Julie was looking very pleased.
“But,” Robin continued, lifting a warning finger. “There are some problems.” She looked up at her with concern. “He’s married, isn’t he?”
Julie nodded.
Robin showed her the High Priestess. “Here she is — the wife. She dominates the spread. She’s a very powerful woman. They’ve been fighting a lot.” She pointed to a card that showed men fighting with sticks. “But this is what concerns me,” she went on. She picked up a card that showed people jumping out of a burning tower.
“The Tower,” said Julie, reading the title on the card.
“Yes,” Robin said, setting it down. “Right next to the High Priestess. Which means that she’s going to make trouble.” She pointed to a card showing a family gathered in front of a castle. “She doesn’t want her home wrecked. You haven’t slept with him yet, have you?” She looked up inquiringly. “The cards don’t show that you have.”
Julie shook her head.
“Well, if you do, I would advise the utmost discretion. If his wife finds out, it will be devastating. It won’t be only the end of the affair, it will be the end of...” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t like to make dire predictions; after all, the cards weren’t infallible, though in her experience they were almost always right.
“I’ll be careful,” Julie said.
“Good,” said Robin. One of her tarot teacher’s favorite expressions had always been, “There are no accidents in the cards,” which meant that although the throw of the cards might be random, their meaning was not.
“How did it go at Madame Zorro’s today?” Ron asked over cocktails in the mahogany-paneled library. It was ten and he’d just gotten home. Few were the evenings when he got home on time anymore. During the week, he hardly saw their two teenaged sons, who were usually in bed by the time he got home, as they were this evening.
That’s what he called Robin’s business, “Madame Zorro’s.” He made it sound like a friendly joke, but it was really a thinly disguised form of ridicule. He hated her business. He thought it was unsuitable for an executive’s wife to be telling fortunes. But it was more than just that. He also hated it because he didn’t understand it.
Robin had started fooling around with the cards in the ’seventies. It had been the thing to do, along with smoking dope and stringing love beads. Her pastime had quickly turned into an obsession. In her daily readings, she had found that the cards offered amazing insight into the depths of her unconscious, as well as the occasional uncannily accurate prediction. Now and then, she’d been coaxed into doing readings for friends, but that had been the extent of her ventures into fortunetelling — until an office cocktail party.
Her husband, who had been vice president of marketing at the time, had wanted a business-development theme. It was Robin, who also worked for the company, who came up with it: “See your future with Reliance Insurance.” The guests were all business prospects; the gimmick was fortunetelling. Robin would do tarot readings, which, of course, would predict a successful business relationship with Reliance; others would do palm readings and crystal-ball gazing.
The party was a huge success. For three hours, Robin had sat at a card table and read fortunes. At the party’s close, the company had a stack of new contracts and Robin had a new profession. She had discovered she had a natural talent for divination, which was more than she could say for insurance underwriting. Besides, a part-time career as a tarot reader would allow her to leave her full-time job, which she had wanted to do ever since their sons had been born.
By the end of the year, she had set up shop in a storefront in the small city near the suburban community in which they lived. She took the shop’s name, “Madame Zigana’s,” from the Hungarian word for gypsy girl. A neon sign in the window proclaimed: “Reader, Advisor.” She worked from nine to three, when her sons were in school. If she needed to take off to go on a class trip or attend a class play, she did. And although they didn’t need the income, her work gave her money that wasn’t under her husband’s control.
And control — with him — was becoming more and more of an issue.
She was reminded of Julie’s reading. Ron had once been Robin’s King of Pentacles: a person of character and intelligence with natural leadership ability and a gift for making money. Now he was her King of Pentacles reversed: mean-spirited, spiteful, controlling.
It was called the male climacteric.
She answered Ron’s question in the terms he understood. “Fifteen customers,” she replied. “About average for a weekday.”
“At fifteen bucks a shot, that’s two hundred and twenty-five,” Ron calculated. “Subtracting half for overhead, that leaves you with about a hundred and twelve.” (Ron did their taxes.) “Times ten, it just covers the payment for your expensive new vehicle.”
In other words, pin money. With Ron, it was always the bottom line. At least, that’s the way it had been recently. If he couldn’t control his mortality, he would try to control something else. Money.
And, she was beginning to suspect, something — or someone — else...
Ignoring his put-down, she said, “I had my regular Thursday customer today.” She never revealed the names of her customers, in keeping with the sign in her office that promised confidentiality. “It looks as if she’s about to take a lover.” She always tried to share the events of her day, however futile the effort might be.
“Oh, it does, does it?” he said, already engrossed in the newspaper.
After a moment, she changed the subject. “The church is holding its progressive dinner this weekend. I thought we might go. We had such a nice time last year.”
He looked up at her over the rims of his reading glasses. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m going to be in Cincinnati for a conference.” Catching her expression of disappointment, he added, “Maybe you can go with one of your friends. Or we could go out the following weekend for a nice dinner. How does that sound?”
She nodded in assent, but she was suspicious.
She was convinced he was having an affair. Unfaithfulness was one of the characteristics of the King of Pentacles reversed. And her readings for him had consistently turned up the Fooclass="underline" the innocent who steps blithely into the unknown without regard for how his actions will affect others.
The prospect disappointed her, but it didn’t make her mad. Her work with the cards had revealed the frailty of human nature. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if the motives of her adult clients were as transparent as a child’s. But if the cards exposed human weaknesses, they also showed how one could deal with them.
She glanced around her at the beautiful room, with the silver-framed photos of the boys displayed on the gleaming surface of the baby grand. According to the tarot, if she could get Ron over this one temptation, everything would be all right. Embracing husband and wife, dancing children, beautiful home — she had seen it in the cards.
Julie was right on time for her appointment the next Thursday. Robin was glad: She was eager to do her cards. It was exciting when events were unfolding in a client’s life. She was reminded of those nineteenth-century novels that had been issued in weekly installments, and how their readers would mob the news agents for the latest issue.
But she didn’t need to look at the cards to see what had happened in Julie’s life. She was aglow. Had Robin been able to read auras, which was not one of her psychic abilities, she was sure Julie’s would have been psychedelic. She was in love.
That’s what her cards showed, too. The Lovers was at the center of the spread, while the card indicating a mere attraction had receded into the position for the recent past. “There you are,” she said, pointing to the Lovers card. She looked up at Julie. “You did it, didn’t you? You took the plunge.”