“Oh, no, no, no, I, no, no, no. Me?”
“So they say.”
“Ha-ha?”
“You’re not a bad witch?”
“Oh, no. You know, if they believe it it can get you. Ha-ha?”
They were enjoying themselves out there. She was achieving an immortality guaranteed to generate income and she knew the protocol. Probably get a book out of it.
He was showing what easy terms he could be on with The People. The evening was in the bag.
“Got any predictions about the new administration?”
“Trouble ahead.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t like this president.”
He looked around. “You neither? You should be on staff here.”
Laugh.
“Real dumb fucker.” An error in taste perhaps but such was the force of her authenticity that it came through unscrambled. Even the censor liked her.
“Well. You don’t have the evil eye on him, do you?”
“No need at all. He is a arsehole.”
“I see.” Belton looked restive. This was getting a little too Gong Show.
“Guy’s a york.”
“We’l1 be back!”
Commercial.
I deck-counted through my notes. Nothing looked that good. I couldn’t do this!
“Come on,” said Tiffany, and led me down an empty hall through a padded door into a dark space that was big but somehow muffled, scaffolding above, cables underfoot, behind a tall panelled screen to a rear angle on the set, Belton whispering with the guest.
“Don’t worry,” whispered Tiffany, “it’s totally simplistic.”
“We’re talking with Pennsylvania Avenue Oracle Gora Smard, who sees dark days ahead from the administration, is that right Gora?”
“Well that’s right, Belton. Things are shapin’ up bad.”
“And you expect an Executive shake-up?”
“Sure as frogs fart bubbles, Belton.”
“Now,” he hurried on, “let’s check those findings with another fortune-teller, here in Washington trying to make his fortune. Please welcome Word Wallace!”
We shook hands at the step under light applause and he mimed an introduction to Gora who thumbed-up on me when I reached for her hand, got a laugh. “Ha-ha?” But it kept the applause going till I took my seat.
“Hi,” I said, a little breathless, fresh from another engagement. I knew the protocol too.
“Yes, well. Word. Is that your professional name? Your name isn’t really Word, is it?”
“What’s the word, Word? Ha-ha?”
Laugh.
I smiled and nodded, shrank from the lights. I couldn’t see anything!
“And you’re a palmist, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Do mine,” she said, holding it out.
“It’s not something I like to do in public,” I said. “It’s sort of an intimate thing.”
She put her tongue between her lips and made a rude noise. “Farts through his teeth,” she said.
Big laugh. One street character they could forgive. Not two.
“Why do you say that, Gora?”
“He’s got no aura! Look at him!”
“You think he’s a fake?”
“No vibes!”
“Well let’s, in the spirit of inquiry—”
“Guy’s a dick!”
“Now, Word—do you mind if I call you Word?”
Richter-scale laugh. I smiled as hard as I could. This was like being strapped in the ducking chair.
He forced his face straight and coughed for voice. “Now let’s—can we talk for a minute? What do you usually charge for a reading?”
“Five hundred dollars,” I said. What the hell, I could use the respect.
Indeed, there was a gasp from the audience.
You said two-fifty, his look told me. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It discourages the larkers. I want people who are really interested.”
“But you don’t have any special training for this.”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Broomhilda leaned in beside me. “Wait,” she said, “you’ve got a little piece of snot in your hair.”
She plucked something, examined it, wiped it on her clothes.
It was a circus in there.
“Which hand to you look at?”
“Both,” I said. “The left is what you’re born with, the right is what you do.” Textbook stuff but it was all I had.
Gora was working the crowd, mouthing something, pointing at me through her hand. High-pitched hoots. People sank into their seats laughing.
“I understand the Chinese have a different system from the one used in the West, is that right?”
“That’s right,” I said. I presumed he knew what he was talking about.
“Which do you use?”
“Well I don’t really lay claim to any particular method.”
“You go by your own intuitions.”
“That’s right.”
He glanced at Gora.
“What a fuck-ass,” she supplied.
“Now we’re going to look at ink impressions of some palms of people in political life in Washington, and you’ve never seen these before, is that right?”
“That’s right, Belton.”
“And you’re used to working with these?”
“That’s right. Some of my clients have been high officials in their governments—”
“No, I mean with ink impressions.”
“You fuck-head!”
“Uh, yes. I generally take a print of both palms and make notes right on the paper, point things out so you can take it away with you. And I keep a cassette going so you can play back what I say.”
Bingo. They were quiet. I could hear the suckers salivating.
He gave me a NewsHour look. “So you don’t worry about anyone challenging you, coming back at you with the tape?” There was a scam to be exposed right under his nose and he didn’t quite know where to roll up the siege engine.
“I just do my best,” I shrugged.
“I see. All right, let’s look at these. You don’t mind reading them in public?”
Laugh. Still his show.
“If the people involved—” I shrugged.
He handed me a sheet of paper. “Can you roll away that monitor? Now, what kind of person do we have here?”
“Uh.” I looked at it. “I have to know if the subject is right-handed or left-handed.”
“Staff? Right-handed? This is a right-handed person, Word.”
Titters. He spoke as to a senator who’d been taped taking a bribe.
“Well, this man—”
“You can tell it’s a man?”
I hesitated. Anybody could see it was a man!
“Yes, the thickness of the thumb here—”
“I see.”
Snickers. The gnome looked at her watch.
“Well, I’d say what we had here was a— you see this line here?”
“This one in the middle.”
“That’s right. This is a man who’s under a lot of pressure, lot of pressure. Nervous man. Clenches up a lot. You see how deep this line is?”
Knowing laughs. Belton winked at the audience.
Wrong track. This had to be a junior climber anyway. Who else would let himself be drawn into a raffle like this?
“I would say that what we have here is a young man trying to make his mark, probably a newcomer to Washington, got some uncertain lines here. Intense ambition. Just at a glance.”
“On his way up.”
“There’s certainly potential there but I wouldn’t like to say how soon he’s going to make it. A lot of drive.”
“Say late twenties, early thirties?”
“New guy,” I confirmed.
The laughter was building.
“This of course is Secretary of State Tupper. Now Mr. Tupper does not believe in palmistry, let’s understand that. He’s been on th
e program and he was kind enough to do this for us when we told him what it was about. Well, Word? Does he owe you five hundred dollars?”
“It was sort of blurry,” I said. “Was that a photocopy?”
Gora sniffed in my vicinity. “Did you cut one? Smells like somebody cut one.”
The laughter was wild. People were weak with it.
“That’s you,” I said. “You’re getting ripe under these lights!”
“What was that, shit-sucker?”
“You should run yourself through the car wash sometime. You smell like a wet cat.”
She came at me but Belton bowed in and held us apart.
“Fuck you!” I told her.
“C’mere, shitball! You want somethin’? C’mere!”
“We’ll do this!” said Belton.
A light died and America went away. Technicians came on stage and milled around to muffle things. The audience was coughing with laughter, catching its breath.
“Try to be cool,” Belton advised me.
“I don’t have to take that shit!
“Try to relax. Think about after the show. Me, I’m going to have a few days at the St. Regis, forget about Washington.” He smiled at me.
“Rub salt in your arse,” screamed Gora, still rampant. She wrenched free of her holders-back. “I don’t give plop one!” she told them.
“Look you two,” said Belton, “are we going to be able to do this?”
“You,” she pointed at me from the shoulder, “are through!”
She sat down.
“Try not to lose control,” he counseled. “We’re back with Gora Smard and Word Wallace on our night of the supernatural and I think”—he looked us over cautiously—”we’re ready to proceed. Do you look at any particular area of the hand, Word? Any particular lines?”
“Well, Belton, you really have to look at the whole hieroglyph.”
“You do?”
“The whole snowflake. Your palm is one of the most intimate parts of you. It’s the way you shake hands and hold things. The way your grip folds up, the way everything fits you or fights you—”
“Just get on with it, shit-for-brains!”
“We don’t want your whole world view here, Word. What can you tell us about this person? See anything there?”
Muted laughter. He winked and waved it down.
I looked at the sheet. Last chance to pull this out of the bag, and now I knew what league we were playing in. The heavies owed him favors or something and we were talking Congress, Executive, that level. No time to stall.
“Well, Belton, this is somebody used to handling power, he’s comfortable with it, has a strong headline here, calm thinker—”
“He’s a man?”
“He’s a man, and this career line could have been drawn with a ruler. Major responsibilities, lot of people depending on him, legal, I see the law here. See this line? The whole architecture suggests the law, balancing interests.”
“Well, he got the sex right.”
They laughed like they were shouting Surprise!
“These are the hands of Ramon Rodriguez, the young man who makes the coffee at the Senate cafeteria.”
“You fucking DOPE!” screamed Gora into my face. “Do you DENY it?” She raised her skirt and dropped her longjohns and hung me a squarish, mottled moon.
The audience was falling apart.
After holding the position for long enough to make her point—to which what possible reply?—she expressed what began as a single tuba note and sustained it with almost audible effort through deeper and flatter modulations until it exhausted itself with a sputter.
I just sort of sat there.
“That one hurt!” she said, straightening up. She held awe in her face. “That had smoke in it!”
By now, laughter had become an environment. I no longer heard it. Belton smiled discreetly into his fist.
I was curiously gratified. It was all over. I had known, I had known.
The delirium began to subside.
“Ouch!” said Gora, squirming.
“Well, Word we’ve got a minute left. I guess the magic doesn’t always work. Do you find that? That you’re often—wrong?”
I sat with my arms folded. It was too late to walk off without looking like a cry-baby.
“What about the actual confrontation? Say I came in for a reading. You know a bit about me, you know what I look like. What do you say?”
He turned his hands up but I wouldn’t play. I just wanted to savor dejection.
The crowd was giggling but he hushed it with a hand. “What do you tell me about myself?”
“It’s not the kind of thing you do in public,” I said.
“Aw!” said the audience, baiting me.
“I’m asking you!”
I crossed my legs away from him and threw them a glance—him, his hands.
“Well,” I said, turning away, “you’re going to die.”
His eyes sagged. The audience groaned. “We’re all going to die, Word!”
“That’s what we usually say in these cases,” I said.
“You do? You don’t suppress bad news when you see it?”
“No. What people don’t realize is, the palm changes. It can change in a month. If you see a warning you have a responsibility to let people know, tell them what’s cooking.”
He held his hands up. “So I have time to change this.”
“No. You’re going to die very soon.”
He invited America to grin with him. “How soon?”
“Any minute.”
“You mean very soon.”
“You’re already overdue.”
He laughed and looked at his palm. “Where do you see that?”
“There,” I said.
“Where?”
“There.”
He looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Gora leaned in to see.
“You mean here,” he said. He stretched his lines open like he was looking for leprosy. “Here?”
Music. Credits over the three of us looking at his hands.
6.
The boat skipped and slammed against a wave, gave us a little jolt. We linked fingers and smiled at each other reassuringly. The motor was too loud to talk over and our gazes drifted back to the horizon.
The warm wind in our faces. The Bay, a blue picnic blanket. Life, a breeze blowing through us.
I stretched.
In the few short days since the show there had been hundreds of phone calls, telegrams, letters. People rushed up to us in the lobby to request readings. I was famous!
I didn’t understand until I saw the tape. Belton projected a ruthlessness not unlike what he gave off in real life, that’s why you tuned in, but it did tip a certain sympathy towards the victim if he had any kind of appeal at all, and there I had underestimated myself. My nervous paralysis had come over as a kind of, what, suave detachment! Sort of cool!
I should have known.
My lapses in language, not to say Gora’s, had come out goobibilyboop. There were a few plosives too close to the mike on my part, sure, but all in the spirit of debate, whereas Gora had too eagerly fallen into her role as Belton’s monkey to be altogether sweet. Her underbite, not to mention her airy outburst, suggested something in a German fairy tale.
I was the guy.
“I must say I almost died watching you two get all that attention,” Alberta said.
We had hit. For a simple fleeting on-camera moment America’s favorite bully, the Tom Snyder of politics, had peered into the abyss of his own fate and trembled. Now hundreds, perhaps thousands of supplicants were lined up at the ticket booth ready to risk death themselves and have a reading.
Belton’s insurance people had immediately scheduled a physical for him that he loudly refused to submit to. Privately however he had been admitted to a clinic for tests and of course the story had leaked. He had enemies. He had friends for that matter! This was news!
&nb
sp; It was only his annual check-up! he had protested. But that little voodoo island in everyone’s soul knew better and America stood by waiting for news that Belton Haines had dropped it. Gone on.
Indeed, there was some ambiguity about the results of the tests. Probably something was just late coming back from the lab but the network was arranging a follow-up program with other palmists for second and third opinions, maybe a medium, to give the ratings another goose before he went nova.
The Secretary of State had been the subject of a Post editorial on ambition—just what were his intentions, and so forth—and Ramon Rodriguez had been appointed co-chairman of the Hispanic Affirmative-Action Lobby Group. So that was okay.
I had done a Larry King interview, I-calls-em-like-I-sees-em sort of thing, and we had hired an answering service and moved into a hotel with urns beside the elevator. We were now charging—are you ready?—two thousand five hundred dollars per consultation. That’s what I said. Two and a half K’s a time.
Just sit there and think about that for a minute.
Ten readings, twenty-five thou. A hundred readings—which is what, a month punching the clock?—one quarter mill. I was beginning to see the point of all this!
Thing now was to cash in before Belton didn’t die.
That was Wonder Woman’s department. She was screening the applicants for social connections, even if they could’t pay up front, and keeping the high-roller parvenus on hold. Pretty nervey if you ask me but I didn’t like to interfere.
It was my fault, I guess, the pressure. Be easier if I’d told Belton something a little less final, hadn’t tightened down the time frame like that, but the spontaneity of the moment, what can one say? Results, baby.
Like for example we were right now bouncing out into the Chesapeake Bay to keep an appointment with The First Lady! Are you with me? The President of the United States’s wife, sweetheart.
Oh yeah.
It wasn’t exactly an official summons to Court or anything. Officially the First Lady’s hairdresser had invited us out to his yacht in seclusion from the public eye, and the First Lady and the Vice-President’s wife would just probably happen to be there. But as a career move it came to the same thing. Assuming the artiste wanted his done too I was anticipating a return of some seven and a half big ones for the afternoon’s work.
The sun smiled. It was difficult to suppress the sentiment that success-wise I had pretty well kicked the door in. You just have to know what you want and go for it!
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 5