Please See Us

by Caitlin Mullen

  She stared down at her fingernails, picked at her cuticle.

  “You don’t just … see shit and tell me about it?”

  “Not exactly. It helps to have a focus. Something you care about.”

  She blew her bangs away from her forehead. “Something I care about. Ha.”

  “You can think about it for a minute. No rush.”

  She looked out at the boardwalk again. It seemed like she was watching for something, someone, but I couldn’t tell what. The seconds beaded into minutes. I didn’t mind the silence, unless it meant that she was going to change her mind about the reading entirely—like that other woman had. She shifted in her chair, continued to pick at her nails. Then, just as I was starting to get worried she might get up and leave, she spoke.

  “I want to know what’s going to happen to me … like, what’s next? Like, is this just my life?” When she faced me again, I realized that she was younger than I had first thought. Probably only five or six years older than me. But her skin was bad underneath the makeup, and she had that hollow stare of someone who’d seen too much.

  “Okay, so you want to know about money? Your job prospects?”

  She snorted. “Job prospects. Christ, that’s rich. Seriously? So many fucking questions. Aren’t you the psychic?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “How does it work, then?” She switched the crossing of her legs and her sweatshirt fell off her shoulder, revealing a tattoo on her chest: a peach, with a bright green leaf hanging from its stem, Peaches written in complicated, scrolling cursive above it. She noticed me staring. “A nickname,” she said. “No one’s used my real name for years.” I waited for her to say more. She sighed. “Fine, you wanna know about me? I left home three years ago,” she said, huffing at her bangs again. “I never thought it would be permanent. I told myself I was in love. So much for that. Or I was in love, him … well. If he was, he had a weird way of showing it. Like leaving me on the side of a highway after we got in a fight. Didn’t even have my shoes on.” I let her talk. The more she told me, the more I’d have to work with when I read her cards, in case a vision didn’t come through clearly, and I didn’t trust that one would. All of those other images and sounds were still spilling into my brain, interfering like radio static. Another fly tickled down my spine.

  “I guess I never really thought about the future before at all. I don’t even know what I want to know. I’ve never really believed in anything before … but now … now I think about the future keeping up like this and I can’t picture it. Can’t stand it—is more like it. I want to know if things will change. When. How.”

  I thought of telling her that I felt the same way. That if I didn’t have my dreams of California, the thought of staying here, with Des, stealing, doing readings, meeting men, would kill me.

  I turned the first card over: the Fool. The next was the Five of Wands, and the third was the Tower. My breath caught in my chest. All of the readings I had done lately—this one, Julie Zale’s uncle with the bandana, the woman with the locket, the one I had given Lily—were full of darkness, warnings, bad omens. But this was the worst one yet.

  “What?” she said. “What does it mean?” I took a breath and tried to think about how I could spin things, how I could approach the cards and not feel afraid.

  “This is the Fool.”

  “What, is that me? Shit, man.”

  “People make that mistake a lot. The cards aren’t you—they represent elements of your life. There’s a difference.” She raised her eyebrows, which were over-plucked, and the skin around them was still pale where the hair used to be. “The Fool represents a journey. Maybe you are about to go on a trip, about to leave town. It can be a real journey or a metaphorical one. That you’ll start something new, a project, or start thinking in a new way.”

  “I like the literal journey. Wanna get outta this dried-up town as soon as I can.”

  “Me too,” I said, before I could help myself.

  “All right, babes. We’ll carpool, then.” She smiled. At first, I thought she might be mocking me, but then I realized she was just being nice.

  “And this one, the Five of Wands, represents conflict—a lack of connection or failure to communicate. Stubbornness or resistance to change.”

  “And what about that one?”

  I paused. There was no way not to talk about it. I wished like anything I could tell her it was something good. Especially now that she had just started to like me. “That’s the Tower.”

  “Jesus. There’s people jumping away from a fire inside of it. That can’t be good.”

  She was waiting for me to offer an explanation, to say something comforting. But there was no getting around the Tower when it showed up. You could try to soften it, to say that something was about to be ruined, in order for growth to take place. But it was a brutal card. No spin would change its essential meaning: the recipient’s life was about to be torn apart.

  “It usually means destruction. Turmoil. Upheaval. Change that will force you out of your own ways. For some people it’s divorce or the loss of a loved one.”

  She looked at me pleadingly. She wanted me to offer her any kind of consolation, deliver a caveat.

  “The cards don’t predict the future, necessarily. They offer guidance. I like to think that their meanings can shift, depending on how you act, the choices you make. It’s up to you to put yourself on a path where the Tower takes on a different meaning, something that’s potentially good.”

  “Ha. You’ve been talking to my mom, huh? She wants me in rehab. Twelve-stepping it with all those fake-ass losers. Avoiding trouble isn’t my strong suit. There’s something bad—well, I pretty much run smack into it.” Her eyes started to water, and I looked down at the floor. There was a pair of shoes in her bag, stilettos with laces that must have climbed up her calf like vines. It was only then that I remembered where I had seen her before, her face contoured differently in the shadows, her mouth traced with red lipstick. Waiting in the dark corner of a casino bar until a man came and sat down next to her, angling herself toward him, arranging her legs so her ankle pressed against his.

  I tried again. “These cards are a warning. I can’t see what they are warning you about, exactly. But you should be careful, I think. Take care of yourself. Maybe the journey you need to take is back home. Back to your mom.”

  “Maybe. Maybe you’re right.” Her voice had changed, and the hardness in her face seemed to break apart. A few tears rolled down her cheeks. When she wiped them away, I noticed one of her fake nails had come off, and the real nail underneath it looked tender and pink.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that everything feels so … fucked.”

  I didn’t need to pretend to know what she meant. The eviction notice. The memory of Tom’s tongue in my mouth. I understood.

  “How much do I owe?”

  It felt wrong to charge her for such a harsh reading. But then I pictured the yellow notice again. I knew I would need to use my California fund to save the shop. That I would have to start over. “Twenty.”

  She reached into that big bag, underneath the high heels, and pulled on a strap, produced her purse. It felt like déjà vu, at first, my brain jumping and skipping through time, but it was the same bag that the other woman, the one with the locket, had. A tooled leather purse with an oval of a turquoise stone at the center, right above the clasp. She took out a fat roll of bills and held out a twenty. I hadn’t noticed before that she had small, almost childish hands.

  “Where did you get that?” I said.

  “The cash? Ha. You don’t wanna know, sweetie.”

  “No … no. I mean the bag.”

  “What? You like it? To be honest, I found it on the side of the road. No wallet in it, unfortunately. Here. It’s yours. Easy come, easy go, and all that shit, right?” She shook the bag upside down, sending a collection of lipsticks and lighters and mints, matchbooks, loose change, and compacts clattering across the ta
ble. One of the eye shadows popped open and left a sprinkling of green dust on the tablecloth. She raked them all into her big bag and tossed the purse into my lap. I thumbed the clasp. Just like I thought—it would have slid out easily, without a sound. “Actually, that’s how I found you. Your card was in that little pocket on the inside. Whoever got to all the goods left that behind, I guess. I took it as some kind of sign. Stupid, right?”

  “No, I’m glad you came.” I meant it. I liked her, this woman with her sarcastic smile, her sad eyes. And I didn’t want to tell her, but it felt like I was meant to know about the bag, about her.

  “Well, catch ya later. Thanks for … well. Thanks.”

  She slipped her feet out of the slippers and pulled the heels from her bag. She wrapped the straps around her calf with an expert quickness, and by the time she tied them into a bow her face was hard again. Before she left, she stood in front of the statues at the counter, their pious eyes all glancing upward like they could see God hovering just above their heads. Maybe she was thinking what I always thought—that for saints, their mouths had been painted such bright, voluptuous reds.

  * * *

  DES CAME down the stairs after she left. “What was that about?”

  “Just a reading.” I wondered if the woman really went by Peaches, or if she sometimes used her real name. We were alike that way. Another person with two names, one for each version of our lives. Clara Voyant and Ava. Peaches and whoever she had been.

  Des pinched the twenty from the table. She still looked tired, and the lines between her eyebrows seemed like they were painted on. “Well, at least it’s a start.”

  I took a breath, pictured the wad of bills that Peaches had pulled from her purse. The shoes, the tight dress. “Look Des, I’ve saved a little bit, pawning stuff at Zeg’s and all. It won’t cover everything. But I know what we need to do. I think we’ll be okay.”

  Before I could change my mind, I told her about Tom slipping me his number, about the offer he had made. I knew it was our only chance, but still I waited for her to put her hand out, to say no. To tell me I was too young. That she’d handle it. That I should go back to school in the fall. I was always waiting for her to show me something that looked even a little bit like protectiveness.

  Instead, she squeezed my arm, excited. “Well, what are you waiting for, Miss Clara Voyant? We don’t have any time to lose.” I felt another one of the phantom flies creep along my shoulder. I rubbed at my skin, shook my hair off of my neck, and still I felt it. My ankle. My earlobe. My left eye.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Des asked. “You keep twitching.”

  “I don’t know. Nervous, I guess.” It took all my willpower not to rub at my chest as the sensation crawled across my collarbone.

  I found the paper with Tom’s phone number on it in the back of my dresser drawer. I wondered what it had meant, that I saved it at all. Surely another girl would have thrown it away—had I sensed this coming? That one day, sooner than I could have thought, I’d be desperate enough to call? Des handed me her phone, and while it rang I prayed he wouldn’t answer. For a moment, I let myself think I was safe, but he picked up on the fourth ring.

  “It’s Clara,” I said. “From Atlantic City?” My voice was a pitch too high. Des shook her head. I tried again, swallowed the lump in my throat. “Remember me?” Better, Des mouthed.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said, and I listened as he muffled the receiver. I tried not to picture who he was stepping away from.

  “Well, this is a nice surprise. How are you, my dear?”

  “I’ve been thinking about our date,” I said. “About what you said. I’d like to … to stay over with you.”

  “I’d like that, too. I suppose I might be able to slip out of town, for a last-minute business trip, if you know what I mean.”

  “Great,” I said. Des nodded at me, encouraging me to go on. “I need to make one thing clear first. This is going to be … an investment.” That was the word Des told me to use. “After all, there’s only one first time for everything. If you know what I mean.”

  He let out a small groan, like he had just had a taste of something delicious, and I felt the goose bumps rise on the skin of my arms. “Oh my goodness. Well. Whatever you need. I’ll let you know where, what room, as soon as I book.”

  An hour later the text came through: a hotel name, and a room number with a winking face. We would meet on Tuesday—three days away—at 9:00. Des lifted the screen for me to see, threw her arms around me, and whooped. I wasn’t happy or afraid. Instead, an eerie calm slid into my gut, where the anger had been.

  That night I put the purse on my nightstand. I would have liked it, if I hadn’t known where it had come from. If it didn’t make me feel nauseated to picture it on the side of the road—what road? God, why hadn’t I asked?—and what it meant that it had been abandoned. Maybe she got mugged, I told myself. It happened often enough. Des said the girls at the club all carried mace or pepper spray, because thieves targeted strippers, waitresses, bartenders. The ones they knew would have cash. After all this with Tom was over, I would try to find Peaches again. Ask her where the bag had come from, how many days it had been since she found it. Maybe whatever Peaches had to say wouldn’t lead me anywhere. Maybe whatever had happened to the bag was the betrayal the cards had said to watch out for. But something told me it was deeper than that. Me, Peaches, Lily, Julie Zale. And that it wasn’t over yet.

  * * *

  I KNEW that girls bled the first time, but it hurt so much that it felt like something must have gone wrong. That kind of pain could not be normal. But when he asked if I was okay, I told him I was fine, tried to shape my grimace into a smile. I wouldn’t have believed me if I were him, but that was the thing about people—they wanted to believe whatever was easiest to accept.

  Afterward, I was surprised at how small the bloodstain was, on the sheets. The pain—and what had caused it—had seemed so much bigger than that. I knew it was strange to feel disappointed, but a part of me wanted to see those sheets soaked in blood, something I could point to and say that’s what they did to me. Tom and Des and my mother and the clerk at the desk who had handed me the key to the room, the woman who asked what floor when I got on the elevator, and pressed the button for me on the way up. Zeg, when he bartered with me for some stupid trinket I had lifted and made me take less than half of what he would sell it for. The bartenders and waiters who never even asked for my fake ID. The man who only had twenty bucks left in the wallet I stole. The girls at the spa who wouldn’t let me in to read people’s cards. This whole failing town and its closed casinos, its empty parking garages, the ocean and bay that hemmed us all in. I wanted a sheet bloodied enough to make everyone see how wrong it had all gone.

  I slipped out of the room when the first hint of sunlight came through the blinds, my purse filled with the bills Des had told me to ask for up front. I hadn’t slept at all and my body felt light and drifty, like I was moving through a dream, but the bones of my face ached. A housekeeper trundled her cart down the hall and looked at the ground as I passed. In the elevator down, I saw myself reflected in the gold panel of buttons—my eyes dark with smeared makeup, my face pale, my hair too bright against my skin. I was wearing my dress and heels from the night before—I hadn’t thought to bring anything else. I thought of Peaches and her little mesh slippers, and the way her face changed when she took them off and tied those straps around her legs. As I cut through the floor, a woman eating a Danish at a slot machine looked up at me and sneered as I passed. Whore, she was thinking. Hooker, slut. A dull throbbing had replaced the pain between my legs, and I tried to tell myself that when it went away, I would be able to forget everything that had happened the night before, the way you come back into yourself once a headache releases its grip. But I knew it wasn’t true. I would never be able to forget how he looked at me. Not with hatred or horror or desire, but like I wasn’t even there at all.

  I waited for a jitney underneath
a banner advertising a poker tournament—It’s July, Summer is just heating up—and was relieved when I got on that it was empty. My skin felt feverish, and I leaned my face against the window’s cool glass until we arrived at the Tropicana and I could walk back to the shop.

  On my walk, I passed a telephone pole with Julie Zale’s picture stapled to it. The photograph had become faded, the ink ran in the rain, like mascara tears sliding down a face. The paper was tattered and peeling away from the staples. I wondered about her uncle, back in Baltimore now, probably. Jumping at the sound of the telephone. Peeking in Julie’s old room to admire her trophies on the wall, the track medals hanging from nails above her bed. I was sick of thinking about the girls I would never be: treasured, adored. The girls from middle school, sipping their vodka and lemonade, flipping their hair. That was how their wholes lives tasted—a combination of pink lemonade, vodka, and strawberry-flavored lip gloss—everything for them was sweet and exciting. Julie still smiled out from her photograph. I reached out and ripped the poster, shredded it until the paper was confetti in my hands. I watched the pieces blow down the street, and a coldness moved into my body. How stupid I had been to think that my visions and my tarot cards could get me anything. The world wanted things from me, but they weren’t insights or answers. It didn’t matter who I was, or what I might be able to see. Look at how it happened with Tom—I had a glimpse of who he was, and still, I ended up underneath him while he drove himself into me, biting my lip to keep from crying out.

  I had given my savings to Des for the back rent, and now with the money she had and the cash from Tom, we nearly had enough to cover what we owed. But in another month another rent check would be due. In three, four months, another eviction notice on the floor.

  When I got home, Des was sitting in the kitchen. She must have been thinking the same thing—how the bills would continue to come, the demanding envelopes stamped in big, bold lettering. I already knew what she was going to propose. I had opened up a door that I couldn’t walk back through.