RabbitsWarren
Your local trans writer femboy.
The Lovers
trigger warnings possible: infidelity, implied transphobia, tarot, homicidal ideation (will add more if asked)
“Katya! You haven’t been answering my texts!” I pushed open the door of the small, cramped shop in the middle of downtown Jacksonville trying to find the only person that could save my failing marriage. Wallace, my boyfriend, refused to answer my texts too. Unfortunately, as I took in the familiar smell of salts and essential oils as well as the sight of a different person entirely, I realized my best friend Katya wasn’t there. In her place instead stood a boy with several star-studded earrings connected by silver chains. A pair of oval glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, and a silvery chain embedded with small rose quartz crystals hung off the temples of the spectacles.
Even though her paintings that she got on our trip to Denver on vacation, the ones that originally made Wallace and I start saving for our move there, still hung on the wall, he climbed down from a ladder propped up against one of the shelves instead. His dyed grey-blue hair framed his face in a bad haircut that looked like he or a friend cut it in a mirror at home. He pursed his soft, lip-gloss coated lips at me and peered over his lenses. This man dressed like an ethereal goddess and swayed his hips to a soft violin music playing from a nearby speaker before addressing me.
“I’m sorry, can I help you?” The only other person in the building produced the most strained smile I ever saw as he adjusted his glasses. “Didn’t someone teach you that it isn’t polite to go screaming into buildings?” He placed his hands on his hips after he set the large tome down on the table. His hands wrinkled the brightly colored fabric of the turtleneck clinging to his figure only slightly less than the belt tucking it under his expensive slacks.
“I’m looking for Katya, my best friend, she owns this shop.” I told him as felt the heat climb into my face while I started to quiet myself. My mother always scolded me for being too loud, and I heard ‘use your inside voice’ more times than I could count. Wallace, at least, after I moved in with him, embraced my loud outbursts. I just wish he would reassure me now after what I found in our bathroom.
“Oh, yeah, I’m her new hire. I’m working here just so that I can prove I work twenty hours a week for my college scholarships. My name’s Soren. She went home because her kid got sick.” Soren put the ladder back into the closet in the hallway behind the small main room. The space barely had room for Katya’s table, her shelves, and her chairs, but somehow, I see she managed to squeeze in just one more shelf for this boy where he kept that book he got down as well as several other things. It felt almost as if he were putting on a show for me, and presenting this fake persona for me to see instead of the real him. I never went to college because I never could afford it, so after four years of starting my new life in a dead-end job straight out of high school, I admit that I felt a little jealous.
“Is that your real name?” I looked him up and down again as I took in the unusual aesthetic he sported. Surely, that was some stage name he used, right? “Mine’s Tatianna.”
“Are those your real tits, Tatianna?” Soren’s face contorted as his eyebrows attacked the bridge of his nose. His brown eyes turned from soothing bowls of molasses into hot, burning coals when I questioned about his name, and the look he gave me hurt more than his words. I tugged on my romper and crossed my arms as I wondered if my chest really looked that bad. “Someone really needs to teach you manners, sweetie. You don’t ask those kinds of questions in order to be mindful of others.” I apologized without making excuses, and he seemed to settle down.
“I guess since you said sorry so nicely, I can help you.” The boy in the earrings waved a crystal at me before returning it to a little nest of fabric and wire on the shelf. He slipped back behind the reading table, and his hips were only barely small enough to fit around the claustrophobic setup of furniture meant for an actual room rather than this abysmal den. The looming threat of the pink fabric I stumbled upon in the bathroom haunted me. A crumbled piece of the gaudiest pink lace and silk fabric that could barely be constituted as a garment with its little amount surface area emerged from underneath the plunger when I went to tidy up around the house.
“How much for a full spread? I really need advice right now. Katya usually charges me forty.” I pulled the money out of my wallet and thrust it across the table before taking a seat in the uncomfortable folding chair facing him. I tried to gauge his expression by my truthful price offer, even though I knew it was much cheaper than the sixty that Katya charged regular customers. He sucked his teeth at me and thumbed through the bills I handed him. The leftover feeling of Wallace’s lips burned my skin where he kissed me goodbye before work and reminded me of the hot pink underwear crumpled in my pocket. His handsome face wouldn’t save him if I came home from the investigation and found someone else in my bed, even though his kisses and calm voice usually toned down my temper.
“A hundred since you decided to be a bitch and you’re desperate.” Soren’s eyes met my own as they tore me out of ogling my husband’s possible infidelity. They looked like the eyes of a cat playing with an injured mouse. Surely, he couldn’t hate me that much over a simple comment about his name, but he only gave me this fake, shiny smile as he shuffled so the iridescent cards whisked against each other as they slid back into the deck over and over. At least he used his own deck instead of Katya’s.
“A hundred dollars for a thirty-minute, full spread?” I guess Katya spoiled me with her discounts, but I felt like I also deserved it because of my comment on his name. I pulled out sixty more dollars and slid the bills into his finely manicured claws. The holographic nail polish shined as he counted them and put them in the drawer beneath the desk. I mourned the new hole in my wallet as he said, “Now, what seems to be the problem?”
“I found these in my bathroom.” I pulled out the only evidence I had to the crime committed in my own house, and placed the wadded up pink panties on the table. “They’re not mine. I…” Soren stared at them for a moment, blinking and quiet, while the cards stilled. A blazing red color overwhelmed his cheeks from beneath his makeup and exposed his embarrassment. “I think my husband is cheating on me.” I redirected him to my face away from the underwear. After a super long period of silence, he set his deck aside. I guess it was kind of weird to bring a Tarot reader a pair of some random woman’s underwear. I apologized.
“Oh, honey,” Soren scrunched his nose up at the vile specimen and used his nails to delicately move the fabric back to my side of the table. “No worries, you can put that away.” He tried his best to regain his composure and I stuffed the eyesore back into my jeans. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough time. You’ve done this before, so you know the drill. Close your eyes, focus your intent, and let’s see what we can do.” Katya never made me close my eyes, but I obeyed in my desperation for the knowledge that this process always brought me. I did the same thing when Katya gave me a reading, which meant I focused my thoughts and questions about the problem and concentrated them on the deck. Should I leave Wallace? Was he cheating? Who was this elusive mistress of the night? I wanted to ask so many more, but I didn’t want to muddle the focus with too many loose ties, so I finally settled in on the relationship and it’s outcomes in general.
When Soren told me to open my eyes, he already had the spread arranged facing me in a six-card spread to look like a pyramid with the first card on top, two in the second layer, and three in the bottom layer. All of the holographic surfaces shone in the low lamplight of the shop, and as much as I despised his own lack of manners, I could admit that he picked a pretty deck.
“Why didn’t I pick the cards?” I asked and reached towards the deck. The image looked different as the shadows from my hand passed over the repeated back images of two snakes eating each other in a figure-eight, bordered by a rhombus. Four eyes also lined the middle of the cards; two of them sat on the inside of the circles created by the snakes, and the other two sat outside of that yet inside the rhombus with equal spacing between. Soren swatted my hand away and shuffled the unused cards as he let out an aggressive ‘anh!’ that I assumed meant no. Normally, in Katya’s readings, she asked me to pull the cards I felt most drawn to when she fanned them out, but this kid decided that wasn’t how he did things.
“There’s too much negative energy on you.” Soren’s syllables stumbled when he began the sentence, but by the end of it, he regained his composure. “You’re just seeping it. I don’t want it to taint my cards.” He paused. “It’s okay, though. If you focused hard enough, it should give you a good read.” He frowned over a pair of gold-framed glasses and mouthed the word ‘sorry’ to me as he set the unused deck aside. As much as I hated it, I need to respect his property, so I didn’t say anything more on the matter. If I thought he knew what he was doing after he got started, I could trust it. If not, I could take her deck and go see Katya at her house. As is customary with most readings, I silenced my phone and prepared to be quiet so I could listen to his interpretation.
Soren hovered his hand above the first card and hesitated. Before turning it over, he locked eyes with me. Again, he said nothing for a short bit. What a kook. A part of my brain nagged at me and asked me if he was just as good at this as Katya was. An even scarier suggestion stirred up the fear of him being better than her. “This card indicates your situation with your partner now.”
Soren turned the card over to reveal a Ten of Swords, upright.
The card greeted me with an image of a teenage girl lounging in her bed as she scrolled through something on her smartphone, but ten shiny, holographic swords protruded from her back.
“Ow, well,” Soren swallowed. “I’m sure you have some experience with the cards, right?” I listened to Soren’s voice, but my heart already decided that it could beat faster than my body could handle. “This means your current situation is coming to a head in a display of betrayal and backstabbing, usually. You are seeing demise of something in a crisis, but ultimately, as it is a ten card, the end of that will be here soon for you to start fresh without the betrayer.” If this was true, that meant Wallace probably was cheating on me. That filthy smart-ass with his charming smile could probably land any girl he wanted. I imagined him coming home from work and me shoving the underwear in his face. Maybe he would even bring his hussy with him. “This card tells you why you should stay in the relationship.”
Soren turned the second card over to reveal a Four of Pentacles, upright.
Four holographic coins emblazoned with pentacles cascaded from the top of the card and into the mouth of an anthropomorphic pig with tusks wearing a sharp business suit.
“Something in your situation is providing you financial or material stability.” Soren told me, but I already understood what that meant. If I left behind Wallace, we would need to split our savings and part out the things we bought together. We would have debt from the lawyer fees. Since our current lease was in his name only, I would have nowhere to go at first. If I did decide to leave, I would have to face all of that. I imagined Wallace screaming and arguing with me over who would get to keep the car as tears left his salt-ridden blue eyes. “However, this card is why you should leave anyway.”
Soren turned over the third card to The Magician, reversed.
A man on the card thrusted a wand into the sky towards an iridescent infinity symbol, and on the table laid a branch, a coin with a pentacle, a sword, and a goblet filled with wine.
“Someone in the relationship is a deceptive trickster because the card is backwards. Dishonesty, greed and manipulation are at the core of this.” All of Soren’s cards so far started to worry me, especially with his claim of my negative energy. Katya said that about me in the past before, and usually I faced some misfortune sometime after. “I would start looking for receipts of interactions now.” Maybe Soren really did know what he was talking about, and that meant that Wallace was a dirty cheater. I sat up straighter in my chair. “This card is how you would feel should you choose to stay in the relationship.”
Soren turned over the fourth card to a Nine of Swords, reversed.
Nine holographic swords skewered the head of the woman facing me on the card, and her one in-tact eye reddened with lack of sleep scrutinized my every move.
“Aha, sounds like you should just throw the whole man away, am I right?” Soren tried to laugh to make me feel better, but all of the tension in my body refused to release. “This means that you’re going to be dealing with all kinds of anxiety and nightmares, as well as just being unsure of yourself.” I just desperately needed to make it to the end of this reading. If I asked Katya to redo it, would it end up saying essentially the same thing? “This is how you’re going to feel if you leave the relationship.”
Soren turned over the fifth card to The Tower, upright.
A rose garden filled with overgrown thorn-coated vines surrounded a witch’s tower that stretched high into the air just to hit the clouds of a thunderstorm which invoked the power of iridescent lightning.
“That one is…” He took a deep breath, but I already dreaded seeing the crumbling stone picture with the person falling from the top. “We all know that one. I’m sorry. There’s going to be a lot of chaos and upheaval.” I imagined what it would be like trying to patch a relationship where all Wallace did was cheat and apologize in an endless cycle. “It’s going to feel like your life is falling apart at the seams.” Tears burned the edges of my eyes, and Soren passed me the tissues before continuing. “This is how you’re going to feel leaving.”
Soren turned over the sixth and final card to The World, reversed.
The final card showcased an eight-months pregnant woman lovingly cradling her belly that turned into an image of the Earth when Soren turned it over, like those lenticular print cards that you could sometimes get as a kid.
“Look at that! Some good news.” Soren tried to reassure me with a stale pat on the shoulder. I struggled to keep my tears behind in my red, puffy eyes and strained to breathe through my nose. “If you leave, you’re going to feel accomplishment and completion in your life, as well as explore a bit of yourself.” A small wail escaped my mouth. He scooped up the cards with gentle hands and replaced them back into the deck before placing the deck in the box.
“What do I do now?” I snatched some tissues out of the box on Katya’s desk and poured my soul into them. Soren squirmed as he tried to come up with an answer, but every time he opened his mouth, he only closed it again. His face and stature softened, and he scooted the box of tissues towards me.
“Do you have a friend you can stay with for a few days?” Soren leaned in and tucked a stray hair from my breakdown behind my ear. I watched as a formerly crude scowl melted into a helpful, soothing gaze. I guess the amount of pain I endured today finally made him pity me. As for friends that I could stay with, Katya always had a spare couch for me to crash on. “Just until you can figure things out.” I explained that I could go to her house, but that I didn’t have a ride.
“You’ve had a rough day. You can ride with me.” Soren and I left the shop together into a night of pouring rain after I accepted his offer. The overhang of the shop kept us dry at first, but in order to get to his fancy silver car in the large, nearby parking lot, we needed to sprint in the pouring rain before leaping into the safety of the metal carriage.
As soon as we got in, Soren filled the void by turning on some funky indie pop that I never heard before, and began heading to Katya’s house with my directions as assistance. Now that I had some spare time, I tried to text Wallace again. After waiting ten minutes and still suffering a lack of any reply, I tried to call him.
When my phone’s screen lit up and told me he was unavailable, I wanted to throw it through the windshield. A scream threatened to erupt from my throat this time, sure that when I got home, I would find the Wallace and some floozy draped over the sofa. I pulled my knees up to my throat and sobbed into my knees as Soren turned the radio up.
“442 Walnut, yeah? I’m sure your friend can help more than me.” Soren’s smile cradled me with the hand of a stranger that cared but unfortunately had limited knowledge of the situation. I dried my tears as best as I could with my wrists while sobs continued to wrack my ribs. I thanked him and he wished me good luck before his car vanished in the night and left me on Katya’s porch.
“Bratty Katty, it’s me,” I called into her house as I used my key on the door just like we always did at each other’s house. I remembered back when we were kids and she would burst into my childhood home calling for ‘Tiny Tia’. I called again, and finally found her watching some drama show in her bedroom. A cute t-shirt and some cheap gym shorts clung to her figure, and her mass of long, brunette hair splayed about the massive pile of stuffed animals on her bed that she laid on while her dark eyes took in every pixel on the television. I could hear her husband Keith in the other room tending to her puking child.
“Sorry, Carmen has the flu we think. I just finished my shift helping her.” Katya began. “Has Wallace gotten you anything to celebrate your anniversary yet?” She continued with a sentence that normally would have launched me into a cork-board and red thread explanation of what I thought he might get me, but instead it just made me erupt into a fountain of tears. With permission, I climbed up into the bed and explained my day. At least I always had Katya to count on, even if Wallace ended up doing me wrong.
“That fuckboy!” Katya clutched one fist and gently caressed my shoulder with her arm around my back with the other. She side hugged me as tight as her arm could manage, and then grabbed her phone. She pulled me out of her bed with her and turned off the television before I could say anything or object. “We’re going to go beat his ass, and we’re going to beat his slut’s ass, too!” She yelled, and poked her head into the nearby room with the ruckus to tell them she would be back as soon as possible. I didn’t want to start up the confrontation, but just as with many of our childhood memories, when Katya she’s had enough, she’s had enough.
Katya and I took to the streets by hopping into her large mini-van, which felt much different in contrast to Soren’s sports car. Somehow, I preferred the growling engine and stuttering brakes of Katya’s barely running piece of junk. It helped keep me distracted on the trip. I only began to think when we had to park next to the curb on the street because another car took up the guest parking space. I recognized the shiny silver paint, body style, and the crystals draped around the rear-view mirror.
“What’s Soren doing at your house?” Katya wondered out loud for me, as she recognized the vehicle, too. We looked at each other for a brief, silent moment, before passing a memo of unspoken communication between the two of us. We didn’t need to say it. We both now knew that Wallace and Soren knew each other much more intimately than previously thought.
I charged towards the door and unlocked it as fast as I could turn my key in the tumbler. My living room door, still chipped from our first break in, swung open to reveal the dimly lit living room. A movie I didn’t recognize continued to play on the large television screen, and it rumbled on into something about a sleazy secretary. I paused it and almost knocked over a nearly empty glass of wine that sat next to a half-full one. It looked like they decided to have a date since I went to Katya’s.
While I examined the living room, however, I just barely caught Katya as she stormed towards my bedroom door. I wanted to investigate first, but she threw my door open as soon as she got her hands on the bronze knob. I raced to her side to try and stop her, but instead I found myself staring at a home-wrecking mess.
Soren and Wallace laid cocooned in a nest of blankets in my bed, and I could only see from their collarbones up because of it. Soren’s glasses lay draped on our wedding picture on my bedside table, and Wallace’s pants hung off his own nightstand. While Soren said nothing, stunned and silent, Wallace began to stutter and try to make up excuses.
“Get your ass out of here, you filthy bastards!” Katya wrapped her hands around a coat hanger from my open closet and headed towards the bed on hot feet. Within seconds, she beat a naked Wallace out of the bed and dove for Soren next. Soren leaped from the sea of comforters and fled for the door. Though he wore more clothes than Wallace, he left out the front door in a pair of nearly identical pink underwear that I found in my bathroom just the night before.
“Soren, wait!” Wallace yelled towards the door as he tried to cover himself with his arms and the comforters despite Katya’s incessant beating. I couldn’t help a laugh slowly building from my stomach and into my throat. I could always count on Katya to make sure that others respected me, at least. Something told me that Soren would probably be getting some unfortunate comments in his work reviews before Katya fired him if he didn’t quit first. As for Wallace, we could deal with him together.
trigger warnings possible: infidelity, implied transphobia, tarot, homicidal ideation (will add more if asked)
“Katya! You haven’t been answering my texts!” I pushed open the door of the small, cramped shop in the middle of downtown Jacksonville trying to find the only person that could save my failing marriage. Wallace, my boyfriend, refused to answer my texts too. Unfortunately, as I took in the familiar smell of salts and essential oils as well as the sight of a different person entirely, I realized my best friend Katya wasn’t there. In her place instead stood a boy with several star-studded earrings connected by silver chains. A pair of oval glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, and a silvery chain embedded with small rose quartz crystals hung off the temples of the spectacles.
Even though her paintings that she got on our trip to Denver on vacation, the ones that originally made Wallace and I start saving for our move there, still hung on the wall, he climbed down from a ladder propped up against one of the shelves instead. His dyed grey-blue hair framed his face in a bad haircut that looked like he or a friend cut it in a mirror at home. He pursed his soft, lip-gloss coated lips at me and peered over his lenses. This man dressed like an ethereal goddess and swayed his hips to a soft violin music playing from a nearby speaker before addressing me.
“I’m sorry, can I help you?” The only other person in the building produced the most strained smile I ever saw as he adjusted his glasses. “Didn’t someone teach you that it isn’t polite to go screaming into buildings?” He placed his hands on his hips after he set the large tome down on the table. His hands wrinkled the brightly colored fabric of the turtleneck clinging to his figure only slightly less than the belt tucking it under his expensive slacks.
“I’m looking for Katya, my best friend, she owns this shop.” I told him as felt the heat climb into my face while I started to quiet myself. My mother always scolded me for being too loud, and I heard ‘use your inside voice’ more times than I could count. Wallace, at least, after I moved in with him, embraced my loud outbursts. I just wish he would reassure me now after what I found in our bathroom.
“Oh, yeah, I’m her new hire. I’m working here just so that I can prove I work twenty hours a week for my college scholarships. My name’s Soren. She went home because her kid got sick.” Soren put the ladder back into the closet in the hallway behind the small main room. The space barely had room for Katya’s table, her shelves, and her chairs, but somehow, I see she managed to squeeze in just one more shelf for this boy where he kept that book he got down as well as several other things. It felt almost as if he were putting on a show for me, and presenting this fake persona for me to see instead of the real him. I never went to college because I never could afford it, so after four years of starting my new life in a dead-end job straight out of high school, I admit that I felt a little jealous.
“Is that your real name?” I looked him up and down again as I took in the unusual aesthetic he sported. Surely, that was some stage name he used, right? “Mine’s Tatianna.”
“Are those your real tits, Tatianna?” Soren’s face contorted as his eyebrows attacked the bridge of his nose. His brown eyes turned from soothing bowls of molasses into hot, burning coals when I questioned about his name, and the look he gave me hurt more than his words. I tugged on my romper and crossed my arms as I wondered if my chest really looked that bad. “Someone really needs to teach you manners, sweetie. You don’t ask those kinds of questions in order to be mindful of others.” I apologized without making excuses, and he seemed to settle down.
“I guess since you said sorry so nicely, I can help you.” The boy in the earrings waved a crystal at me before returning it to a little nest of fabric and wire on the shelf. He slipped back behind the reading table, and his hips were only barely small enough to fit around the claustrophobic setup of furniture meant for an actual room rather than this abysmal den. The looming threat of the pink fabric I stumbled upon in the bathroom haunted me. A crumbled piece of the gaudiest pink lace and silk fabric that could barely be constituted as a garment with its little amount surface area emerged from underneath the plunger when I went to tidy up around the house.
“How much for a full spread? I really need advice right now. Katya usually charges me forty.” I pulled the money out of my wallet and thrust it across the table before taking a seat in the uncomfortable folding chair facing him. I tried to gauge his expression by my truthful price offer, even though I knew it was much cheaper than the sixty that Katya charged regular customers. He sucked his teeth at me and thumbed through the bills I handed him. The leftover feeling of Wallace’s lips burned my skin where he kissed me goodbye before work and reminded me of the hot pink underwear crumpled in my pocket. His handsome face wouldn’t save him if I came home from the investigation and found someone else in my bed, even though his kisses and calm voice usually toned down my temper.
“A hundred since you decided to be a bitch and you’re desperate.” Soren’s eyes met my own as they tore me out of ogling my husband’s possible infidelity. They looked like the eyes of a cat playing with an injured mouse. Surely, he couldn’t hate me that much over a simple comment about his name, but he only gave me this fake, shiny smile as he shuffled so the iridescent cards whisked against each other as they slid back into the deck over and over. At least he used his own deck instead of Katya’s.
“A hundred dollars for a thirty-minute, full spread?” I guess Katya spoiled me with her discounts, but I felt like I also deserved it because of my comment on his name. I pulled out sixty more dollars and slid the bills into his finely manicured claws. The holographic nail polish shined as he counted them and put them in the drawer beneath the desk. I mourned the new hole in my wallet as he said, “Now, what seems to be the problem?”
“I found these in my bathroom.” I pulled out the only evidence I had to the crime committed in my own house, and placed the wadded up pink panties on the table. “They’re not mine. I…” Soren stared at them for a moment, blinking and quiet, while the cards stilled. A blazing red color overwhelmed his cheeks from beneath his makeup and exposed his embarrassment. “I think my husband is cheating on me.” I redirected him to my face away from the underwear. After a super long period of silence, he set his deck aside. I guess it was kind of weird to bring a Tarot reader a pair of some random woman’s underwear. I apologized.
“Oh, honey,” Soren scrunched his nose up at the vile specimen and used his nails to delicately move the fabric back to my side of the table. “No worries, you can put that away.” He tried his best to regain his composure and I stuffed the eyesore back into my jeans. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough time. You’ve done this before, so you know the drill. Close your eyes, focus your intent, and let’s see what we can do.” Katya never made me close my eyes, but I obeyed in my desperation for the knowledge that this process always brought me. I did the same thing when Katya gave me a reading, which meant I focused my thoughts and questions about the problem and concentrated them on the deck. Should I leave Wallace? Was he cheating? Who was this elusive mistress of the night? I wanted to ask so many more, but I didn’t want to muddle the focus with too many loose ties, so I finally settled in on the relationship and it’s outcomes in general.
When Soren told me to open my eyes, he already had the spread arranged facing me in a six-card spread to look like a pyramid with the first card on top, two in the second layer, and three in the bottom layer. All of the holographic surfaces shone in the low lamplight of the shop, and as much as I despised his own lack of manners, I could admit that he picked a pretty deck.
“Why didn’t I pick the cards?” I asked and reached towards the deck. The image looked different as the shadows from my hand passed over the repeated back images of two snakes eating each other in a figure-eight, bordered by a rhombus. Four eyes also lined the middle of the cards; two of them sat on the inside of the circles created by the snakes, and the other two sat outside of that yet inside the rhombus with equal spacing between. Soren swatted my hand away and shuffled the unused cards as he let out an aggressive ‘anh!’ that I assumed meant no. Normally, in Katya’s readings, she asked me to pull the cards I felt most drawn to when she fanned them out, but this kid decided that wasn’t how he did things.
“There’s too much negative energy on you.” Soren’s syllables stumbled when he began the sentence, but by the end of it, he regained his composure. “You’re just seeping it. I don’t want it to taint my cards.” He paused. “It’s okay, though. If you focused hard enough, it should give you a good read.” He frowned over a pair of gold-framed glasses and mouthed the word ‘sorry’ to me as he set the unused deck aside. As much as I hated it, I need to respect his property, so I didn’t say anything more on the matter. If I thought he knew what he was doing after he got started, I could trust it. If not, I could take her deck and go see Katya at her house. As is customary with most readings, I silenced my phone and prepared to be quiet so I could listen to his interpretation.
Soren hovered his hand above the first card and hesitated. Before turning it over, he locked eyes with me. Again, he said nothing for a short bit. What a kook. A part of my brain nagged at me and asked me if he was just as good at this as Katya was. An even scarier suggestion stirred up the fear of him being better than her. “This card indicates your situation with your partner now.”
Soren turned the card over to reveal a Ten of Swords, upright.
The card greeted me with an image of a teenage girl lounging in her bed as she scrolled through something on her smartphone, but ten shiny, holographic swords protruded from her back.
“Ow, well,” Soren swallowed. “I’m sure you have some experience with the cards, right?” I listened to Soren’s voice, but my heart already decided that it could beat faster than my body could handle. “This means your current situation is coming to a head in a display of betrayal and backstabbing, usually. You are seeing demise of something in a crisis, but ultimately, as it is a ten card, the end of that will be here soon for you to start fresh without the betrayer.” If this was true, that meant Wallace probably was cheating on me. That filthy smart-ass with his charming smile could probably land any girl he wanted. I imagined him coming home from work and me shoving the underwear in his face. Maybe he would even bring his hussy with him. “This card tells you why you should stay in the relationship.”
Soren turned the second card over to reveal a Four of Pentacles, upright.
Four holographic coins emblazoned with pentacles cascaded from the top of the card and into the mouth of an anthropomorphic pig with tusks wearing a sharp business suit.
“Something in your situation is providing you financial or material stability.” Soren told me, but I already understood what that meant. If I left behind Wallace, we would need to split our savings and part out the things we bought together. We would have debt from the lawyer fees. Since our current lease was in his name only, I would have nowhere to go at first. If I did decide to leave, I would have to face all of that. I imagined Wallace screaming and arguing with me over who would get to keep the car as tears left his salt-ridden blue eyes. “However, this card is why you should leave anyway.”
Soren turned over the third card to The Magician, reversed.
A man on the card thrusted a wand into the sky towards an iridescent infinity symbol, and on the table laid a branch, a coin with a pentacle, a sword, and a goblet filled with wine.
“Someone in the relationship is a deceptive trickster because the card is backwards. Dishonesty, greed and manipulation are at the core of this.” All of Soren’s cards so far started to worry me, especially with his claim of my negative energy. Katya said that about me in the past before, and usually I faced some misfortune sometime after. “I would start looking for receipts of interactions now.” Maybe Soren really did know what he was talking about, and that meant that Wallace was a dirty cheater. I sat up straighter in my chair. “This card is how you would feel should you choose to stay in the relationship.”
Soren turned over the fourth card to a Nine of Swords, reversed.
Nine holographic swords skewered the head of the woman facing me on the card, and her one in-tact eye reddened with lack of sleep scrutinized my every move.
“Aha, sounds like you should just throw the whole man away, am I right?” Soren tried to laugh to make me feel better, but all of the tension in my body refused to release. “This means that you’re going to be dealing with all kinds of anxiety and nightmares, as well as just being unsure of yourself.” I just desperately needed to make it to the end of this reading. If I asked Katya to redo it, would it end up saying essentially the same thing? “This is how you’re going to feel if you leave the relationship.”
Soren turned over the fifth card to The Tower, upright.
A rose garden filled with overgrown thorn-coated vines surrounded a witch’s tower that stretched high into the air just to hit the clouds of a thunderstorm which invoked the power of iridescent lightning.
“That one is…” He took a deep breath, but I already dreaded seeing the crumbling stone picture with the person falling from the top. “We all know that one. I’m sorry. There’s going to be a lot of chaos and upheaval.” I imagined what it would be like trying to patch a relationship where all Wallace did was cheat and apologize in an endless cycle. “It’s going to feel like your life is falling apart at the seams.” Tears burned the edges of my eyes, and Soren passed me the tissues before continuing. “This is how you’re going to feel leaving.”
Soren turned over the sixth and final card to The World, reversed.
The final card showcased an eight-months pregnant woman lovingly cradling her belly that turned into an image of the Earth when Soren turned it over, like those lenticular print cards that you could sometimes get as a kid.
“Look at that! Some good news.” Soren tried to reassure me with a stale pat on the shoulder. I struggled to keep my tears behind in my red, puffy eyes and strained to breathe through my nose. “If you leave, you’re going to feel accomplishment and completion in your life, as well as explore a bit of yourself.” A small wail escaped my mouth. He scooped up the cards with gentle hands and replaced them back into the deck before placing the deck in the box.
“What do I do now?” I snatched some tissues out of the box on Katya’s desk and poured my soul into them. Soren squirmed as he tried to come up with an answer, but every time he opened his mouth, he only closed it again. His face and stature softened, and he scooted the box of tissues towards me.
“Do you have a friend you can stay with for a few days?” Soren leaned in and tucked a stray hair from my breakdown behind my ear. I watched as a formerly crude scowl melted into a helpful, soothing gaze. I guess the amount of pain I endured today finally made him pity me. As for friends that I could stay with, Katya always had a spare couch for me to crash on. “Just until you can figure things out.” I explained that I could go to her house, but that I didn’t have a ride.
“You’ve had a rough day. You can ride with me.” Soren and I left the shop together into a night of pouring rain after I accepted his offer. The overhang of the shop kept us dry at first, but in order to get to his fancy silver car in the large, nearby parking lot, we needed to sprint in the pouring rain before leaping into the safety of the metal carriage.
As soon as we got in, Soren filled the void by turning on some funky indie pop that I never heard before, and began heading to Katya’s house with my directions as assistance. Now that I had some spare time, I tried to text Wallace again. After waiting ten minutes and still suffering a lack of any reply, I tried to call him.
When my phone’s screen lit up and told me he was unavailable, I wanted to throw it through the windshield. A scream threatened to erupt from my throat this time, sure that when I got home, I would find the Wallace and some floozy draped over the sofa. I pulled my knees up to my throat and sobbed into my knees as Soren turned the radio up.
“442 Walnut, yeah? I’m sure your friend can help more than me.” Soren’s smile cradled me with the hand of a stranger that cared but unfortunately had limited knowledge of the situation. I dried my tears as best as I could with my wrists while sobs continued to wrack my ribs. I thanked him and he wished me good luck before his car vanished in the night and left me on Katya’s porch.
“Bratty Katty, it’s me,” I called into her house as I used my key on the door just like we always did at each other’s house. I remembered back when we were kids and she would burst into my childhood home calling for ‘Tiny Tia’. I called again, and finally found her watching some drama show in her bedroom. A cute t-shirt and some cheap gym shorts clung to her figure, and her mass of long, brunette hair splayed about the massive pile of stuffed animals on her bed that she laid on while her dark eyes took in every pixel on the television. I could hear her husband Keith in the other room tending to her puking child.
“Sorry, Carmen has the flu we think. I just finished my shift helping her.” Katya began. “Has Wallace gotten you anything to celebrate your anniversary yet?” She continued with a sentence that normally would have launched me into a cork-board and red thread explanation of what I thought he might get me, but instead it just made me erupt into a fountain of tears. With permission, I climbed up into the bed and explained my day. At least I always had Katya to count on, even if Wallace ended up doing me wrong.
“That fuckboy!” Katya clutched one fist and gently caressed my shoulder with her arm around my back with the other. She side hugged me as tight as her arm could manage, and then grabbed her phone. She pulled me out of her bed with her and turned off the television before I could say anything or object. “We’re going to go beat his ass, and we’re going to beat his slut’s ass, too!” She yelled, and poked her head into the nearby room with the ruckus to tell them she would be back as soon as possible. I didn’t want to start up the confrontation, but just as with many of our childhood memories, when Katya she’s had enough, she’s had enough.
Katya and I took to the streets by hopping into her large mini-van, which felt much different in contrast to Soren’s sports car. Somehow, I preferred the growling engine and stuttering brakes of Katya’s barely running piece of junk. It helped keep me distracted on the trip. I only began to think when we had to park next to the curb on the street because another car took up the guest parking space. I recognized the shiny silver paint, body style, and the crystals draped around the rear-view mirror.
“What’s Soren doing at your house?” Katya wondered out loud for me, as she recognized the vehicle, too. We looked at each other for a brief, silent moment, before passing a memo of unspoken communication between the two of us. We didn’t need to say it. We both now knew that Wallace and Soren knew each other much more intimately than previously thought.
I charged towards the door and unlocked it as fast as I could turn my key in the tumbler. My living room door, still chipped from our first break in, swung open to reveal the dimly lit living room. A movie I didn’t recognize continued to play on the large television screen, and it rumbled on into something about a sleazy secretary. I paused it and almost knocked over a nearly empty glass of wine that sat next to a half-full one. It looked like they decided to have a date since I went to Katya’s.
While I examined the living room, however, I just barely caught Katya as she stormed towards my bedroom door. I wanted to investigate first, but she threw my door open as soon as she got her hands on the bronze knob. I raced to her side to try and stop her, but instead I found myself staring at a home-wrecking mess.
Soren and Wallace laid cocooned in a nest of blankets in my bed, and I could only see from their collarbones up because of it. Soren’s glasses lay draped on our wedding picture on my bedside table, and Wallace’s pants hung off his own nightstand. While Soren said nothing, stunned and silent, Wallace began to stutter and try to make up excuses.
“Get your ass out of here, you filthy bastards!” Katya wrapped her hands around a coat hanger from my open closet and headed towards the bed on hot feet. Within seconds, she beat a naked Wallace out of the bed and dove for Soren next. Soren leaped from the sea of comforters and fled for the door. Though he wore more clothes than Wallace, he left out the front door in a pair of nearly identical pink underwear that I found in my bathroom just the night before.
“Soren, wait!” Wallace yelled towards the door as he tried to cover himself with his arms and the comforters despite Katya’s incessant beating. I couldn’t help a laugh slowly building from my stomach and into my throat. I could always count on Katya to make sure that others respected me, at least. Something told me that Soren would probably be getting some unfortunate comments in his work reviews before Katya fired him if he didn’t quit first. As for Wallace, we could deal with him together.
