"The first card represents my life," she intoned as she turned up the first card. The card was Temperance. It pictured an angel with a star in her forehead. The angel held a pair of golden goblets and poured water back and forth between them. Yup, that's me, thought Marjorie. Temperate and dull as a stick -- just like Steve says.
"The second card represents my present personality," she said, and turned up the Nine of Pentacles. Upside-down, it showed a beautiful woman carrying a tame bird through a garden. Prudence and self-control, mused Marjorie. But it's reversed, so I'm going to lose all that. Perhaps I'll do something rash. She giggled. Oh dear, I hope so.
She turned the third card up, "Influences I am aware of." The card was the Four of Cups. It showed a young man relaxing under a tree. A hand reached down from a cloud, offering him a cup. Yup, that's Steve, sitting there dreaming about my chalice, wanting me. Well, I want him too, damn it.
Marjorie snapped over the next card, "Influences you may not be aware of." She stared at The Fool. A man dressed like a jester with a pack on his back looked, grinning, over his shoulder, unaware that he was about to walk over a cliff. What on earth? Oh, no. It's gotta be that guy Hobart from school. He'd better not be an influence in this. . .
Impatiently she turned the next card, "Present influences that will soon leave my life." It was the Knight of Swords. A helmeted knight on horseback, handsome and dashing, holding an upraised sword. Now, that's gotta be Steve. But what does it mean that he'll soon leave my life? He hasn't even gotten in yet. She snickered at the unintended pun, and thought of the symbolism of the erect sword.
"The immediate future," and she turned up the next card: The Chariot. A chariot drawn by black and white sphinxes carried an armored prince with a sword raised in triumph. Ah, that's more like it, she thought. Hmm. . . sword nicely erect there. The chariot's obviously his car. Not quite the Fontainbleu, but it's as good a place as any.
She turned a card. "My behavior in the future." The card was The Lovers. A nude man and woman held hands in the sunlight. There was an angel overhead, and fruit trees. There was also a serpent among the branches. I'm gonna be sure to make him use a condom, though, she thought.
"Important future influences," she said, and turned up the Knight of Wands. A knight in armor rode horseback carrying a wand. He smiled at Marjorie. Well, that's Steve, of course. She picked up the card and examined it closely. But why does he look so much like Hobart? She took The Fool and compared the cards. Yup. No doubt about it -- that's the same guy. What a sick tarot deck.
"Thoughts that will cross my mind as future events unfold." The card was the Two of Swords. It showed a blindfolded young woman holding two crossed swords. Hmm, this is really spooky. Am I gonna have to choose between Steve and that creep? How can I have any good thoughts with a damn blindfold on?
"Well, let's see the ultimate outcome." With an impulsive gesture she turned up the last card. It was the Nine of Swords. Nine treacherous-looking swords hung above a woman sitting in bed, weeping with her face buried in her hands. Marjorie stared at the card. She picked it up and looked at it carefully.
Oh, no. No, this isn't fair.
"Hello, Ma," yelled Hobart into the house, detaching his jacket from the doorknob that had somehow snagged on his pocket.
"Make your bed," Joyce Rank called from the living room, where the voices of soap opera characters spoke in anguished whispers amid organ chords.
"Yes, Ma," he yelled, taking the steps two at a time -- but slowly -- on long thin legs.
Hobart had hated his room for as long as he could remember. It's walls were still the baby blue his father had applied in the time that Hobart still inhabited a bassinet in his parents' bedroom -- before his father had gotten sufficiently fed up with his wife's endless prattling to pack up his paints and brushes and move out. On the wall opposite the foot of his bed -- where its presence was the last thing to intrude on Hobart's consciousness at night, and the first to disconcert him in the morning -- was a grotesque anatomically incorrect yellow rabbit with bent ears and blood-red eyes. The rabbit's maniacal red stare had haunted Hobart's nightmares every night for eighteen years. His father, a commercial artist, had since made many overtures for Hobart's friendship over the years to no avail; Hobart hated him because of that rabbit.
There was no room on the desk or the computer table beside it, so Hobart put his books on the dresser beside a pinned butterfly, and tossed his jacket over the back of the room's one chair. Averting his eyes from the creature on the wall, Hobart surveyed the bed. It was as rumpled, he thought, as. . . as an unmade bed. It would do for another night, though. He hauled a bedspread from the floor, shook it out, spread it over the tangled sheets, and patted down the major lumps. Perfect.
He regarded his books on the dresser and, considering his embarrassment answering a simple question in class, knew he needed all the study he could possibly fit in. Still, savoring the guilt that wasting time always engendered in him, he folded himself into the chair and switched on the computer. Mesmerized, he watched the copyright notices scroll up the screen as the machine booted the bits of its programming into place.
When the blank blue screen of the word processor came up, Hobart hunched forward and applied his fevered soul to the keys.
"Dearest Marjorie," he wrote, "you looked so good in class today I couldn't take my eyes off of you. I saw a drop of sweat on your shoulder, and longed to lick it off. I watched the strap of your bra and thought of the wonders that bra contained. I longed to rip that strap off, I longed to. . . "
Hobart paused, unsure of what he longed to do. He had many ideas, but was uncertain which, if any, were anatomically possible. As always when he thought of Marjorie there was only one thing he really longed to do. But he couldn't tell her, even in a virtual letter she would never see, that the thought of her made him overwhelmingly long to masturbate. He couldn't help it; it was the only band on the broad spectrum of sexual expression he knew anything about. Motionless, he stared at the screen, trying to ignore the pain in his groin, the swelling in his pants.
"Save Document (Y/N)?" the screen asked, and he pressed the N. He began again on a blank screen.
The door creaked open, "Hobart? Oh, you've made your bed. That's very good, Baby."
Hobart hit the computer's power switch and watched the screen go blank, losing the beginning of what had looked like a promising story.
"Ma! I thought we agreed that you weren't gonna barge in here any more."
"Oh, dear. I forgot. But it's all right, Baby, you've got nothing to hide from your mother." She looked as she always did from morning till after her soap operas in the afternoon, shapeless in an orange chenille robe with a tiny speck of dried egg on the left lapel and a larger coffee stain where her lap would be were she sitting down. Her brown hair was pulled back under a kerchief and her pale blue eyes perennially looked out with a mildly bewildered expression.
"And we also agreed you weren't gonna call me 'Baby.'"
"I'm sorry, Hobart. But you'll always be my baby."
"But I'm not. And we agreed you'd quit saying it when I graduated."
She smiled and patted his arm, "But you're still in school, dear. How was it today?"
"Tech doesn't count," he said. "It's just a little bank teller course for the summer."
"Well, when you graduate from there, I'll stop calling you Baby. I promise. I do wish you'd consider college, though. There's still time to start in the fall."
"For the millionth time, Ma. I may go to college some day. When I'm ready. I'm not ready, yet."
"Well," she said, swirling her orange chenille skirts as she turned to leave, "If you're not ready for college, maybe I should keep calling you 'Baby' after all."
"Ma. . . " But she was gone.
The shower was a quick one; she wanted to be dry and pretty when Raul got home. Lately he'd been so critical. But when she pulled open the dresser drawer in which she kept underwear and blouses, she sighed and sniffed the mildew smell. One by one she opened the other drawers, and found the smell strongest in the bottom drawer, which was Raul's.
She rummaged through the drawer. She would take everything out and wash it, but first she would ask Raul. He was so crabby about her touching his things. Idly, she explored through the socks and condoms in the back of the drawer, and saw the envelope underneath. No, she thought, it's not that envelope. But when she opened it and looked inside, she saw it was. Raul could never throw away anything.
Inside the envelope was a white gummed label, printed in red and black ink. "CAUTION," it said, "Explosion Hazard." And underneath that it said, "Glycerol Trinitrate (nitroglycerine) Belden Chemical Co. Ann Arbor, Michigan. KEEP COOL DO NOT SHAKE OR DROP."
The first time she'd found that label it had been in the top drawer, which they shared. "It's nothing," he had said, shrugging.
"No, it's not nothing," she had said. "I know what nitroglycerine is. What does this mean?"
"Nothing. It belongs to Julio. One of his crazy schemes."
"Tell me this scheme of Julio's."
"It's nothing. Foolishness."
The painted wooden panel between the refrigerator and the
grill didn't look like a door until it opened. "What in hell
were they laughing about out here?" Marcus Aurelius Wood looked
like a small mountain masquerading as a human being in faded
camouflage fatigues with the sleeves rolled up to reveal powerful
rock-hard forearms. Straw-colored hair was cut short on the top
of his head and shaved off altogether over the ears, and his
craggy nose was askew, the heritage of a badly-set break.
"I think they were laughing at your daddy's pictures."
"Why's that girl keep coming in here?"
"Not for food, that's for sure. She asks for rare burgers and I burn 'em black, and she still comes back. Now with another one."
"I don't like it," he said. "I don't like it one little bit." He raised an Uzi submachine gun and took aim through the window. "Pow," he said, imitating the sound of a gunshot.
"Put that thing away," said the waitress, "before somebody sees it."
"Oh, Ma," he said. "Ain't no one looking."