0. The Fool. [Reversed]

Our Rooming House—MORNING

I practically run from The City back to our little rooming house By the Shore.

But my second thoughts catch up to me as I cross under the red rose arbor. My hand falls from the knob in hesitation. I stare blankly at the wreath upon the door for a moment. It’s the holidays. New beginnings.

I go in.

Through the living room and down the hall. I enter our rooms cautiously, slowly, closing the door behind me.

Andrea sits in the bed, naked, swaddled in purple blankets. When I enter she jumps and covers herself, reaching for the batons she kept near the bed to fend off an intruder. Realizing it’s me, the blankets fall again. They are grayish I think, not purple at all.

Sex and Love, I muse, Is it too much to ask to Master these Two Worlds?

She looks at me with sad eyes. Tosses the cudgels aside.

“Tenez-moi. Aimez-moi. Toute la journée.”

I take two hesitant steps towards the bed, “Toute la journée?”

“Pour toujours, Piteux.”

With nervous obligation, I hedge, “Okay, but I really have to get to my job.”

She grabs at me. “I have such bad cramps and look! Voila! My breasts are swollen!” At her indication I cross the room, and then move a hand over her belly and chest to confirm. She adds, “I know that you want to make love to me.”

I nod. I just want Freedom to Live.

“And I want us to make love, as well, but I cannot in this condition.”

I am crestfallen. I fall to my knees.

This has happened before.

She pats me on my balding head, soothing the sweaty strands of hair back to my scalp. I am shortened, but awake. Back in the World. She smiles.

“I am not always well. You know that, my Piteux.”

XXI. The World.

The Coffee Shop—MORNING

The Waitress and I sit back in the coffee shop again. The Waitress is behind the counter and I at my usual stool at the counter. She is being a bit flirty with me because she knows I am so down. In appreciation, I’ve tossed a sizable tip on the counter with every refill. We chat about how hard it is to meet someone on-line, especially because people look at one attribute and then reject you.

“Deal-breakers,” I say, “That’s what they call it. For me it is my height.”

“Really?” She says, surprised “You’re not too short.”

“Have you never had a good look?” I ask.

She shrugs.

“Most of the time I’ve been sitting on a stool next to the counter.” I reason. She comes around the front of the counter. I step off, finding her much taller than me.

“Yep, you’re short,” she frowns, “And going bald. Forgot about that.”

With that she seems to lose all interest, and goes back to her work. I melt into a puddle. At length she notices and drops a bagel on a plate before me, saying, “On the house.”

I tear up a slice of bagel. One of the regulars points at my bad manners and laughs.

“Tearing up your food? That’s a bad thing.”

I gnaw at the bagel. The Waitress slams two more bagels on the counter before me, condemning “That’s your dinner? You’re cheap!”

“I’m cheap?” I beg, “I can pay.”

“Whatever,” she huffs and spits. Sits on a stool opposite me.

Now we are both staring blankly at each other, my mug and the bagels both left untouched and growing cold between us. At length, the pay phone on the wall rings and I dash over to pick it up.

I smile to hear on the other end of the line a faint “Piteux, are you there? It’s me.”

It’s her. Andrea.

“Yea, it’s me. I was waiting.”

“Come home.”

“Okay. Coming.”

I eagerly slam the phone down and grab my satchel from the counter. The Waitress frowns. I say in sum, “It’s her; she wants to see me!”

The Waitress frowns even more deeply on this, but I hurry off, happy that I have her back.

I have My World back.

Nine of Swords

Back In School—UNKNOWN

I am sitting in a large, near-full amphitheater. I am groggy but soon comes awake enough to realize that He is the subject of the lecture. At a podium a dull speaker in a short-sleeved white shirt and bow tie, adjusts his glasses as he moves through endless slides, indicating each with a laser pointer. The slides show FRANK’S LIFE and are variously named HIS IMPALA, THE SAILOR NEE CHIMP, FRANK BY THE SHORE, FRANK AT WINES AND LIQUORS, and FRANK HANGING UNTO ANDREA.

Next to me, I thought, was a girl with long black hair and glasses in a black skirt. She reminds me of Andrea of old. But she adjusts herself in her seat and pretends not to notice me. But then on second glance I find she is not next to me at all. There is a girl to my other side with curly red hair slumped in the seat next to me. When I notice her she slumps towards me and puts her head on my lap.

Once comfortable she asks if her forwardness is bothering me. She says that she has a headache and could use the compassion. I say its okay and begin to stroke her hair and shoulder.

After a bit she moves off me but then apologizes and returns, saying that I really am making her feel better. I wonder what she looks like. I never got a good look before her face buried itself in my lap. Probably just like Iris of old I imagine as I seem to be in a familiar old place between raven and red.

Anyway, I don’t I have a bottle of aspirin in my bag anymore, but I probably have some anti-depressants that would also do the trick. Of course, that would be an awkward thing to offer a girl I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the speaker drones on about me. “Francis Jupiter Trautman lives in Guillory’s Motor Lodge on Route 276 in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, and also for long stretches in the backseat of his 1973 Chevy Impala, with his cat, John Merrick. Frank’s current projects include a travel guide for East St. Louis, as well as a screenplay for an episode of NBC’s “Watching Ellie” (Please do not inform him that the program has been cancelled.) Mr. Trautman holds advanced degrees in semiology and forensic entomology both from the Mail-order University of Toledo, as well as an honorary PhD in mixology from the Businessmen’s Association of Greater Baton Rouge. In his spare time, Frank enjoys his collection of porcelain unicorns and velvet painting of clowns (Not the sad ones!), and his turn-offs are legal action and women who won’t commit. His advice to young writers?: ‘Hop a bus. Join a cult. Kill a vagrant. It’s just good copy. Period.’”

Now they all know my secret truths!

The speaker continues. “...and the scab on his lower back is really the scar tissue from the vestigial tail he had removed shortly after birth...”

I hide my face. Everyone knows all my secrets now! They have somehow come across my notes, journals and everything! What a presentation! A fascinating look into someone’s psyche! He even shows my dream about—

The appropriate slide flashes. FRANK SNIFFS PANTIES.

—sniffing Lu’s culottes——Complete with sketches, photos, recreations, everything. I am so embarrassed—perhaps if he presented them more tastefully, I would be proud of the material?! Is he not illustrating all the secrets worries, terrors, loves, et cetera of my generation?

The slides continue through FRANK IN SUPERMARKET, FRANK AND ANDREA IN SCHOOL, and FRANK IN THE AMPHITHEATER. I grimace with embarrassment at each one, now sinking further in my theater seat, as I am confronted with a photo of me sinking further in my theater seat.

I am much relived when the slide flashes on to BACK IN THE COFFEE SHOP AGAIN—

XXI. The World. [Reversed]

The Bar—NIGHT

I am with Iris and Mary. Sitting under a table in the Bar where Iris has proposed some sort of Truth or Dare game. I have been stripped and am sitting in my boxers. Iris checks me out with a smirk.

“Wow! Look how small your penis is!” She exclaims.

“It is cold and it’s shrunk.” I mutter defensively.

Surprisingly Mary defends me saying “It gets pretty big when it needs too.” She must have rubbed against me when we slept together or something. She continues in tears, “Frank was always big when it counted, like when he brought cake and champagne to our video shoot. Even when he cheated it was big.”

“Andrea and I weren’t together at the time, Mary.” I remind her, “So it wasn’t cheating. I never cheated.”

But Andrea has recently gone missing, suspiciously taken, so I also do not want to belabor the point. I don’t want to remind everyone about my association with her.

Iris balks. “I am just more than a bit surprised to hear Frank described as a hot commodity that you or Andrea would be sad to have lost.”

Seven of Pentacles [Reversed]

The City—EVENING

I get to the back of the hearse but no one else is there yet. I grab the surprisingly smallish coffin.

It’s surprisingly not too heavy either so I shove it in myself, thinking, “Let’s get this thing over with.”

Some on-lookers seem offended, some relieved, but they bring out bread to nosh on nonetheless.

Four of Cups

Back In School-NIGHT

After a while, we sit closely in an awkward silence. Just like old times. She smiles at me.

“Piteux, will you move in with me?”

“You asked me that before. A long time ago.”

“No! I never said that. You always make up things I said.”

“Okay,” I stammer, I know she’ll say I was drunk and imagining, but we were both drunk and she was off her meds to boot.

But she did say it.

But that was long ago.

And it isn’t important.

“Piteux, you just don’t know what to make of me. You think of me as crazy. A little girl.”

“No.”

“Oui. Le fou. Le fille.”

“No. I am glad of what you’ve become. A stable, well-adjusted woman. I am proud of you.”

I don’t wholly mean it.

She is crazy but she is also all mine. A least for a little bit. There is some comfort in thinking she was never quite right. Always a little off. She probably wasn’t even a virgin anymore. And I had considered that, sadly, if not crudely, to be a prize that had been promised to me. Taken away before I could claim it. No matter.

Lose to win. That is the way of the Fool.

Ace of Wands

Back In School—DAY

I am unhappy with the way my works have been presented. They have practically shredded all my panels. Each a small part of a larger epic triptych, consisting of a black and white photograph collage with magazine ads, newspaper print and other larger “found” pieces of electrical wiring, doilies and the like.

The catalog for the exhibit, sponsored by Pepsi Cola (of all things) is a huge tome, though, my work still takes up several pages in the badly laid out book. Though I think no one will ever consider my work to have merit under these conditions.

My parents who have flown out for the show are exceedingly proud. They didn’t understand my work anyhow and cannot realize how it has been butchered in its presentation. Besides, just to be chosen is an honor; especially considering no one had given any merit to my photography or collage previously.

As I shut the catalog with a heavy thud, my eyes catch sight of a voluptuous brunette girl passing by. Our eyes meet. I do not know what to say for it is Andrea, my old and disturbed college girlfriend. So, as I frown, she beams and takes my hands with a quick wink.

“Bonjour. Comment avez-vous été?” And then takes back off across campus.

“Wait!” I call after and chase her out of the hangar-like building and into the quad, “What’s going on? Where are you going?” I catch up to her and try to take her right hand to slow her down.

She sees this and crosses to the other side of the sidewalk, “Zut! No! Stop your tricks. We shouldn’t do that.”

I see she means that we shouldn’t hold hands, but now that she is on my other side I take her, surprised, by the unaccustomed left hand. “Andrea, we were holding hands from the moment we met. Now, slow down and talk to me. What’s going on?”

She stops to face me, “Alors. What’s going on is that the gallery is going to show my work.”

“That’s great, Andrea,” I hadn’t even known she had become an artist, “I’m showing here, too, I mean, I’m so proud of you!”

At this I put my arms around her, and her eyes flash with all the fire they used to look at me with back in her cluttered little dorm room.

“And I’m proud of you too,” she blushes. And then as if no time had passed she reaches for me and we kiss, as passionately and uncontrollably as back then, when we were practically kids. Her solid frame crushes me to the ground like it always did.

I do not give a damn what the on-lookers though of we two artists rolling about in the grass like mad.