James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“He may be a mage.” Looking up, I fixed my gaze and stared at her. “A Phitometrist.”

The last word caught her off-guard. Her head snapped up, throwing back her hair from her face. For a moment, I saw something wild in her eyes.

“We… we don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible.”

“They are. Malicious, thieving, cunning, deluded and powerful. The opposite of what these cards normally represent. Someone who is manipulative, silver-tongued. Spiritually corrupt and incapable of self-reflection. Blind.”

I gathered the cards in, and decided to sate my own curiosity while Talya digested the news. Decisions in tarot were rarely stand-alone, and she seemed to understand that, resting quietly and facing the window as she thought. I shuffled while I asked another question. Who else was involved?

The King of Swords came up again, flanked by the Nine of Swords and Five of Staves. The second triangle consisted of the Page of Cups, the Three of Cups, and Seven of Swords.

“What are you doing?” She glanced across, then down.

“Just making my own query. Is one of the people involved in the military?”

Talya nodded, reaching up to dab at her cheeks with a tissue. “The woman. Former military.”

“She has nightmares and lingering pain. Troubles from war or conflict. The other is less mature than she is, maybe someone religious. A priest, perhaps?”

“He’s…” Suddenly, her face closed off and shut down. “No. I can’t say any more. I’m sorry.”

“I understand the importance of secrets.” I sighed, and sat back. “That was quite a question, Talya Karzan. In summary, I think these people you are alluding to are in serious danger from a power-hungry madman. I hope that was a sufficient answer?”

“It’s… you’re very good.” Talya was visibly nervous, fumbling her napkin, her bag, her wallet. “Look, um, I don’t know how to ask it any other way, but… you’re more than just a tarot reader, aren’t you?”

“You could say that.” The words were ashen, flat, as they were every time the world reminded me of what I had lost. I couldn’t get the Phitonic push to break past the wards laid into my flesh. “It has been a while since I had any work like this.”

When I refocused on Talya’s face, it was imbued with a strange purpose. Her fluffy gray hair hung around her face. “You… look. I know someone who might be able to help. But I… have to talk to him first.” She took out a laminated card, scribbled something on the back, and slid it across. It had a brightly painted, stylized cat with a flaming guitar on the front, like a Chinese tattoo design. “This place is called Strange Kitty, it’s in Williamsburg… go there later tonight. Two a.m. or so, like, really late. Show it to the guy at the bar. He knows my handwriting. Tell him you need to speak with Zane, that I sent you to join the meeting. If they forget I called this in, just tell him to call me, okay?”

The Lovers reversed loomed large in my mind’s eye, but I reached out, and took it from the table. My life had been spent fixing messy problems; there was good money in it, if the game was good. “Alright.”

With shaking fingers, Talya took a fifty from her purse and slapped it on the table as she stood, bumping the edge of the table hard enough to send her empty cup skittering to the floor. She paused for a moment at the bang of breaking crockery, as if surprised by her own clumsiness. “Oh god, sorry. Here, and… thanks, Rex.”

“Do you need anything else?” I watched her, perplexed. “Any help?”

“Yes,” she said. She stepped away, eyes wide, and glanced around the deli. If the other occupants had noticed her fumble, none of them cared. It was New York. “Yes. If you’re right, I think we need all the help we can get.”

Strange Kitty was an hour ride on the Pelham and J lines from my Mott Haven squat, a narrow dirty building crammed between a dodgy barbershop and a dirt parking lot. It was marked by a six-by-five-foot steel plate bolted over a pair of metal blast doors. The sign featured a grinning Cheshire cat: silver raised detailing, black burned outline, anodized rainbow fill. It had a mouthful of pointed teeth crafted from old bullet casings. The sign, the building, and my bones thrummed with sound, filling my mouth with clashing colors and textures. It pulsed behind my eyes like migraine aura.

Six motorbikes were parked out on the sidewalk. Harleys, Triumphs, Indians… custom bikes that gleamed with chrome and slick color under the lights on the bar and the street. A crowd of neon signs on the blacked-out windows advertised American beer, German beer, some other kind of beer, and bourbon.

Bikers. Prim little Talya had sent me to a biker bar.

A couple of skinheads lingered outside, smoking and laughing in drunk delirium with a man in white coveralls and a rubber Regan mask. They stared at me in my military surplus sweater and jeans and boots as I dug around in a pocket and came up with some Altoids in a tin. They were clearly expecting something other than candy when I took out three, put them in my mouth, and then very deliberately cracked them under my teeth. The chilly mouthfeel took the edge off the impending sensory assault. Barely.

The unseen bouncer rose up from his crouch by the door to greet me on the way inside. His legs just kept on going until he quite literally towered over me and everyone else on the street. This guy was close to seven feet of sleek muscle. Even under a puffy black SECURITY jacket, he looked like he was cut from red-brown marble.

“How’s it hanging, buddy?” He asked the question with the kind of slow accent and sincere warmth that told me he was from out of state. His shaven scalp was tattooed with leaping fish and a large tribal hook design. It looked Polynesian, maybe Maori.

“It hangs in the breeze, chilly, as usual.” I pulled up at a respectful distance, turning the peppermint tin around and around in my hand. I took a moment to gather details and then looked up to be able to meet his eyes. “Nice hair.”

“You too.” The quip earned me a guarded twitch at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were green-gray and intelligent, startlingly pale in his dark face. “This place is invite-only after ten, Cuz. You got a card or something?”

I took out the business card Talya had given me and held it up. “I’m here to see someone.”

“No offense, but I don’t recognize you,” he said. His voice was smooth and beveled, a pleasant green rumble under the jagged mess of sound leaking from the club. “Mind telling me who gave you the ticket?”

“Talya,” I said. “She told me to come late. I’m here to help her with a problem.”

His mouth quirked. He sucked on one of his canine teeth, then nodded. “No worries. You have a good night, man.”

“And you.” He opened the door for me, every inch the gentleman. I caught a trace of his cologne on the wind as I walked on through the door and was promptly ejected into filthy chaos.

Strange Kitty was hot, excruciatingly loud, tightly packed, and dirtier than any bar had any right to be. Every inch of wall was covered in sloppy paint or ragged posters, signs, and fliers. A punk band was in full swing on a tiny stage in one corner of the building. Everything smelled of alcohol. If someone dropped a lighter, the place would go up like a barrel bomb.

Most nightclubs at least had the decency to play bass-heavy music, but not Strange Kitty. No… this was the worst of the worst. High slashing treble, screeching, sharp mechanical noise, voices barking out of nowhere like needles to the tongue. My vision whited out as I ran face-first into the wall of sound. I pressed back against something, gasping as my hands cramped and twisted, and rocked in place until my body simply gave up under the assault and began to throb in time with the ‘music’. When my fingers began to work again, I crammed three more mints into my mouth and pushed off through the raucous crowd. I could only hope that ‘Zane’ had the good grace and common sense to be sitting down somewhere quiet.