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A dark fringed shawl draped over the table and soft light through half-closed curtains gave Kate’s living room the ambiance fortune-telling clients expected. She stacked the Tarot cards beside her crystal ball, dreading her next customer. Kate would have preferred never to meet the irritating woman again, but she couldn’t turn down business. Maybe she would see something that would enlighten her, if that was possible.
In response to a timid tap on the door, Kate called, “Come in, it’s open.”
Posey entered with a tiny dog tucked into her purse. A whiff of cheap perfume came with her, and Kate was glad she had her windows open. Lobo ignored the little dog, but it went into yapping hysterics at the sight of him. Posey babbled, “Is Baby excited? Does Baby like the big doggie?”
“Perhaps,” Kate said, “Baby could wait outside.”
Posey looked startled. “He’ll settle down in a few minutes.”
“I’d rather not”— have my eardrums shattered for another second—“have you distracted by him. The yard is enclosed.”
Posey set her purse down and scooped the dog out, her baby-talk endearments drowned out by his shrill barks, and carried him outside. Kate was surprised to notice a designer name on the bag. With her dated hairstyle and her dress that reminded Kate of a little girl on an Easter egg hunt, Posey didn’t seem to have any sense of style. The purse probably came from a consignment shop. Kate often found fashionable clothes at such places. Posey could have, too, but she clung to her cute-and-adorable-ness, unaware it had expired when she left kindergarten.
Posey returned and sat by the table, knees together, head cocked to the side. “I feel so close to Baby. Because of my past life as a dog. And of course, the whole not-having-babies thing. I didn’t ever mean to name him Baby. I just kept calling him that.”
Because he reminds you of your puppies? “Have you done a past life regression? Past life astrology? Anything to compare with what Sierra said?”
“No.” Posey’s eyes grew round. “I’d be overwhelmed if I knew more.”
“It can be even more overwhelming to see the future.” Kate gave Posey time for her words to sink in. When she saw no sign that they did, only the same anxious stare, she asked, “Did you come with a particular question in mind?”
“I think so.” Posey’s head tipped the other way. “How do you answer it?”
“Three ways. A Tarot spread, a palm reading, and the crystal ball. Some clients want only the cards, though, so I can do a specific spread based on what they want to know.”
Posey shuddered. “I don’t like Tarot cards. There are very disturbing pictures on some of them.”
“The ones that look the most troubling don’t necessarily have terrible meanings. And if there’s bad stuff in your future, seeing the cards won’t change it. They connect with its pattern, and then you can act to change it.”
Posey fidgeted with her long, lace-edged sleeves. “My question is about a man. We met online through Spiritual Singles. He’s very charming, but he just quit smoking after forty years. I wonder if he’ll be around.”
“You’re asking about his future, then?”
“Well, yes. He’s fifty-five, after all.”
“I can’t read his future for you, only yours. I might see if there’s a man in your life in the coming years, but not if that man is him. If you’re afraid he’s going to drop dead because he smoked for so long, I can’t tell you.”
“Oh.” Posey crossed her ankles and smoothed her skirt. “I’m not sure what I want to know, then. I guess I could ask about my future in general.” Her voice rose at the end of her sentences, converting her statements into questions. “Health, money, love.”
“All right. We’ll start with the simple three-card spread. Shuffle and cut the cards, then pick three without looking at them and lay them face up in a row that goes from me toward you.”
Posey dithered over pulling three cards, her eyes closed, displaying lids caked with thick blue and purple eyeshadow that matched the flowers in her dress. Can someone with makeup that bad really be an artist? She finally laid the cards out, face down, and sighed.
Kate turned over the one closest to her. The three of swords. Perhaps the most negative card in the deck, it showed a heart pierced by three swords. Posey gasped. “It’s one of those dreadful ones.”
“It’s about your past, though. The first card is the past, the second the present, and the third the future.”
“My past lives?”
“No. Your past in this life. You may have suffered from grief, depression, or the loss of a job or relationships.”
Posey nodded. “My karmic baggage made me go through all of that. I’ve been divorced three times. And I had to stop working as a hairdresser because of my chronic pain. It was very sad. I loved my work.”
“Then I don’t need to interpret this card for you.” Kate had the impression that Posey was sadder about her work than her husbands. But then, the little flower-fairy was hot on the scent of number four. “You see why you drew it.”
“Yes,” Posey whispered mournfully. “I’ve had a very hard life.”
Kate turned over the middle card. “This represents your current life situation.” It was the five of cups, an image of a bowed, cloaked figure with three spilled goblets at his feet and two upright goblets nearby. “You may be paying too much attention to your losses and ignoring what you still have.” She could hear AA old-timers in her head, repeating the sayings that knocked sense into newcomers. Get off the pity pot. Have an attitude of gratitude. “The man in the picture is crying over spilt milk. Or wine. If this is a question about health, you might be overidentified with the sick role. If it’s about love, you might be thinking too much about your divorces. If it’s about work, you may be focused on what you did before rather than what you can do now. And you could be dwelling too much on your past lives instead of the one you’re living. That’s a strong possibility.”
Posey frowned. “I have to pay attention to my past lives. That’s how I’ll heal my health problems. Sierra says we need to dig into our dirt, from our present life and the ones before. You remember your ceremony. You fought it. You wouldn’t look. But if you do, it’s the first step to healing.”
Judging from Posey’s whiny, fearful outlook, the cards knew more than Sierra did. However, Kate usually didn’t argue with a client during a reading. She turned the third card, revealing the Devil reversed.
Posey moaned, hands to her cheeks. “Another one of the bad ones.”
“When it’s reversed, it’s more like a wake-up call. You may have financial problems or your health may not improve, but you don’t have to let it drag your whole life down. Look at the people you surround yourself with. If you’re having trouble being positive, see if people are nitpicking or attacking you, or if you’re being undermined spiritually.”
“Oh, no, I’m being supported. Sierra says we can change everything when we work through our karma. Like she did. So why would I get this awful card?”
“It’s not awful. It’s advice. Are you sure you’re getting real support from this group?”
“Of course I am. We’re not ...” Posey chewed her lip. “We’re not an emotional support group. We’re a karmic support group. We have work to do. The next stage in Sierra’s soul group’s karma is the retreat center she and Yeshi plan to start.”
Holy shit. Was the support group a money-making scam after all? “Do members of the soul group give to the retreat center?”
“They aren’t the only ones. I give a little from every sale I make. But their karma has made them more successful in this life than the rest of us, and more seriously ill. They have more responsibilities and more burdens. Magda is very generous. I’m not in the soul group, so compared to her and Leon, I’m not as able or as strongly called.”
Did able and strongly called mean rich? “What kind of shop does Leon run?”
“One of those very expensive clothing stores on the Plaza. Such beautiful things. I could never afford them, but I love to look.”
“Where do you sell your art? Which galleries?”
“I sell it online.” Posey handed Kate a lavender business card with Poesy by Posey in blue script. “I do poems in calligraphy to order, with illustrations. Flowers, angels, things like that. Do you have a favorite poem? I could do it for you instead of paying cash.”
“Thanks, but I don’t barter.” Was Posey broke or just dense? Surely she should have noticed that Kate was not the flowers-and-angels type. Seeing Posey’s crushed expression, Kate changed the subject. “For the next part of the reading, I need to look at your dominant hand first, and then the other.”
Posey turned her right hand palm up on the table. Kate took her time to examine the lines and mounts and the overall hand shape, and then studied the left. An oval, long-fingered water hand type, introverted and not assertive. On both hands, Posey’s heart line began under her middle finger, suggesting someone who was selfish in love. The head line was broken, a sign of inconsistent thinking. Her life line was close to the thumb, indicating a lack of energy and vigor. Posey’s fate line suggested she let herself be dominated by outside forces, and her marriage line was short and didn’t reach the heart line. She wasn’t going to like what Kate had to tell her.
Posey scooted forward on her chair. “Does it look promising for me and Rex? He’s the man I met through Spiritual Singles.”
This had to be Mae’s client, the one she’d been afraid would get dragged into Sierra’s group. “I’m sorry, but no. I don’t see this new relationship lasting. You don’t seem to be cut out for romantic commitment.”
“Pooh. I just need the right person to make me bloom.” Posey stuck her chest out defiantly, hands clasped in her lap. “It’s always worked that way.”
And you got divorced from all those right people. Kate continued, “Your hand says you’re imaginative but not a logical thinker. And you’re shy. This can make you turn to people you think are stronger.”
Posey bowed her head. Her right thumb rubbed the left with a pressure that blanched her nail. What had made her uncomfortable?
Kate prodded, “Did what I said resonate for you?”
“I do like to be around strong people.” Posey looked up with her customary tilted head and a faint smile. “I hope Rex is as strong as I think he is. That’s part of what I look for in a man.”
And what’s the other part, money? Clingy and needy, Posey might want to be taken care of financially as well as emotionally.
A pickup truck pulled up outside and Baby launched into a squealy bark-fest. Kate glanced through the aperture in the curtains to see Tim walking across the yard toward the side of the house. Good. He’d remembered he was supposed to use the back door if the curtains were partly closed. One of the challenges of moving in together was her working at home. She sent Lobo to shut the door to the living room.
“Do you have another client?” Posey asked.
“No, that’s my boyfriend getting home. Are you ready for the crystal ball reading?”
Posey didn’t seem to hear the question. “How long have you and your boyfriend been together?”
“We’ve known each other longer, but we’ve been a couple for a year and half.”
“Are you going to get married?” Posey beamed as if marriage was the most magical, fairy-tale thing imaginable.
“Eventually. After my three-year sobriety anniversary. He’ll have had over three years by then, too.”
“I can’t imagine waiting that long to marry someone I loved. I’m a hopeless romantic.”
Hopeless is right. “Are you ready for the crystal ball reading now?”
“Oh, yes. What do I do?”
“Focus on the ball.” Kate drew off the black cloth that covered it. “Send your energy into it. You won’t see anything, but if you concentrate on sharing yourself with it, I’ll see more. If you have a specific question, now would be a good time to think about it.”
Her shoulders hiking up and her eyes bright, Posey clutched her hands together at her heart and wriggled. It was an excited child’s gesture and made her look more than ever like a middle-aged woman playing the role of a little girl. “I’ll be thinking about Rex.”
Kate closed her eyes for a moment to quiet her mind, and then cupped her hands around the wooden stand that held the ball and gazed into the crystal’s depths. Its interior grew smoky and then slowly cleared. Instead of playing at being a child, in the vision Posey seemed to be playing Ophelia. Not onstage, but floating on her back in a river with her hair spreading out, her dress sodden, and flowers drifting around her. On the banks grew scraggly trees and weedy grasses, a narrow band of green between the water and the dry earth around it. A few dead trees stood silhouetted against a red and pink-brown desert on the far shore, a scene dominated by a mountain with a rock formation that resembled a sleeping turtle at its crest.
Kate waited for more of the image to emerge, but instead it began to dissolve back into smoke. What did it mean? Was Posey going off the deep end? How was she like Ophelia?
Kate looked up from the ball. “I don’t fully understand what I saw. But usually the client knows what the imagery means or can help me piece it together. You were playing Ophelia.”
“Who?”
“The girl in Hamlet.”
Posey frowned. “Is that the play with ‘to be or not to be’ in it?”
She didn’t know? Kate caught herself being judgmental. It was possible Posey had only a high school education and her cosmetology degree. “Yes, that’s one of Hamlet’s speeches. One of the other famous lines is ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’ ”
“I think I’ve heard that. I never knew what it meant, though. Telling someone to go to a convent.”
Kate kept her voice soft. Posey wasn’t going to like the explanation. “In the same scene, Hamlet tells Ophelia there will be no more marriages. Later, he kills her father. She goes crazy and starts handing out flowers. And then she drowns. In the ball, you looked like a lot of the famous paintings of Ophelia. It was a place on what I think was the Rio Grande where there’s a mountain with a turtle shape in the rocks. I’ve heard of Turtleback Mountain, but I can’t think where it is.”
“Truth or Consequences. Where Rex lives.” The petite woman moved even further to the edge of her chair, her eyes alight. A fragile fifty-something Ophelia, all mad floral innocence. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it? Floating with flowers in the place where we’ll have our first date?”
“I just told you she drowns. If Rex plays Hamlet to your Ophelia, the image may mean you’ll be disappointed in love. Or you’re about to lose a parental figure. Rex may even be responsible.”
Posey appeared ready to fall off her chair or take flight. “It could mean a spiritual death. Washing away my karma, the seeds of my samskaras. And the petals of my chakras flowering.”
“You do know Hamlet is a tragedy, don’t you?”
“But floating with flowers is too pretty to mean anything negative.”
Kate took her time putting the cloth back over the ball, arranging it to drape symmetrically. She liked to think her visions helped people prepare for the future, but Posey had disregarded the most likely meaning. “A lot of things are beautiful. Coral snakes. Poison arrow frogs. They can still be bad news.”
“You really need to come back to the support group, Kate.”
“Where did that come from?”
“You see the dark side of everything. We could bring you into love and light.”
“How? First you tell me I resisted digging into my dirt, which I assume means seeing my shadow side and my bad karma, and now you say this group will bring me into the light.”
To Kate’s confusion and surprise, Posey held her arms out and began to sing off-key, a song from the seventies about reaching out in the darkness to find a friend. Trying not to cringe at the display, Kate cut in and summed up what she’d learned from the reading. It seemed to go past Posey unheard, so she wrapped up the session as quickly as she could without being rude.
When Posey left, Kate let Lobo out of his harness to play and then called Bernadette.
“I just talked with one of Sierra Mu’s support group members. I found out she tells people with money or influence that they’re members of her soul group, and they’re giving substantial donations toward starting a retreat center.”
“But she’s still not charging money?”
“No.” Kate rolled to a window and opened the curtains, letting the late afternoon sunlight flood the room. “But Yeshi must be. They’re starting the retreat center together.”
“Will it be for his work or for hers? That could make a difference in whether or not it’s shady.”
“How?”
“Tibetan medicine isn’t licensed here yet—”
“You’re kidding. He can’t be a DOM?” Doctors of Oriental Medicine were licensed providers under New Mexico law.
“No. Tibetan practices are similar to both Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, but all the accredited programs are in Chinese medicine. I wasn’t saying that would make him shady, though. It just means he can’t do something like join an integrative medical group. He’s had good training. I looked him up. He studied at the Tibetan medical school in India, and he’s licensed in massage here, which is a big part of their healing system. There are four Tibetan centers in Santa Fe, but they’re spiritual or cultural. A Tibetan health retreat could be an asset to the community. Something based on Sierra’s concepts wouldn’t be. That would be shady.”
“I don’t know what they plan to do exactly. He’s supposedly in Sierra’s soul group. He doesn’t fit in, though. They have chronic illnesses, but he didn’t participate in the support group, and he looks ...” Kate sought the word to best describe the man, “... robust.”
“I wonder if they work together. And what she does, if they do. Are you going back to the group to find out more?”
Kate tensed at the prospect of another session with Sierra and Posey. There was also the hassle of getting into the house and past Mitzi the pit bull. “I don’t want to.”
“You should think about it.”
Kate was already thinking. If Posey was fishing for a rich man and caught one, she could bring him into Sierra’s group, even if he might eventually tell her, Get thee to a nunnery. Did Rex have money? Apparently Leon and Magda did. Previously, Kate and Bernadette had dismissed Sierra’s capacity to raise funds, but depending on who fell for her ideas, a few followers might be all she needed.