Night Secrets (3 page)

“Join you what?”

“To discover the future.”

Frank looked at him unbelievingly. “You don't believe in that stuff, Farouk,” he said.

“But it is just an entertainment,” Farouk told him. “A way of passing the time. Will you join me?”

Frank shook his head.

“Why not? It can do no harm,” Farouk said insistently. “And besides, it is possible that one may sometimes find a truth stuck in something false.”

Frank shook his head again, then started to move away.

Farouk grasped his arm. “Then at least come and observe,” he said insistently. “The Gypsies are an ancient people.” He smiled and tugged Frank forward. “Come.”

Frank hesitated a moment as Farouk headed across the avenue, then he moved forward slowly, following him reluctantly until they reached the door.

Farouk knocked gently, and the door sprang open like a trap. A small, very slender woman stood in the hallway, her hand still on the knob. She wore a blue skirt, embroidered here and there with black horses, and a white blouse. Her face was very brown, and badly wrinkled, with deep webs around the nearly black eyes. Her hair was stone gray, but most of it was hidden beneath a large red scarf.

“You wish to have your fortune told?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“That is my wish, yes,” Farouk said. He glanced down at her bare feet. Three of her toenails had been freshly painted a bright purple. “But, perhaps another time?”

“No, no,” the woman said hastily. She pushed the door open instantly. “Now is good.” She turned and led them through a red beaded curtain into the adjoining room. It was very small, the walls hung with paintings of Jesus, the small tables filled to overflowing with plaster statues of what looked like the Virgin Mary, except the eyes were without pupils and looked strangely black.

“Please sit down,” the woman said.

Farouk lowered himself into the plain metal chair that rested beside an equally small table. The table was covered with a very ornate cloth, bright green with red trim, that was embroidered with complicated scenes of jungle life, panthers peering out from behind thick clusters of green foliage, boas coiled around overhanging limbs.

The woman walked to the window which looked out onto the street and quickly drew a light-blue curtain over it. Then she sat down at the table, facing Farouk, her hands flat down on the cloth, the elbows locked rigidly in place. “I can tell you of yourself,” she said to him, “or I can tell you of your destiny.”

“They are not the same?” Farouk asked, in a tone that struck Frank as surprisingly serious.

“They are never the same,” the woman replied crisply. She smiled quietly, with one eye closed, the other one focused intently on Farouk. “You must choose.”

Farouk nodded. “And one costs more man the other, yes?”

The closed eye shot open. “Destiny is always more.”

Farouk glanced over toward Frank. “What should I ask for, my friend?”

Frank shook his head, then leaned more heavily into the doorjamb at the entrance of the room. Strings of red beads hung over his shoulders like the shredded remnants of a shawl. He raked them away. “Up to you,” he said.

Farouk looked back at the woman. “Destiny.”

The woman nodded quickly. “Give me your hands.”

Farouk stretched his hands toward her.

The woman took them in hers, turned them palms up, stared at the deep lines. The light in her eyes seemed to dim slowly, then go out. “Ah, yes,” she said, her voice suddenly flat, trancelike. Then she released his hands and drew a deck of cards from beneath the table. “The tarot,” she said, as she began to arrange them on the table. “The cards of divination.”

A shadow darted across the blue curtain, and Frank leaned forward slightly and glanced to the left, toward the rear of the house. The interior room was separated from the front by another curtain of red beads. It was entirely empty except for several strange musical instruments which hung from one of the walls, a white wicker chair, and a small table, upon which a large red candle burned almost motionlessly, casting netlike shadows over his face as its light passed through the beaded curtain.

“The Ace of Coins,” the woman told Farouk, “the light of the world.” But Frank could hear her voice only as a faint monotone. It was followed by Farouk's.

“Better than the Ace of Scepters,” he said, “the eye of the serpent.”

Frank continued to watch the place where the figure must have passed in order to throw its shadow on the curtain, but nothing moved. He cocked his head for an instant, tried to hear something other than the fortune-teller, but everything was silent except for her flat, drowsy voice.

“Another ace,” she said as if surprised, “The Ace of Cups.” She bent down farther, her eyes now concentrating on Farouk. “You must know the truth.”

Frank glanced back at the fortune-teller, let his eyes linger on her for a time, men drew them back toward the rear of the house. He leaned forward again, inching closer to the thin silvery slits of light that passed through the slender red tentacles of the curtain.

The candle had been put out, throwing most of the room in deep shadow and leaving only an eerie tunnel of light, which fell directly upon the chair and the woman who now sat silently in it, her face lifted high, her eyes staring boldly into his. She wore a long black dress embroidered in bright designs. A profusion of swirling colors gathered at her waist, and there were two embroidered scorpions curled at her breasts. Her skin was very brown, and her long black hair fell in curls and ringlets to her bare shoulders.

For an instant, he pulled away, then drew back, watching her more closely, taking everything in, the white sandals that clung to her feet, the long swirling hoops of her earrings. He could tell that she saw him, but she gave no hint of it, not the slightest gesture, but only stared directly toward him, her black eyes burning wildly through the screen of dripping red.

He nodded toward her gently, awkwardly, and for a moment felt the strange sensation that they were already locked together in a primitive collusion, as if they'd exchanged in whispers some searing line of vital information:
I know what you know
.

Suddenly she stood up, stared at him a last smoldering instant, then vanished from the room.

Frank felt his breath release in a sudden burst, saw the glittering beads again, then heard the fortune-teller's voice, and pulled his eyes back to her and away from the now empty room.

She had turned the last of the tarot cards and was staring at it intently, her eyes fixed on the swirling colors of its intricate design. “The Ace of Swords,” she said suddenly. Then she shivered slightly and let her hands drop helplessly to her sides. “No more,” she said quietly.

Farouk stared at her penetratingly. “You see danger?”

The fortune-teller shivered again. “Please, you must go now.”

Farouk leaned forward. “Death? You see death?”

The fortune-teller stood up. “Go now. I can say no more.”

Farouk slowly got to his feet. “Please, tell me more,” he insisted. “You must have seen something.” He reached for his wallet. “If it is a matter of money …”

“No. No money,” the woman replied coldly. “Nothing. Nothing.” She bolted toward the door, opened it instantly. “Please, you must go.”

Farouk dropped his head forward tragically and moved ponderously out of the room, pausing at the open door. “Madam, are you sure that you …?”

“No,” the woman snapped. “No. Nothing.” She stepped back and closed the door tightly behind her.

Farouk snapped his head up immediately after the door had closed, leaving him alone with Frank again. A mocking smile played on his lips. “It is always the same,” he said. “For a thousand years, it has not changed.”

Frank looked at him questioningly.

“To see something fearful, then order you to leave,” Farouk explained. “To pretend that money means nothing to you. That is how they deceive.” He shook his head. “It is what they call the
Hokkano Baro
, the Great Trick, the heart of the sting.”

“Then why do you go to them?” Frank asked.

Farouk's eyes darted away. “For the experience,” Farouk said crisply, his eyes not looking back at the door. “And because they are Gypsies,” he added, “the last of the vagabonds.” His dark eyes swept over Frank. “Have you ever heard the Gypsy prayer, my friend?”

“No,” Frank said, thinking of the woman again, the strange, invisible net she seemed to have cast over him for an instant, the way his breath had leaped from him when she vanished, as if a lethal grip had been suddenly relaxed.

Farouk grinned mysteriously. “The Gypsy prayer,” he repeated, crossing himself as he quoted it. “‘Thank God I got away.'”

I
t was past midnight before Farouk finally roused himself from the sofa in Frank's office and lumbered to the door, hesitated for a moment, then looked back. “I must go to Toby's now,” he said. “Are you coming later?”

Frank nodded. “Maybe.”

Farouk opened the door. “Well, good night then, my friend,” he said as he stepped out into the brick corridor.

“Good night,” Frank said, then watched out the front window until he saw Farouk mount the short flight of cement stairs, carefully pulling his large frame over the woman who now slept at the bottom of them.

For a long time after Farouk had disappeared, Frank watched the sleeping woman, how she drew her legs up to her enormous drooping breasts. Even in the shadowy light that covered her, he could still make out the details of her clothing, the tattered shoes and mismatched socks, the long orange coat she used to protect herself from the evening chill.

He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, took out the bottle and poured himself a round. It went down warm, as it always did. He poured a second round, brought it nearly to his lips before he stopped, his eyes fixed on the blue paper that lay crumpled up in the wastebasket beside his desk. He drew it out again, spread it faceup on his desk, and stared at it. It seemed far away, an artifact from a distant time. Then he thought of the woman behind the beaded curtain, and he suddenly returned the whiskey to the bottle, and the bottle to the desk drawer. He didn't know why, except that if he took another shot, he would take another and another until tomorrow would seem entirely irrelevant.

He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and waited. Sleep came upon him slowly, as it always did, like water rising in the room, cutting him off from the dusty light and the sounds of the street that banged against his window. At first it was a kind of slow muffling, then a vague, uneasy darkness, and finally an oblivion so dense and dreamless that, each time he awoke, he sensed that it was not so much from a suspended consciousness as from a dream of death.

It was a sound that jerked him up a few hours later and made him pull forward in the chair, his eyes searching the room like a hunted child. He listened for it again, the slight screech that had awakened him, and as he listened, he thought of all the things that it might be, a crackhead lurking in the shadows, a prostitute looking for a dingy corner to turn a five-buck trick, an old tosspot, sucking the last pink drops from his bottle of Thunderbird. In the silence, the fog of sleep lifting steadily, he opened the top drawer of his desk and felt for the .45 which nestled among the papers there. It was in his hand when he heard footsteps in the corridor, and as he moved toward the door, he felt his hand caress the pistol grip more firmly, his finger pull down with a hard impulsive longing upon the steel lip of the trigger.

He threw open the door in a single, quick motion, hesitated an instant, then stepped out into the corridor. He could see two feet as they bounded up the stairs then disappeared over the top of the landing, but he felt no need to pursue them. Instead, he walked out to the stairs and checked on the old woman.

For a time, he remained with her, leaning against the jagged brick wall, just to make sure that no one returned to do her harm. As he kept watch, he thought of his mother, the one who'd left them all so many years before.