Mark Harvey Levine
TAROT READER, late 30s to early 70s
A sleazy-looking street psychic, holding tarot cards and standing at a little fold-up table, accosts a stranger.
TAROT READER [With a vague foreign accent.] Here, come my friend. I give you a freebie. I read your tarot. I tell you your future. And this is freebie. This is free.
[Turns over a card.]
Look at the first card! Ahhh . . . I see already you’re going to be rich! Yes, very rich, my friend. Filthy rich. Dirty, dirty, dirty, filthy rich. You will not be able to wash it off, that’s how rich you’ll be. Pigs rolling in their own slop will not be as soiled as the filthiness of your richitude.
[Turns over a card.]
And you will be rich many years, for I see a long life ahead of you. Long, long, LONG life. It will seem to go on forever! Friends, family will be dying all around you, and you—you will just keep living. And living. And then you turn around and you are living some more. You will live so long that you will beg and pray for the sweet release of merciful death—that’s how long you’ll live. And all this time? Filthy rich. Just nasty, squalidly . . . a contamination of riches. You will be Rich Out Loud.
[Turns over a card.]
Now this card here, this is the Six of Cups. It means you are going to have six cups. Not those plastic purple ones from Target, like you have now. No, my friend, these will be solid-gold goblets, because you’re indecently rich and you actually think that’s what wealthy people drink out of. They will be huge, heavy, gaudy things, with large jewels encrusted in them right where you would grab them, so that every time you pick them up you cut the hell out of your hands.
But you don’t care because that’s how rich you are. You can buy new skin, and you can buy new friends when they all leave you because you’re doing things like buying immense gold goblets in the worst possible taste just to show them how very rancidly rich you are.
[Turns over a card.]
Which brings us to your love life. Because of your gigantic wealthiness, you will attract a multitude of women. Or men. Whatever you want! There will be hordes of grasping, fawning sycophants beating down your door, offering up every possible sexual delight and perversion—all you have to do is open the door and point at the crowd! “You, you, and . . . I think . . . you.” And in they will come, ready to submit themselves to your most debasing whims, the most sordid, sadistic desires you can imagine. And, my friend, you can imagine plenty, because you are grimy with opulence and can afford the many lawsuits that will follow.
There is your reading! And it is absolutely free! Although, considering how extremely, disgustingly rich you shall shortly be, would you like to perhaps make a small donation . . . ?