Id love to invite you along for the weekend, sweetums-theres supposed to be a really inspirational sunrise service in Golden Gate Park-but Im going to beseech you to stay here and keep searching for the little rascal in my absence. You know, just in case.
You flash a smile that could polish every winesap in Happy Valley. This is the best news youve heard since the last time the Fed lowered interest rates. How lovely to have Belford out of town, out of your hair, for the remainder of the weekend! Now youll be free to devote all of your attention to your shaky career and the external and internal factors that are shaking it. In Belfords absence, moreover, you ought to be able to get a clearer perspective on his role in your future. As fiercely as you might wish to deny it, you are compelled to admit that an abba dabba honeymoon with Mr. Dunn is a feasible solution to your current problem.
Oh, but what if you should marry Belford and he discovers that your problem is a tad more … shall we say, complicated than that of the average broker caught in the crash? Upon the stage of worry that dominates the theater of your mind, you imagine a scene in which a distraught hubby comes home-from his flourishing realty office, you would hope, not from some grubby cubicle in the Department of Social Services-to confront you. Gwendolyn, he says in his sternest manner, its common knowledge that brokers push stocks and other instruments based on what the brokerage firm wants to peddle on a given day or week. Its also common knowledge that unsuspecting customers are sold specific securities-mutual funds are a good example-that result in the highest commission for the broker. Its a fact of life, sad but true, that most brokers have their own interests at the forefront of every buy and sell recommendation that they proffer. That just goes with the territory, I guess. But, Gwen, Mr. Posner has informed me that you were unethically churning your accounts. He was concerned about that possibility from the start. Posner hired you not because of your MBA or your unusual voice or your good looks, but because once at Nordstrom you sold his daughter three pairs of ski pants when she only needed one. He both liked it and feared it that you were so money-motivated. And his worst fears came true. You solicited orders night and day, pressing to switch accounts from one mutual fund into another, but rarely explaining trades properly. You set up portfolios with an atrocious disregard. You had the wrong clients in the wrong stocks at the wrong amounts and with the wrong expectations. When the market finally fell, you left a killing field in your wake.
Its erythrophobia time. And as usual, your fear of blushing causes you to blush. But theres no pigment of guilt in the puccoon that reddens your cheeks. Instead of shame, you feel resentment. You would have operated differently had conditions been different. As it was, you were tricked by circumstance, cheated by history. Were you supposed to just surrender to the zeitgeist? Be a pebble? Go where you were kicked?
In your fantasy, your groom forgives you. Belford Dunn is nothing if not forgiving. Of course, you have to earn your redemption. I want you to get down on your knees, Belford orders. Not for a blow job but something equally degrading and distasteful. I want you to pray to Lord Jesus, Gwendolyn. AndrE and me will pray with you. So you kneel between the fleabitten macaque and the square-headed hulk in his Mens Wearhouse suit, and you endure the triple ordeal of confession, contrition, and avowal. Then, new leaf smartly turned, you are released. Off the blasted hook, wahoo!
By the time this simulated confrontation has played itself out, you are feeling pretty swell. Certainly the best youve felt in forty-eight hours. Actually humming a little (Lazy River), you pull jeans on over your panties, close the window against the cooling air, fold and set aside The Wall Street Journal, exchange your iced tea for a goblet of chardonnay, check the clock-half an hour until Q-Jos due home-and turn on the television in pursuit of further hope. If the President has taken extraordinary measures, if he and his administration have acted boldly for a change, marriage to Belford could be an option whose bristles you no longer are obliged to caress.
Alas, it is neither the President nor one of his economic advisers whose face fills the incandescent glass rectangle. Rather, it is Dr. Yamaguchi.
Doctor! a reporter calls. Doctor! Youve come here from a small clinic on the northernmost tip of Japan, and our mayors given you the key to the city, the governors planning to wine and dine you, theres been a huge public rally in your honor, people cheering you, clamoring for you, press from around the world constantly shooting your picture. How does all this attention feel, Doctor? How does it feel?
With that tiny, furtive smile peeking out of the corners of his mouth, Dr. Yamaguchi lowers the Bic, sighs, and shrugs his shoulders. Another day, he says, in the life of a fool.
FIVE THIRTY-ONE P.M.
You suck in a breath that could tatter every squash blossom in Happy Valley. The card! The card, the card, the card! You had put down the card while you were listening to Q-Jos message, and so frazzled were you by the implications of that message-Hes just back from Timbuktu-that you forgot about it. All afternoon, as you itched and fumed about the fate of the market, the audacity of Larry Diamond and the safety of the Huff, the card has lain on top of the bookcase, facedown, unexamined, ignored. Goodness knows when you might have thought of it again if it hadnt been for Dr. Yamaguchi.
Fool, he said. Fool. Three of the last four times you have selected a card from the tarot deck, it has turned out to be the Fool. Three times in four. Baby, the tarots got your number, said Q-Jo. This is your card.
Gee, thanks a lot. Thats encouraging as shit. You must have been upset: you said the s word.
Hey, Ive always suspected you were a closet Fool. If I hadnt, Id have given up on you long ago.
If that is a compliment, then a rapscallion is a hip-hop onion. However, you ought to be grateful, you suppose, that Q-Jo maintains a more positive view than you do of that figure some experts regard as the beginning of the tarot and others regard as its end.
A giddy youth is skipping through the wilderness, seemingly oblivious to the dangers around him. His cap is on backward, as if he doesnt know-or doesnt care-whether he is coming or going. Dum-dum-de-dum. Skip along, skip along. In his left hand he holds, as though presenting it to society, a white rose, the apples opposite, emblem of purity and innocence. Over his right shoulder, tramp style, a stick with a bag hanging from it. What is in your bag, Fool? Dum-dum-de-dum. We will trade you a kilo of gold for the contents of your bag, sight unseen. Dum-dum-de-dum. He is an admirer of clouds. And with his eyes turned upward, he has skipped right to the brink of a deep and rocky chasm. The promontory is crumbling beneath his boots. Yet forward he goes, clear eyes squinting in the sun, a smile on his lips, his bag of useless trinkets swinging wildly.
According to Q-Jo, the whole tarot deck, or at least the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana, may be read as the Fools journey. On one important level, she explained, the major cards are chapters in the story of a quest. Im talking the universal human quest for understanding and divine reunion. And it doesnt matter whether the quest starts with the Fool or ends with him, because its a loop anyhow, a cycle endlessly repeated. When the naive young Fool finally tumbles over the precipice, he falls into the world of experience. Now his journey has really begun. Along the way, hell meet all the teachers and tempters-the tempters are teachers, too-and challenging situations that a person is likely to meet in the task of his or her growing. The Fool is potentially everybody, but not everybody has the wisdom or the guts to play the Fool. A lot a folks dont know whats in that bag theyre carrying. And theyre all too willing to trade it for cash. Inside the bag, they have every tool they need to facilitate their lifes journey, but they wont even open it up and glance inside. Subconsciously, the goal of all of us out-of-control primates is essentially the same, but let me assure you of this: the only ones wholl ever reach that goal are the ones who have the courage to make fools of themselves along the way.
Now, that is all fine and dandy, you suppose, but the word fool plays whoopie-cushion music in your ear. Its a label you would hasten to scrape off your pigeonhole
with the first sharp object at hand. When you learned that in medieval tarot decks the Fool sometimes was identified as the Beggar, you knew for certain you wanted no part of him. Anyone who heralds poverty is no friend of yours. The Brinks truck, not the circus wagon, is your transportation of choice. Its not enough to be in the money, you want to be in money, inside of it, like one of those dead presidents looking out. Anybody who doesnt build themselves a fortress of money is a fool, you once said.
Exactly so, quipped Q the Huff.
FIVETHIRTY-FIVE P.M.
With forced nonchalance, you saunter up to the bookcase. Every book on the shelves is about investment strategy, save for an encyclopedia of wine, a Porsche picture book, and a skinny volume of your mothers poetry: Cupid Reflected in the Drool of a Zombie While the White Butterfly Attends the Lilacs After the Heat Has Gone. Published posthumously. The card is on top of the case, next to the Bauhaus vase, and with continued nonchalance, you lift it up. If I get the Fool again, you think, I may go stick it back in the deck and take another card. Psychic or not, Q-Jo would never know.
Wait a minute! Hold on! What the fu—? You come within two consonants of pronouncing the f word. Who could blame you? This card … why, youve never seen this card before. At one time or another, youve at least glanced at every card in the tarot, and you are absolutely positive this one has not been among them. What the … fun?
To a degree, it resembles the Star card, except that the nude female who is kneeling beside a pool has, on this card, green scales over the lower half of her body, and her hands and feet are webbed like a frogs. Moreover, shes wearing a headdress that resembles the tail of a fish. At the bottom of the card, where it would normally read THE MAGICIAN, THE TOWER, THE EMPRESS, or in this case, perhaps, THE STAR, it reads, in the usual block letters, THE NOMMO. The Nommo? What the … ?
Looming in the sky above the kneeling nude, there are the same seven silver stars and the one giant central gold star that you remember from the Star card. Only now the silver stars are very faint, as if clouded over, and the big bold gold star has some kind of markings on it. After a minute, you recognize the markings as the dim outline of the head of a dog. Huh?
Like the maiden on the Star card, this one holds a pitcher in each hand-or, should one say, flipper. With the pitcher in her left … appendage, she pours water onto the ground, with the pitcher in the right, she is pouring water back into the pond. As you walk toward the window, where the light is better, you notice that the pitcher on the left is gold, the other, silver. And then you notice something else. In the background, behind the pool and beneath the dramatic sidereal display, there is a little tree with a bird perched in its uppermost bough, exactly as there is on the Star card. But here a word is inscribed on the birds body. And the word (oh, how many goose bumps does it take to cobblestone the epidermis of a full-grown Filipina?), the word is Bozo.
Perplexity lines your face like the type in an arrest warrant. You collapse into the nearest chair like a reverse phoenix sinking back into the ashes. Q-Jo Huffington had better get home soon.
SEVEN-FIFTY P.M.
Why arent we as smart when we wake up as we are in our dreams?
The sunset had been spectacular. In recent years, pollution has both expanded and intensified the solar palette, and tonight, without the customary clabber of cloud to diffuse its hues, to make it resemble, as it so frequently does in Seattle, a poultice of quicksilver and peach juice, it spread the full length of the western horizon like the nuEe ardente bloodspill of a Day-Glo Christ. It was the definitive Good Friday sunset, and you had watched it from your chair until the last sanguineous drop of it was absorbed by the greasy gray waters of Puget Sound. The sky had been as crimson as any of your blushes, plus a great deal more luminous, and at one point you actually had thought about Jesus and how Belford and Grandma Mati both referred to him as the Light of the World. You were on the verge of being consoled, maybe even uplifted-but then the darkness rolled in from every direction, and you said to yourself: That figures. Shortly thereafter, you nodded off.
You dreamed that you were holding up that weird maverick tarot card-the one that in actual fact was lying on your lap-only in your dream the card seemed ancient and worn, as if it were made of parchment or papyrus or something, and there was a kind of aura around it. But it had not puzzled you in your dream, you intuited its meaning, you understood it perfectly. A man was standing behind you, looking over your shoulder. He was never identified, but his voice was familiar. Even now, awake, you are within one synapse of recognition. This is what he was saying:
Sarah Bernhardt was such a powerfully popular, awe-inspiring actress that when she toured in North America her performances invariably sold out, even though she spoke hardly a word of English. Whatever play she did, Shakespeare, MoliEre, Marlowe, or whatever, she did in French, a language few nineteenth-century Americans could comprehend. Theatergoers were provided with librettos so that they might follow the action in English. Well, on at least a couple of occasions, ushers passed out the wrong libretto, a text for an entirely different drama than the one that was being staged. Yet, from all reports, not once did a single soul in those capacity crowds ever comment or complain. Furthermore, no critic ever mentioned the discrepancy in his or her review. At this point, you distinctly remember, the man nudged you. Then he went on.
We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a reality that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue-only weve all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, were given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. Were given Time magazine and Readers Digest, daily papers, and the six oclock news; were given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; were given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. Were attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe barroom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And whens the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?
Those were his exact words, you recollect them with a peculiar clarity. And sure, it was just some pseudo-philosophical, nugatory babble, but where had it come from? Even if such a man existed, you had dreamed his speech; thus, the words had had to have come from you. Was there some part of you that entertained ideas such as those? How annoying, if true. And what of the inner you that seems to know so much about Sarah Bernhardt? You vaguely recall your mother once dropping her name. Before your mother dropped all those barbiturates and sank into the Big Snooze-a-roo.
SEVEN FIFTY-THREE P.M.
Abruptly, you switch on the floor lamp by your chair. When your eyes have grown accustomed to the glare, you reexamine the aberrant tarot card-and in the 150-watt beam of full disclosure make a significant discovery. To wit: the card has been altered.
Yes, it is as plain as the Welsh nose on your Filipina face. Watercolor marking pens and a black stylus were used to transform an ordinary Star card into the fishy anomaly that so astonished you. A pale blue wash dimmed the silver stars, a bright green felt-tip turned the maidens feet into flippers, the words, THE NOMMO, were superimposed over the whited-out original title, THE STAR. In a sense, your discovery is a big relief. It means that you had neither overlooked this card in the past nor that something, uh, supernatural, had occurred. Good. However, you are left to wonder why Q-Jo would do such a silly thing, why she would deface the tarot, for which she harbors a profound respect. And you must wonder, further, about the intrusion of that word Bozo. Frankly, Bozo has become a bit of a bother to you.
When at last you check your Rolex, you are bothered all the more. Q-Jo is almost two hours overdue. And she has not had the courtesy to phone. Oh, but what if she is unable to phone? What if she is
bound to a fumigated mattress, the victim of unimaginable probes and squirts perpetrated by that … that pee-sniffer? Once again, your emotions vacillate. Anger. Concern. Anger. Concern.
NINE P.M.
Anger. Concern. The upsetting oscillation continues, and now, with each swing of the pendulum, the to and the fro are escalating in scale. ANGER! CONCERN! Well, to be scrupulously exact, it is more like, ANGER! concern. Because you do have more faith in the Huffs ability to take care of herself than you do in her reliability; at least where men are involved. However, when the phone rings a few minutes after nine, you do not hesitate. You are at that phone like a trout at a gunk-filled fly.
Oh, sweetums, youre home. I just called to leave a good-bye message. I thought you and Q-Jo were going out. I thought that was why you werent helping me tonight. Look for AndrE.
Im here. Q-Jo is out. Way the hell out. And the reason Im not helping you look for AndrE is… . Your voice trails off. Just as well. Your tone is sour enough without getting specific about what you wish Belford would do with his monkeyitis.
After a pause, Belford says, I dont read you.
Listen, Belford, Im worried about Q-Jo. She had an appointment this afternoon with a really weird guy, and she hasnt come home yet or called or anything.
So thats it. Well, honey, Im sorry youre worried, I dont like you to worry. But Q-Jo is a willful woman, a lot of willful woman if I may say so, and nobodys likely to make her do anything she doesnt want to do. And what makes you think this client of hers is weird?
I know him to be weird.
Oh? Youre personally acquainted with the gentleman? Under the fingernails of his voice, there can be detected the green cheese of suspicion.
The gentleman ? Yes! No! I mean, I met him yesterday at the Bull and Bear. He tried to… . He referred to… . Never mind. Trust me, hes an unstable individual. Q-Jos three hours late and hasnt called. And strange stuff is happening.