The Grift

by Debra Ginsberg

  “He’s worked so hard his whole life,” Madeline had told Marina. “He made Royal Rings all on his own. And he wants to pass it on. You know, keep it in the family.”

  But Marina wasn’t convinced that Andrew’s anger and frustration could be explained as simply as that. She sensed a much deeper dissatisfaction—or maybe disappointment—inside of him that no amount of money or possessions could fix. And men like Andrew, who shoved his own emotions so far down that he completely lost touch with them, always looked to blame others for their own predicaments. It was worse when they had money, because money gave them power and power turned them into bullies. Marina didn’t believe that a child would make him happy.

  Irritation prickled at the edges of Marina’s thoughts. These people had no idea how petty and meaningless their problems were in the greater scheme of things. It was a good thing; if they ever woke up and realized the insignificance of their own little troubles, Marina would be out of a job.

  Marina’s office was wedged between a nail salon and a tiny thrift shop, a space that was open and public but not overly so. She’d fashioned a waiting area in the front of the office, outfitted with shelves, used books and a couple of comfortable chairs. There was a smaller, private space partitioned off behind this area that Marina used for her readings, as well as a tiny bathroom and a back exit door that Marina never used. The office was tasteful and inviting, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what kinds of services were provided there. Unlike other psychics, Marina didn’t choose to hang neon signs or symbols in her window. A brass nameplate advertising “Intuitive Counseling” hung on her office door, and that was enough to attract the right kind of clientele. People here knew exactly what that meant. After Florida, she’d decided never again to work out of her house, and she found that her current clientele liked going to an office—it gave the whole process an air of legitimacy.

  The wind was still blasting as Marina stuck her office key into the lock, and she could smell smoke. The bone-dry brush around the marine base just north at Camp Pendleton was probably already on fire, she thought. It seemed to burn regularly. Across the street, a waitress struggled to keep her long hair in place as she served coffee to a man sitting alone at one of the café’s outdoor tables. The man must not be from around here, Marina thought, amused. The locals hated any kind of atmospheric interference with their meals; as soon as there was a hint of rain or a puff of wind they headed inside for shelter. And heaven forbid the temperature should fall below the mid-seventies. Outdoor heat lamps had to be lighted immediately. Marina noticed that the man seemed much more relaxed and unperturbed than his harried waitress. He smiled at the sulky girl, handed her his menu and then, as if he could feel her watching him, turned his eyes toward Marina. Surprised and embarrassed to be caught staring, Marina looked down at her keys and moved quickly to unlock her door.

  “Some weather for Election Day. Guess we’ll be getting some interesting results. But you probably know what those are already, don’t you?”

  Marina startled at the voice close behind her and whipped her head around, almost convinced that the man from the café had materialized at her back. But no, the voice belonged to Ed “call-me-Eddie” Perkins, who had come in for a reading back in February and had been making a periodic nuisance of himself ever since.

  “I don’t make political predictions, so you should go vote anyway,” Marina said, unruffled by his swagger and sarcasm.

  “Aw, come on, I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “How are you, Marina?”

  “Doing fine, Ed. What can I do for you?”

  “You can call me Eddie to start.” He grinned wide, making sure to maximize the effect of the prominent dimples on each cheek, and ran his hand through his longish salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Eddie, fine. What else can I do for you?”

  “Can we go inside first and then I’ll let you know?”

  Marina knew Eddie’s type so well. He was the kind of guy she’d cut her psychic teeth on when she was a kid and men like him had trailed in and out of her mother’s bedroom. Marina’s mother would go off on a nod, too out of it to service them, so they’d start checking out her daughter like a piece of meat. Her razor-sharp powers of observation and her natural talent with her mother’s worn-out set of tarot cards saved Marina from molestation on more than one occasion, because while these men were too morally impaired to see the wrong in having sex with a girl her age, they were too scared to attempt the same thing with a freaky little witch. At least, most of them felt that way. But Marina was now expert at avoiding those memories.

  Marina sensed that Eddie was not a child molester, but thought his womanizing was the most insidious kind of abuse. She could see it all—his compulsion to use them and then move on to the next—the minute he walked into her office, mud and rain falling from his work boots, to get the reading that one of his many girlfriends had bought for him. Marina had gone easy, giving him what he’d find inside any fortune cookie and throwing in a bit of astrology (too technical and boring for most guys like him). She could tell he didn’t have much extra cash and probably wouldn’t be back for another reading. Plus he was obviously more interested in her body than in anything she had to say. So she didn’t bother mentioning anything about what she’d learned by looking at his prison tattoos and the jagged scar above his collarbone.

  But Eddie had come back. He bought his own reading a couple of months later and spent the whole time (mostly a repeat of the first) attempting to x-ray her blouse with his eyes. He told her that she was the most beautiful and unusual woman he’d ever met and that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since he’d met her. Marina couldn’t imagine the kind of helpless innocence one would have to have to fall for a line like this, but she supposed there were still women out there who did. She’d set him straight right then—told him that she wasn’t looking for a date and that unless he was serious about their sessions, he wouldn’t be able to get any benefit out of them. He’d apologized and left, but the following month he was back again—not for a reading, but to drop off a half dozen red roses. A month later, he returned with a single white one, long-stemmed and elaborately wrapped. And this was how it had gone.

  It had been a while since his last offering, and Marina had thought he’d found another new girlfriend or gotten tired of the game. But, naturally, Eddie was the kind of man who lived for this kind of challenge.

  “Eddie,” she said when they were both inside her office and out of the wind, “I’ve told you that I would never become involved with a client romantically. And that’s not even considering the fact that you’re married.”

  “I need a reading, Marina. A real one—I mean, a big one. No, I mean, I have a problem and I need you to…look into it for me.”

  Marina stared into his face, searching his eyes for his real motivation, and couldn’t find it. “Do you want to do this now? Because I have—”

  “No. I’ll make an appointment. But if you have time this week, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Okay,” Marina said, “but this is an appointment, Eddie. Don’t bring flowers.”

  “Just money, right?”

  Marina allowed him a smile and pulled her calendar from her desk drawer. Fine, she thought. Eddie wasn’t a bottomless well, but he had some money, and as long as he was going to keep coming around, she might as well take it.

  “What about Friday?” she asked him. “I have a cancellation at four. After that, it looks like I’m booked solid for a couple of weeks.”

  Eddie smiled. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  Marina’s day had been even busier than she’d expected. Whether this was solely because of the weather or also because it was Election Day, giving people more than the usual need to know what the future held, she couldn’t tell. After Eddie left, the hours had passed in a blur of beseeching faces seeking answers to all of life’s major questions.

  Kiki, a receptionist for a medical group, wanted to know wh
en she would meet her soul mate on the Internet dating service she’d just joined. In her tarot cards, Marina had conveniently spotted a doctor—perhaps even someone where she worked—who would soon be making contact. Kiki blushed, excited. Well, in fact there was someone at work she’d had her eye on, she told Marina. Who would have thought?

  Stephanie, a new client referred by a regular, wondered whether she should change careers from technical writing to nursing. Marina noted the strong healing energy in Stephanie’s aura, but the cards showed that Stephanie would have to put that energy into caring for a sick relative. Then there was Jill, a young woman who had seen Marina’s sign when she’d gone into the thrift store next door and had decided on an impulse to come in for a reading. Jill, who adopted the I’m-not-going-to-tell-you-anything-about-myself-because-you’re-the-psychic-and-should-know attitude common to some first-timers, proved to be a major drain on Marina’s own energy and flagging blood sugar. She sat there, pale and pouting, and refused to either agree or disagree with anything Marina was saying. Working much harder than she wanted to, Marina looked for the tiniest giveaways—or tells, as poker players called them—to clue her in to what Jill had really come in for. Nobody came to see a psychic if she was perfectly content. And nobody was ever perfectly content. So Marina observed the way Jill’s eyes blinked hard at the sight of the Lovers card, the anxious way she twisted the still-shiny wedding band on her finger and the unconscious motion of her hand to adjust the collar of her shirt so that it covered a faint red mark on her neck.

  “I’m seeing a third person,” Marina said finally, “standing between you and your husband.”

  Jill hadn’t mentioned that she was married nor had she asked about relationships, but Marina’s words hit squarely on the mark. For the first time, Jill dropped her guard and gasped. From there, the session was easier, if still exhausting. By the time she ushered Jill to the door, Marina’s stomach was growling in protest.

  There was a small natural foods market a few blocks from Marina’s office where one could find organic fruit, bagel sandwiches or vegan sushi next to bottles of vitamin-enriched water and shade-grown coffee to go. It was the perfect place for an overpriced snack if not for stocking up on household staples, and she calculated she could walk there and back before she met with Cooper, her last client before she had to head to Madeline’s house.

  Marina had returned to her office, finishing the banana she’d begun on the walk back, when she realized that the man she’d seen in the café across the street was still there. He was sitting at a different table, so he must have moved at some point during the day, but he was still outside, still alone and still nursing a cup of coffee. He’d picked up a newspaper and was staring at it in the way people do when they’re pretending to read. Marina leaned against the doorjamb and tried to recall if she’d noticed him there at any other time during the day when she’d been letting clients in and out, but she couldn’t remember registering his image between the morning and now. Marina peered across the street at the man, suddenly convinced he was watching her. Prickly cold anxiety began forming at the base of her spine and her stomach turned in a sick flip. The rational part of her brain insisted that he had nothing to do with her. But Marina’s irrational self, the part of herself she tried her best to suppress, didn’t need any proof—it knew. Was it even the same man, Marina questioned herself, or was she imagining the whole thing? But no, while there might have been two big men in faded blue jeans drinking coffee in Encinitas that day, there weren’t two big men in faded blue jeans, a red lumberjack-looking shirt and worn tan work boots drinking coffee in the same café. And there was something about the way he held his head and shoulders, squared off and tilted forward, that made her sure it was the same man. She stood there, her hand on the jamb, unable to move or avert her eyes for several seconds. It was Cooper, who’d arrived early for his appointment and was gliding toward her on a wave of expensive cologne, who finally broke the spell.

  “Marina, my love, you look more fetching than usual,” Cooper said as he approached. “Were you waiting for me? That’s very sweet.” Although she knew them all very well at this point, Cooper was the only one of Marina’s regulars who spoke to her with this kind of familiarity. Marina, who tacitly demanded a certain emotional distance from her clients, didn’t mind Cooper’s lack of formality as long as it didn’t involve an invasion of her personal space. She felt something resembling affection for Cooper, although she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he didn’t seem to care whether or not she cared about him. Unlike most of her other clients, Cooper had no need for her approval. There was something about this that made him less pathetic in his quest for approval—and love—from a person who was never going to give it to him.

  “Marina? What are you looking at?”

  “Sorry, Cooper. I just want to see…”

  “See what? Something good?” Cooper craned his neck to get a glimpse of whatever it was she was looking at.

  “There’s a man…”

  “Well, that’s never a bad thing, is it?”

  “He’s been sitting there at the café all day. I saw him when I got here early this morning. He’s still there.”

  “And that’s a problem because?”

  “Not a problem,” Marina said. “Just kind of odd.”

  Cooper squinted in the direction of the café. “That burly guy over there? Looks all right,” he said. “From what I can see, anyway. He seems tall. Look at those long legs of his. And what’s with that shirt? Very Paul Bunyan.”

  “Yes,” Marina said, smiling in spite of herself, “I was just thinking that.”

  “Soooo…?” Cooper said. “We’re going to watch him now?”

  “No,” Marina said. “I’m sorry. Let’s get to your reading.”

  Cooper knew his way around her office and headed immediately to her table in the back. He relaxed into the chair opposite Marina, who lit a candle scented with orange and sandalwood and set it between them. Cooper liked candles, incense and any other psychic accessories that were available. If she’d had one, Marina was sure he’d have enjoyed gazing into a crystal ball as well. He’d have believed in her without the trappings, Marina knew, but she still provided them for him. It was important that the client was comfortable. If that meant bells and whistles, fine. Most of Marina’s clients here didn’t seem to care one way or the other. This was so different from Florida, where her mostly elderly clients were attached to outdated images of what a psychic should look like.

  Marina chased the unpleasant memories of Florida out of her head and turned her full attention to Cooper, who was leaning back in his chair, lips pursed as if to hold in words that were trying to burst out of his mouth. Still tired from her encounter with Jill and uneasy about the man in the café, she decided to let Cooper speak for as long as he wanted to.

  “How have you been, Cooper? I’m sensing a lot of heightened energy around you right now. I think you have something you need to tell me?”

  Cooper inhaled a huge breath and placed his hands, palms down and fingers splayed, on top of the table. His flair for the dramatic was sometimes subdued, Marina thought, but always somewhere in evidence—the result, she’d told him before, of having so many planets in the sign of Leo.

  “I think Max is getting ready to ask me to move in with him,” Cooper said after a pause. “I know, this is big.” He looked at her for confirmation and continued. “I thought at first I was imagining it, like it was more of my wishful thinking, you know? So I’ve been playing it really cool, waiting for the other shoe to drop or something.” He paused, but Marina didn’t interrupt him. “We haven’t had a fight for a really long time—not even about the little things like what movie to watch. He’s been really…I don’t know, calm or something. It’s like he’s accepted me, or us. Like he’s accepted us. We haven’t been talking about the future or anything, kind of taking it day by day, I guess, but he just seems more comfortable with having me around.” Cooper stopped
talking and cleared his throat. One corner of his mouth turned up in a little almost-smile. “Remember when I gave him that rosebush?”

  Marina smiled noncommittally, not knowing if the rosebush was something she’d forgotten or if Cooper hadn’t even mentioned it to her but just assumed in his benignly self-absorbed way that she would know.

  “It was this gorgeous rosebush I got for his garden and he killed it. All right, maybe not killed it, but it died on his watch. He didn’t do it on purpose. It was just…he just couldn’t get it together, I guess. He said it got some kind of worm, whatever. So the other day, I brought over this beautiful pot I found at the Seaside Bazaar…I was going to keep it at my place, but I thought it would look great in his house—he’s got this hallway that it’s perfect for. And it doesn’t require any maintenance. Anyway, I brought it over and he loved it. He said I ‘beautified’ his surroundings—that I had such great taste…” Cooper looked down at his hands and then up at Marina, his eyes begging for response, affirmation, anything.

  “And?” Marina said gently. “And then what?”

  “He said he liked seeing me in his house.” Cooper smiled, as if remembering something sweet. “We actually had our first holiday together the other night. I know, it’s only Halloween—not like Christmas or anything like that—but it was really nice. Max really loves Halloween because of the kids. You should see what he goes through to get the best, most nutritionally sound, politically correct candy. It’s so funny. I told him that they don’t care—you know, they probably prefer the really disgusting stuff—but it’s like a thing with him.” Cooper grew silent and shifted his eyes downward. “I need you to tell me, Marina. I need you to tell me whether I’m on the right track here. I can feel a change in him. I’m almost sure that he’s going to ask me to move in, but I don’t want to say anything until…until I’m positive. You have to tell me.”