“I guess,” she said.
“Bill must have been waiting for you to come here—staking the place out. I’m glad you didn’t go with him. You know what would have come of that.”
Marsha nodded tentatively.
“I feel guilty, though,” she said. “About him going to jail, maybe to prison. Isn’t that when a wife’s supposed to stand by her husband?”
“Not if he’s an abusive, controlling prick, Marsha. Then it’s an opportunity.”
Marsha winced at the word prick.
Bill might have treated her like a slave, a prisoner, property, and sometimes even a punching bag, but she still wanted to believe he wasn’t all bad, and I suppose he wasn’t. But he sure was bad enough.
“Wanna help me feed the fish?” I said.
Marsha nodded again, enthusiastically this time, grateful for the change of subject.
I led her to the fish tank by the waiting area. It was the one and only change I’d made to the White Magic Five and Dime since moving in. The rest—the crucifixes and African masks and tarot symbols on the walls, the New Age baubles and bric-a-brac in the display cases, the general air of faux-mystical seediness—I’d left the same.
If you want to attract mice, you don’t put caviar in the trap. Leave the cheese.
The little canister of fish food was beside the tank. I handed it to Marsha.
“Just a little,” I said.
Marsha gave me a small sad smile. She’d never given me a big happy one.
“Don’t worry,” she said, flipping up the lid on top of the tank. “I had fish once.”
She took out a pinch of fish food and crushed the red and green and purple flakes as she sprinkled them over the water.
Most of the fish were hanging out at the bottom of the tank near a big porcelain pirate ship with a jagged hole in its hull. But the second the flecks of food hit the water, the fish—about a dozen silvery angelfish and electric blue tetras—were wriggling wildly upward, racing to suck in as much as they could before it was gone. There was no such thing as “enough” to them. They’d mindlessly take and take till they destroyed themselves.
My mother had no use for animals—they’re not known for their bank accounts—but I think she would’ve appreciated the fish.
Look past the gills and the fins and the pretty colors, I could hear her or Biddle say, and they aren’t that different from people.
Despite the feeding frenzy, the fish missed a few colorful flakes, which drifted slowly, like a rainbow of snow, toward the bottom of the tank. The algae eaters would take care of them. I squatted down to look at one as it swam lazily past the pirate ship.
Through the hole in the ship’s side I could see the dark outline of a box. A treasure chest—if you have a really sick definition of “treasure.”
Inside it were my mother’s ashes.
Clarice and I had given Mom a mini burial at sea, leaving her to rest where she’d spent so much of her life: with the bottom feeders.
It was a reminder for us never to sink so low ourselves.
“Bon appétit,” I said.
You’ve got the whole world in your hands—or at least a bowling ball that looks kind of like the world. You’re gazing out at the horizon, taking in your domain while searching for unexplored territory and unconquered foes. Don’t worry; you’ll find both. It’s a big world out there, and you’re not the only one looking for a fight.
Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing
After Marsha fed the fish, I offered to go make us some tea.
“Thanks,” Marsha said. “That’d be nice.”
For some reason, people find it comforting when a woman makes them tea. It’s the only reason to make it, really. I’d rather drink Coke myself. Or liquid soap.
I find my comforts elsewhere.
While a mug of water heated up in the microwave in the back room, I hurried up to the building’s second floor.
“Quick,” Clarice said when she heard me coming. “Get rid of the heroin.”
She and Ceecee were sitting on the floor by the couch in the living room—“the living room” in the little upstairs apartment being merely the couch and the floor and the TV nearby. Textbooks and papers and pencils were scattered around them.
The BB gun was on the kitchen counter. It had been left at the White Magic Five and Dime a couple weeks before by a mark who’d come looking for jewelry Barbra had conned out of him.
Another satisfied customer.
“Don’t flush your stash on my account,” I said as I picked up the gun. “I just came for this.”
“You’ll shoot your eye out,” Clarice said.
“That’s all right. I only need one to aim.”
I was back downstairs in front of the microwave before it even beeped.
Soon I was walking up the hall, a mug of steaming tea in one hand, a mug of cola masquerading as tea in the other, with the gun jammed into the back of my jeans. I put the cups down on the store’s main display case, then pretended to be excited by the sight of a tour bus passing by outside.
“Please stop please stop please stop,” I said.
When Marsha turned to look out the window, I slipped the gun under the counter beneath the cash register.
Men like Bill Riggs couldn’t even be trusted to act in their own best interest. If he changed his mind and came back, I wanted to be ready. A soothing cup of tea wasn’t going to do the trick with him.
“Dang. Sorry, Alanis,” Marsha said as the bus kept cruising past. It was black, with the words magical mystery tour painted on the side in big, swirly, acid flashback–inducing paisley. It drove through town four times a day, headed back and forth between Sedona and the (supposedly) mystic energy–soaked spot called Devil’s Ridge.
It never stopped.
“Oh, well,” I sighed. “Maybe next time.”
“Business still slow?”
“Only if you define business as providing services and goods to paying customers.”
“Uhhh…,” Marsha said, furrowing her brow.
“Joke,” I told her.
“Oh. Right. Well, at least you’ve got one paying customer here.”
I knew where she was headed with that, but I pretended I didn’t.
“You’re not a customer,” I said, swiping a hand at her.
She opened her mouth to reply.
“Your tea’s getting cold,” I said.
While Marsha dutifully picked up her mug and took a sip, I plotted my next distraction.
She’d come for a tarot reading. And I wasn’t going to give her one.
I’d learned to respect the tarot since inheriting the White Magic Five and Dime. I wouldn’t call it supernatural or magic, but I also wasn’t thinking of it as I had the first thirty-something years of my life: as just another con. The cards really were a gateway to…something.
Still, that didn’t mean I thought they’d be good for Marsha just then. The tarot offers implications, insights, suggestions, but she tended to take them as commands. And she’d had enough of that from her husband and my mother and maybe even me. She didn’t need another master. She needed a reason to live.
“What did you do before you married Bill?” I asked her when she started leafing through one of the books we had in stock—a self-published guide to the tarot called Infinite Roads to Knowing. I didn’t want her asking to try some new tarot spread she saw in it.
“Not much,” she said. “I was a cashier at a pharmacy, going to community college. I thought I might become a veterinary assistant.”
“Why not a veterinarian?”
Marsha smiled shyly, her eyes still on the book. She was a short, slight woman—so much so that from behind you might think she was one of Clarice and Ceecee’s friends from high school. You’d know better as soon as you saw her face, though. She was thirty, but her sallow skin and haunted eyes made her look decades older.
“Oh, I couldn’t be a vet,” she said.
“Why not?”
&nb
sp; Marsha shrugged her bony shoulders. “I don’t know. I just can’t think of myself like that. I always see myself as the assistant.”
“Perhaps it’s time you found a new way of thinking.”
Somehow I managed not to wince at my own words. What I really wanted to say was “grow a pair, lady.” Instead I’d trotted out a line from every self-help book ever written.
Talking like Dr. Phil. Taking tarot cards seriously.
Being in Berdache was doing weird things to me.
The front door swung open, and a couple walked in out of the blinding-bright Arizona afternoon.
Skills that had been drilled into me from the time I could talk kicked in automatically. I noted their clothes, their complexions, the way they walked, the looks on their faces. In an instant I knew who they were and what they wanted and how I could turn that to my advantage if I chose to.
Cold reading, Mom and Biddle called it.
Cops call it sizing up suckers.
“We saw the sign in your window,” the woman said—as I knew she would. She was fortyish, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and flushed slightly pink on her right-hand side.
The man hung back a step, looking sheepish. He was dressed the same, aged the same, and with the same pink glow to his skin, only on the left-hand side.
“Which one?” I said, though I knew the woman hadn’t meant open. I wanted her to say the words herself.
“‘Under new management,’” she said. “‘First reading free for returning customers.’”
I smiled.
“And you’re returning customers?”
The woman nodded. The man didn’t.
“We used to be in here all the time,” the woman said.
I kept smiling.
“Well, welcome back, folks,” I said. “Who used to do your readings? Claire Voyant or Cy Kickmann?”
“Oh, Claire,” the woman said. “She was amazing. The predictions she used to make! So accurate!”
I stopped smiling.
“Come on, Amy,” the man said, taking a step toward the door.
“What?” the woman said. “Is something wrong?”
I just stared at her.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just half her face that was flushed red.
Without a word, she turned and walked out of the shop. The man followed her.
“I told you this was a dumb idea,” I could imagine the man saying as they returned to their car and he slipped once again behind the steering wheel. (Drivers get more sun on the left.) “‘Claire Voyant.’ Geez, Amy.”
“It was worth a try,” the woman would say. And off they’d go, continuing their tour of central Arizona and its spiritual vortexes and towering red-rock formations and traditional Native American casinos.
“Uhhh…what just happened?” Marsha asked.
“Just a little misunderstanding.”
I’d put the magic word—free—in the window to lure Barbra’s old customers/victims. I wanted to make amends, help.
Despite what my mother and Biddle would have said about that, it didn’t make me a sucker. I wasn’t going to let anyone make a fool of me except me.
“So,” I said, “how does somebody become a vet, anyway?”
I couldn’t talk Marsha into veterinary school.
I couldn’t talk her into going back to college.
I couldn’t talk her into getting a degree online.
I couldn’t talk her into squat.
She didn’t have any money, she said. She didn’t have any experience. She didn’t have any prospects.
What she really didn’t have was any oomph.
Outside, meanwhile, the sun sank into the hills and the day ended and the night began.
“Come on! There’s got to be something you’re passionate about,” I said. “Something that lights a fire in you.”
Marsha gave me one of the languid, passive shrugs I was beginning to know so well.
“I guess I’m not a fiery person.”
She suddenly brightened, shoulders unslumping and eyes widening in a way that told me exactly what she was about to do: change the subject.
“What about you, Alanis?” she said. “What are you passionate about?”
I mulled it over a moment.
“Grilled cheese with barbecue potato chips and a kosher dill,” I said.
“What?”
I walked to the window and turned off the neon open sign. Then I locked the door.
“Closing time,” I said. “I’m hungry.”
Marsha re-slumped.
“Oh.”
“Fortunately for you,” I said, “I share my passions.”
Marsha blinked at me.
“Come on up. I’ll make you a sandwich,” I explained.
Marsha grinned with obvious relief.
It wasn’t just a reading she’d come to the store for. She’d come so she wouldn’t have to be alone.
She followed me down the hall and up the stairs. I’d stayed in Berdache to put things right and had ended up picking up a stray.
Maybe I was a sucker after all.
“Good night, Ceecee,” I said when the credits rolled on the movie she and Clarice had been watching.
“Oh, come on, Alanis,” Clarice said. “Let her stay a little longer. Please.”
She and Ceecee gave me sad puppy-dog eyes from the couch.
“Sleep tight,” I said to Ceecee with a little buh-bye flap of the hand. “Bedbugs, etc.”
Ceecee turned to Clarice, kissed her chastely (grownups were watching), then got up and shuffled toward the stairs.
“Good luck with your date tomorrow,” she muttered at me.
“Date?” said Marsha from the apartment’s dinky little dining-room table. She’d eaten her grilled cheese there, half-watched the movie there, chatted with me there about anything other than her future, and generally gave the impression that she was glued there like a barnacle.
Ceecee whirled toward her, suddenly bright-eyed and smiling.
“Yeah! She’s gonna have dinner with—”
“Out,” I said, pointing at the stairs.
Ceecee turned and started trudging toward the steps again.
“You’re mean,” she mock-pouted.
“And don’t you forget it,” I said.
I didn’t let myself feel badly about kicking her out. I’d already picked up two strays: Marsha and a sister I hadn’t even known I had a month before. I didn’t need a whole pack.
“So…a date?” Marsha said to me.
I shrugged dismissively.
“I’m helping a guy take his eighty-five-year-old mother to Olive Garden. It’s not exactly Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Clarice snorted.
“You. School night. Bed,” I said to her. Not because I was worried about her getting enough sleep. I just didn’t want her bringing up who I was going out with.
“Mom never cared if I stayed up late on a school night,” Clarice said, not moving from the couch.
“Mom wouldn’t have cared if you knocked over Fort Knox as long as you split the take with her.”
“True,” Clarice said.
She finally got up and headed for the bathroom.
“You guys,” Marsha said, grinning and shaking her head.
She thought we were joking again. She was wrong.
Clarice paused to look at her in an almost pitying kind of way, then threw me a quizzical look.
I knew what the glance was asking.
(A) Can you believe this square (or whatever it is kids call squares these days)?
(B) Is she sleeping here?
I’d known the answer to (B) since we’d come upstairs.
“I think I’ll turn in, too,” I said. “Marsha—do you want my bed or the couch?”
“What? Oh, no! You don’t have to do that! I’ve already taken up too much of your time today.”
“This isn’t going to take up any of my time at all. I’ll be asleep. I don’t care if it’s on a couch or a bed.”
“Marsha. That was a freaky scene with Bill today. If you don’t feel like going back to your motel alone—and who would after that?—you can stay here tonight. It’s no trouble at all. Right, Clarice?”
I looked at my half sister.
“Of course,” she said.
But there was that look pointed at me again. Eyebrow slightly cocked, lips curled into the slightest hint of a smirk.
Clarice and I shared a trait we must have inherited from our respective fathers, whoever they were. Something we sure as hell hadn’t gotten from Barbra.
We each had a conscience.
Yet although Clarice had told me she understood my little crusade to make up for Mom’s crimes, she hadn’t fully stepped out from Barbra’s shadow.
She wasn’t fleecing patsies with my mother anymore. But she still thought of them as patsies.
“Well…okay, then. I guess I will stay,” Marsha said. “Thank you. I’ll take the couch.”
“Great,” I said.
I turned to see if that smirk was still on Clarice’s face. If it was, I was going to wipe it off with a stare. All I saw was the bathroom door as it swung closed, though.
A second later I heard Clarice lock the door.
Once Marsha was settled with pillows and blankets on the couch, she opened a book she’d found on the coffee table and started reading. It was the same book she’d been looking at downstairs earlier that day: Infinite Roads to Knowing by one “Miss Chance.”
This was a different copy, though: it was my copy. Which was why it was filled with underlined passages and scribbled notes in the margins.
Infinite Roads to Knowing was my CliffsNotes for the tarot. I had it to thank for half of what I knew (or pretended to know) about the cards. Another 25 percent or so I’d gleaned/stolen from Josette Berg, the New Age Earth Mother who ran a rival bullshit emporium across the street. The rest I just pulled out of my butt.
Strangely, though, when I checked my out-of-the-butt stuff later, it usually turned out to be right in line with Infinite Roads to Knowing. Maybe Miss Chance and I shared a psychic bond. We definitely shared some genes.
Infinite Roads to Knowing had been written by Barbra and Clarice. Mom had printed up copies herself so she could sell them in the shop without having to share any of the profits with real publishers or real writers or real tarot readers. Real slick.
Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery Page 2