"Chile, you need to take care of yourself, get your life straight, put yourself in Jesus' hands."
"I've been meaning to," Cindy said. "I promise, I'll get on it right away." Mama Lucy gave Cindy a look, a look that went right through the back of Cindy's head.
"What I'm seein' here," Mama Lucy said, poking a bony black finger in a lily-white palm, "what I see, is a karmic ulceration in your second house. You got a plumbin' problem with Pluto, girl, you got the past backin' up."
"Is that bad?"
"It isn't real good. 'Course, it isn't real bad," she said quickly, catching Cindy's eye, the flutter in the hollow of her throat. "What it is, what we call it in the seerin' trade, it's a indication, is all. The planets and the stars got signs for us to see. It's up to us if we keep on drivin' down the road they're pointing at."
"Well that's good to know," Cindy said. "I'd like to think we can all, you know, do better, like you said?"
"We all can, girl." Mama Lucy gave her a smile and squeezed her hand. "God's grace is working for us all the time."
"Someone is," Cindy said with a visible sigh. "I've been saved from dire harm any number of times. Can I have another Nehi orange?"
"You can have anything you want, long as you get up and get it for yourself "
"Oh, thanks, you are so sweet, you know that?" Cindy bounced up, planted a kiss on Mama Lucy's leathery cheek, pranced like a puppy across the wooden floor, flushed with sheer pleasure at the chance to run free in an ethnic atmosphere, a room filled with people of every shade and hue.
"You and me got to talk," Mama Lucy said, still startled by the kiss, "I don't guess you surprised to hear that."
Dreamer saw Mama Lucy had run out of smiles.
"It's not what you think," he told her. "Okay, it sort of is, but it's not."
"It's not what you think either, boy."
"Now what's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't be pushing a prophet, you might get a answer you don't want to hear. Lord help us, Dreamer, that chile ain't big enough to be drinkin' Nehi orange. I'm surprised you're not under arrest."
"She's not a child, she's nineteen."
"She's a child at heart, and she isn't fully clothed. I can see all her private parts. I don't allow naked girls in here, this ain't a bawdy house."
"She's not entirely naked. She is scantily clad."
"Naked is as naked does."
Dreamer knew better than to chase after that. Mama Lucy was right. Sometimes it's better to remain mystified, to stay completely in the dark.
Laughter came from the kitchen, and Dreamer realized it wasn't just Cindy, but Horace E. Temple as well, Horace, who was meaner than Dinh and about as much fun. Still, like Dinh, he was under Cindy's spell.
"Listen," Dreamer said. "I got this thing in my head, I can't seem to sort it out. You don't think she could be some kinda–Some kind of angel, do you? Some sort of celestial person, am I being silly or what?"
Mama Lucy drew in a breath. For an instant, she nearly showed a hint of surprise, nearly showed a little of herself, which a person of the prophet persuasion never likes to do at all.
"Don't you even be thinking 'bout heavenly persons," she said, "that's God's business, not yours."
"She's got these silvery eyes," Dreamer said.
"I know what kinda eyes she's got. You don't have to tell me that."
You told me to bring her here. Before I went to the party over there. I thought it was Eileen you were talking about. It wasn't, though, it was Cindy; you didn't tell me that."
"Don't be double guessin' me. You asking questions, givin' back answers to yourself."
"It isn't her or it is?"
"Why don't you tell me?"
"Okay," Dreamer said, knowing when to quit. "you knew I'd meet her there, right, you knew that?"
"I knew that, Dreamer, the night you an' Junior Lewis saw her the first time, the night you was out where you shouldn't oughta be."
"Junior told you that?"
"Nobody told me anything, boy."
Mama Lucy leaned across the table and took Dreamer's hands. "You got doubts about what this girl is to you, don't tell me you don't. You'd best listen to your head. Trouble finds her, trouble binds her. And you're right squat in the middle of that. Something else, too. You got lots of women trouble coming. Coming from them you know, comin' from one you didn't know you did."
"You want to run over that again?"
"You want to pay your bill? That angel of yours has drunk every Nehi in the house…"