She was a failed painter, he explained, who’d reinvented herself as a jewelry maker. “You bought earrings for the last woman in your life,” Dot reminded him. “This one makes her own. What are you going to buy for her?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s economical. Between not giving her gifts and not taking her out to dinner, I can’t see this one putting much of a strain on your budget. Can you at least send the woman flowers?”
“I already did.”
“Well, it’s something you can do more than once, Keller. That’s one of the nice things about flowers. The little buggers die, so you get to throw them out and make room for fresh ones.”
“She liked the flowers,” he said, “but she told me once was enough. Don’t do it again, she said.”
“Because she wants to keep things superficial.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Keller,” she said, “I’ve got to hand it to you. You don’t find that many of them, but you sure pick the strange ones.”
“Now that was intense,” Maggie said. “Was it just my imagination, or was that a major earth-shaking experience?”
“High up there on the Richter scale,” he said.
“I thought tonight would be special. Full moon tomorrow.”
“Does that mean we should have waited?”
“In my experience,” she said, “it’s the day before the full moon that I feel it the strongest.”
“Feel what?”
“The moon.”
“But what is it you feel? What effect does it have on you?”
“Gets me all moony.”
“Moony?”
“Makes me restless. Heightens my moods. Sort of intensifies things. Same as everybody else, I guess. What about you, Keller? What does the moon do for you?”
As far as Keller could tell, all the moon did for him was light up the sky a little. Living in the city, where there were plenty of streetlights to take up the slack, he paid little attention to the moon, and might not have noticed if someone took it away. New moon, half moon, full moon-only when he caught an occasional glimpse of it between the buildings did he know what phase it was in.
Maggie evidently paid more attention to the moon, and attached more significance to it. Well, if the moon had had anything to do with the pleasure they’d just shared, he was grateful to it, and glad to have it around.
“Besides,” she was saying, “my horoscope says I’m going through a very sexy time.”
“Your horoscope.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you do, read it every morning?”
“You mean in the newspaper? Well, I’m not saying I never look, but I wouldn’t rely on a newspaper horoscope for advice and counsel any more than I’d need Ann Landers to tell me if I have to pet to be popular.”
“On that subject,” he said, “I’d say you don’t absolutely have to, but what could it hurt?”
“And who knows,” she said, reaching out for him. “I might even enjoy it.”
A while later she said, “Newspaper astrology columns are fun, like Peanuts and Doonesbury, but they’re not very accurate. But I got my chart done, and I go in once a year for a tune-up. So I have an idea what to expect over the coming twelve months.”
“You believe in all that?”
“Astrology? Well, it’s like gravity, isn’t it?”
“It keeps things from flying off in space?”
“It works whether I believe in it or not,” she said. “So I might as well. Besides, I believe in everything.”
“Like Santa Claus?”
“And the Tooth Fairy. No, all the occult stuff, like tarot and numerology and palmistry and phrenology and-“
“What’s that?”
“Head bumps,” she said, and capped his skull with her hand. “You’ve got some.”
“I’ve got head bumps?”
“Uh-huh, but don’t ask me what they mean. I’ve never even been to a phrenologist.”
“Would you?”
“Go to one? Sure, if somebody steered me to a good one. In all of these areas, some practitioners are better than others. There are the storefront gypsies who are really just running a scam, but after that you’ve still got different levels of proficiency. Some people have a knack and some just hack away at it. But that’s true in every line of work, isn’t it?”
It was certainly true in his.
“What I don’t get,” he said, “is how any of it works. What difference does it make where the stars are when you’re born? What has that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know how anything works,” she said, “or why it should. Why does the light go on when I throw the switch? Why do I get wet when you touch me? It’s all a mystery.”
“But head bumps, for Christ’s sake. Tarot cards.”
“Sometimes it’s just a way for a person to access her intuition,” she said. “I used to know a woman who could read shoes.”
“The labels? I don’t follow you.”
“She’d look at a pair of shoes that you’d owned for a while, and she could tell you things about yourself.”
“ ‘You need half-soles.’ “
“No, like you eat too much starchy food, and you need to express the feminine side of your personality, and the relationship you’re in is stifling your creativity. Things like that.”
“All by looking at your shoes. And that makes sense to you?”
“Does sense make sense? Look, do you know what holism is?”
“Like eating brown rice?”
“No, that’s whole foods. Holism is like with holograms, the principle’s that any cell in the body represents the entire life in microcosm. That’s why I can rub your feet and make your headache go away.”
“You can?”
“Well, not me personally, but a foot reflexologist could. That’s why a palmist can look at your hand and see evidence of physical conditions that have nothing to do with your hands. They show up there, and in the irises of your eyes, and the bumps on your head.”
“And the heels of your shoes,” Keller said. “I had my palm read once.”
“Oh?”
“A year or two ago. I was at this party, and they had a palmist for entertainment.”
“Probably not a very good one, if she was hiring out for parties. How good a reading did she give you?”
“She didn’t.”
“I thought you said you had your palm read.”
“I was willing. She wasn’t. I sat down at the table with her and gave her my hand, and she took a good look and gave it back to me.”
“That’s awful. You must have been terrified.”
“Of what?”
“That she saw imminent death in your hand.”
“It crossed my mind,” he admitted. “But I figured she was just a performer, and this was part of the performance. I was a little edgy the next time I got on a plane-“
“I’ll bet.”
“-but it was a routine flight, and time passed and nothing happened, and I forgot about it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I even thought about it.”
She reached out a hand. “Gimme.”
“Huh?”
“Give me your hand. Let’s see what got the bitch in a tizzy.”
“You can read palms?”
“Not quite, but I can claim a smattering of ignorance on the subject. Let’s see now, I don’t want to know too much, because it might jeopardize the superficiality of our relationship. There’s your head line, there’s your heart line, there’s your life line. And no marriage lines. Well, you said you’ve never been married, and your hand says you were telling the truth. I can’t say I can see anything here that would make me tell you not to sign any long-term leases.”
“That’s a relief.”
“So I bet I know what spooked her. You’ve got a murderer’s thumb.”
Keller, working on his stamp collection, kept interrupting himself to look at his thumb. There it was, teaming up with his forefinger to grip a pair of tongs, to pick up a glassine envelope, to hold a magnifying glass. There it was, his own personal mark of Cain. His murderer’s thumb.
“It’s the particular way your thumb is configured,” Maggie had told him. “See how it goes here? And look at my thumb, or your left thumb, as far as that goes. See the difference?”