Fortuna and the Scapegrace Read online

  THE SOOTHSAYER’S ROOM WAS elegantly simple, with none of the flamboyant finery one typically finds in such an establishment. There were no tarot cards strewn about, and no voodoo dolls. There were no Zodiacal charts or spirit bones or telepathic hairballs. The walls were whitewashed and blank. Somehow this austerity lent an unexpected credibility to the little industry and its alabaster proprietress. One sensed that a lucid insight could be more genuinely ascertained in such a tidy and colorless venue.

  A dark curtain divided that part of the room in which we stood from another part kept out of sight. A large silver bowl rested on a squat table, and an orbicular lamp hovered above it like a miniature moon. The bowl was half full of water. A pair of spoke-back chairs faced each other from opposite sides of the table. The lady bid me to sit on one chair, and so I did.

  She sat on the other.

  A brackish fragrance wafted from the bowl between us, indicating that the water it held had been drawn from the bay. My senses were somewhat aroused, and I could also detect – like a breeze blown over a bank of tropical flowers – the unmistakable attar of a well-cosseted femininity.

  I was amused to see a yellow minnow darting about in the bowl.

  The lady smiled and reached toward me. “Take my hands.”

  I pushed up my sleeves and interlaced her thin fingers in my own. It had been some months since I had enjoyed a proper manicure, but she did not seem to mind my grubbiness. She squeezed my fingers affectionately as she lowered our hands into the tepid water.

  The sensation was quite visceral. It had been a long time since I had coupled with a creature quite so lovely, and it was most agreeable to do so now, if only in a benign, handholding fashion. The near warmth of the water heightened the sensuality of the moment, and I blush to say it, but the entire experience worked to cause a certain stirring in the long-dormant manliness sequestered in my trousers.

  Our hands floated weightless in the bowl.

  The minnow wove in and out around our wrists.

  I began to relax.

  At last, the lady leaned forward, entered a trance-like state, and then, as if peering into the pages of a book, she began to read.

  *****

  Now the language she spoke to me was not one I recognized at first. It was a melodious mix of awes and oohs and lahs. Her charming libretto rolled and flowed in exotic, rhythmic waves. The tip of her tongue appeared intermittently between her pearly teeth. The pale lucent rose of her lips pouted and puckered in resonant labial spasms. A deep part of her, it seemed, was communicating with a deep part of me.

  From a primordial place long submerged.

  In an original language before words.

  It made no sense at the start. But by and by, I began to believe I could indeed remember that old vernacular from long ago. It was water music sloshing. It was the jargon of bare wet skin brushing lightly against bare wet skin. The laughter of unborn babes. The lullaby of whales. The hallowed hush of a church left empty after the choir has shuffled out. It was God cracking his knuckles on high while stardust sprinkled down onto the eyelids of sleeping maidens.

  “I see rain,” she told me in this oblique language. “Followed by sunny days.”

  I took that as hopeful information.

  “I see a little death.”

  Not so hopeful. But then, I thought, perhaps she is only referring to the recent death of my former self.

  “And a rebirth.”

  Hmmm.

  I confess, I cannot prove she voiced these things exactly, but that was the translation as I heard it with my own ears. Her breath uttered forth little echoes of wind full of secret meanings designed, it seemed, for me alone. Such was her method of prophecy. And yes, I suppose a more skeptical sort could argue that what she uttered was so undeniably vague and unfathomable that what I thought I heard was only what I so badly wanted to hear.

  Phrases like –

  “I see a fondling bosom in your future.”

  And – “I see the possibility of great riches, and a much-sought comfort and contentment.”

  Who, outside of a lunatic, could hear such exactitudes through her nonsensical blarb and blabble?

  Well, I thought, time will unravel the particulars.

  Maybe it will prove true, maybe not.

  I was keen to find out.

  And anyway, I had experienced enough baffling mystery in my life to know that only a faithless dupe would choose to doubt such favorable, and possibly heaven-sent, blessings of foresight.

  AT LAST, THE FORTUNETELLER finished her predictive incantations.

  She lifted our dripping hands from the water.

  The Chinese man came in with a towel and we dried ourselves. I found this intimate and most enjoyable to do, holding our hands out before us over the bowl and patting them with the one towel. After that, the man took the towel and draped it over his shoulder, and then he squatted and, with a grunt, lifted the bowl from the table. He struggled not to slop the water and minnow onto the floor as he staggered into the darkness beyond the doorway.

  I looked into the lady’s face. She seemed strangely familiar. Her eyes were very nearly clear, holding only the faintest suggestion of blue, like shallow water pooling over clean white sand. Her gaze roved over my person, and I had the discomfiting sense that she was sizing me up as a man – an assessment for which I felt, on that particular evening, ill-prepared.

  Most mystics I had encountered in the past were either scabby old men or wart-laden hags. They all reeked of smoldering incense mixed up with the odor of something dead left out a little too long in the sun. But not this one. Had I known she was going to be so exquisite, so appealingly wraithlike and fair, I most certainly would have prefaced my visit with a haircut and a shave, and maybe even cleaned my teeth. Yes. Call it the misguided whimsy of a desolate man, but I found myself hoping the lady and my destinies might prove to be intertwined, and that the fondling bosom she had so vividly mentioned in her premonition might turn out, coincidentally, to be her very own.

  My stomach growled loudly.

  “Pardon,” I said, and felt myself redden.

  “You are alone in San Francisco?”

  “Uh…” This caught me off guard. “Yes, madam, I am.”

  “What is your profession?”

  “Well… honestly, I am between vocations at the moment. Formerly I was a wandering Romantic Poet – a nomadic wordsmith, of sorts – but recently I have decided to make a career change. Sadly, it turns out that penners of heartfelt verse are greatly underappreciated in this part of the world. I have kind of lost my taste for it besides. It is a fool’s pursuit, a compulsion that I have sworn off, involving too much soul-searching to be healthy, too much mental and spiritual anguish not to cause a persistent ache in one’s heart and spleen.” I shrugged. “Anyway, it is a hard way to earn one’s bread.”

  “And what will your new career be?”

  “I am open to the possibilities, but…” I held up my palms. “Your guess is most assuredly better than mine.”

  “You have no friends or family in your life?”

  I squirmed in my seat and considered the pathetic truth. “None to speak of. Of course, like most fellows, I did have a mother. But I have not seen her in many years. She may well have passed on to paradise by now.”

  The lady nodded, apparently thinking. Her interrogations were making me somewhat uncomfortable, but I assumed it was all part of her services. Although mention of my mother made me feel queer and sentimental, I felt I needed to speak with a forthcoming candor. Perhaps the lady was not yet done with me and was gleaning further information for another prediction concerning my bright and happy future. Besides, it had been so long since I had conversed with anyone, it was somewhat cathartic to do so now.

  Still, for all the narcissistic enjoyment I was experiencing in talking about myself, I somewhat wanted to know a thing or two about my hostess. Things like – where was she from? What was her name? Did she find me handsome? Had she ever read
Keats? What did she look like naked? And could she ever see herself living the rest of her life in connubial bliss with a tender, if failed, poet?

  She pushed away from the table and stood.

  Eager to appear the gentleman, I pushed back too, but in my haste, I upset my chair and it banged backward onto the floor. I scrambled to right the chair and regain my poise. When I turned around, the lady had moved to the dark curtain and was drawing it back along a cord.

  A quaint parlor lay beyond – a separate arrangement entirely from the austere room in which she performed her business. A dreamy seascape caught my eye right off, complete with the sails of a ship disappearing over a distant, stormy horizon. It hung on the wall over a satin divan loaded with tasseled pillows. A fish bowl rested atop a marble pedestal at one end of the divan, filled with more of the yellow minnows. A little table with a pair of silver hand bells stood at the other end. A rug covered the floor. A squat porcelain brazier was mounted near the wall, and I detected from the quiet click and snap I heard coming from behind its grate that it held a cheery flame.

  The lady glided into the room and let herself onto the divan, extending her legs over its length. Her gown fell open partway down, revealing a pair of thin vanilla knees that brought to my mind a statue I had once seen in an Italian fountain. I inadvertently tipped back on my heels and sucked at my teeth.

  “Would you care to warm yourself at my fire?” she asked.

  Oh, man!

  Now, I was generally dank. My clothes and I had been out in the rain for days on end, and I could not be certain that moss was not beginning to sprout between my shoulders and shirt. Hovering near to the lady’s fire, so to speak, might just cure my constant juddering and overall stiffness. And yet, for all of the luxurious promise of comfort, for all of my aforementioned longings concerning the lady’s bosom, I felt a trifling of doubt flutter in the deepest depths of my common sense as I wavered on the threshold of the lady’s parlor.

  Do not go there, I heard a self-preserving voice whisper in my ear. Something is not right. Turn and leave.

  “Would you care for some brandy?” asked the lady.

  No! shouted my inner voice.

  I rubbed my chin as I hemmed and confusedly hawed.

  Oh why, oh why, I asked myself, does life always have to do this to me? No sooner do I determine to change my ways and become a wiser and more prudent man then I am thrust into a situation that is full of dubious allurement. Sure, this encounter could lead to nothing more than friendly conversation and a bit of tongue-warming libation, and maybe it could even go so far as to end with me held for a time in the lady’s marble arms, but I had experienced enough such situations to understand that it was more likely to plunge straight to hell and drag me with it. And yet, as I regarded the lady’s kneecaps, I found myself thinking that a brush with hell might not be so bad. At least this one last time. What, after all, is ever gained without taking a chance?

  Well, if it does not go as hoped, I told myself, we will most assuredly change our reckless course once and for all.

  My inner voice offered its opinion, but I was unable to hear it clearly, as it seemed to sound from under deep water and came to me like nothing more than popping bubbles.

  “A bit of brandy would be very nice,” I heard myself say at last. I stepped over to the brazier and opened my hands, waggling my fingers over its warmth. The rug felt luxurious under my toes. “Thank you.”

  The lady smiled and reached toward the two bells on the side table. Her hand rested on the handle of the smallest. She hesitated; she had a thought. And then she picked up the larger of the two bells and made it ring.

  Yes, I admit, in hindsight this could have been interpreted as a suspicious clue to the events that were soon to transpire. Why one bell over the other? But by that point, I was bewitched beyond help. I could already taste the lady’s brandy-damped lips. I could pre-feel her doting embrace. I had made my leap, as they say, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the splash.

  Or possibly the thud.

  NEVER LIE WITH A clairvoyant.

  Surely every man’s heart resonates with that axiom of common sense.

  And yet, as the Chinese man brought in our snifters, I found that very intention perched at the forefront of my thinker. Now I liked strong drink as much as any man and could even be said to have had a debilitating weakness for it during certain liquor-numbed stretches of my own personal history. It had more than once served to oil the poetic sprocketry of my brain. Under the circumstances, the brandy seemed like an interlude of wasted time. It paled considerably next to my other, more overpowering hunger for feminine flesh. After all, could not the libation be more fully enjoyed as we discussed our wedding plans in the afterglow of our passion? Now that I had decided to toss all prudence to the rising wind, I was eager to move on to the more intimate part of the evening. But then I chastened myself. I recalled how long it had been since I had partaken of civilized intercourse. Whoa! I needed to rein in my animal desire to thrust headlong into the copulatory vision I saw so appealingly playing out in my imagination. Surely the lady would be more inclined to become my wife if I demonstrated a civilized self-control.

  She held up her goblet and said, “To the future.” She sipped her drink.

  I grinned and took an enthusiastic swig of my brandy. As the liquor burnt a smoking trail down my gullet, I regarded, through watering eyes, the beautiful creature spread out like a meal on the divan.

  She was so bread-white! So apparently delicious!

  I found myself wondering what our children would look like.

  “Be honest with me,” I teased. “Are you truly able to see the future?”

  “Why, sir!” she said with mock hurt. “Of course I can see the future.” She laughed. “I know all things.”

  “And can you truly read minds?”

  “The simple ones, yes.” She winked. “Especially those harboring simple thoughts.”

  I grinned stupidly; I could not stop. I quaffed more brandy. This fore-playful banter was most intoxicating. “Then pray tell, what turn of events do you see for my immediate future?”

  She squinted and peered into my face. She held her fingers to her temple, as if massaging a vision into place in her head. “I see... Yes. I see a voyage.”

  “Ho! I am going on a voyage, am I?”

  She swirled the drink in her glass. “Most certainly.”

  This intrigued me, as I assumed she was speaking symbolically of the erotic voyage upon which we both were about to embark. I decided to play along and extend the metaphor.

  “And will I be taking this voyage by myself?”

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  That is when the room first tipped to the side.

  “You’ll be in good company,” she said.

  I held out my hands to steady myself and staggered a single step to the left. I peered into my glass, somewhat confused. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to guzzle brandy on an empty stomach.

  “And with whom…” The room began gently swaying. “And with whom… will I be taking this… voyage?”

  The lady stood. She came close to me. She took my chalice from my hand and held it to my lips, tipping it so that the amber liquid flowed over my tongue and into my craw. Something told me that this gesture could either be taken as one of sultry seduction or perfidy. The latter option suddenly seemed most likely. And yet I took the beverage offered me like a man who had just crossed a waterless desert and was suffering a great intelligence-inhibiting thirst.

  “That’s it,” she whispered. “Drink it all down.”

  I gulped and gulped. The brandy dribbled out the corners of my mouth.

  I gazed at her distorted face through the bottom of the glass, the way a pet minnow might see its master from inside a fish bowl.

  My nostrils began to burn.

  I could not breathe.

  And then, finally, she took the glass away.

  I gasped.

  By now the roo
m was all-out rocking. The seas upon which we were voyaging had blown up with a tempest and were wildly tossing our little ship up and down and sideways. I found it difficult to keep on my feet, but my would-be lover remained an image of well-balanced composure. The storm, it appeared, was a personal one, designed for me alone.

  The lady continued to smile. She held our brandy glasses one in each hand – mine empty, hers nearly full. “You had better lie down,” she warned, “before you fall down.”

  Her voice came to me over the wind-blown waves.

  I nodded queasily. Her advice made good enough sense, and so I let myself drop to my knees, and then stretched out onto the rug, rolling onto my back.

  Then I belched.

  I had not noticed it going down, but now, on the upsurge, I tasted the poppy-flavored posset of an opioid.

  “Oh,” I muttered. “I see.”

  The lady knelt next to me and was hovering above. She smiled down like an angel. The Chinese man’s face came into view over her shoulder.

  “You have drugged me.” My words came out slurred.

  She nodded.

  I was greatly confused. And greatly disappointed. In myself mostly. It seemed Erstwhile Me had risen up and ruined a very promising evening.

  “Well…” I licked my lips. “Well, at least… won’t you please… as a consolatory gesture… grant me a parting kiss?”

  She leaned down to me, her long white hair creating a tent around our faces.

  I puckered up, preparing to accept what I assumed would be the last kiss I would ever enjoy on this earthly walk. I was amazed at how much I hungered for it, even within the panicky throes of my pending doom.

  But she did not kiss me. Instead, she moved to the side, her hair dragging across my face like spider webs. Her breath blew coolly over my ear.

  I felt myself sinking… sinking… sinking…

  “Adieu,” she whispered. “Bon voyage.”

  And then it all went to black.

  PART ONE

  GENESIS