and the things that masqueraded as love.

“I’ve never seen this,” the woman to Lilith’s right breathed. She leaned over the cards, staring intently. “Bobby, that’s—” she pointed to the card nearest her brother, opposite Lilith.

“The Fool,” Lilith told him. “A popular card. And a good one. It’s you. Happy, unafraid, always willing to go on an adventure.” She gave him a little nod, and a slight smile. It was the simplest, most commonplace interpretation, but in this case it was true, and very nearly a complete character reading. Bobby was one of the world’s born jesters. He grinned at her. Probably thought he might get lucky tonight. She smiled down again. “This card,” she pointed at the one closer to his friend, “is the Knight of Swords. A warrior’s card, a fighter’s. You’ve been looking for a fight, haven’t you?” she asked, pinning the fiancé with her gaze.

“I—”

“Tim’s always looking for a fight,” the woman told them. “He was always beating someone up in high school. Defending my honor, whether or not it needed defending. Right?” she looked from one to the other of her champions for concurrence.

“You’ll soon find fights that are not of your choosing, with stakes higher than you can conceive. And you,” she turned to the woman, “Your name is Gwendolyn, and you believe the world is your oyster. This card that’s fallen to you is the Queen of Pentacles. She loves money, or at least all the things it buys. You’re going to get a lot of those things shortly. I see you living in great luxury, but–” she paused and blinked. There’d been a shadow across her sight.

“Yes?” Gwendolyn asked. Lilith felt Cheryl lean forward. The two boys watched her, not blinking.

Luxury. A lot of it. Pillows and silk sheets, and lush fruits and drinks. Indulgence. More women, and the sounds of tinkling water.

Lilith squinted, as if that would help her see the vision better. It was like a harem, very posh, very well cushioned. Gwendolyn, lying nude on a silk-thrown bed, other figures in the room around her, at the edges of Lilith’s vision. The feel of fingertips on the girl’s flesh. The feel of breath, silent, invisible. A tickle here and there, and then Gwendolyn gasped, and arched her back, and shrieked in ecstasy and kept on shrieking. The other figures in the room stopped, watched her. Waited. The shrieks reached a shrill climax, earsplitting and unending. And then stopped. Her body collapsed. All sound was gone, all movement stopped for good. The shadowy, watching figures moved away.

A hint of chuckling trembled through the air.

“He’s killed you,” Lilith murmured.

“What? What!” Gwendolyn demanded. “I couldn’t hear that. Did you say—”

Lilith looked up, then looked down at the cards. “I see great pleasure in your near future,” she resolved. She touched the Queen’s card, and the one next to it, the Ace of Swords, a dripping blade piercing a heart. “This is a dark deck,” she commented.

Ten minutes later, Tim, Bobby, and Gwendolyn had left.

“Honey, we’ve got to talk,” Cheryl sounded troubled. “I’m not sure what you saw, but…” She shook her head and obviously didn’t know how to go on, or exactly what she wanted to say.

“But I upset them,” Lilith finished.

“That’s an understatement, honey! If that woman hadn’t been so shook up, she would have been fighting for her money back. The only reason I got them out of here is because you scared them as much as you pissed them off. What were you seeing?”

Lilith turned over the five center cards in the spread, still lying untouched on the table. Death, the Tower, the Emperor, the Eight of Swords, and the Moon. All spoke of darkness unleashed, imprisonment, cataclysm. Taken together, they made even Cheryl wrinkle her brow and stare at Lilith in consternation.

“Honey! I’ve never seen— what do you think it means?”

Lilith swept all the cards together and recombined them with the rest of their deck. “It means I’ve changed my mind, Cheryl,” she smiled at her friend. “Lock the door, okay? I’d really like a reading after all.”

Cheryl didn’t ask any questions. She got up and bustled about, turning the key in the door and switching off the neon “Special Readings!” sign in the window. “Good idea, honey,” she said. “Maybe we both should do one.”

Lilith kept shuffling. “I agree,” she said evenly. “We should search through the aether for as much information as it will give up, tonight. It looks like Las Vegas might have some interesting things in its future this New Year’s after all, my dear.” She gave her friend a grim smile.

“Oh, honey!” Cheryl breathed in mingled dread and anticipation.

NEXT POST: ON DRAGONS (Monday 11/2)