The heat felt like a punch to the chest, stealing the breath from his lungs as Ted stepped off the bus. The sub-tropical sun seared the thick morning air as Ted crossed Decatur and started up St. Phillip towards Bourbon Street. Shopkeepers were hosing down the sidewalks in a vain attempt to quell the stench of stale beer and urine as the August heat turned everything rancid with its touch. In moments Ted’s clothes were damp and sticky as his deodorant gave up without a struggle. Most tourists avoid New Orleans in August because of this jungle heat.
But Ted was fool enough to call this little corner of hell home. The smell of fresh sweat on his own skin was arousing in a strange, primal way. He did pass a few tourists as he walked – their red faces racked with exhaustion as they plodded doggedly through the streets. A man sat at a doorway with a beat up old guitar case holding about 2 dollars in change, but no guitar. He just sat there, not bothering to ask for money. A couple of “gutter punks” sat on a stoop sharing a handful of crackers stolen from some restaurant’s table.
Ted’s destination was a tiny leather shop a block past Bourbon called Second Skin. His relationship with Nancy had been cool – Ok, icy – lately. Perhaps a top quality love toy would be a suitable last-ditch effort to prove this failure wasn’t his fault. It was just the sort of bold, desperate move that had caused him to quit Lawson & James Architects a week ago because he noticed he had been sitting in the same chair long enough to wear a hole in the seat. Maybe the heat was making him crazy, but he felt like a leaf in the Mississippi and his life was caught in some great, omnipotent current.
Since this was a weekday, he was the only one in the dimly lit store as the flamingly homosexual sales clerk started preening in the mirrors. They were all over the store – though Ted doubted few people tried these clothes on and then paraded out into the store to see how they looked. There were leather handcuffs lined with thick sheepskin padding, crotchless panties, and leather corsets. In a glass case were whips, clips, and liquid latex by the gallon. All of a sudden, Ted realized just how futile this would be. He hadn’t gotten so much as a deep kiss from Nancy lately – nothing here could change that. He strode for the door as quickly as he could and practically leapt into the broiling heat once more. He was as close to crying as he’d been since he last slept in a bunk bed.
One good thing about the heat – you can’t concentrate on anything else, even intense psychological pain. As the back of Ted’s neck was starting to sting as the midday sun began to roast him, Ted saw a sign “Find Out Where You’re Going – Fortunes Told at the Witch’s Closet”. It sounded like just what Ted needed – a place to cool down and perhaps a little direction.
The store smelled like his grandfather’s house – of dust and old people. There were the usual tourist trappings – alligator heads with shiny glass eyes, raunchy postcards, and dictionaries depicting how to speak “Southern”. Then there were the candles – some for luck, some for love, some for money. High on the shelves were dusty jars with handwritten, unreadable names on the sides. Probably better Ted couldn’t read them. “Nancy would love this.” Ted thought. She had a curiosity about the occult and even had a deck of Tarot cards that she sometimes pulled out for parties.
The curtain at the back of the store slid open to reveal a pale, thin man in his early thirties. He wore a black poet’s shirt with ruffled sleeves that opened wide to reveal a leather necklace hung with strange crystals that lay against his bare chest. He wore tight black pants with tall black leather boots that laced to the top. A loosely tied black leather vest completed the ensemble. This was not your typical New Orleans summer wear. The man’s eye’s locked for an uncomfortable time to Ted’s as he came toward him and introduced himself as Ian, the fortune teller.
“You have come for a reading, of course.” Ian stated rather than asked.
“Yes” Ted replied.
“Thirty dollars. Upfront.”
Ted fished around in his wallet for the cash and handed it to Ian. He crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. “I guess the governor won’t be getting his taxes off this sale” mused Ted.
They went back to the little room and Ian closed the curtain behind them. He lit a large candle in the center of an old wooden table that dominated the tiny room. An intricately carved incense burner released a steady stream of smoke from a fearsome dragon’s mouth. The walls were a dark, midnight blue that seemed to swallow any light that strayed from the table.
A deck of Tarot cards lay on the table. Ian pulled the King of Swords out of the deck and laid it on the table. Then he asked Ted to shuffle the cards and make three piles starting from his left using his left hand. Then Ian put the deck back together and dealt the cards out in a cross fashion.
“This covers him…This crosses him…This is beneath him…This is behind him…This crowns him…This is before him…” The cards fell swiftly and deliberately into place.
“You are confused and uncertain about your path into the future. Your job is unstable, your love life is unstable, and your sanity is unstable. You are in an environment of chaotic change. This uncertainty is not only the environment you’re in, but also the obstacle to your goals. You are handling it poorly. It could cost you your livelihood and your lover. You’ve always been a reliable and responsible person, yet you have driven yourself to change that merely for the sake of change. You have no goals. You have no real knowledge of those closest to you. You live in a nice suburban neighborhood, yet you cannot name your neighbor across the street. Your lover is a dark-haired woman of modest means but a generous heart whose name starts with an ‘N’. You don’t know her any better than you know your neighbor. She is afraid of the changes you have to you your lives and angry that she had no part in the decisions you made. She too, is looking for answers. She has been keeping secrets that could damage you both. This will not remain this way, however. You will take decisive action, resulting in extreme emotional upheaval, but positive results. You have many negative features in your future according to this spread – but they may be overcome if you respond to the challenges that face you. Go back to what has worked for you before and all may be resolved. Despite how you feel now, your future is still your own doing.”
This was not the light, fun reading that Nancy had done at parties. Ted decided that Ian was just trying to milk him for another reading by forecasting gloom that could be changed by his actions. He was probably lucky that Ted had paid in advance. This was not at all what he was looking for.
Ted decided that although the leather lingerie had been a bad idea, maybe a surprise visit for lunch might just be better. As he walked toward the small branch bank where Nancy worked as a teller, the words of the fortuneteller echoed in his head. The guy spouted some incredible details when Ted thought about it. He got to the bank only to find she had already gone to lunch - so much for surprises. Ted decided to wander on home.
Nancy took a puff from Ian’s clove cigarette. The only time she ever craved these things was after particularly hot sex. It’s aroma mingled with that of their lovemaking and the incense burning in the corner of the reading room to form something salty and sweet; smoky, and dangerous. Ian still had the enthusiasm and endurance of youth, something Nancy was flattered to inspire. He had awakened a passion in her that she thought had died sometime after she “grew up”. She even wore a leather corset for their trysts that Ian had given her that made her feel both fierce and sexy. She liked the power it gave her – she had control. At least, for now. And Ian was such a wild, magnificent beast…
“There was the oddest coincidence this morning, love. Your very own Ted came in here for a reading.”
Panic flashed across Nancy’s face.
Ian continued “Not to worry, he didn’t suspect a thing. I just told him to get a job or move out. Not in those exact words, of course!”
When Nancy came home that evening, Ted gave her a peck on the check as she continued past him to watch her soaps that she taped during the day. As she came close, he picked up the scent of incense in her hair. The same incense they burned at the Witch’s Closet. Ted thought about the deck of tarot cards Nancy used at parties. It was the same as those used by Ian. Ted went to the spare bedroom and fired up the computer. As Nancy nuked a Lean Cuisine, Ted hit the Internet to see if he could find that deck of cards. They had beautiful artwork and it never dawned on him that decks like it would cost over two hundred dollars, when she claimed she picked them up for twenty.
Nancy slept quietly under a thin sheet as Ted lay in the muggy darkness of a moonless New Orleans night, plotting his revenge to the hum of the air conditioner working overtime. He had been taken for a fool, and that would stop tomorrow.
There was a three-day waiting period before buying a handgun, but Ted had a way around that obstacle. He had a focus; and now that he did, he discovered Ian was right – he felt like he was no longer adrift, but guiding his own destiny once again. He went into the Confederate Shadow, an antique gun shop on Royal Street and looked over the old pistols on display. A lone dueling pistol caught his eye. The pearl handle curled smoothly into the cold iron six-sided barrel. Its mate had likely been buried with the unfortunate loser of an “honorable dispute”. He was also able to buy a couple of balls of the approximate caliber to use for “display”. He charged it all to Nancy’s American Express.
He brought the fine velvet case back to his car where he could work unseen. He opened the box of shotgun shells he had picked up at K-mart, and sliced a few of them open to release the gunpowder. A tiny bit of oiled handkerchief served as a patch and he rammed one of the balls into place. There was so much you could learn on the Internet – he’d never have known how to pack a muzzle-loader otherwise. Ted would have one shot to settle the score. That was all he felt he needed.
When Ted got to the Witch’s Closet, there was a sign on the door saying “Closed for Thirty Minutes”. As the adrenaline began to fade his legs felt weak and he leaned against the door for support. To Ted’s surprise, it opened. The lock had been turned, but the latch hadn’t caught. Ted heard noises from behind the curtain that hid the reading room. That blasted incense filled the room, along with the smell of a clove cigarette. He pulled the curtain, to find Ian and Nancy passionately kissing. Her blouse was loose and partially unbuttoned. Their eyes opened wide at the unexpected intrusion. The drawn pistol commanded center stage, practically larger than life.
Ian’s face went even whiter. “Ted! Where did that come from? Put it away! Surely you don’t want to hurt anyone else?” babbled Ian. Nancy simply froze in shock. Her eyes were going glassy like she was about to faint.
Ted leveled the gun at Ian. He had hoped to have some clever words to send him off to hell, but he hadn’t actually planned on having Nancy as a witness. There was only one shot – who should get it? Then, under Nancy’s open blouse, he saw the leather corset. He fired. The dueling pistol was murderously accurate once again as a small hole opened up in Nancy’s forehead. But it would never fire again. The pistol was designed for slow-burning black powder. Ted had loaded it with modern, high-powered gunpowder. The brittle old metal fractured into a dozen pieces of white-hot shrapnel – one of which laid open Ted’s carotid artery. As his lungs filled with his own blood, he looked one last time into Nancy’s blank lifeless eyes and came to the realization that he had made a grave mistake – he really should’ve shot that guy at the leather shop for starting all this…