Cheryl Sees Her Future

Cheryl laid the cards out all across the table, covering its surface from edge to edge.

There were things in the aether, she felt certain, that wanted to come out. They wanted an ear, a vision, a voice. And with Lilith missing — with Lilith hardly bothering to come in, or call, even though there was finally all the business they could want! — Cheryl was the only one available. And even she recognized she was inadequate. The aether cried out, helplessly. And no one cares except me, though Cheryl. And I can’t see!

She’d never really seen a thing, she knew. Just like she’d never really carried off Totie Fields or Mama Cass onstage. She might have been the only girl in a cast of drag queens, but she was the worst impersonator in the show. She knew it, all the boys knew it, and the audiences knew it, too. They chose her numbers to go to the bathroom.

“Ah!” she cried out, banging her fist down. The cards just sat there, pretty pictures on cardboard, and didn’t say or show a thing.

“You’re working late.”

There was a man in the room with her. Zem, Lilith’s old client. And two other —

“Wha—” Cheryl started.

“You’re working very hard.”

His voice was smooth as honey. His smile was bright and warm. Lilith had said terrible things about this man. Cheryl caught her breath. All the bangles on her body chimed.

“I — I just stayed because a client wanted—” she looked at her watch. It had been two hours since her last customer had left. But he couldn’t know that. “We’re here all day,” she said, “if anybody wants us.”

“I’m sure you are,” he reassured her. “And I’m sure they do.” This is the one. He sat down. “And I want you. Would you like to help me?”

He stared at her across the table. His eyes were gray and clouded, but his gaze was unblinking. Cheryl hardly felt she was breathing, as she looked at him, caught. Frozen.

“I — what—” she gasped.

“Come with me. I have wonders to give you.”

A smile, so faint she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t already been staring, passed over his lips. Yet it was so deep, so full of meaning, she was bombarded with thoughts, with forgotten wishes, with images so fantastic she couldn’t believe they’d been born in her head.

She shivered with a thrill that traveled up from her toes through her head and jittered out her hands. She heard her rings clink against each other as her fingers twitched. She imagined the aether that Lilith saw into so calmly might feel like that. The things hidden from her, all those truths and mysteries, might shoot through her spine and electrify her if she, just once, could focus hard enough.

“All right,” she said before she thought about it.

“Good,” he told her. “Very good. You’ll be my hero. Heroine.” He grinned at his own correction.

Cheryl couldn’t catch her breath. “Me? But I — I’ve never even—”

She had no idea what she’d never even done. But his suggestion just seemed... impossible, fantastic. Something anyone who knew her would laugh at.

“Give me your hand.”

Not “believe in me”. Not even “follow me”, as Jesus said to those fishermen. The Christian god required far too much.

“Here,” Zem prompted. He laid his hand, palm up, on the table between them. Cheryl laid hers on top.

“Be strengthened,” Zem said.

And she was.

NEXT POST: MANAGING THE REVOLUTION (Monday 2/22)