Fool's Journey Page 2

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "I didn't see it at first . . ." Panda cocked her head and peered at her, "but someone —it looks like someone really cut off some of your hair. My God! It looks like they took quite a hunk."

  Deirdre sank back, feeling like a puppet whose strings had been dropped. Panda rummaged in the depths of her enormous purse and finally pulled out a full-sized hand-mirror and passed it to Deirdre.

  "Here," she said. "Take a look."

  Deirdre had to turn her head to see, but it was clear enough: a hunk of hair had been cut off, just a few inches from the scalp. A steely shiver coursed up her spine and with it, a wave of sickness, a palpable sense of vulnerability. Her fingers closed over the spot and she let out a deep breath.

  "Who've you got after you, Deirdre? The ghost of Papa Doc and his voodoo horde? This is really creepy."

  The old urgency swept over her: hide, hide, hide.

  If only she were home with the doors locked and the shades drawn. Tears began to form again. Who did she have after her? The dead couldn't harm her. She'd made sure of that.

  Deirdre ran her fingers through her hair. "What the hell do I make of this?"

  "I don't know. Maybe nothing. Not everything has a meaning. There are all kinds of oddballs out there spreading their weirdness around, and maybe you just happened to intersect some of it." Panda gestured toward the Market. "A place like this attracts them. After all, look at us." Her attempt at humor fell flat.

  "Look," Panda went on quickly, "I knew someone once with hair that went down way below her waist, longer than yours even. It was so long she could sit on it. Well, she was at a bar one night having a few beers. She was sitting on a barstool with her hair tucked under her bum, and when she stood up to go, her hair didn't. I mean someone had come along behind her and just cut it off. Now that I think of it, she must have had more than a few beers or she'd have felt something, but, anyway, she was devastated. Felt totally invaded. I know it's weird, Deirdre, but you can't let yourself worry about it—some cult probably wanted a new recruit."

  Deirdre shot her a grim look.

  "Come on, Deirdre," she went on. "Don't give me that 'we are not amused' expression of yours. I know how rattled you let yourself get even over general rudeness. It's your 'sensitive poet's nature,' I guess. But there's a lot of craziness floating around in the cosmos and sometimes it floats our way."

  "I know that," Deirdre snapped, her voice low and tense. "I know that as well as I know anything. I'm the last person on earth who needs a lecture on the craziness of the cosmos."

  Deirdre pressed her fingertips to her eyes. She hadn't felt like this in years. Pursued. Violated. And she'd said more than she should have. Damn!

  "What really bothers me is that – on a whim! – someone can rattle my universe. A hand from nowhere can reach in and, suddenly, the day I began with becomes a different day. I am so angry, Panda. I'm all jangled. I hate feeling like that. And I despise being scared."

  "That's how they want you to feel. Don't. So they got a few strands of hair. Big deal. They didn't get you."

  Deirdre shrugged, but she pulled her journal from her satchel and scrawled again:

  Settle me in the attic eaves

  Sift me into floorboards

  Swallow my heart beneath the bed

  A shadow child from nowhere.

  IV.

  As Panda drove them back through the rain-washed city, Deirdre rested her face against the cold window and willed herself to be calm. She felt as if she had been whiplashed, spun from elation to fear in mere seconds. Her high spirits were tainted now. She was suspicious of her good fortune.

  The Dovinger Prize and the tenure offer had been bolts from the blue, as shocking and unexpected as that hand in her hair. What did it mean? Poets and prophets always looked for signs and symbols—it was their nature—and this sign had been as malevolent as a wasp in a lily.

  "We're almost home," Panda said. "You'll feel better when we get there."

  Deirdre nodded. The streets of her neighborhood shimmered in the rain. Coming home always helped. She needed to be by herself to recover her equanimity.

  The Queen Anne district was Seattle's answer to San Francisco–a better answer most locals would insist. It combined cosmopolitan with community. One could go to the beauty parlor, pick up film, go to the dentist, attend live theatre and buy an espresso within only a few blocks—and not get mugged.

  Deirdre rented the top floor of a former timber baron's mansion, built in ornate fashion over a hundred years ago. From her airy watchtower, she was able to observe the city, as well as the water and mountains beyond it. The living room window opened on a view of ferries, which continuously traced and retraced their paths through the waterways of Puget Sound. Across the water, the occasional clear day afforded a breathtaking view of Hurricane Ridge, a spectacular, saw-toothed crest of the Olympic Mountain Range.

  When Deirdre first discovered the place, she had been so taken with the panorama she had given only cursory attention to the actual rooms. Others might see the former servants' quarters as cramped and dingy, lacking the magnificence of the rooms below, but the room arrangement appealed to Deirdre. Its layout reminded her of a rabbit's warren, low ceilinged and secure. Every time she looked out over the city and sea, such mundane concerns faded.

  The rain continued, hard now, carrying with it the last yellow leaves of autumn. Threading a path down the narrow street, Panda squeezed her beetle into the breathing space between a Mercedes and a Volvo. "Guard the car," she told the pink dogs.

  Deirdre knew it was too much to expect that Panda would merely drop her off— not after what had happened. Panda was too good a soul for that, but still, Deirdre hoped she wouldn't stay long. She raced up the zigzagging wooden fire escape that clung to the side of the Victorian era building and led to her apartment's entrance. By the time Panda caught up with her, Deirdre was trying to extricate her keys from the tangled depths of her satchel. At last the telltale jingle revealed their whereabouts and, in another minute, she and Panda were safe inside.

  "I'd forgotten Mrs. Ruiz was coming in today," Deirdre said when she heard the hum of a vacuum cleaner coming from the bedroom. She flung her satchel onto the couch and shrugged out of her damp coat. It seemed she would have to wait for her solitude.

  Rosa Ruiz had been cleaning for her once every other week for the last three years. In that time they had developed an easy-going, friendly relationship. It had been astoundingly difficult to find someone she could afford on an assistant professor's salary who would also refrain from tossing out the dozens of odd pieces of paper she accumulated during the week. To the unschooled eye, they might look like ordinary trash, but on each was recorded a line or image, the starting point of a poem or a story that might be irreplaceable.

  After a series of disastrous episodes with cleaning agencies that sent in a different crew each time, she had finally interviewed Mrs. Ruiz.

  "I'm a writer," she had explained, "and it's important that nothing with writing on it is ever thrown out, no matter how meaningless it looks."

  "'Diamonds in the dust heap,' eh, Senorita?" Mrs. Ruiz had smiled knowingly.

  "You've read Virginia Woolf?" Deirdre had asked, a little surprised.

  "Sure," Mrs. Ruiz told her. "Anaïs Nin, Sei Shonagon, Charlotte Brontë. I read all women. Men, they no good."

  "What about Mr. Ruiz?"

  Mrs. Ruiz had sniffed disparagingly. "Him? Worse than Hemingway! Don't worry. I pick up the paper and dust underneath."

  Deirdre later learned that Mrs. Ruiz had, from time to time, sat in the back of classrooms and listened in on a variety of lectures during the years she had worked on the custodial staff of a college. In this way, she had accumulated an impressive, if inconsistent, store of knowledge. Eventually, though, one of the professors had complained. Her supervisor had immediately called her in and told her to take her lunch break in the student union snack bar like everyone else.

  "So, I
think about it maybe a minute and then I quit," Mrs. Ruiz told her with an eloquent shrug. "Can't be much of a school where they don't want people to learn."

  In a few minutes the vacuum whined to a stop and Mrs. Ruiz emerged from the back of the apartment. She was a tiny woman whose dark eyes sparkled like a wren's. Her purple velour jogging suit was covered with a crisp apron, and her frizzy black hair was pulled back with a pair of mother-of-pearl combs.

  "Ah! I thought I hear you two out here," she nodded to them. "Haven't seen you in a long time, Panda. You ever get a real job?"

  Panda grinned. "Nope, Mrs. Ruiz. I've found another fake job – I'm collecting urban legends this time." Panda, a folklorist by training and profession, sustained herself with grant money from the National Endowment for the Humanities. "You know what I mean," she went on, "the 'vanishing hitchhiker, dead grandma in the sleeping bag, slugs in the pop bottle.' Slumber party stories."

  Mrs. Ruiz clucked and shook her head. "Can't believe they pay good money for you just to write down stories everybody knows already. They gonna catch onto you," she said darkly.

  "Could be," Panda agreed with a grin.

  Mrs. Ruiz looked over at Deirdre who was standing in front of a small mirror.

  "What's the matter?" Mrs. Ruiz demanded.

  "Nothing," Deirdre told her quickly.

  "Don't look like nothing." Her eyes narrowed. "What happened? Why you so scared?"

  Deirdre didn't say anything.

  "It's just one of those weird things, Mrs. Ruiz," Panda answered for her. "We were down at the Market for lunch and someone in the crowd came up behind Deirdre and cut off some of her hair. See?" she said, pointing out the spot high on the back of Deirdre’s head.

  Mrs. Ruiz crossed herself. "I don't like that. Taking somebody's hair. It's no good." The housekeeper stood a moment, frowning as she seemed to deliberate. "You sit down, Deirdre."

  She stepped across the room to her purse and pulled out a packet wrapped in a silk scarf. "I'm going to read your cards."

  "Wow!" Panda sad. "You read tarot cards? You are a woman of infinite talents, Mrs. Ruiz. Do you mind if I take notes?"

  The woman snorted. "Part of your job?"

  "You might say that. Tarot has always been a sub-specialty of mine. I've been tinkering with a paper on variant interpretive systems for years."

  Mrs. Ruiz shrugged. "Just don't interrupt."

  She cleared a spot on Deirdre's coffee table, untied the scarf and ruffled through the deck. After another moment, she pulled out one card and placed it face up on the table. The Queen of Cups—a crowned woman with flowing hair sat on a dais above a green ocean. One hand held a glowing cup, the other a book.

  "It looks just like you, Deirdre," Panda whispered.

  Mrs. Ruiz nodded. "It is her. Now hush, Panda. You sit down here by me, Deirdre," she said, patting the spot next to her on the sofa. "I want you to shuffle the cards. Keep on shuffling until you feel like part of the cards. You'll know when it's time to stop. Then cut the deck. Use your left hand, and then make two wishes."

  Obediently, Deirdre picked up the deck and began to shuffle almost hypnotically. It had been an odd day already, almost like a dream. Having her fortune told seemed to be a part of the same fabric.

  Although the cards were larger than those in a normal deck, they felt smooth and comfortable in her hands. They were beautiful, too. The images ruffled by—the Lovers, the Magus, the Hanged Man. They fascinated her, even as they frightened her. Cups, pentacles, wands and swords reminded her of poems, each with its own symbols and hidden meanings.

  Finally, she stopped, rested her fingertips on the deck and shut her eyes for a long moment. Two wishes, Mrs. Ruiz had said. I want my happiness back. That one was easy. But the second? She was already beginning to feel that she had over-reacted to the incident at the market. Still, a wish did no harm. I wish no harm will come from this day. Then she sat back and waited.

  Mrs. Ruiz turned up the top card and frowned. It was the Tower. She placed it on the Queen of Cups. "Strange things happen all ‘round you," she said.

  She turned a second, the five of cups, and placed it across the other two, "Love crosses, gets in the way."

  She turned the third, the Devil. "Lies. All kinds of lies. Someone wants your power."

  She pursed her lips for a moment, then slowly began to lay the cards out in an asymmetrical pattern around the original three. When she had finished, she studied the configuration for a long time.

  Panda leaned over. "What do you see?"

  Mrs. Ruiz leaned forward on her elbows and continued to contemplate the cards as the minutes ticked by. Deirdre found herself looking at the symbols in the layout, trying to interpret it herself, like a text written in a vaguely familiar but forgotten language.

  "I never seen nothing like this before," Mrs. Ruiz said eventually. "Most times I know what to say, but today I don't see nothing clear. You see the Queen of Cups, Deirdre. See? This is you. Dreams and poems in your head. Just like a mirror—everything 'round you reflects. But, don't forget, everything in the mirror's backwards. Hard to know what you see.

  "You gotta be careful," she warned. "Don't trust nobody. There's all kind of danger 'round you, and bad will. But I think I see some angels, too."

  Mrs. Ruiz stared at the cards a few minutes longer, shaking her head. “There’s something I want to see,” she said and fanned the remainder of the deck across the table. “Pick one card, Deirdre.”

  Deirdre let her hand hover over the array of cards. She felt a prickling in her fingertips—Just like the witch in Macbeth. She chose the card nearest her and turned it up.

  The Fool.

  Mrs. Ruiz said nothing, but pressed her lips into a thin line as she swept the cards together into a neat pile.

  Panda let her breath go. "I'm going to make a pot of tea."

  "That's a good idea," Mrs. Ruiz nodded.

  “What is it you two know about this card that I don’t?” Deirdre demanded.

  Mrs. Ruiz tied the deck back into the silk handkerchief. “Just interesting," she replied with a shrug. "Never see much of the Fool. He stays in the deck most times. The deck, it’s his story.”

  Deirdre put a hand to her temple. “So are you saying the Fool’s story is about to become my story?”

  "Everybody's story is the Fool's story,” she said as she replaced the cards in her purse. “Just depends which chapter you're on. Maybe I'll try again later, Deirdre. Today's no good. But I'll come back tomorrow if you want."

  "Don't worry about it, Mrs. Ruiz," Deirdre told her. "I think it would be best if I put the whole thing out of my mind. There are better things to think about." She smiled as she ran a hand up through her hair.

  "You let me know. Okay, Deirdre? You promise?"

  "Sure, Mrs. Ruiz."

  When Panda came back into the room bearing a tray holding a teapot, three mugs, and a plate of cookies, Mrs. Ruiz was just putting on her raincoat.

  Panda's face fell. "You're not going to stay, Mrs. Ruiz? I wanted to ask you some questions about the tarot. It's peppermint tea. All my sources say it's good for serenity. Plus, I raided Deirdre's hoard of macadamia nut-chocolate chip cookies. They're good for the soul."

  "Sorry, I gotta go, Panda." Mrs. Ruiz tied on a plastic rain scarf. "I got a three o'clock over on Highland Drive. Bachelor. A real slob."

  "You think maybe we could talk another time?" Panda asked. "My article has been on the shelf since graduate school and I could really use a publication. Besides, I want to help Deirdre figure out what’s going on."

  "Maybe, Panda. We'll see. Sometimes tarot has more questions than answers. You take care of yourself, Deirdre. Be sure you lock all the doors and windows tight. Oh—and light a candle. Angels always like candles."

  The smell of the rain blew in as Mrs. Ruiz opened the door, then hesitated. "Looks like somebody left a package for you, Deirdre," she said as she stooped to pick it up from the landing.

  Deirdre frowned. "I wonder
why they didn't knock?"

  "You sure it wasn't here when you come up?" Mrs. Ruiz asked as she stepped back inside and handed the package to Deirdre. "Maybe with the rain coming down so hard you was just anxious to get inside. Didn't look, maybe?"

  "I don't think so," Deirdre answered slowly. "Did you see anything, Panda?"

  "No, and I always look down at my feet when I'm wearing this caftan. I've tripped on it too many times. I couldn't have missed it."

  For a moment, Deirdre considered the box in her hands. It was wet, although it didn't look as if it had spent too many minutes in the rain. It was a common stationery box, the same kind used for the sort of paper on which she printed her own manuscripts. There were no markings to indicate the package’s origin. It looked innocent enough, but she was reluctant to open it, almost as if she sensed it contained some sort of malevolent jack-in-the box.

  She shut the door and carried the box to the coffee table. Sitting down on the couch, she took a pair of scissors from the table and snipped the tape that sealed the box shut. Slowly, she lifted the lid. Bright pink tissue paper peeped innocently out. she smiled. A present!

  Feeling a little foolish, she set the lid aside and lifted the paper away.

  Then she froze.

  "What is it, Deirdre?" Panda asked.

  She looked at her friends still standing by the door, waiting for her to reveal what lay inside the box. She swallowed hard and held the box up for them. Inside was a dried flower wreath, identical to the one she'd tried on earlier at the market.

  Amidst the colored ribbons, woven through the purple and pink flowers, curled a lock of her own copper-colored hair.

  V.

  "I'm going to call Manny," Mrs. Ruiz said, untying her rain scarf as she headed back towards the telephone.

  Panda went to the door and slid the security chain.

  "Who's Manny?" Deirdre asked sharply.

  "My nephew. He goes to law school, but he works sometimes for a detective downtown. He'll know what to do," she said, beginning to dial.