Dianna covertly studied his face. Or, at least, tried to. Despite the strangeness of his skin and the oddness of his energy, his face was so completely ordinary that it was hard to categorize any detail. It was as if the moment she remembered the size, or shape, or orientation of any of his features, the memory was canceled out. As if no short-term or working memories could be anchored. Dianna knew she should be worried about that, but wasn’t able to focus on worrying about it.
The only detail that stuck with her was his tattoos. He wore a dress shirt buttoned at the wrists and all the way to the Adam’s apple, but peeking out from collar and cuffs were flies. Very lifelike. As beautifully rendered as the roses on her inner forearm, but deeply ugly. A rose inked so vibrantly that it seemed to bloom before the eyes was a thing of wonder; flies that looked like they could lift from that pallid skin and fly directly at her was another.
As he shuffled, Dianna rubbed at the spot on her forearm where he’d touched her. Near her rose. It repulsed her as much as if it had been one of those flies crawling on her. The odd sound intensified for a moment and she had the sudden, irrational thought that it was the buzzing of blowfly wings. Which was impossible. Silly, really, and she forced the idea away. Then Owen Minor tapped the deck on the table to smooth the cards. Before he handed it back he put it to his nose and sniffed. Not merely a quick sniff, but he ran his nose along the long side of the deck, taking a deep inhale. His eyelids fluttered as if the smell gave him an erotic thrill.
Dianna felt a flush of disgust and wished she could just end the session, but that was against store policy and her own professional integrity. It was not required that the customer be likable or even nice as long as they did nothing that was overtly and inarguably offensive. Most often with male customers they spent a lot of time looking at her chest. Having very big breasts came with challenges. Apart from being a source of frequent back pain, they were an eye-magnet. During puberty that was humiliating. As a young woman hunting her way through the club scene it had been fun, but the novelty wore off very quickly because her breasts became a way-obvious focus of attention, comment, and groping. Guys would find ways of standing so close to her that a brush of their arms or hands against her breasts was inevitable. Hugs were often wraparound so that there was some side-boob touching. All perfectly innocent. Right. And the stares. She even once had one of those novelty T-shirts that said MY PERSONALITY IS UP HERE, with an arrow pointing to her face. It backfired. For a couple of years she wore clothing that covered her chest and blocked any hint of cleavage, but that felt like a defeat, it felt cowardly. Over time she reclaimed her sense of clothing style, and tried to just ignore drifting gazes and obvious lustful glances. Once in a rare while someone would make a deliberately crude comment. If it was in a club—and it happened in lesbian bars, too—she would either freeze that person out of her awareness or wither them with a biting comment. If it was here at the shop, she reserved the right to end any sessions that smacked of sexual harassment. Ophelia accepted that, but they differed a bit on where the line was. Staring was not really actionable. Sniffing tarot cards wasn’t, either.
All of that said, this man skeeved her out on a deep level. Everything about him felt transgressive, though it was hard to land on exactly what was wrong with him. Maybe it was those blowfly tattoos.
Maybe only that.
She held the cards and went deep into herself. Listening with senses not listed among the standard five. Unnamed senses that connected her with energies that flowed subtly or dramatically all around her. Then she dealt three cards facedown on the table, took a breath, and turned over the first card.
“This card represents you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
“Dianna…?”
She blinked and looked up at Ophelia, who stood a few feet away, hands clasped as if nervous.
“What?”
“I asked if you were ready for your next client?”
Dianna blinked again. “Next…?”
It took her a moment to come back to the moment. To be where she was. She looked around at the store, and it was as if the overhead lights were just now coming on, though they had been on all along. The client chair was empty, placed orderly across from her. Her deck of cards stood in a neat tower. A few customers browsed, talking with one another in low voices. Rain pattered on the window.
“What?” she asked.
Ophelia gave her a queer look. “You okay, sweetie?”
Dianna nodded vaguely and glanced down at her client list. The first name was Owen Minor. Odd name. She wondered who he was or what he’d be like.
“Um … yes,” she said. “You can send Mr. Minor over.”
Ophelia’s expression changed into one of confusion, with half a smile as if she was trying to figure out a joke. “You mean Gertie Swanson. She’s in a hurry, too. Has to get back to the station.”
“No,” said Dianna, tapping the list. “Owen Minor. He’s the first…”
Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of the clock above the window. The hands had moved and the time was wrong.
“Mr. Minor left already,” said Ophelia.
“What?” asked Dianna again.
“Sure, he was very pleased with the reading.” Vertical lines now formed between Ophelia’s brows. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Dianna quickly. “Right. Gertie. Sorry, I guess I had a hard time coming back from … well, you know.”
Ophelia nodded, but looked unconvinced.
“It’s good. It’s fine,” insisted Dianna. “Everything’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. Forty-nine minutes of her life was gone and she had no memory at all of the customer whose name was at the top of her list. No memory of him, of the reading, of anything. She sat there, rubbing the inside of her forearm, listening internally for even the echo of a memory. Finding nothing. A fly, trapped inside the picture window, buzzed faintly.
No, she thought, nothing is fine at all.
13
Monk sat in his car and wondered if he was going to get storm-surged the fuck back to the Delaware River.
Streams of muddy water came running out of the fields to fill the gullies on either side of the road. A torrent slapped its way past his car, gurgling along the doors. He had the heater on but didn’t know if he had enough gas to keep the engine running until the storm let up.
“Should have gassed in goddamn Doylestown,” he told the night.
The perverse and contrary voice that lived inside his head told him he should have stayed in New York. He told that voice to shut the hell up, but it only laughed at him.
Monk thought about Patty and tried her cell four more times. Got nothing. Nerves made him try to get to her, but his car never made it off the muddy verge and back onto the road. The wheels spun mud into the storm and accomplished exactly nothing beyond digging him deeper into the muck. Monk slammed it back into park and glared through the slap-slap-slap of the wipers. Thunder was continuous, as if the storm had parked itself overhead and simply refused to move on until it had beaten Pine Deep to a pulp.
“Fuck you,” Monk snarled.
The storm just laughed, just rained harder.