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out
the cards in the Celtic cross, she fidgeted and sniffed and peered across at me
like a moth-eaten ermine scenting its prey. I knew she was dying to ask me what
I saw, but I never gave any hints until the whole thing was set out on the
table. The more suspense, the better. I had to go
through the whole performance of frowning and sighing, and biting my lips, and
making out that I was in communication with the powers from beyond. After all,
that’s what she paid her $25 for.
    But she
couldn’t resist the temptation. As the last card went down, she leaned forward
and asked: “What is it, Mr. Erskine? What do you see? Is there anything about
Daddy?”
    “Daddy” was her
name for Mr. Winconis, a fat and dour old supermarket manager who chain-smoked
cigars and didn’t believe in anything more mystical than the first three
runners at Aqueduct. Mrs. Winconis never suggested as much, but it was plain
from the way she talked that her greatest hope in life was for Daddy’s heart to
give out, and the Winconis fortune to come her way.
    I looked at the
cards with my usual elaborate concentration. I knew as much about the Tarot as
anybody did who had taken the trouble to read Tarot Made Easy, but it was the
style that carried it off. If you want to be a mystic, which is actually easier than being an advertising copywriter, or a summer camp
warden, or a coach-tour guide, then you have to look like a mystic.
    Since I am a
rather mousy thirty-two-year-old from Cleveland, Ohio, with the beginnings of a
bald patch underneath my scrubby brown hair, and a fine but overlarge nose in
my fine but pallid face, I took the trouble to paint my eyebrows into satanic
arches, and wear an emerald satin cloak with moons and stars sewn on it, and
perch a triangular green hat on my head. The hat used to have a badge on it
that said Green Bay Packers, but I took it off, for obvious reasons.
    I invested in
incense, and a few leather-bound copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a
beaten-up old skull from a secondhand store in the Village, and then I placed
an advertisement in the newspapers which read: “The Incredible Erskine –
Fortunes Read, Future Foretold, Your Fate Revealed.”
    Within a couple
of months, I was handling more business than I knew what to do with, and for
the first time in my life I was able to afford a new Mercury Cougar and a quad
stereo with earphones to match. But, as I say, it wasn’t easy. The constant
tide of middle-aged ladies who came simpering into my
apartment, dying to hear what was going to happen in their tedious middle-aged
lives, was almost enough to drown me forever in the well of human despair.
    “Well?” said
Mrs. Winconis, clutching her alligator pocketbook in her wrinkled old fingers.
    “What can you
see, Mr. Erskine?”
    I shook my head
slowly and magnificently. “The cards are solemn today, Mrs. Winconis. They
carry many warnings. They tell you that you are pressing too hard toward a
future that, when it comes to pass, you may not enjoy as much as you thought. I
see a portly gentleman with a cigar – it must be Daddy. He is saying something
in great sorrow. He is saying something about money.”
    “What is he
saying? Do the cards tell you what he is saying?” whispered Mrs. Winconis.
    Whenever I mentioned
‘money,’ she started to twitch and jump like spit on a red-hot stove. I’ve seen
some pretty ugly lusts in my time, but the lust for money in middle-aged woman
is enough to make you lose your lunch.
    “He is saying
that something is too expensive,” I went on, in my special hollow voice.
    “Something is
definitely too expensive. I know what it is. I can see what it is. He is saying
that canned salmon is too expensive. He doesn’t think that people will want to
buy it at that price.”
    “Oh,” said Mrs.
Winconis, vexed. But I knew what I was doing. I had checked the price-rise
column in the Supermarket Report that morning, and I knew that canned salmon
was due for an increase. Next