Woman of Light (67)

“For what?”

“What else? Women and booze.” He laughed and reached for a cigarette from his breast pocket. He struck the match on the inside of his watchband. “You know, I’ve never stayed here before. I’d love to see what the rooms are like inside. Wouldn’t you?”

Luz was still trying decipher what David meant when the waiter returned with a three-tiered tray of cheeses and meats and a steaming porcelain kettle. “What will happen now?” Luz asked. “Now that they’re investigating the murder?”

David blinked, a long while. “I wish I could tell you. It could be the officer is indicted for murder. Or nothing could come of it at all, but I’d rather not think about that. Today is a triumph—let’s focus on that.”

Luz had requested her tea leaves and the strainer on the side. She pointed to the teacup and saucer before David. “I could read for you,” she suggested.

“My tea leaves?” he said, dismissively.

Luz nodded. “You could be prepared.” She paused a moment, searched the expansive dining room. “For what will come.”

David gazed into his cup. He spun it by its handle. “Sure, what the hell?”

“Really?” Luz asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “If anything, could be fun.” David winked.

Luz motioned for him to scoop the leaves into his cup. She instructed him to focus on his question, the case, what was at stake for him and everyone involved. “Move away,” she said, “from all other thoughts.”

“Like a prayer?” he said.

Luz told him that was true, though he didn’t seem like the praying type.

David laughed. “You,” he said, “have no idea what I’ve asked for.” He then blinked several times. “All clear, boss.”

Luz poured hot water over David’s leaves and whispered for him to keep holding his question while his tea steeped. For a moment, they sat together in silence, Luz leaning into the velvet cushion of her chair as she watched David’s eyes move over her face until he grinned.

“Ready?” Luz asked, and David nodded.

“Now,” she said, “drink and keep holding your question.”

David brought the teacup to his shiny lips and blew across the steam. He gazed downward as he drank, eyes hidden, mouth wet. After several minutes, he looked up and passed the cup to Luz.

“Let’s see,” she said, turning the teacup counterclockwise on the table. Luz normally would feel something at first glance, but the cup felt cold and empty.

“What do you see?” David asked optimistically.

“Still looking,” she said and brought the cup closer to her face, where an image came into focus. What at first appeared to be a black bird shifted into a bear.

“It’s easy,” said Luz with relief. “That’s an easy one. A bear. It means something from your past is hanging over you. Does that sound like something you might know?”

But when Luz gazed at David, he was speaking to the waiter, asking about something she couldn’t hear over the piano music, which had risen above their conversation, louder than anything else in the room.

“David,” Luz called out, unable to hear her own voice. He continued speaking to the waiter, oblivious to Luz shouting his name. The piercing piano music grew louder until Luz worried the sounds would damage her ears. Frightened, she stood from the table. She yelled David once more, but was forced into her seat by an invisible weight. The music stopped. The hotel went black. Luz waved her hands in the air, frantically fumbling for the table, but it was gone. The hotel was no longer there. Everything had vanished.

She heard it before she saw it, and smelled it, too.

A crowd. Jeers. Gunpowder. The ruffled snout of an angry animal, a stench like rotten glands.

And then Luz saw.

Through a murky day, high on wooden bleachers, featureless faces blurred in a circled audience. Luz inhaled and examined herself in a fringe gown with white suede boots. She held a rifle, surprised by its dead weight. Several yards ahead, an elegant white man in an old-fashioned suit stood with some playing cards in his hands and others balanced atop his head. He stared into Luz’s eyes and mouthed something that she was certain was love. Luz felt his affection travel inside her, sliding down her throat, and settling behind her breasts. The man smiled. Kindness seeped from his blue eyes. Luz raised her rifle, aiming to shoot his cards, but from the sidelines of her vision came a black fog. The crowd screamed.

A bear running, full speed, its body colliding into Luz and knocking her to the ground. The rifle fired.

The sounds grew deafening—shrieks, labored breathing, the death-stench of the bear’s wet mouth, teeth ripping fringe-covered thighs. The pain was so great that Luz feared she’d die of it, but through her agony, she maneuvered her rifle and shot her last bullet upward into the bear’s barreled chest, the steaming warmth of the animal’s blood pouring onto her like rain. As if on cue, the bear went lax, its impossible weight smashing Luz into the ground. She lay pinned to the sawdust-covered earth, her face turned to the right, her lungs flattened, unable to inflate. The world was muted as boots shuffled and between their mud-caked heels, Luz followed her line of sight into the crowd, where a cloaked figure stood in black, a woman making the sign of the cross.

That’s when Luz saw the body of the man who loved her. How he had collapsed into the sawdust. His face was vacant, overflowing, pieces of whitish and pink inner self on the outside. His cards were speckled in blood—a red queen, a black spade, a red diamond seven. This, Luz thought, is my last look at you?