Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(5)
“May you be lucky,” she greeted the couple with her wide-tooth grin. A grin that hid her anxiousness about Old Duke. He was inside dying, sure as Salome danced with seven veils.
“I would imagine it is you who are hoping to get lucky off us,” said the man called Gunter, his sharp-eyed gaze sweeping over her frayed and wash-worn clothing and then dismissing her with cutting negligence.
“It was you who came seeking me.” However, like a blacksmith, she forged her lips into an upturned-horseshoe.
She led them up the arc of colorfully painted steps. Never mind that their paint was peeling as badly as the skin on her once bloated stomach had peeled from inside out.
They were already seated before she located her Tarot deck above the wardrobe, along with a finger cymbal she had misplaced. Seating herself at the head of the table, she began shuffling. “What is it you wish to know?”
“We’re here merely for another diverting afternoon,” the blond Adonis said.
Well, Sweet Baby Jesus, she could do that. Divert him. Her imagination and Gypsy cleverness combined, surely, had to have enough clout to equal his obviously high intelligence. His narrow face, long nose, and high forehead gave that away.
She might not be able to read cards, but she could read people. Exposure repeatedly to life-or-death fate determined by others was a powerful teacher.
“Who is first?” she inquired of the two.
He nodded at the woman he had called Irina, and she shook her head. Hers was a classic beauty that was saved from mediocrity by her determined jutting chin. Today, she wore a snow-white coat as protection against October’s brisk but cleansing autumn air and a dollop of a white beret atop her fashionably platinum hair, a la Jean Harlow.
She shrugged out of her woolen coat, as white as purity, and smiled. “Let’s find out if we’ll beat them at their own game.”
Romy’s attention to that information pricked up. She passed the cards to Gunter.
Capping his fedora on the chair’s ear, he shuffled and cut the deck.
Eyeing his expensive watch, a Meisterstück, Romy collected the cards, reshuffled, then laid them out. Absent were the onerous four – the Magician, the High Priestess, the Emperor – and, of course, Death. However, once again the Tower showed up in Gunter’s spread.
Gunter? Was he the famed attorney representing the shagger Third Reich officials in court cases? If so, he was a thief in sheep’s clothing.
He frowned at the Tower card and glanced askance at her.
She lifted her shoulders. “The cards fall as they will. The Tower in this layout warns that disaster is afoot. Evil is roaming.”
His eyes froze her as cold as smoke off hot ice. “As you said, the cards fall as they will, disaster comes or not. But, if so, I am in charge of what I do about it.”
She had noticed his exact articulation, but she also picked up something most people would not. The barest of a Yiddish accent. Was the smooth-talking Gunter trying to go sub rosa with possible Jewish heritage? She raised a brow. “I wouldn’t be so su – ”
At the loud creak of the entrance steps, she glanced from Gunter to the doorway. A huffing train porter staggered to the top stair. “Mr. Wagner, is he – oh, there you are, Mr. Wagner. You said to let you know if anything untoward occurred. Uhh, the – ”
Gunter shot to his well-shod feet, grabbed his fedora, and crossed to the door in two strides. Romy heard something murmured about a valise, but then, of course, her hearing wasn’t that acute. He turned back to her. “Go ahead with Irina’s card reading. I will return shortly.”
Warily, Romy reshuffled the cards, cascading them back into place, and passed them to Irina to cut. “What is your question?”
Behind the time-worn curtain, Old Duke’s rattled, deathbed wheezing could have served as the medium between two worlds for any Gypsy-staged séance.
The young woman looked uncertainly toward the curtain, then out the vardo’s open doors. She put aside the cigarette she was just about to light, then took up the cards. Her hand trembled as she clumsily cut them into three decks. “My baby, it . . . . “
That one word rankled Romy. Her womb could have ached – if it weren’t a charred lump of coal. Immediately she hated the young woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties “Ye wish to know about yuir bairn?” Shite, she had let herself lapse into her natural Irish brogue.
Apparently, Irina had not noticed. She nodded, more a jerk of her head. Her eyes were glassy.
Was the infant dead? Something wrong with it? Pondering how to elicit more information, Romy gathered the three piles and glanced at their bottom cards. Her eyes fell immediately on the Empress and Death, both reversed.
Resistance to change for the regal acting young woman?
The third card, the Wheel of Fortune – well, sometimes, when ye resisted, destiny kicked ye in the arse. She hazarded a guess. “Ye miscarried?
Behind Romy, Duke’s death rattle had finally ceased, as most likely had his spirit. What to do? What to do? She laid the cards aside, making to rise.
Irina’s pretty lip’s quivered. “I am . . . it would have been better if I had lost – ”
“Romy!” a woman’s age-raveled voice yelped from the doorway – Romy’s elderly neighbor Marta, her face garishly painted in an effort to cover its warts. “The SS, they’re here! In the camp. Rounding up everybody!”