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Seer Suckers by Barry Baldwin
Frank wasn't flattered that she'd tried him first. In any other circumstance he would have been. Sam was big and handsome and cheerful, the kind of guy that girls go over to and ask to dance in the clubs and give their names and phone numbers without waiting to be asked. Frank was average this, average that, average everything, and although it was five years now he sometimes found it hard to credit that Maureen should have said yes to him and that they were still together in spite of their problem.
But to be given priority by a carnival fortune teller touting outside her booth, which showed how slack business was, only meant that she had him weighed up as the patsy of the three, the one most likely not just to cross her palm with silver but to load it down, and so the one most willing to believe whatever hocus-pocus she came out with if only to get value for his money.
Well, he'd see about that.
The other two were all for it, provided it wasn't for them. "Go for it," said Maureen, "you never know."
Sam backed her up with "Yes, why not, what have you got to lose?"
"Only some of my hard-earned dough."
Maureen started to tug at the clasp of her handbag,
the first time she'd done that all evening. "Here, if that's what's holding you
back...."
The small part of Frank that wondered if there might
be something in it prompted him to say, "It wouldn't count if I wasn't using my
own money. Come to that, what about you having a go, if you're so keen?"
"Women don't give everything away to other women,
even if they're paying for it. You're the man. She might say something about
you-know-what."
"I don't like leaving you out here, though."
"Oh, don't be so wimpy. What harm am I going to come
to? And Sam'll take care of me, won't you, Sam?"
"You know I always do." He gave her the squeeze that
Frank didn't. "Get in there, pal. At least it'll be a laugh. And she's not a bad
looker, either." Trust Sam to concentrate on that. But he had a point. The fortune teller wasn't at all the toothless old crone with brass earrings bundled up in a head scarf and muttering to herself that he'd seen in magazine yarns or at the movies. She had a good mop of hair, deep dark eyes and almost bee-sting lips, and although it didn't give much away the brightly colored silk robe sort of thing she had draped around her had the effect of making Frank want to look at her more rather than less.
"All right, then, if you're both twisting my arm.
Stop here, though. I don't figure I'll be long." He nodded to the woman who'd
stood patiently through all this without a word or trying to hook a different
customer, and followed her into the booth.
This was more like Frank's idea of a fortune teller.
Lots of skimpy black curtains got up with silver triangles and half-moons and
other signs he couldn't fathom. The only light was a low-wattage bulb in a lamp
with a reddish shade sharing a rickety-looking table with a crystal ball and a
pack of cards. Apart from half-expecting a black cat to jump out from the
shadows and perch on her shoulder, Frank wondered what the odds were on a cup of
tea whose leaves she might read. No, that was out of date; even the smartest
star-gazer couldn't get the future out of a soggy tea-bag. Well, maybe over in
Britain, but not here. He plonked himself down across from her.
"Which shall it be? The cards or the crystal?"
Why did she have to ask? Wasn't she supposed to know
things in advance? Oh, of course, it was a question of cost. There was bound to
be a sliding scale in fortune telling like in everything else. And money first,
just as with those other kind of women that tout for custom. Frank dug out a
handful of coins from his change-purse which was always and only full on a
Friday night and shoveled it into her hand. Like the blind man from whom he
bought his evening paper on the way home from work, she seemed from her
expression to have the knack of knowing how much she'd been given just from the
feel of it.
She didn't thank him. "The crystal, then." Her voice
was pitched at what he imagined was her idea of Romany-like and mysterious,
though the effect wasn't helped by an obvious undercurrent of magnolia. Once a
Southerner, always a Southerner, Frank thought. The only time he'd been down
South was to a football game where he'd been belted by one of the home fans
liquored up from their tailgate parties in the parking lot.
Frank wasn't sure if he was getting the cheaper or
the dearer look into the future. The crystal wasn't that big, but it did have a
cloudy-gray swirling going on末some sort of tricked-up paperweight, he decided.
It was probably as well that the cards apparently weren't coming out末he might
not have been able to refrain from asking if she would care for a hand of
penny-a-point gin rummy.
He was expecting she would kick off by telling him
what a wonderful person he was, the way they did in the stories and the films.
But she went straight into the main act, peering at the crystal, giving him a
look, then raising her head and gazing up without a word into the gloom. Frank
was just about ready to say, "Get on with it then, Lady" when she brought her
head back down, fixed him with the eyes into which he thought he might have been
drawn if they'd been in another kind of room with another kind of purpose, and
spoke.
"I see a child."
This was a turn-up. "Come again?"
"I see a child. And a man."
Shouldn't she be seeing Maureen as well? "You're
barking up the wrong tree there. I've got no kids and after all this time I'm
not likely to." His laugh was intended to cover up what he felt about this.
"Can't that ball of yours come up with anything better? What about a tall dark
stranger or the right lottery numbers or...?"
If she thought this wait would get him to put his
hand in his pocket for more money, she had another think coming. But after
tapping the crystal a couple of times she got back into gear.
That did the trick. "What do you mean? Who's dead?
Is it the kid?" He had to admit she knew her stuff, getting him all het up over
a child who didn't exist and never would.
"No, not the child. The father. The man is fading,
the crystal is going out...."
So was Frank. He pushed back his chair, which fell
over as he jumped up. "I've had enough of this garbage. I know what your game
is, sweet-talking folks into here and frightening them out of their wits with a
lot of morbid talk so that they'll hand over more money to get you to look again
and make it come out all right in the end. Well, I'm not as green as I might
look, so you know what you can do with your crystal ball末"
"I can only see what末" the woman began to repeat,
but Frank was stomping out, almost tangling himself up in one of the curtains.
He had half a mind to turn back and wrestle his money from where she'd tucked it
in her robe, but she might report him to the cops if he did, and the last thing
he wanted was for anybody except Maureen and Sam to know he'd been fool enough
to go in there in the first place.
They were there when he got outside. For some
reason, Frank had the impression that they hadn't just stood waiting there for
him but had been off somewhere else and had got back in the nick of time. He
didn't make anything out of it, though. He'd been inside longer than he'd
predicted, and couldn't blame them for wandering off for a bit.
"Well, what did she say?" demanded Maureen. Sam
stood smilingly silent.
"Some stuff about a kid." Frank didn't let on about
the dying father detail. No sense upsetting her like that. And anyway, where was
Maureen herself supposed to end up? She hadn't featured at all in the crystal
ball business.
"I said she might." Maureen seemed caught halfway
between his impatience and her own expectations. "There's more than one way of
looking at it, Frank. We have talked about adoption or fostering末"
"You mean you have."
"Never mind about it now. Why don't we have a burger
and fries and go on the rides?"
"Better have the rides first, otherwise somebody
will be losing their burger and fries at the top of the roller coaster." Sam
always seemed to know when and how to ease himself into their exchanges and take
over a subject and make it look like he'd brought it up to begin with.
"No, I'm fed up with this place. I'm heading for the
bar. Are you coming?"
This was meant for Maureen. Sam didn't drink, always
stuck to one coke. He said it was against his religion, though Frank believed it
had more to do with not wanting to put his hand in his pocket to buy a round,
and sometimes speculated that he might have a sly one when he wasn't with them.
Maureen didn't argue, but her disappointment was plain enough, so Sam said he'd
take her on the rides and see she got home safely afterwards. One good reason
for staying in with him. Sam had been looking after Maureen a lot recently, now
that Frank was spending more and more time at the bar.
Sam wouldn't even break his coke rule when they
gathered there several weeks later for a double celebration.
"A coming and a going," proclaimed Frank, who'd been
sounding tipsy before they'd so much as got there. "Maureen here expecting and
now Sam off to the Big Apple."
"So, what about that fortune teller now?" This
wasn't the first time by a long way that Maureen had said this since they'd
found out, though Frank was no longer clear if she was asking a question or
making a point. Given the fact that he was still keeping to himself the balance
of her prediction, the last thing he wanted was that the star-gazer should
continue to crop up.
"Just lucky. It doesn't need to have anything to do
with second sight. She saw we didn't have a kid with us and what parents would
come to a carnival by themselves if they had one? And I read somewhere that
women can sense when other ones are in the family way, a sort of glow they give
off, and she had a good look at you outside the booth, so that's that. What's
your take, Sam?"
Frank wanted Sam to agree. Maureen put a lot of
stock in what he thought about anything, too much so sometimes but never mind
about that now, and it would help get the woman out of her mind as well as his,
so he was as disappointed as he was surprised by the answer.
"Well, until now I'd have said the same. But she got
me right as well as you, so I have to admit there could be something in it."
With Sam's kind of face, it was hard to tell if he
was blushing or not. "She got you as well? You mean末?"
"Yeah, I went back the next night. It's like I said
at the time, at least it'd be a laugh and she wasn't a bad looker and I thought
I might stand a chance. Not that I did. But she had a glom at that ball of hers
and said I'd soon be getting a spot of news and be off on a long journey."
"And here you are packing your bags," Maureen said.
"I wish you weren't. I mean, I'm glad for your sake and all that, it sounds like
a great job and we always knew you'd go far, but not as far as that. I wanted
you here for the baby."
Sam didn't answer, so Frank chipped in with yes, it
was a shame, but once he was there and settled and sent them his address they
could write to him and send him pictures of the baby after it came. Privately,
Frank wasn't too bothered. He couldn't visualize Sam coughing up much in the way
of a christening present or anything like that, so he already had him ruled out
for godfather, whatever Maureen might want, and with the baby on the way his
drinking days were done after this, so no more need for Sam and his escort
duties.
There was something else on all their minds. Maureen
came out with it first. "I wonder if she saw her own luck in the crystal ball as
well?"
The story had come out in the local paper. Since the
carnival was celebrating its hundredth anniversary, the town council had managed
to get a big name from Washington, not a top-notcher but still a headliner, to
come and open it officially to mark the occasion. Going the rounds after the few
words and the ribbon-cutting, the bigwig had looked in on the fortune teller's
booth and held out his hand with a smile that was really for the cameras but
she'd grabbed it and done a quick examination of his palm and said the horse he
owned would win the Kentucky Derby the next week, which it did at 40-1. Wanting
to be in on this kind of publicity, several people from the towns the fair had
previously been at stepped forward with their tales of how this fortune teller's
predictions had come true for them as well. The reporter had done a good job on
his story and the big city papers and CNN had taken it up, with the result that
in no time flat she was gone from being a dame in a booth to Madam Petulenga,
society astrologer, in New York.
Over the moon about the baby, Frank wouldn't have
cared a nickel whether credit was due to the crystal ball or a sheer fluke, had
it not been for the other half of the story which kept nagging at him, so he
said,"I wonder when somebody will step forward with one that didn't turn out?
Still, what does it matter in the long run?" Maureen said she was a bit tired
and could they go home now? Sam looked at his watch, a dime store special about
which Frank often made a joke, always the same one, and said he ought to be off
as well, packing to finish and an early cab in the morning and then the long
plane ride.
In the next months, Frank didn't have a lot of time
to dwell on what he still kept to himself, too busy turning the guest bedroom
into a nursery and coping with Maureen who had become very tricky to handle.
Having a baby seemed to have turned into a bigger problem than not having one,
first with the morning sickness, then the weekly drag to the clinic and the
getting so fat and the moping about and forever bursting into tears, especially
over the fact that they'd not heard a word from Sam since he'd left. Frank was
as patient as he knew how to be; he'd read in the magazines that women in her
condition could be difficult with all the changes their bodies were going
through, though there were moments when he felt like giving her a good clip and
telling her women had babies every day without all this fuss, she'd wanted one
long enough, hadn't she, the same as him? He called in once where Sam used to
work and they said he was getting on swell in his new job. Frank was a bit
jealous of this, but told Maureen anyway, thinking it would cheer her up a bit,
but instead it made matters worse. The waterworks were on again; if he had time
to write to them, why not to us?
Frank couldn't entirely close his mind to the
fortune teller's prophecy. It didn't help that she was in the news so much,
she'd certainly known how to market herself, with her luxury apartment in the
Trump Tower and her column in one of the celebrity magazines and capping her
reputation with the revelation that the plane that had recently crashed with no
survivors was the one she'd changed her mind about traveling on at the last
minute.
The baby arrived ahead of schedule, going by his
calculations, and Frank ended up delivering it on the kitchen floor. He'd been
going around telling people till they were sick of hearing it that he didn't
care what it was or who it looked like as long as everything was all right.
Frank got in touch with the local paper, not the
reporter who'd done the original story but another one, a guy he'd known at
school and who did his drinking at the same bar that Frank, Maureen, and Sam had
used. He was keen to get on, especially at the expense of somebody else, and
kept smiling and nodding his head as Frank outlined what he wanted: a story to
the effect that he was still very much alive despite Madam Petulenga's forecast
of his post-baby demise. When this story came out, it would be too late to deny
or re-jigger her original prediction. It only needed one failure. Frank
calculated that his would bring folks flocking out with complaints about her
others. The same media that had built her up would tear her down just as
efficiently.
Frank knew what the price would be when everything
came out. To delay payment, he put their house on the market and without waiting
for it to sell skipped to another town where he found a cheap apartment and told
people that they'd taken it in after it had been abandoned by its own father but
now he was on his own and left holding the baby. Listening to him and looking at
it, they all thought he must be one in a million.
The story came out, but it wasn't the one Frank
wanted. The reporter had always had a crush on Maureen, and was almost as
jealous of Sam as he was of Frank whenever he saw them with her. He'd also
observed, while doing a stint on the Births and Deaths Column, that Frank and
Maureen didn't appear to have announced their baby in it. Backing his hunch,
which he'd many times read in articles about the great journalists was the
quickest way into the big time, he went round to Sam's old office, obtained with
a cash payment that was chargeable to expenses his Manhattan address, and sent
it with an outline of the situation as he saw it to Madam Petulenga .
He never heard back from her in so many words, but
the bundle of dollars that came in the post with the clipping from a New York
newspaper was more than enough. How much further life there'd be in his story
would depend on what the police turned up after he'd tipped them off to get on
Frank's trail and find out what had become of Maureen, whom none of the
neighbors had seen for at least a month and the baby not at all. Madam Petulenga would have another feather to stick in her prophetic hat, plus the satisfaction of what was going to happen to that customer whose awkwardness she had never forgotten and which was why she'd been pleased to lay out such a morbid future. She'd had no ordinary way of knowing before that reporter's letter that he'd been left holding a baby as black as the curtains in her old booth, as black as his real father, who was soon going to be found dead in suspicious circumstances in his New York apartment less than a year after moving there.
THE END Barry Baldwin ｩ 2007 |
Barry
Baldwin was born (1937) and educated in England. Armed with Classics degrees
from Nottingham University, he emigrated, first (1962) to Australia, thence
(1965) to Canada where he is now Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of
Calgary, and Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. After 12 books and some 600
articles on Greece, Rome, Byzantium, 18th-Century England, and Albania (an
exotic interest), he has re-invented himself as a freelance writer of
magazine/newspaper columns and (so far) around 30 short stories. Has been a
Finalist in the Crime Writers' of Canada (1999) and Antony (Bouchercon, USA)
Awards, also a listed Finalist for the Raymond Carver Contest (twice) and the
Fish International Publishing Contest (Ireland).