MONICA IS AT THE HOUSE of Rising Visions in what she guesses they would call the lounge, waiting for Polly to come out from the red-velvet-curtained cubicle where she’s having her fortune told. Monica finished first, and is kind of excited to tell Polly what she heard, even though she thinks it will probably be essentially the same thing Polly gets told. Monica doesn’t really believe in fortune-telling. She believes in signs, but that’s information that comes from within herself, from her own unconscious, not from some stranger who takes Visa.
Last night at dinner Polly insisted that a trip to New Orleans was incomplete without a visit to a fortune-teller, and she suggested they go to one before they left for the airport. It surprised Monica that Polly would have such a strong belief in them. But Polly went on and on, talking about how there are ways to divine things, there are people who can intuit things, come on, hadn’t Monica ever heard of those psychics who help the police find crime victims and lost items? Hadn’t Monica herself ever had a psychic vibe about something?
“No,” Monica said. “Nope, I have had signs, but I have never had a psychic vibe.”
“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to go to a reading,” Polly said.
“No I’m not! And anyway, I doubt that the people we’d be seeing are real psychics like those cop ones. Plus, it costs too much.”
“I’ll treat you,” Polly said, and she just wouldn’t stop, and so, fine, here they are at the fortune-telling Mall of America.
It does seem like a kind of mall, though maybe “strip mall” is more accurate. The place is long and narrow, just a line of six cubicles with fortune-tellers inside, with a row of chairs for people waiting on the other side of the booths. Lots of red and black, lots of velvet, dim lights on some ratty chandeliers. When they first walked in, there was a man who was available, but neither Polly nor Monica wanted him—they asked if they could wait for a woman. “Suit yourself,” the man said, and went out for a smoke. Monica thought that was unprofessional. She thought he might have said something like, “I see you have had bad experiences with men.”
Monica got a woman who seemed to look the part: long black hair, a great deal of eyeliner, long red fingernails, a throaty voice. She wore a full-length, black velvet dress embroidered in silver thread with all kinds of things, including suns and moons and pentagrams. Her little table was covered with a black silk shawl, and it had the longest fringe Monica had ever seen. She kind of wanted that shawl. If she’d had enough nerve she would have asked to buy it, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t for sale.
The fortune-teller, whose name was Twilight (Sure it is, Monica thought), had a few different kinds of tarot cards. She had what she called a divining stick, decorated with beautiful stones. She even had a crystal ball, but that was extra if you wanted her to look into it for you. Praying for you after your visit, that was extra, too, but highly recommended. “No thank you,” Monica said, a bit too emphatically, perhaps. She requested a basic tarot card reading.
She looks at her watch, crosses her legs, and starts to jiggle her foot. Polly has to come out now, or they’re going to miss their flight. She leans forward, straining to hear what’s going on, but can’t. And then she decides not to try to eavesdrop anyway. It would be wrong, like listening in on someone’s confession. Which, actually, she has done and then felt bad about, but who could walk away from a guy confessing pretty loudly about infidelity with his wife’s best friend? And he didn’t even get that bad a penance, just a couple of rosaries and a promise that he would stop the affair and go to a therapist. Well, maybe the man did. Maybe the wife was a shrew and deserved to be cheated on. Monica shouldn’t be so judgmental. She shouldn’t eat so much bread.
The bell over the door tinkles and two young women come in, giggling. The man comes out and says he’s available if one of them would like to come with him. They look at each other and then ask if they can be seen together.
“Up to you,” the man says. “You both have to pay the full amount. And I’m going to say some real personal things about y’all in front of each other.”
“That’s okay,” they say, all singsongy and together, and Monica feels sure they’re cheerleaders. Maybe it’s something in the air, but she really does feel sure they are cheerleaders. Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. She feels so sure she wants to ask them, but she doesn’t. “I’m Midnight,” the man says, and the girls say (together), Ohhhhhhh, and Monica rolls her eyes. They disappear behind the curtain.
She is just about to knock on Polly’s curtain, should she be able to do such a thing, when Polly bursts out of the little space, grinning.
“What did yours say?” Monica asks, as they walk quickly (a little too quickly, for Monica’s taste, but Polly would move quickly if she were ascending the ladder to the gallows).
“Wait till we’re in the car!” Polly says. “The crystal ball reading, oh, my God!” Now Monica feels bad that she didn’t get the crystal ball reading, too.
“Did you get the she’ll-pray-for-you thing?” she asks.
“Of course!” Polly says. “Didn’t you?”
“No,” Monica says. Then, apologetically, “I was too cheap.”
“I was paying!” Polly says, and Monica says, “I know.” And then she doesn’t really want to share what Twilight told her anymore. Because it wasn’t even that interesting and it was not what she wanted to hear. She probably should have gotten the crystal ball reading.
As it happens, Monica doesn’t have to worry about saying anything, because Polly starts talking a mile a minute and does not let up until they reach the airport. Her psychic told her that she was going to meet a man who would become more of a friend than a lover but he would be a good friend and they would end up living together. He would take her often to Paris, where it looked like he might have an apartment? A permanent hotel room? “And then she looked at me as if I should know,” Polly, says, laughing. “So I said, ‘An apartment, with a beautifully stocked kitchen.’ And then she said, ‘Oh, no, he’s not a cook. Never has been a cook. That’s where you’ll come in, because you’re a cook, am I right? Your job is something with food.’ ”
“Wow,” Monica manages to fit in.
“Yeah, and she told me that I am going to get a dog, a dachshund, which she knew I have always secretly wanted but never got, but now I will, a red doxie, maybe a mini one.”
Oh, it went on and on. That Polly should wear more yellow because it lit up her aura and brought her good fortune. That her business would thrive until she sold it, and then it would go under. “Which actually made me kind of happy, which I guess is small of me,” Polly says.
She keeps talking, and Monica gets bored and starts thinking about the food they had there, chickory coffee, red beans and rice—the rice and beans were just from a fast-food stand, and they were so good! They also had oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s, and Monica tried escargots, so fun to even say, and she’s going to tell Lucille Howard all about that because Lucille said one day in her baking class that eating snails was one thing she wanted to do. Well, wait till Monica tells her they were escargots à la bordelaise, baked in red wine and garlic sauce and sprinkled with cheese and breadcrumbs they made out of French bread. And oh, those muffulettas! They got them from the Central Grocery because Polly said they had to get them there. They thought about sharing one because they were so huge but then they didn’t share and they both ate every last bite. Monica told Polly they should put muffulettas on the menu at the Henhouse and Polly said it would be too hard to find the right olive salad to put on top and Monica said you could get everything on the Internet now. “Who would eat them, though, in Mason?” Polly asked, and Monica said, “Us! And Tiny!”
“Yeah, Tiny’ll eat purt near everything,” Polly said.
That was true, except at breakfast, when he refused to eat anything but the same thing he always had.
At the gate, Polly asks Monica what her fortune-teller said.
“Oh, not so much, really,” Monica says. “She knew my dad had died when I was real young. She said my mom was watching from heaven. She said I was going to get married soon, but to a man whose first name starts with P.”
“P?” Polly says. “Are you sure she said P? P sounds a lot like T, you know.”
“I’m sure. I even said, ‘You mean P like Paul,’ and she said, ‘Yes, but it isn’t Paul. Or Peter.’ She might be wrong,” Monica adds.
“I suppose,” Polly says, but Monica can tell she doesn’t think so.
“Huh,” Polly says.
They fall asleep on the plane just like that because one thing about New Orleans is you don’t sleep much because of the beckoning fingers of jazz and zydeco music and the meandering crowds holding great big glasses of booze and the bright-colored beads and the whoo-ha and yee-ows as people spin wildly around on dance floors and the exotic-looking drag queens (the only people who can wear blue eyeshadow and wear it well) and the Creole you hear and all the other languages and the horses and buggies and gaslights and even the danger, even the little sense of danger they felt when they were followed back to their hotel a bit too closely by a couple of really seedy-looking characters. Well, seedy in New Orleans is romantic. Everything there is romantic. When she marries P., she’s coming to New Orleans on her honeymoon. She hopes T. will be good and sorry.