— Its face looks modern, I said.
— It's a classic, I shouldn't wear it, it's wrong, but I can't resist. It's my one vice.
— Really?
— Did you notice that its hands are midnight blue? he asked evasively
In his way, the Count, who loved timepieces, and whose addiction to them obliterated his pain, turned night into day, designing an existence that also escaped regular time's exigencies. Time itself was a fox-his progenitors had hunted fox-an agony for him, but like a wily mistress, he paid for and kept it, knowing he couldn't subdue it, but punctuality was essential, and he accumulated its objects, and so, in a sense, he collected time, it was a sweet illusion, though he was no fool, less foolish than I was during this time in my life, when I was brought together with him and others, residing with them, when it was expected-I expected it on the prognosis of the card reader-that a great obstacle would be confronted and a magnificent change effected in me. There is usually interference or an obstacle, small or large, as there was even during the card reading, when a headache pulsed above my eye, so I found it difficult to concentrate, the stiff deck was nearly impossible to shuffle, but once I split it in half, as the prognosticator or reader dictated, while dogs barked outside and my young cat followed the shadows he made when he arranged the cards, it was primarily his hands and lopsided mouth I watched.
After that, I no longer was permitted to touch the cards, and about them he repeated several times, They're in the past. Some think that the page represents a female, but we don't know, and this-he exclaimed-is like a love letter, the page is carrying a love letter, he or she is a student or messenger of some kind, this is the page of hearts; he's carrying a cup, but it's generally thought to be a love letter. With another card beside it, since context is important, it could mean a pregnancy, he explained. When the king of the suit wants to get something done, he sends the knight. One of my cards was the knight of coins, the tarot reader said, he's a hard worker, he's stable, dependable-like a Ulysses S. Grant, he won the war, gets the job done but he's not long on style-the page has style, but not the knight. It's an emotional card. The card of the hearts-and you've got a work card, it's a good balance of work and love. The middle row is the present and the middle card tends to represent you, and this is, he said, happily, a great card, it's literally the whole world, the world is your oyster, the world is good, it's not the political world, and, look, here's the sun, it's beneficence and good fortune. Nothing can go wrong here-this is the brain. You have the Queen of Coins, the highest female figure, very capable. Coins are money, money is a token, you move money around and your world moves, coins became pentacles, but they're money, worldly capability, and she's the Queen Bee. You have hearts and coins, there's only one of the swords, and mostly they're bad because they're tricky, but you have only one of them, a good one at that, but if you had two, it could turn the whole table and the reading.
He grimaced at the cards.
There was also a page and a knight, I recall now, they were in the past or maybe the present. The reader was staring at the cards the way my dermatologist does my skin. In the present and the future, you have hearts and coins, he explained, money and love, and one of the swords, you've got the best one, because they're more mental. Mostly they're bad because they're tricky, since the brain turns into anxiety or viciousness, treacherous in the extreme, but you have a very good one at that.
He tapped my head twice. But if you had two, it could turn the whole table and the reading. I liked having my head tapped. Then he saw an obstacle and commented, reassuringly, that because I had the best mental card, I would know when to stop. But then he stopped the card reading. I am not sure I know when to stop, but that may be the most important thing to know: When to stop sleeping, when to stop eating, when to stop exercising, when to stop crying, when to stop talking, when to stop a friendship, a romance, when to stop trying, when to stop having hope, when to stop waiting, when to stop.
All my life, I've been stealing fire, it is a persistent image, and, as the fire before me raises its red head, a welter of phantasmal shapes leap and roll, dance like the tarot card reader's hands, and with them the words Stealing Fire-in blue script-flicker overhead. The kitchen helper is figuratively inside me. It is impossible to steal fire, but I hope to steal what can't be robbed, like love, devotion, purpose, because then I wouldn't have to return it. Isaac was Abraham's son, and his throat was almost cut, with a fire nearby, until God relented and allowed Abraham to sacrifice a sheep instead, in honor of which sheep are slaughtered in Morocco every year, commemorating God's compassion. If Abraham had murdered his son, he would have obeyed arbitrary commands, as job did, to confirm his faith in God, but job isn't celebrated, though his churlish arguments with God nag at faith and free will, and he was the Bible's antihero. I suppose my father might have sacrificed his son to his business, or that's what my brother feared and ran from, it's an interpretation. I became a son by default, a mimicry that probably failed, and studied American history to make sense of the past, any past that wasn't entirely mine or of my own design, I believe it was my remedy or rationale, though it's not what I thought then. Now history assures me no longer of sense and reason but of the human effort to document and legitimize its humanity, its triumphs, laws, flaws, to make legible what is incoherent, to remember a past that might help people in the present-a persistent belief that is rarely ever justified. I know the difference between right and wrong, yet I am always stealing fire, and now my outstretched left hand scoops the air above the wanton, undulating flames, as they leap out of reach, impossible to catch and control, like a body that recoils from constriction. And like a human being, a fire dies, especially when it's not tended, but it could do the opposite and spread rapaciously about the room, but then certainly I'd notice it, because the heat would be overpowering, and I'd sense it. If I didn't, I couldn't escape, I could be badly burned or suffer grotesque disfiguration, then require costly and repeated surgeries to return my face to normal, though normality is relative, but undoubtedly never again to be pretty or even attractive. I don't want to be scarred or grossly disfigured, but I feel a compulsion to look at the fire-scarred faces of strangers in the street, whose skin is stretched tautly across their faces, covering it like enemy territory.