Two of Pentacles [Reversed]

A Farm—DAY

The crew is staggered around the farm, digging test pits and I drive the field van around to them to check progress.

My guys are making quick progress in the field. The small parcel has been surveyed before and it is full of test holes. They are digging large square tests but have to squeeze them in between older holes. I am telling the crew that if we finish early, I will take them to work on another job for the end of the week.

The Boss in what I am told is her usual haste has had us start digging tests before I have really looked at the survey map. These first tests have yielded prehistoric artifacts, specifically quartz projectile points, necessitating more testing. But now as I see the map, these tests are really outside the construction zone of impact and therefore out of our accepted territory. We should only be working between the Farmer’s driveway and the barn. Not across his yard.

I point the crew in the right direction to dig while I decide what to do next. One asks why we are slowing up. Wasn’t the project going to be finished today? I assure them that there is still time, as the Farmer bangs out of the house to show me the survey boundaries. He tells me how valuable this plot of land is, and how the Boss assured him we’d be quick as usual.

“I’m doing my best,” I assure him and pace the distance between a ditch and its associated berm. There is no need to even inspect this disturbed area.

The Farmer wanders off and I think to duck behind a tree to piss, but the new girl, tall, skinny and with curly red hair, is quickly gliding through the trees looking for me, waving a machete and smiling broadly.

I offer the redheaded girl to drive her to a new test, but am worried the others will be jealous. That’s when we see the Boss step out of the bushes and out in front of the van brandishing a large buck knife.

“Is she going to cut some of the vegetation with that?” the redheaded girl asks, considering her own machete.

I gulp and smile, “That’s just called the Boss’s way of solving problems.” In any case, it is signal to get back to work. I shut off the engine and usher the girl out.

I join the Sailor in the house.

The Sailor and I are in a dirt-filled cellar digging test pits; as the Boss hasn’t permitted us to fill them in without he inspection, I am piling dirt all around and running out of plastic to pile it on as well, as space to keep each test’s soil separate. Meanwhile, I can hear the Sailor on the phone upstairs somewhere, and realize slowly that he is talking to a potential woman friend, and not his wife. I wonder if he is joking or really flirting.

“Oh, no! I’ll give you a workout!” I hear his side of a flirty joke. He continues, “Yeah. Really. I like biking and yoga and...”

I think “Ahh, Lou, you old dog!”

The Sailor has walked out of earshot and it is suddenly silent. I sense there is a ghost here now so I quickly head for the door. The cellar is dark but I can see the way out. A table smacks me in the stomach as I go. I am not sure that it moved to hit me, but I am sure at least, it moved on its own into the path since I entered. 

“Okay,” I call to the ghost, “I see how it is, and I am going.” When I get to the door and open it I am blinded by the sun, and then am tackled by a babbling child, possessed, and stabbing at me with a knife.

IV. The Emperor. [Reversed]

My Office—MORNING

I am back at the office. It’s pretty dark; must be the weekend. First I hit the soda machine for some caffeine. They’ll be no coffee brewing today. After some deliberation and a search for uncrinkled dollars, I am soon popping a can of what calls itself Ram's Blood energy drink. I am a tad surprised the good folks at the cola company are using the shield of Mars as a logo, since the average joe would associate it with a phallus.

Whatever.

I shrug past the oaken office doors of several dignitaries, towards my own tiny space. I spend the entire trip looking about cautiously. Guiltily even, though I have no reason.

In my bare, little office is a small desk, a large computer and little else. I begin to grab some folders, disks, and the like so I can take some work home. Well, maybe not home. But somewhere else. Anywhere else. Besides, I am also not sure what even to grab but there is always work to do, isn’t there? So I just grab and grab.

I poke my head out of the office to see if the coast is clear. It is not. The Boss catches me, spots me from the open door of a nearby conference room. She waves me over to her. She is large, brash mannish woman in a red serape blouse. A souvenir of all of our time in the mountains, no doubt. She and the rest of the staff are eating together. A working lunch with reports, maps, scales and the like strewn over the conference table. I curse her under my breath. The air is thick with intervention. She holds a scale and a French curve in one hand and waves a menacing t-square in my direction with the other as I approach.

“Do you want to join us?”

“No, actually I was going to grab some work and head back home.”

“You aren’t going to work today? Don’t you know what we’re doing tomorrow?”

“It’s Sunday!” I yelp, “But, I was going to bring something home anyway. And. Yes, I know, we’re going out to the Point tomorrow to survey—”

“—Exactly.” She interrupts, “Tomorrow we’re going to do some of the most boring survey work possible. You’d think you’d want to work here today. To do some real work.”

“I see, I see. L’etat est toi!” I look around the table for help. There is none. She smiles crossing the drafting tools over her chest like a pharaoh with his ankhs. The Boss continues.

“After all you seem to try to give the impression that everything we try to do here is utter crap. I think everyone would agree with me.”

“The prince is right!” I hoot, in sarcastic agreement.

Six of Cups [Reversed]

The Coffee Shop—DAY

I am daydreaming I am dancing on a rooftop with a broom with Andrea. I wake to find myself am in the Coffee Shop helping Anna Feng with her research. Brainy girl. A brainy girl I’ve always had a minor crush on since college. It is not now or was it ever clear what our relationship is, but we’ve always seemed close. Now we flip through some art books. She’s been going on about something as I drifted.

Art history.

Okay.

Needing to save the conversation I say “I guess what we a looking at is just a series of regular conventional conceptions.”

“Exactly.” She’s excited. I get it.

We sit at our usual table in the corner where we can watch folks go by on the sidewalk. When the Waitress totters over hands me a bottle of malted non-beer with a cartoon dog on it. She tells me to give this to Anna, who is going to do a drawing of her dog for her. She wants the dog’s eyes to look like the one on the bottle. She also gives me a photo of the dog for Anna for reference too. Not knowing why I have become the middle man, I turn hand these things to Anna but find she is missing. Again.

I do not want to carry the bottle around, so I assure her I have a case of malt at home. Then, to be sure I get a pen and paper and sketch the eyes just in case. Anna comes up to me from behind and asks what I am doing. By this time I have finished the eyes and am making a sketch of the rest of the dog too. I apologize for stepping on “her territory.” But tell her I couldn’t stop drawing once I started.

“You know me.” I mutter.

“Of course,” she sighs somewhere between frustration and nostalgia, “I is good that we could meet up and talk about the good old days. Are you still close with some of the old gang?”

“College? Bah.” I complain, “You are not remembering properly. I was never part of the group. I was lonely and alone. Now that I have a good job and a good wife. Sometimes, maybe for both, but regardless. These are the good old days.”

“I wanted to know what you’ve been up to since college and if you miss everybody. I guess you’ve just answered that.”

“Those were four horrible years of my life.” I tell her “I was always being hurt or getting in trouble and no one ever helped me. You weren’t friends. You all let me grow up an angry, lonely person, who doesn’t believe in anything.”

“But there’s Andrea.”

“There was always Andrea.” I tense. Chuckle. Past tense. “It was always us against the World.”

She gives me a hug. “You’re leaving now, I guess.”

“That’s what I/ men do. Right? ” I tell her, “When there’s nothing here for me. I have to leave eventually.”

“That’s sad. I cannot help you.”

I stomp off. She doesn’t make a move to keep me. I am gone.

Three of Wands

By The Shore—MORNING

I awake still sleepy and stiff to the sounds of the Sunday morning crowd, mostly comprised of a group of boy scouts. I did not sleep well, but had dreams of the Boss watching me sleep.

“See?” she keeps saying in my dreams, “What a terrible researcher you are!” But I cannot wake up to face her for fear it is not just a dream.

Eventually, I  sit up, quickly grab my things and shuffle off with nowhere in particular to go. I don’t head back towards the rooming house but opposite to the public area where I might freshen up or at least stick my head under a shower. The Waitress, still in uniform, is there in a parking lot.

“Frank, there you are!” she beams as if waiting for me. “Listen. The plan is to go out to the island on Saturday to check things out. From the city to the island shouldn’t be any longer a trip than any other, I figure. One of the girls has gotten her sports car stuck, though.”

I shrug with no idea what she is talking about, and the Waitress shuffles after a nearby group of scared teen girls that scoot away as she accosts them about the stuck car.

“Which one of you did it? Come on, dammit! Admit it!”

This hurts my head, “Forget it! It doesn’t matter who did what!” I call after as the yelling fades in the distance. I look around the lot and then, advance on a little red car flanked by police cruisers. This is no doubt the stuck car, having died before finding a parking space, blocking the through traffic.

The girls return and crowd me, one announcing, “The cops have blocked the car in!” which is patently obvious.

“Damn cops. Give me the keys.” I hold out my hand and one girl drops some keys in it. I get inside. The cops do not offer assistance.

“Push at my direction. All of you girls, together.” 

Standard. I try to put it into gear, but when I hit the pedal, I find there is a large half-empty bottle of brown colored booze and a pack of ground meat hidden down on the floorboards blocking the pedal. I wonder to myself which girl is sneaking out for a nip and a burger at night? But then again, who am I to point fingers?

I pull the contraband out and hand it to the Waitress. Now back in the seat, I am barely able to see over the steering wheel in the low bucket seat. But I am still able to get the car into gear.

“Push, girls.”

I put it into neutral and pull the wheel hard to the left. With all the girls pushing, the car just inches past the huge police cruiser in front of it. Then, with the slight slope of the lot down to the beach, I am able to coast the car downhill and into a parking space.

Six of Swords

Our Rooming House—NIGHT

Hearing about the ghost of the pointing lady, from Maggie the landlord, Andrea and I are both scared and intrigued about staying our first night in our new place. As we get into the four poster bed, I think I may see some shadowy figures in the hallway. As we are about to shut the lights, I see the shades are being pulled back, as if by an invisible hand. I think of the pointing lady and that maybe she wants us to look outside. Pointing to the window as it were. I say as much to Andrea, but neither of us dares to go take a look.

We hide under the covers. The lights go out on their own.

As my eyes adjust to the dark, I can spot a figure of a young woman by the window, she is indeed pointing. Now that I see her I am not so scared. I go up to her hoping she won’t disappear. She is pretty albeit somewhat transparent. She is in a yellow dress, or at least it feels yellow, as best I can make out a transparent garment in the dark.

As I go up behind her, it seems I can feel her breath and warmth. That’s surprising. She smiles.

“Show me where,” I say and stoop to better follow her pointing arm, “There in the yard?” She shakes her head “No.” Finally I get directly behind her shoulder and look.

“There by that big tree, in the grass?” This time she nods “Yes,” smiles and disappears.

I turn back to Andrea, but she has gone for help. She soon returns not knowing who to alert on such an occasion. I tell her what happened but to keep it quiet until we find out what is going on with that tree.

Seven of Swords

Our Rooming House—MIDNIGHT

Next, I am back home. I guess I had nowhere else to go.

As I amble up to the house, that I guess I had left that morning but things jumble together on the road, it is mostly dark. The door is locked at this late hour and I haven’t brought my key.

I cup my hands over my eyes and peer into the sidelight, hoping to see someone inside. I see Sailor Lou through the window. I’ve been avoiding him as he is embarrassed that I have a new job and he on the other hand has been laid off. Ugh. Perhaps I can help him out. Get him on my crew maybe.

I knock on the door softly. I can see Sailor Lou is sitting, sluggishly in an easy chair watching TV. I feel even worse, and decide that, if he seems to not have seen me, I will leave without knocking again.

The bedroom on the second floor is lit. From the stoop I watch the room and consider disturbing the family that lives up there by knocking louder. The figures silhouetted on the shades in the second floor bedroom seem to embrace, and I decide not to disturb them with my troubles. I’ve made enough noise searching my heavy satchel a second time for my key and sighing, however, and one of the lovers peeks out of the curtains.

“Sorry,” I wave. I guess it would be pointless to wake everyone, since I refuse to share a bed with Andrea now, and all the other beds are likely all taken anyway.

But as I look back at the door, it just swings open, so I must call out “Hello, are you there Lou?” And peek around the corner. He is now lying on the floor with a pillow. He is half asleep but mumbling sheepishly to himself.

I slouch off with a sad shrug. I’m not sharing the parlor with Sailor Lou either.

I head to the tool shed, which is unlocked, where I pull out a sleeping bag that I know the Sailor has stashed for just such occasions.

Behind the house there is side path down a bluff to the beach. I lay out the bag in the sand, shivering a little, and then lay down, head propped up on my satchel of books as a hard pillow. But I am exhausted.

III. The Empress.

The Coffee Shop—DAY

Inside I slowly look around for either Andrea or Spike and Company. The coast is clear of the latter and the former I spot at length in a booth in the back talking to the Waitress. I stomp over, feet dragging and plop across from her in the booth. Andrea is engaged in a breathless conversation—about me— with the nodding Waitress. She’s set her pillbox on the table and waves the hatpin about like a scepter as she gushes.

“...Big time! You are entirely right and I hope that Frank was just not thinking right. I sure hope that he would have fallen in love with me anytime, anywhere and in any shape—I mean my shape. I do believe in love and that overrides any physical dimension—you know, it is like if I get sick or big or even suddenly really, really mean, Frank should still love me. Well, maybe not the mean part. I know that if he gets sick, or anything, or even if he wears a worn out tee shirt, I would still love him, or as I always tell Frank— I would love him even more.”

Andrea roots around in her purse as she gabs about Us. A flowery diary has spilled out of her bag and I finger it a second then decide I am much too depressed to discover its contents. I am not here. I am out in a wheat field somewhere. A scarecrow. Hollow and alone.

But depression leads way to curiosity and curiosity to guile. If she’s been with Spike or any other man, Her Majesty has certainly chronicled it in her diary. I reconsider, and open the book. But the words swim on the page. Of course. She writes in French.

No matter, Andrea quickly notices, and slaps my hand with the waving hat pin. I pull back. She snatches the book away, and flips through it as she talks, as if to find evidence of all this love she speaks of.

“Frank said he wanted to put me on a throne. He claimed he would even love me if I would be paralyzed and stuck in a wheel chair. He even liked to push me around real fast in the chair in Wal-Mart and not stop for anything that I wanted to look at. It was really funny, I was laughing so much and the people did not know if I was handicapped or not.”

I drop my head on the table with a dull thud. I’ve had enough fond memories for now.

The Waitress exclaims, “Wow, he’s really starting to lose some hair!” and I find her pointing out the top of my head to Andrea. I’ve had enough.

“I am finished!” I yell, standing to exit, “Of course, my hair was the one thing about my body that I liked, so God had to take it away from me! I am leaving!”

Andrea squeaks “Qu'est-ce que c'est?” as I go in the cute way she always does and the Waitress shrugs.

“I said: My hair was the one thing about my body that I liked, so the World had to take it away from me! Now, if you will let such a sad beast blindly, wantonly leave, I am going.”

Two of Cups

Back In School—DAY

 Andrea hands me the large, blue binder she has crammed her notes into. She is distracted, and begins to wander from our bench in the quad. But meantime, I flip through it finding various love notes and sketches of mine are also there, preserved from our first dates last semester. I guess she had wanted to show me that she liked them. But now she is distant and I try hard not to feel ignored. I just nod and slowly leaf through.

Seeing my lack of enthusiasm, she hurriedly scurries back over to  me to point out what she means. She flicks the pages quickly past some poems (which are rare for me), dialogues and other things I have noted, added among her work, saying, “These, of course all have your usual insight and expression, which is brilliant.”

But as she comes to some pages where, I have made some brainstorming lists, trying to come up with a story idea for my next play, she adds “But these here are really important, like this.”

She points to where I had been taking some notes on race relations. By today’s standards I am a terrible person for even trying to address these issues. However, in fact, it is in retrospect legitimately a little too old timey racist. I apologize, but Andrea insists that its implied-racism made my point about de facto segregation.

“Forget it.” I egg instead, “Let’s get Lou and go get to some lunch,”

“Nah.”

“Okay. Then, I propose you tell us a story because I both do not want to talk myself up and because you are interesting and have such a beautiful voice and an endearing way of speaking.”

“Oh, no!” she giggles, a little surprised.

“Oh, yes. I’ll even give you possible topics. How did you come to this City from France? Where did she get that shirt? How did you pick the name of your pet rabbit?"

“How did you know I had a rabbit back in France?”

“A lucky guess,” I smile back, “I can always tell.”

III. The Empress. [Reversed]

The City—DAY

I rush out of the shop and into the street, smashing into a woman who is passing with some groceries. We both clatter to the ground, fruits and cheeses flying everywhere.

“Sorry. Sorry!” I apologize getting quickly back up, so as to offer a hand, “I guess I didn’t see you!” I wave the stars from my eyes.

“Or perhaps maybe didn’t want to see you!” I add looking at the figure on the sidewalk who I now realize is Andrea, the cheat. She is nearing tears at a scuffed knee or perhaps maybe they are tears of guilt for what she’s done.

Still, I help her up and she smiles, smooths out her dress, and rights her sequined pillbox hat. Readjusted, she smiles again and then puts an arm around me, “Bonjour, Piteux Frank.”

I squirm under her touch. She calls me the Pitiful One. She thinks it’s cute, but it isn’t really nice is it?

“You know, I desperately want to reciprocate but I won’t.” This is as much an explanation to myself as it is to her.

“Comment ça va?” She ignores my comment. Stoic.

I give no answer but a groan and a wave. Her brave face crumbles at this. Floodgates open.

“Frank, I have something important to discuss with you.” She pleads in a waterfall of tears. “Come with me to the coffee shop so we can talk. Venez avec moi?”

“Fine, coffee,” I groan again and acquiesce, “I guess I am miserably along for the trip.”

We begin to gather Andrea’s things from the sidewalk; I continue to avoid conversation. She sniffs back the remaining tears. She is only sad when I am outright mean. She is perfectly happy with frustrated silence and misery.

Andrea puts a hand to her chest to find she has lost the heart-shaped locket she keeps close to her breast. I had given her that trifle a lifetime ago. She’s never taken if off. She looks frantically for a moment then finds it on the sidewalk with the groceries.

“Rappelez-vous?” she asks holding it up glinting in the sunlight.

“Of course I remember. It’s just some doo-dad from the past.”

She frowns at the word. After all this time, occasionally I come up with a new English word for her.

“A Doo-dad? It means a trinket. A chotsky. Un bibelot.”

“Oui, je comprends.” We both stand up and she stops and hugs me, showing me the heart as if I’ve never seen it before.

“Remember? It’s your heart. You were supposed to give me the real thing—”

I pull away, “Remember, you were supposed not to have another boyfriend.”

Andrea doesn’t answer. The ugly Truth is now known for sure. I repeat louder, “I am not sure if I said this aloud or not: you were supposed not to have another boyfriend!”

She ignores the accusation, “Piteux! Ayons du café!”

“Typical.”

Andrea is back at the Coffee Shop door. She disappears with a final plea, “Piteux! Café!”

I groan and follow.

Page of Cups

Back In School—EVENING

I am chatting, flirting really, with Anna Feng as she packs up her things for summer break. And I am getting somewhere with her, I think. It’s too late of course. Summer break is and endless time to be apart when you are young. She will live and love to the fullest in the next two months, return next semester a different person. No matter, there is always the ebb and flow of Andrea for me.

Speak of the devil, trouble-causing Andrea storms in into Anna’s room gushing about this guy Spike. It seems he is quite the dapper fellow and though a bit early to tell, she thinks she has a new boyfriend in him. He even has his own apartment. I wince at this as it suggests a maturity and freedom I hadn’t counted on and cannot match. It seems to me I have perhaps lost them both.

I am crushed and look for a way to slink off unnoticed. Andrea shows pictures of Spike to Anna who says what a cute couple they are, before excusing herself from the room. I am a puddle of misery oozing away, when Andrea calls me back and shows me the photos of her with a bunch of furniture in a field.

“An attempt at moving in,” she says, “Spike helped get me that far.”

Already shacking up! I am dead. Burst.

When she sees I am broken-hearted, Andrea smiles and pats me on the back and tells me that she talks Spike up just for the benefit of Anna and the other girls. To seem like one of the crowd.

“Spike is a close-friend,” she says, “And I suppose he does love me. But I don’t love him. We’re just friends. Don’t worry.”