As intimidated as you were disappointed, you nodded in the affirmative and upon Q-Jos direction, cut the cards. One by one, off the top of the deck, she began to turn the cards over and lay them out systematically in an arrangement that soon approximated the shape of a Celtic cross. Now, for one reason or another, your subconscious knows things your conscious mind doesnt. Oftentimes its ahead of your conscious mind in regards to the direction youre leaning regarding a particular situation or decision. So in that respect, the information I glean for you tonight may, at a later date, seem to you to be a prediction coming true. Follow me? Mmm … what have we here? Likewise, if the tarot and I detect trends in your behavior, such as patterns and that kind of thing, we can be at least semi-predictive. You know, if you see that somebody is driving down I-Five seventy miles an hour blindfolded, you can safely predict that relatives of that person will be coming into money, providing that the persons adequately insured. Okay, Gwen? But if a psychic claims she or he can actually know future events, well, thats denying that theres free will, and I happen to believe in free will. The futures not preordained. Anything that I reveal to you tonight can be changed. You, of your own free will, can change it. Reverse it, redirect it, whatever. You can remove the blindfold and slow the hell down. Remember that. Now, lets have a look. Mind if I smoke?
Although tobacco fumes tend to turn your stomach, you signaled that it was permissible. She fired up her stinkweed, filled her sails, and fell into a light trance. In that state, her voice became soothing, almost hypnotic; her manner of speech more articulate and formal. Nevertheless, it didnt take long for her to ram her supertanker into your amusement pier.
In the number three position, which is the card representing current concerns and influences, you see we have the Four of Pentacles. Whats happening in that picture, Gwen? Dont try to analyze it. Just look at it as if it was an illustration in your favorite childrens book. Thats the way I want you to always look at the cards. Okay? Whats the figure doing? Grasping, right? Hes holding down two pieces of gold with his feet, he has his arms tightly wrapped around another piece, and a fourth one is balanced on his head: gold on the brain, in other words. What the Four of Pentacles in this position suggests is insecurity about money, fear of financial loss. There are basic security issues here. You seem to be worried about accumulating sufficient funds or of losing what you have already. And if you should lose your money, what would you be worth as a human being, who would you be? Your identity is wrapped up in material wealth. The problem here, Gwen, is that the more desperate you are to achieve financial success and the tighter you hold on to what youve got, the greater your chances of losing it. Moneys like love in that respect. You might want to focus on other aspects of life for a change. It could benefit you to loosen your grip.
Shock of recognition? Not enough to matter. Neither informed nor impressed by what youd heard, you thought, What a scam! She could have extrapolated everything she said from the comments I made when I first walked in. You were decidedly annoyed, and it wasnt destined to get any sweeter. It seems that a four-inch tag of pasteboard called the Five of Rods was familiar with your modus operandi to the degree that it could accuse you of causing problems for yourself without realizing it, of tripping yourself up, of struggling too hard, and spreading yourself too thin. There was yet a third card representing stress around matters financial, while in the position that was alleged to disclose how others viewed you, there thundered an almost comically aggressive dude on a charger, the Knight of Swords, whom Ms. Huffington described as consumed and pushy, a type who wouldnt allow anyone or anything to block his or her path to the payoff.
If there was a crouton of fact in that nettle salad-and you had had to admit there was a crouton-it could be dismissed as temporary and trivial, from your point of view, certainly not deserving of the hulking hankyheads conclusion that you either had chosen the wrong goals or the wrong way to pursue them. You had been on the verge of compensating her-Do you accept Visa? Now thats a card that knows how to treat a woman-and fleeing to the comforts of home when she proceeded to the Queen of Cups and regained your attention in a prime-time way.
A slender, fair-skinned blond in royal robes sits on a carved wooden throne at the edge of the sea. Clams have gathered about her feet, caroling, perhaps; the tide sucks her toes. Oblivious to salt and shine, to ships on the horizon and pearl-making in the surf, the queen gazes intently at an ornate golden chalice that she balances in her hands. She gives the impression that the sky could burst without interrupting her fix on the grail, her fidelity to its hard beauty.
This woman, the Queen of Cups, is delicate and dreamy, said Q-Jo. Shes a romantic, an aesthete, though sometimes in a morbid way. She can be gentle and nurturing but obsessed with philosophical questions she cant understand. Q-Jo looked up from the layout. Gwen, this woman obviously isnt you. She must be your mother. Yes, shes your mother. Your mother was a loving person but emotionally imbalanced. Probably tried to be there for you but didnt know how to, because she couldnt even be there for herself. I say tried because I sense shes gone to the other side, with which she was always very intrigued. Your mother took her own life. You still are unable to say why.
How could this fat fraud know that? How dare she know? It was the future she was hired to scan, not the past! You were outraged. But the tears you were choking back were not of fury.
Q-Jo found your father in the layout-the immature and unreliable Page of Cups. She pointed to the Five of Cups and the Seven of Swords, the former indicating the loss and loneliness she said youve experienced in family matters, the latter suggesting anger and separation. She alluded to ducked landlords, bare mattresses, and spilled Chianti, to revolutionary rants and thrift-shop school clothes, even to mimeographed poetry magazines and those all-night bongo parties that had caused you to fall asleep in freshman algebra. She spoke of a forgiveness card, but you couldnt tell which one. By that time, youd lost control, your sobs growing wet and muscular. The arms with which the psychic enveloped you were like inflated beach toys: rubber horses pumped up with molasses. You pulled away, but you were both purged and comforted, and you knew you would visit her again.
ELEVEN FIFTY-FIVE A.M.
You let yourself into Q-Jos flat. It has the same tiled fireplace and exposed beams as yours, but whereas your red maple floors are bare and polished, hers are nearly hidden by threadbare Oriental rugs; whereas your leaded windows sparkle unadorned, hers are draped with dry-rotted lace; whereas your apartment is airy, modern, minimalistic, hers is dense and itchy. As ever in her quarters, you experience oddly mixed sensations of solace and suffocation.
The tarot deck is on the cherry table, twiddling its tens of thumbs, tapping its tens of feet. Instead of the cruciform layout, it is spread facedown across the tabletop in a gamblers fan. Not bothering to pose a question-what could possibly be on your mind other than the market crash and the extent of its repercussions in your life?-you immediately point to a card. As youre about to pick it up, however, you withdraw your hand. Somehow, that card doesnt feel right.
Giggling nervously, you glance around the room as if youre being watched. You feel suddenly foolish. The nation, if not the world, is in economic turmoil, your careers on the bubble and with it your dreams, your security; and youre wasting your time consulting a deck of picturesque cards provided by a roly-poly occultist, in absentia. Oh, but what the heck. Q-Jo complains that you never take the tarots advice anyhow, so wheres the harm? Its a game, a frail amusement, and who couldnt use a diversion?
Slowly, you pass your hand over the deck. Until … it experiences a slight tug. Youve never felt that before. Like a water witchs Y-stick that has sniffed out an underground spring, your pointing finger, bobbing and twitching, is pulled downward until it touches a particular card. You pick up the card and without examining it, clasp it to your heart, as Q-Jo has encouraged you to do, and return to the less cloying oxygens of your own place.
ELEVEN FIFTY-NINE A.M.
As you enter
your apartment, the phone is ringing. You elect not to answer it. You fear one of your clients could have gotten your unlisted number and is calling to berate you, although more likely its Belford. AndrE has come home. AndrE has not come home. AndrE is a hostage. AndrE is kaput. AndrE, in a blond wig and glasses, has been spotted in Vegas; or onstage with the gospel choir at a Billy Graham crusade. Give you a break. Right now you arent interested in AndrE.
The voice that crackles out of the answering machine speaker, its intonations afuzz with auditory hairballs, is not Belfords, however, its Q-Jos. Gwen, baby, its Huff, she says. I stopped by Fratellis for a sundae and a shake, so Im running a little late, but I wanted to let you know were probably gonna miss the early movie cause Ive scored another job and wont be home till six or so. Guys hiring me to look at some interesting slides for a change. At least, they could be interesting. Hes just back from Timbuktu.
FOUR P.M.
The afternoon lasts approximately as long as fourth grade. However long it takes a wuf of light from Sirius the Dog Star to reach its reflection in a puddle of tar on the Dog House roof, thats how long it takes the afternoon to go by. The afternoon is a million-car train rattling at half-speed through a crossing in a prairie town. The boxcars are empty, and you try to fill them up with market research. At least thats what you tell Belford each time he phones. No, I cant help you hunt for AndrE right now. Im doing market research.
What you actually are doing is reading Fridays edition of The Wall Street Journal, poring over every paragraph in a largely futile quest for salvation. The experience is both disheartening and marginalizing. There was a time when you could have gone to the disco on a weekend or holiday and availed yourself of the tools and materials of the trade, but five or six months ago, Posner asked for your key back, saying that the partners no longer felt it was in the firms best interest to have its brokers working overtime when they should be relaxing, replenishing their energies. At that moment, you thought it a well-intentioned if misguided policy. Now you cant help but wonder if he confiscated anybodys key but yours.
The post-crash Journal is a gray blizzard of statistics, studies, casualty figures, history, forecasts, and interviews. They must have interviewed a hundred analysts, managers, regulators, marketers, investors, and consultants of all stripes (including that two-faced Sol Finkelstein), and although they were busy bear-dancing on hot coals, they were cogent enough to offer plenty of rational explanations for what went wrong. Most cited the magnitude of government and corporate debt and the slow growth in the nations money supply. There were the usual references to overvalued stocks, flat profits, and escalating foreign competition. A few complained anew about the perils of computerized trading, while a couple of financial-newsletter writers wanted to lay the blame on institutional criminality. Jesse James got himself appointed to the banks board of directors. Saved wear and tear on his horse. Sol Finkelstein was quoted as saying, On a fundamental valuation basis, Americas been in economic never-never land since Reagans first term in the White House. Funny, you never heard Sol bring that up in a meeting.
The afternoon is as sunny as it is interminable. You open a window to let the sunbeams in. They behave like tourists, which, in Seattle, they practically are. Dressed in panties (white with two tiny pink bows) and an Exxon Corporation sweatshirt, you prop yourself up against a cloudbank of pillows that rises above the ridge-line of your headboard. There on the bed, the newspaper spread about you like a wino brides dowry, a pitcher of Filipino-style iced tea within reach, you ought to be serene, but of course, you are not. You are anxious. You could just as well be balanced on a spider-infested log in a sewage lagoon, thats how anxious you are. And it is virtually impossible to separate the work-related anxiety from the anxiety about Q-Jo.
On second thought, it isnt impossible at all. Although you are sincerely worried about Q-Jo, its not a looming, career-crumbling-sized worry. To be honest, it is not so much worry as outrage. And bewilderment. Is this a monstrous coincidence, another of those tasteless practical jokes that the Fates love to spring on you and then roll on the linoleum with laughter? Or is there some cause-and-effect in operation here? Was Larry Diamond-that was the creeps name, wasnt it?-aware that Q-Jo and you are supposed to be friends? And if he was aware of that supposed friendship, wouldnt it stand to reason that his employment of Q-Jo was in some perverse way connected to, or directed at, you? But why? You suppose it could be the other way around: he approached you at the Bull&Bear in the hope that you could grease the rails to Q-Jo. There are men, descendants of the New England whalers, perhaps, who are aroused by women of scale. If only you had answered the phone in time, you might have warned her. The Huff moves surprisingly fast, especially after taking on sugar.
Fretting, you change position on the bed, causing your sweatshirt to ride up and expose abdominal flesh. The sunbeams, cameras around their necks, immediately form a line to get into your navel.
FOUR-THIRTY P.M.
The afternoon drones on. The specialists in The Wall Street Journal drone with it. Management blames labor: The American worker is underproductive and overpaid. Labor blames management: When a guys wearing a golden parachute, he doesnt care if the planes on fire. Whereas the prudent might cite the international wild card of oil prices, the cynical refer to such things as the thick blindfold of patriotic optimism that the military-industrial complex and its political flunkies have wound around our eyes. One overwrought pundit charges, Americas economy is a sinking ship deserting the rats. Harumph, you harumph. Whos he calling a rat? Until yesterday, none of these experts foresaw anything more traumatic than a keen correction. We were expecting a spanking and got a beheading, one admits. Annoyed, you toss aside the interviews and return to the charts. Technical analysis was never your forte, and you are struggling to comprehend a particular configuration of linear data when the telephone rings, causing you to jump so sharply you spill iced tea in your belly button. The less said about sunbeams the better.
You are reasonably certain it is Belford on the line, but unless hes reporting that the born-again monkey has fetched home a diamond as big as the Motel 6, you have scant interest in answering another of his calls. On the other hand, it could be Q-Jo, a desperate Q-Jo in the clutches of a fiend. Refusing to consider the possibility that Q-Jo might relish the clutches of a fiend (blotted from your memory is the time you walked in on her with not one, not two, but three Russian cadets from the training ship Pallada climbing about in her rigging), you spring from bed and hover above the phone. If it is Q-Jo, time could be of the essence, but you chance it and wait.
Following the fifth ring, you hear your own voice and cringe. You spent hours recording and rerecording the message, and you still hate the way you sound. Hello. Youve reached the temporary residence of Gwendolyn Mati. Im not home right now, but if youll leave your name, number, and time that you called, Ill get back to you the instant my busy schedule allows. Speak slowly and distinctly as soon as you hear the beep. Click. Beep. Hey, Squeak! Dat you? Where you, Squeak?
Good grief! Him. Are you ever glad you resisted the temptation to pick up the phone!
Hey, man, I dont dig talking when there nobody there. You want record me, you got see my agent. Ha-ha. But, Squeak, hey, I playing tonight, man. Yeah. New club in Belltown. Woman Rays. It so cool you think you someplace else. Hey, dey got dis Andy Warhol robot tending da bar. A real robot, man, but dis robot got Andy Warhol body parts in it. Look just like him but it a robot. I not sittin in with da band, I solo, man. Drums and poetry. Read some your mamas old poems. Love is a fine linen handkerchief Into which Eros keeps blaring his tumescent schnozzola At dawn the angels weep Clorox. Bop-boppa-wop! You know. So drop in see you papa, Squeak baby. Tonight, tomorrow night, Woman Rays, okay? Dey got nother robot working da door. Dis one call Marcel Duchamp. He strict, but he let you in. Tell em Salvador Dali sent you. Okay. Ciao.
FIVE-TEN P.M.
The next time the phone rings, it really is Belford. As you listen to him apologizing profu
sely for interrupting your work, you have to laugh. You laugh with irony because you have been unable to focus on the charts since your father called, you laugh with something approaching genuine amusement because you cannot imagine you and Belford Dunn applying for admittance to the Woman Ray Club. Belford has never even heard of Salvador Dali. Which is perfectly all right. Salvador Dali and fifty cents will get you a cup of clock melt. In any case, AndrE remains at large, it seems, and Belford has come to the conclusion that your suspicions are well founded: to wit, the monkey has been abducted by its former owner or associates of its former owner. AndrE would not have flown the coop of his own volition, his character is simply too strong, too loyal, too loving for that. Belford has been trying to reach the French consul general in San Francisco to ascertain whether or not Kongo van den Bos is still incarcerated, but the consulate is closed for the Easter holidays. So, your alleged beau has booked himself on a late-night flight to San Francisco, where he will attempt to track down the consul general and persuade him to provide information and assistance. It is an international matter now, after all.