Burial Read Free Page B

that the tarot was dangerously misunderstood; not to be played with; and much more powerful than anybody knew. She said the tarot was a window to a land which all of us could remember, butwhich none of us had ever visited — or would ever
want
to visit. I didn’t know what the hell she meant by that, so I smiled and nodded and listened to what she had to say about detective work.
    Adelaide was almost like Sherlock Holmes, the way she could analyze people; and when it came to predicting what was going to happen to them, she was almost always spot-on. She even predicted that old Mr Swietochowska’s deli on Ditmas Avenue was going to go out of business, almost to the month, although I later found out that she had a nephew who worked for the planning department at Safeway, and he had told her a clear two years ahead of time that the company was thinking of building a new superstore on the waste lot right next door. But that’s what telling fortunes is all about. Observation, logic, memory and common sense. You can tell your
own
fortune if you’re honest about yourself, but not many people are.
    Even Adelaide wasn’t. She smoked a pack-and-a-half of Salem Menthol every day, sometimes more when she was lonely. She said they couldn’t hurt her, being menthol. They kept her sinuses clear. On 15 March, 1967, she complained of chest pains and shortness of breath. On 11 April, she died of lung cancer at the Kings County Hospital Center and the only person who went to her funeral was me. It didn’t rain. In fact, it was hazy and uncomfortably hot, and I wished that I hadn’t worn my raincoat.
    I can see her face today: clear as a photograph. White hair, wound in a knot; bright green eyes; skin like soft crumpled tissue-paper. She always put me in mind of Katherine Hepburn, romantic and girlish and strong, even at the age of 71. And she always gave me a saltwater taffy, and kissed me before I left.
    Wherever you are, Adelaide, heaven or hell or tarot-land, God bless you.
    It was a grilling August day and every window was open wide to let the heat in. My recently-departed lover had been friends with a very hip, black gang-leader called Purple Rayne who had sold me a ‘second-hand’ air-conditioner that still had ‘Avis Rent-A-Car’ stencilled on it. I didn’t object so much to the fact that it was stolen as I did to the fact that it hardly ever worked. When I did manage to get it going, it used to sound like a Mexican rumba orchestra practising
La Cucharacha
on the last train to Brighton Beach.
    This morning I needed comparative quiet because I was telling the fortune of Mrs John F. Lavender, one of my most generous clients; and Mrs John F. Lavender was very demanding when it came to finding out what was going to happen to her next. This was because she was having affairs with three different men at once and she didn’t want any one of them to find out about the other; and in particular she didn’t want Mr John F. Lavender to find out about any of them.
    My walk-up consulting rooms and living accommodation were on the top floor of a peeling three-storey brick building on East 53rd, above the Molly Maguire Club, where some of the less assimilated of New York’s Irishmen gathered of an evening to drink Bushmills Whiskey and sing about the old country and dance a few jigs and knock each other’s teeth out. The whole south side of East 53rd between Lexington and Third was in a state of dilapidation: a sorry collection of trellis-gated stores that had long gone out of business, interspersed with Cohen’s Cut-Price Drugs, the Pink Pussy Sex Center, and Ned’s Bargain Liquor. It directly fronted the gleaming new plaza underneath the Citicorp Center, like a hideous reminder that everything grows old one day, and that even the grandest dreams can collapse into dust. I managed to rent my premises for less than a hundred and fifty dollars a week because Citicorp weredoing