Free 13 ½ by Nevada Barr Page B

absorbed by the company of a handsome man that she had forgotten the children. For a mother, that was terrible; for a woman, it was marvelous.

10
    Idly, Red shuffled the oversized deck and watched Mr. Marchand talking with the blonde. She knew him—maybe better than anybody but his brother, Danny. Mr. Marchand was why she’d become the Woman in Red: to be near him. And to make a few bucks. Tarot reading on Jackson Square paid pretty well, or had until Katrina. Posthurricane, tourists didn’t seem as interested in getting their cards read. Maybe they figured if there was anything to it, of the thirty or so fortune-tellers on the square, at least one might have mentioned that the levees were going to break. Nobody’d seen it coming. Red hadn’t seen it coming. Though, afterward, she did remember the cards had been running dark most of that August.
    Red knew the blonde, too. Not by name and not to talk to. But she knew her by sight. Blondie was a regular. Came about once a month. After getting her cards read, she’d sit in the park with a book, or sometimes just watch the people going by. This wasn’t the first time a man
had come up to her, but this was the first time she’d ever given anybody the time of day.
    Jason had done the blonde’s reading today. With his phony English accent and swarthy pirate looks, he grabbed up a lot of the business. “Hey Jason,” she hissed across the space separating their setups. “What was in the cards for blondie tonight?”
    “Her name’s Polly. Pollyanna. Good name. Old-fashioned and sweet.”
    “Yeah, yeah. Anything interesting in the cards?”
    Jason cocked an eyebrow as thick and mobile as a caterpillar. Red believed in the tarot. Jason didn’t believe in anything. She wondered if he was going to rag her about it. He chose not to, and she was relieved.
    “Let’s see.” He fingered a chin so dark with stubble Red half-imagined she could hear the rasp of his fingernails being filed down. “I did the Celtic Cross. The Knight of Swords was in the sixth.”
    Daring, brave, handsome, unstable man, Mr. Marchand.
    “What else?”
    “I don’t memorize this crap,” Jason said amiably.
    “What else? Come on, don’t be an asshole.”
    “The Devil card was in the top of the ninth.” Even in the dusky light she could see the twinkle in his eyes. She wondered if he was bullshitting her.
    The ninth card represented things that came out of nowhere. The Devil coming out of nowhere was no joke. Not with Mr. Marchand in the mix. “No kidding?” She sounded plaintive, like a beggar. She said it again, better. “No kidding?”
    Jason waved a dismissal. “Would I kid about the Devil?” he asked, as he turned to smile on a couple of rubes down from Mississippi or Montana.
    Mr. Marchand’s blonde, Polly, stood up, and they walked away together. Red whistled softly through her teeth. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, watching Mr. Marchand was a major snooze. He didn’t do much of anything that she could tell. Just worked, and worked, and went home, and worked some more.

    At the gate on the garden’s east side, the two of them turned right. Mr. Marchand’s head was bent to catch what Polly was saying, a smile—a rare thing with him—playing around his mouth.
    Red pushed down on the table to heave herself from her chair. Her hands were pressed flat, fingers, fat at the base, pointed where the acrylic nails had been filed too sharp, splayed out like starfish arms. For an instant, she didn’t recognize them. Her hands were slender, the skin smooth and white. These fat, spotty, wrinkled things revolted her.
    Mostly, she never thought of who she used to be, but the alien hands made her remember. A wave of self-pity washed over her; if she’d had a cyanide tooth, she’d’ve bitten down on it. Second best, she thought, and fished a silver flask from one of the plastic Wal-Mart bags that served as purse and office.
    Bag lady , she thought as she took a swig. Two steps