Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

“Are you saying there was a lot of pressure? You were pushed—”

“Not at all. I had an extremely happy childhood. A very happy family life.”

“I feel that way too. I look back and just can’t remember any bad times, which is ridiculous. All I can see is my parents in their living room chairs and Ike and me on the floor. All of us staring at Ed Sullivan or something.”

“I’m saying that due to both genetic and environmental influences, I was predisposed to language.”

“Yeah, well, that has its advantages. A lot of people flounder around looking for something to do. Most people fall into something.”

“But I get the impression this is not the case with Lenore. You knew what you wanted, yes?”

“Not from birth, but yeah, I knew pretty much what I wanted. Let’s say I knew exactly what I didn’t want.”

“Tell me.”

Lenore pauses, looks up toward the lines of piping near the ceiling, then says, “This will be strange to you, a word guy like you, but sometimes, a lot of times, I hate putting words to feelings you’ve known for a long time, feelings you’ve known forever. It’s always so inexact. It’s worse than that.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I didn’t want to be controlled. I didn’t want to be dominated. I didn’t want to be restricted, directed. I didn’t want to be dominated. Forget it.”

“No, that’s good. That has to be close.”

“That’s like ten miles from home. And then some.”

“It’s a starting point.”

“It’s like pretending you have a starting point.”

“Not meaning to be rude, Lenore, but this is my specialty.”

“Then you give me the word.”

“It’s your feeling.”

“Bingo.”

“I just can’t help but wonder, though—”

“Think about what you’re about to say here. Ask yourself, Would a normal person take what I’m about to say as insulting?’”

“You’re saying censor myself, think before I speak.”

“I just feel something bad coming.”

“I was simply going to ask if you’d ever considered the fact that many would call police work the most restrictive job of all. The policeman becomes a tightrope walker and all. Dominated by her ostracism from the masses. Controlled by ever-increasing rules and regulations.”

“That’s good, Freddy. That’s what I would want you to believe.”

“This is not the case.”

“Not for me. It’s a state of mind. It involves the imagination. If you’re stupid, forget it. You’re exactly right. Take Zarelli. A genuinely stupid man, okay? He’s a walking definition of constipation. He’s an absolutely controlled man. He’s totally dominated from all directions. Family, job, the general population, Lenore. But Zarelli’s an idiot. He’s the cause of his own condition.”

“You’re saying you can outwit your condition?”

“I think I manage.”

“It’s an idea with promise. Imagination as the key to freedom.”

“Okay, let’s not take it too far. You’ll deplete the whole thing. I’m just wondering, at the dinner table growing up, you’re sitting there with the folks, you ask someone to pass the rice, right? What do you say? What language do you use?”

“Usually, English. English would be the norm.”

“Boring.”

“I’m not saying this is hard-and-fast. This was the norm. You might hear French. You might hear Spanish.”

“Keep going.”

“German, Russian, possibly Yiddish, and, of course, Cantonese.”

“Get out of here. What’s with this Yiddish?”

“My father studied the Kabbalah. Taught himself. A hobby.”

“Get out. Say something in Yiddish.”

“Voorshtlekh mit gehbahkehnch beblekh.”

“Translate.”

“Franks and beans.”

“Great. You’ll never starve.”

Woo takes a deck of cards from his coat pocket and Lenore is about to say, “I don’t play pinochle,” when she sees a skeleton figure pictured on the box and realizes it’s a tarot deck.

“Wouldn’t have picked you for a guy who’d have much use for occult crap,” she says.

“Strictly for amusement purposes,” Woo says, again with the put-on smile that makes him look like an annoyed maître d’ in Chinatown. She watches his hands and is surprised by his skill and comfort with the cards. She wouldn’t have expected it. If she’d been giving Zarelli a rundown on Woo she’d have mentioned an awkwardness, a clumsiness that’s clearly not the case.

“Have you ever used a tarot deck?” he asks.

“High school, I guess,” she says. “Sleeping over friends’ houses.”

“It’s a system like any other. For me, it’s not a question of whether I give credence to its occult history, whether or not I believe in prophecy through the cards. It’s just a system to me, and fascinating within that realm. I don’t have to be as affronted as my colleagues in the hard sciences. I can confront the cards on different terms.”

“So you’re going to tell my fortune?”

“Let’s have a look.”

He hands Lenore the cards and she starts to shuffle. They stare at each other as her hands move, then he nods and she hands the cards back. Woo pulls the top card up and lays it down.

“This is Lenore,” he says. “Interesting. The High Priestess. Learned and practical. A challenge to many men. But she has difficulty forming lasting relationships.”

“Real deep. You couldn’t get hired by a carnival.”

He smiles and turns over several cards, laying them down in a definite pattern. He seems to be concentrating. On the turn of the fifth card, he stops.

“The Moon,” he says in a hushed voice.

“What’s wrong with that?” Lenore asks.

“The Moon is a card of warning. It falls here to show what has occurred in your recent past. It shows danger. The chance of having made an error is great.”

He goes on spreading cards without looking up at her. She wants to laugh, but can’t force it, and instead stares down at Woo’s hands. They hesitate and he looks up at her and says, “I think we should stop with this next one.”

“Which is?”

He flips it over. There’s a picture of an angel blowing a horn, possibly Gabriel, and a naked person emerging from an open coffin.

“It’s the card of Judgment,” Woo says. “This is the future. The future shows a time of judgment will come. A great deal of sorrow. And a calling to atonement for a wrong committed. Something hideous and uncalled-for.”

Lenore’s upper lip begins to quiver and the motion shocks her. It’s a tugging, nervous twitch that she once felt while trying to move a refrigerator, a signal, located randomly in the lip, that the weight of the appliance was much more than her body should be handling. It’s as if a dentist had given her a weird, double injection of both novocaine and some untested muscle stimulant. The tiny nerves in her upper lip first seem to go dead-numb and then tear away, out of control, spastic, and shoot north toward her right ear. She starts to tell herself that she’s having a stroke, a seizure of some kind, but she knows this is a lie. What’s happening to her lip is the result of an overstimulated nervous system, a psyche bullied into a cold, fear-ignoring willfulness, a diet of coffee and screeching music, a year without a normal night’s sleep, and, most of all, the issuance from her gun of two aluminum and lead bullets that tore down a Canal Zone alley at four hundred feet per second and entered the hysterical heart of a redheaded teenage hooker named Vicky.

Woo just stares at her. It’s clear he can see what’s happening to the lip, but he makes no comment, offers no assistance.

Her right hand comes up to her face. She attempts to push the lip physically into place and hold it there, but it’s a useless effort. The lip is locked into its numb then spastic routine and no amount of force from the hand can stop it.