a random reading

     



"Put out your hands, palms up. In this one," she touched the girl's right palm at the intersection of two prominent lines. "Ask yourself what you want. Don't speak the words." Anna tapped the center of the girl's other palm. "Ask yourself what you need, again, silently. Think only the questions, not the answers. We'll leave the answers to the cards, yes?" 

She fanned the deck face down across the table and shuffled twice, letting the cards purr. "Now cut the deck and we'll see. "

The woman reached across the table, lifted half the stack, set it aside, and cut again, and a third time. 

Why was she stalling? "Are you ready?" 

The woman nodded and knotted her fingers in her lap.

She dealt the cards facing the woman, left to right, smoothly silent.

"What you want and what you need." She turned up two cards and put two more between them, face down and out of her reach. She tapped it once. "And what you'll get, we'll look at last." 

The guy leaning against the wall snickered. The woman tilted her head at him, and he looked away. She said, "Go wait in the car, asshole." He lit a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke in her direction, and slammed the door behind him.

While Anna waited until the woman turned her attention back to the reading, she lit a candle. A flash of sulfur from the match and the scent of sweet almonds settled over everything, smoothing the edges like good reefer. She wiggled the first card on the felt. "The Empress? Fertility, like it or not."

The second card was the Two of Pentacles. "To most people, a juggling idiot. Piss poor father material."

"It looks like you've dodged a bullet because you already know that's not for you. Not now and not with the wrong guy. Now...." Anna turned the third card face up—the Seven of Cups. Too many choices are problematic. "You have a lot of options. You need to take what you know and decide sooner than later."

The woman sat back and said, "Is this about the asshole?"

Anna shook her head. "He's just a detail. This..." she put a finger on the last card, the Queen of Pentacles, "is about you. It's a good thing that you won't bullshit yourself. You are too smart for that nonsense."

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