Porn Star(50)

I don’t know much (or anything) about tarot cards, but a card called The Hanged Man doesn’t really imbue me with confidence. I’d rather get a card called The Frequently Fellated Man or maybe The Incredibly Wealthy and Amazingly Endowed Man. But I guess there’s no helping that now. With a resigned sigh, I lean over to examine it.

It’s a beautiful but disturbing illustration of a naked man hanging upside down from a tree, ropes wrapped shibari-style around his body. He hangs primarily by one leg, the other leg fastened in a bent position so that his left ankle is behind his right knee. His arms are lashed behind his back, and rope crisscrosses his body in banded patterns, cutting into the firm muscles of his stomach and legs.

Most striking of all is his face. If I were to be hanged upside down from a tree, I think I’d be considerably upset, but he seems to be enduring his fate quietly. Pensively, even. He stares straight ahead with a clear, almost curious, expression, and the corners of his mouth are tilted in what appears to be a small, knowing smirk, as if he knows something I don’t.

“He is at peace because he hung himself from the tree,” Madam Psuka tells me, her voice startling me upright. “He chose this path. Like Odin or Dionysus, he has sacrificed himself for greater cause.”

“I don’t have any great causes in my life,” I point out. “Certainly not any that would require me to hang from a tree.”

Madam Psuka briefly shuts her eyes, as if my ignorance pains her. “Is metaphor,” she says, a little defensively, her accent thickening. “Is not literal.”

“So I have to metaphorically hang myself from a tree?”

She taps the card. “This card means that you are coming to time of great choice. You will be asked to sacrifice something intensely personal and important.”

Hmm. I don’t like the way that sounds at all. “Do I at least get something awesome in return?”

Madam Psuka gives me a shrug that is so very, very European. “Who can say? Is not job of The Hanged Man to know. He knows only that he must have faith. But he also knows that he may perish instead, without having gained anything at all.”

All this talk of perishing and sacrifice and death is a bit of a boner-killer. I turn to glare at Devi. “You told me this would be fun!”

“I said no such thing!” she exclaims. “I only said it was my favorite.”

“Getting creepy cards is your favorite?”

“They’re not all creepy,” she says, jutting her lower lip out in a way that makes me want to bite it. “They just reflect different stages of a journey. That’s all.”

“She is right,” Madam affirms. “This card is not meant to frighten. If you are disturbed, it’s only because you sense—deep down—is truth. Here,” she says abruptly, pushing the card across the counter. “You must take this with you. It belongs in your care now.”

The pain and sacrifice card? No thanks. “That’s kind, Madam, but I—”

Devi elbows me, and I realize that I should shut up. “How much do we owe you for the reading?” she asks sweetly.

Madam looks me over. “Nothing,” she pronounces, her g sounding like a k. “Is favor for Sue.”

“Thank you,” Devi says, giving Madam Psuka a hug. “Come on, Logan.”

Madam Psuka picks up the card and holds it out to me. There’s no way to refuse it without looking rude, so I grudgingly take it from her fingers.

“Sacrifice is just another word for change,” she tells me, her thick brows drawn together. “Change that requires letting go.”

I give her a nod and then I let Devi tug me back into the blinding sunlight outside.





12





“So you never told me where we’re going for the blowjob,” Devi says a few hours later. With Madam Psuka’s card jammed in my back pocket, we walked all over the boardwalk, eating shaved ice and hot dogs and cotton candy, and watching the street artists. Then Devi led me down to the beach and we walked ankle-deep in the surf, gossiping about the porn people we knew and speculating about what would happen in the next couple of years with our industry. And then we made our way to my car, where we are now, heading back into the city.

I look over at Devi. As usual, she has the window cracked, the hot wind ruffling her hair. For a brief, tiny moment, I panic that the tarot card Madam drew for me might mean that Devi and I can’t make it, or won’t make it, for some important but unseeable reason, and my veins are flooded with an anxious adrenaline.

It’s not real, I tell myself. It’s not real.

But what if it is? What if this is some sort of sign that Devi doesn’t love me back? Or that I’ll have to give her up?

It’s not real.

Despite my mental pep talk, anxiety coats my voice when I say, “It’s a surprise where we’re going.”

She hears the change in my voice and turns her head to stare at me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Okay,” she says gently, letting me have my space without the slightest hint of resentment, and then I feel bad for shutting her out.

I take a breath, and then confess. “That tarot card is a little disturbing, don’t you think?”

She laughs. “Is that really what you’re thinking about right now, Mr. This Stuff Is So Silly?”