After an hour of walking I still had more than half of the cards to give away. I stopped in front of the darkened doors of the Taj Mahal, where signs warned against trespassing. Des and I had gone to the liquidation sale, before they closed their doors for good. Men loaded the chandeliers into moving trucks and workers pried light fixtures off the walls. In every room, tables were stacked with empty cocktail glasses and giant serving platters, shelves full of clothing irons and telephones, piles of Bibles shucked from the drawers of bedside tables, and towers of metal champagne buckets. In another room, a cluster of disco balls sparkled in a corner. An entire hallway was lined with mattresses from the hotel, most of them covered in stains. It made me realize how easily the casinos, places I thought were fixed and permanent, could be reduced to debris.
I turned around to walk south again. A drunk man slurred at me—Heyyy, baby—and a pair of women shook their heads as I approached, as though I was holding out a spider or a mouse. I thought I had imagined it when I heard a girlish voice calling my name. “Ava? Ava?” After the jitney ride yesterday, I second-guessed everything I heard.
They were leaning along the rails, passing a bottle of pink lemonade between them. Lucy Ellison, Noelle Cohen, and Nina Wright. We had gone to middle school together, until their parents sent them to private schools inland. We hadn’t been friends, exactly—Noelle and Nina lived in Margate, in large houses with fountains in the front yards and high iron fences, and they always hung out together after school. Lucy lived in Marvin Gardens, in a pink Spanish-style house with her parents and two standard poodles—her life looked like something from a storybook. Des never wanted to give me bus fare, so I never met up with them on the weekends or after school, and after a while they stopped inviting me.
“I almost didn’t recognize you. Your hair,” Noelle said. She passed the bottle to Lucy, who grimaced when she took a sip—not just lemonade.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s different.”
“How’s Atlantic City High?” Lucy asked. “Do girls really throw bleach at each other when they fight?”
“I heard there’s a day care in the building, because so many girls have had babies,” Noelle said.
“I—it’s okay.” It wasn’t true, about the day care or about the bleach. But I didn’t want to explain that I had dropped out. I’d had visions more frequently in school than anywhere else. It made me anxious, unable to concentrate. Des told me she wanted me to help out more in the shop, but it had been my idea to quit, once my sixteenth birthday came around and no one could report me to the state. I told myself it would just be easier that way.
“Want some?” Nina asked, holding out the bottle.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Some of my mom’s vodka, with a packet of Crystal Light stirred in. Down here none of the cops even care, so we came to pregame.”
I took the drink from her. It smelled like nail polish remover and SweeTarts. A ring of lip gloss shimmered around the mouth of the bottle. I took a sip, which made me cough. I had never had a drink before, but I hoped maybe it’d make me feel different—calmer or braver, or just less myself.
“What are those?” Lucy asked, reaching for my wrist. At first I thought she meant the pearls, but then she turned my palm over into hers, slid a business card out of my grip. My face got hot, and I could feel the mottled rash creep across my neck, the way it always did when I was embarrassed.
“Clara Voyant, Seer and Fortune Teller! Oh my god. Stop.”
“It’s just a … a project,” I said. I thought of what Des had said the other day. My mother and I made the same face when we lied.
“What kind of project?” Her eyes gleamed with mean joy.
“Hard to explain.”
“So you, like, tell people about their futures and stuff?” Nina asked.
“Oh! Do Noelle. Noelle, see if Ava knows whether Nick will finally ask you out.”
“Shut up.” Noelle elbowed Lucy in the ribs. “Nick Hart. You know him, Ava.”
“Ava used to like Nick Hart!”
“No, I mean, maybe. He’s fine. But I don’t like him anymore, obviously.” If only they knew what my life was like now—that in a few days I’d probably go out on a date with a strange, grown-up man. But for a second I let myself picture how Nick would look in the prep uniform, the navy blazer with brass buttons, a crisp blue button-down shirt the same color as his eyes.
“You and Ava have to duke it out, Noelle,” Nina said.
Noelle’s smile was small, catlike. “We’ll probably see him at the party tonight. Actually, we should get going. I gotta do my hair.”
“Yeah, I need to get home, too,” I said. Around these girls, I felt like a sliver of myself. Maybe because they had known a different version of me: quiet, mousy brown hair, good at math. They could see the ways I’d changed, the versions of myself that I had left behind. That itchy, tingling feeling crept up my stomach, and I rubbed at my shirt, hoping they wouldn’t see.
Noelle and Nina whispered back and forth to one another. Nina giggled. “You should come with us,” Lucy said, which made Noelle snort.
“Really, I’ve got to go. Have fun, though.” I hated them, their stupid, perfect, easy lives.
My face burned as I walked on. I turned once to see the girls recede down the boardwalk, their ponytails swinging. Noelle held up my card and the three of them exploded into laughter. I stomped to the closest trash can and threw the rest of the cards away, retreated to the shop without raising my eyes from the ground. Once I was back, I sat at the table, cutting the tarot deck and stacking it again, watching the people stream past, and out farther, to where the waves broke into white foam near the shoreline. Dark clouds collected in the sky above, and I pleaded for them to break into rain, but they blew past, and we were left with the skin-blistering heat.
The next day I was sitting at the table in the shop again—thinking about those messages I’d seen on Julie Zale’s Facebook page—when I heard the tap tap tap on the doorframe, so faint that at first I thought I had imagined it. A woman stood behind the beaded curtain. I called to her to come in. “Are you here for a reading?”
Her face was younger than I’d thought it would be, based on her posture and the slumped, tired-seeming shadow she cast from behind the beads. She was pretty, petite, with straight blonde hair and big brown eyes that shifted around the room. In the light, I could see she had dark circles underneath them, like it had been weeks since she had slept well. She held out one of the business cards.
“I found this blowing down the street.” Her voice was soft, with a trace of a Southern accent. The card trembled in her hands. She was afraid. Of what—who? Me?
I stood and pulled out a chair. She sat and fiddled with a silver locket around her neck, working her thumbnail into the charm so it opened just a sliver, then pinching it back into place with a tiny click.
“So you found the card. But you made the choice to visit. Why did you decide to come here today?”
She was quiet for so long that I wondered if she had heard me or if maybe she had only come in because she wanted a place to sit. I eyed her bag—a tooled leather purse with an oval-shaped piece of turquoise embedded in it—and immediately my mind went to the best way I could snatch her wallet. The clasp looked like it would slide open soundlessly. Then it was just a matter of getting under the flap and hoping her wallet was on top. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, other than the locket, though I noticed a pale space on her finger, maybe where a wedding band used to be. She was so distracted that it would have been easy. But I had a rule: no stealing from clients. Des might double-dip, but I tried to have a little more integrity, at least in the shop. I thought it was what my mother would want. Though I wondered if I had broken my own rule when I took Julie Zale’s bandana.
I was trying to be patient but couldn’t wait too long—that bag was calling to me. I had $200 saved, a long way from my goal. I was restless, watching her sit and stare. “There are benches out on the boardwalk
, you know,” I said.
“Huh?” Her mouth parted in surprise.
“If you’re looking to rest. You seem tired.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was wondering. Jesus. I was wondering about … maybe you could help me.” I felt bad about snapping at her. Seeing those girls, Des mentioning that date, had messed with my mood. I made my voice soft again.
“Of course. I would be glad to help you. What are you hoping to find out?”
Her hand closed around her locket again, her fist swallowing up the heart-shaped charm.
“It’s best to have a question in mind. It gives the reading focus. If you can’t think of one, we could ask what you can expect for the next month or year.” I tried to smile, to put her at ease, but by now she looked like she was going to be sick.
“You’re just a kid,” she said. “You’re so young.” Her hand crept across the table, as though she was going to touch me, but then she got up so fast that the chair tipped over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but this was a mistake.” She was almost out the door when she turned around, took a few steps toward the table, then pulled a ten-dollar bill from her purse and dropped it in front of me.
“But I didn’t even do the reading,” I said. “At least let me read your cards.”
“I took your time. I’m sorry. I just … I’m sorry, I really am.” She practically ran through the door and down the boardwalk, jostling a tourist holding a funnel cake, who turned to sneer at her back as she fled.
I felt guilty as I tucked the ten into my pocket, but I still took out my notebook, adjusted my savings: $210. Why had she run after all that? I was used to people being a little nervous around me, or embarrassed, like Julie Zale’s uncle had been. But I wasn’t used to people being scared. I cut the tarot deck, shuffled it three times, and pictured the woman again, the way her hand closed so tightly around that locket on her neck. It was the second time I had broken the rules—read cards for someone who hadn’t exactly asked. But this woman hadn’t come to me for no reason—she had found my card, she chose to come to the shop. And, she paid. Maybe the cards would tell me more about her, or at least I might learn what she sensed in the air, a fate she intuited but didn’t want to see. I decided that would be my question for the cards. What was she afraid to know?
I chose a three-card spread—our standard reading. The first card represents the past. I drew the Four of Wands. Usually that card meant lovely things: Celebration. A harmonious home life. Family. Peace.
The second card, the present. King of Cups, reversed. It meant a lack of clarity, a lack of judgment and reason. “I could have told you that,” I mumbled, and then felt unkind. The King of Cups usually was a sign that the emotions and the intellect were out of balance, that a person was swamped by their feelings, overwhelmed.
The third card is the future: the Seven of Swords. I always flinched at this one—it showed a thief creeping away, looking over his shoulder at someone catching him in the act. It meant you were going to try to sneak away from something, or it could be a warning that there was betrayal waiting for you ahead. It was a sign to trust your intuition if you suspected someone was going to wrong you. As far as I saw it, these cards were a warning. If they were accurate, then this woman’s life had gone from stable to chaotic and was about to get worse.
I was always telling people that the cards weren’t the future, necessarily—they were subtler than that. The cards were reminders that we could make choices, a reminder to look at your life and parse out how you needed to think about things, how you might act, what options were available to you. I didn’t believe in fate coming down like a guillotine or sweeping you up out of your life like a hot air balloon. We were always somewhere in the middle: everyone had obstacles, but we also had free will. If I saw the woman—I wished that I knew her name—again, I would warn her, but I’d have to tell her that, too: that she still had a choice.
A fly buzzed against the window of the shop, slow and drowsy in the heat. I realized what the feeling was, the one that had been creeping along my skin for days. It was the tickle of insect legs. I reached for a magazine, rolled it up, and smashed the fly against the glass. Its guts left behind a greasy smear. But a second later, I felt it again, the creep of a fly along the top of my ear, and when I reached to brush it away there was nothing there.
JANE 3
SHE CAN’T LOOK AT THE pictures on the slot machines—the pair of cherries joined at the stem with a single green leaf, the yellow sickle of a banana—without thinking of her daughter’s picture books, the pages made of thick cardboard, the images simplified into the most perfect versions of themselves. The words she was supposed to read in a slow, sweet voice so the baby could repeat them back to her one day. She can’t listen to the jingle of coins without thinking of the rattles she shook and shook above the baby’s bassinet, pleading with her to be quiet. Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
But they both knew that it wasn’t okay. The baby was right—she didn’t know how to be a mother. Sometimes when her husband was at work, she let the baby cry and cry even if she wasn’t doing anything but laying on the couch, watching poor people win things on daytime TV. Someone told her once that the biggest pawnshop in the world is right next door to where they film The Price Is Right—that they offer half of the value of whatever the contestants win. That’s the kind of world she was bringing her daughter into, where getting more than you’ve been slated for is only an illusion, where someone else already has half a claim on your good luck. She couldn’t make herself feel anything for the baby. When her husband asked about the diaper rash later, she lied. Whose side are you on? she thought at him. But she knew the answer to that.
She watches the slot machines whir from a stool in the corner of the bar, slowly sipping the house white wine she’s allowed herself, even though her money is almost gone. The wine tastes like chilled vinegar, but she drinks it anyway.
It was stupid of her to blow $10 for a psychic reading she didn’t even get. It means that tonight or tomorrow, she’ll need to pick up a john. The thought makes her gulp the rest of the wine. She orders another and feels her options whittled down. A headache creeps into her temples, throbs along a fault line that splits the front of her forehead. After this second glass she’s down to $9, and that’s if she skimps on the tip. Tonight then. She should start looking for her next date. Some girls sleep with the manager of the Sunset Motel—Robert—in lieu of paying their room bill, but she’s prided herself on always being able to cover that much, at least. It’s a small thing, but she likes knowing she still has some kind of code.
She pictures Robert’s stained Hanes T-shirt, always riding up to reveal a round, pale slice of belly, the acrid and stinging smell of his sweat, the compulsive way he licks his lips. She can tell he loves having something to hold over them—even a crumbling motel room that goes for $15 a night. Once, when she came upon him at the desk, his eyes were closed, and as she stepped closer she saw he had his hand on the back of a woman’s head, his fingertips tense with pressure. He smiled up at her, pleased with himself, as though to say One day I can demand this from you, too. As she walked away, she imagined how the threadbare carpet must have bit into the woman’s knees.
Thinking of this, of course she shouldn’t have had the drinks, but she needs the buzz, the thing that makes the world go a little slant, so she can pretend that this new life is a fever she’ll wake from, that one day she’ll be returned to herself—whoever that is anymore. Sometimes she puts a little money into the slots because it means free drinks: the waitresses will come around and bring you cheap liquor, wine, or beer, but she’s afraid she’s too familiar now. Most of them have caught on that she only plays a buck or two, then milks it for four, five drinks at a time. Worse, they could call security or even the cops, if they know she’s here picking up men. When she thinks back on the past few months it is through the warped haze of a hangover, a blend of discomfort, disgust, self-hatred, but one that also feels slightly unreal.
Maybe that’s why she ran away from the girl in the fortune-teller’s shop. At first the card had made her smile. The cheesy illustrations, moons with eyes, the punny name. Clara Voyant. But as she held it in her hand, it seemed more and more like an invitation. Since she got to Atlantic City, she had avoided thinking about the future, beyond what she needed to do to cover her room, get a bit of food. But when she sat down with the fortune-teller, that girl, suddenly the prospect of having to reckon with the consequences of her decisions seemed like the most terrible possibility in the world—more terrible than the smell of strange men on her skin, than the motel room where she has heard gunshots ring out from the parking lot, where roaches scuttle out from the shower drain.
The slot machine nearest to her stops at two halved watermelons and a lemon. She’s been here for three months and doesn’t know what this means—it’s as though if she refuses to learn the language of this place, then it can’t claim her. She thinks about how real fruit is bruised, never as good as it looks. Or when it is, she can’t think past the fact that ripeness is only something close to death, a few days, or sometimes hours, away from rot. The baby must have known this, too. Must have known to reject all these images that the world hands you, the ones that are meant to tell us we are safe, that we’re all okay. Just sign on the dotted line for this mortgage rate. Just wear Ann Taylor and eat your free-range eggs and drive your Toyota and wash your clothes with Tide. But then your life can split open, your body, too. After the birth her husband reported to her how there had been so much blood. She didn’t know whether that was true, but the sound of excitement in his voice confirmed what she had suspected—her mortality was thrilling to him. What we’re most afraid of gives us a little jolt of joy, when we brush up against it, when it hovers too close.
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