It's All in the Cards
Gene Alvin
Issue #5 (July 2008)
"You've gotta be kidding, right?" Harry gave Sandy his best ‘you've gone over the edge, haven't you?’, look.
"No, I think this'll work. If anyone can get to the bottom of it, she can." Sandy leaned in toward him, jaw thrust out, arms akimbo, eyes intense, stressing her point. "Somehow you've managed to irritate a spirit or something and I'm scared. When we go to bed at night, you're Harry. When we wake you're some wild man that I don't know. You're mean. Either we get to the cause of this and fix it or your gonna be living alone. We're going in."
"Not a chance," he said, backing up a step. "I know you believe all this stuff but I think it's just a big scam. Witches, seances, Tarot cards, magic. Hmmph. It's a major waste of time and money, my time and my money, I'm not going in."
"Oh, come on Harry, do it for us, please,” she pleaded. “Something's going to happen, I feel it, just like I felt it when your mom died, remember? I told you something bad was going to happen and the next day it did. I'll even pay for it."
"Any dummy could have predicted that your mom was gonna croak, she'd been sick for months. It's a wonder the old bat didn't die sooner. Look, I told you not to worry, nothing's going to happen. What else do you want?"
"I want you to go inside with me for a session with Madame Sissly." Sandra's finger sank into his flabby chest as she poked it for emphasis. Why she stayed with him was a mystery. He had a vile temper, no sense of humor and was pragmatic to a fault, she, a dreamer. The motto he lived by was get them before they get you, hers was a paraphrased saying by Samuel Coleridge, "Weave a circle round her thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread, for she on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." The differences were bad enough but recently it seemed she was living with a man on the brink of a breakdown.
It was as though the spirit of Felix Ungar from the old TV sitcom, "The Odd Couple" had moved in. Only in this case Felix was not just picky, he was mean. Harry would wake at all times of the night, comb through their little apartment while she slept and nitpick. The next morning he would shout out orders to her like a construction boss. Each and every little thing that wasn't just so was her fault and was an intentional insult to him.
"Oh, all right, but you're paying. I'm not a sucker. Let's get it over with."
Madame Sissly's Occult-Mart was nothing more than a cellar. The entryway was the side door of a run down brick building on the lower east side of town. That was where all the leeches, losers, bums, drunks and druggies hung out. Harry Draven wouldn't admit it but this part of town made him uneasy. He felt like it was a leper colony waiting for its next victim. As Sandra opened the door, a loud squawk sounded from somewhere inside.
At the far side of the small foyer was a stairway leading down to the basement. A large hand painted sign proclaimed this to be the Super Center of the Spirit world. Magic, witchcraft, occult, Taro, Voodoo, all were available here. At the bottom of the sign was an arrow, hand painted in hot pink, pointing down.
Harry was shorter than Sandy by five inches and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. His beer gut sagged across his belt line like over proofed bread dough. He had to wheeze 'n' squeeze to get down the stairs. As his foot landed on the last step, he heard the squawk again.
"Awwwk, thar he blows, whale off the port side. Man the sea and anchor detail, all hands on deck."
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