George Martin - Rogues

“Clairvoyant? No.”

“A seer? You ever had visions?”

“No.” I thought the whole fortune-telling crap was fer the berds, as my mom would say. She really was from a farm downstate, that part was true.

Viveca stopped fiddling with one of her beads.

“Nerdy, I’m trying to help you here.”

I got it. I’m not usually that slow, but my wrist was killing me. That distracting kind of pain where all you can think about is how to stop the pain. Also, in my defense, Viveca usually only asks questions so she can talk—she doesn’t really care about your answers.

“Whenever I meet someone, I have this immediate vision,” I said, in her plummy, wise voice. “Of who they are and what they need. I can see it like a color, a halo, around them.” This was all actually true but the last part.

“You see auras.” She smiled. “I knew you did.”

That’s how I found out I was moving up front. I’d read auras, which meant I needed no training. “Just tell them what they want to hear,” Viveca said. “Work ’em like a rib.” And when people asked me: “What do you do?” I’d say, “I’m a vision specialist,” or “I’m in therapeutic practices.” Which was true.

The fortune-teller clients were almost all women, and the hand-job clients were obviously all men, so we ran the place like clockwork. It wasn’t a big space: You had to get a guy in and settled in the back room, and make sure he was coming right before the woman was ushered into her appointment. You didn’t want any orgasm yelps from the back when a woman was telling you how her marriage was coming apart. The new-puppy excuse only works once. The whole thing was risky, in that Viveca’s clients were mostly upper-middle class and lower-upper class. Being of these classes, they’re easily offended. If sad, rich housewives don’t want their fortunes told by a Jennifer, they definitely don’t want them told by a diligent former sex worker with a bad wrist. Appearances are everything. These are not people who want to slum it. These are people whose primary purpose is to live in the city but feel like they’re in the suburbs. Our front office looked like a Pottery Barn ad. I dressed accordingly, which is basically Funky Artist as approved of and packaged by J.Crew. Peasant blouses, that’s the key.

The women who came in groups, they were frivolous, fancy, boozy, ready to have fun. The ones who came alone, though, they wanted to believe. They were desperate, and they didn’t have good enough insurance for a therapist. Or they didn’t know they were desperate enough to need a therapist. It was hard to feel sorry for them. I tried to because you don’t want your mystic, the keeper of your future, to roll her eyes at you. But I mean, come on. Big house in the city, husbands who didn’t beat them and helped with the kids, sometimes with careers but always with book clubs. And they still they felt sad. That’s what they always ended up saying: “But I’m just sad.” Feeling sad means having too much time on your hands, usually. Really. I’m not a licensed therapist but usually it means too much time.

So I say things like, “A great passion is about to enter your life.” You pick something you can make them do. You figure out what will make them feel good about themselves. Mentor a child, volunteer at a library, neuter some dogs, go green. You don’t say it as a suggestion though, that’s the key. You say it as a warning. “A great passion is about to enter your life … you must tread carefully or it will eclipse everything else that matters to you!”

I’m not saying it’s always that easy, but it’s often that easy. People want passion. People want a sense of purpose. And when they get those things, then they come back to you because you predicted their future, and it was good.

Susan Burke was different. She seemed smarter from the second I saw her. I entered the room one rainy April morning, fresh from a hand-job client. I still kept a few, my longtime favorites, and so I had just been assisting a sweet dorky rich guy who called himself Michael Audley (I say “called” because I assume a rich guy wouldn’t give me his real name). Mike Audley: Overshadowed by jock brother; came into his own in college; extremely brainy but not smug about it; compulsive jogger. Just my guess. The only thing I really knew about Mike was he loved books. He recommended books with the fervor I’ve always craved as an aspiring nerd: With urgency and camaraderie. You have to read this! Pretty soon we had our own private (occasionally sticky) book club. He was big into “Classic Stories of the Supernatural” and he wanted me to be too ( You are a psychic after all, he said with a smile). So that day we discussed the themes of loneliness and need in The Haunting of Hill House, he came, I sani-wiped myself and grabbed his loaner for next time: The Woman in White. (“You have to read this! It’s one of the all-time best.”)

Then I tousled my hair to look more intuitive, straightened my peasant blouse, tucked the book under my arm, and ran out to the main room. Not quite clockwork: I was thirty-seven seconds late. Susan Burke was waiting; she shook my hand with a nervous, birdy up and down, and the repetitive motion made me wince. I dropped my book and we banged heads picking it up. Definitely not what you want from your psychic: a Three Stooges bit.

I motioned her to a seat. I put on my wise voice and asked her why she was here. That’s the easiest way to tell people what they want: Ask them what they want.

Susan Burke was silent for a few beats. Then: “My life is falling apart,” she murmured. She was extremely pretty but so wary and nervous you didn’t realize she was pretty until you looked hard at her. Looked past the glasses to the striking blue eyes. Imagined the dull blond hair de-stringed. She was clearly rich. Her handbag was too plain to be anything but incredibly expensive. Her dress was mousy but well made. In fact, it could be the dress wasn’t mousy—she just wore it that way. Smart but not creative, I thought. Conformist. Lives in fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. Lacks confidence. Probably browbeaten by her parents, and now browbeaten by her husband. Husband has temper—her whole goal each day is to get to the end without a blowup . Sad. She’ll be one of the sad ones.

Susan Burke began sobbing then. She sobbed for a minute and a half. I was going to give her two minutes before I interrupted, but she stopped on her own.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she said. She pulled a pastel handkerchief from her bag but didn’t use it. “This is crazy. It just keeps getting worse.”

I gave her my best there, there without touching her. “What’s going on in your life?”

She wiped her eyes and stared at me a beat. Blinked. “Don’t you know?”

Then she gave me a smile. Sense of humor. Unexpected.

“So how do we do this?” she asked, tucking herself in again. She massaged a spot near the nape of her neck. “How does this work?”

“I’m a psychological intuitive,” I began. “Do you know what that means?”

“You can read people well.”

“Yes, to a degree, but my powers are much stronger than just a hunch. All my senses play a part. I can feel vibrations coming off people. I can see auras. I can smell despair, or dishonesty, or depression. It’s a gift I’ve had since I was a small child. My mother was a deeply depressed, unbalanced woman. A dark blue haze followed her. When she was near me, my skin plinked—like someone was playing a piano—and she smelled of despair, which presents itself to me as the scent of bread.”

“Bread?” she said.

“That was just her scent, of a decaying soul.” I needed to pick a new scent. Not dying leaves, too obvious, but, something earthy. Mushrooms? No, inelegant.