Andromeda Klein (32 page)

“And this is magic?” he said, turning the volume knob all the way down.

“It will be,” she said. Huggy said,
Pinch him
, so she did, not quite knowing why, hard, just above his knee.

“Ow.”

“You were questioning,” she said, following Huggy’s lead, and as she said it she realized it was probably true. “Weren’t you?”

Byron admitted he had been.

“First lesson,” she said. “Don’t.” Wow. She had never been so …
effective
. “Now,” she said, getting a little caught up in the feeling and remembering an old story about Mr. Crowley. “Shall I give you the serpent’s kiss?” Then, when Byron looked puzzled: “Say yes.”

“Yes.”

Andromeda grasped Byron’s wrist and bit it as hard as she could.

“Ow! Jesus. Magic hurts!”

It most certainly does, she thought.

What in the Universe
, said Huggy, when Andromeda was in the bathroom at the Burger King afterward,
was that
“serpent’s kiss” nonsense? You really almost lost him there. You need to stay well to one side of freakishness
.

“Something I learned from Uncle Al,” replied Andromeda defensively.

The Beast
, said Huggy with a kind of sniff,
has his place, but he is not one to emulate in social situations. Stick to the plan
.

“And what is this plan?”

But Huggy was silent once again.

“I don’t know nothing about no plan,” Andromeda said to her reflection, and instantly regretted looking in the mirror at all—she had deteriorated since the morning, and the harsh Burger King vacuum lights were no help.

“So I have to be a vegetarian every other day,” said Byron, when she returned, “and I have to dislike my dad, and then like him, and I’m either a Democrat or a Republican.” He sounded dubious, as one might if one were forced to be the disciple of someone with such flyaway curly-outy hair. Andromeda felt so much less confident now that she realized exactly what she looked like.
Calm down
, said Huggy, popping up.
You’re not trying to seduce him. You just want him for his library card and assorted services
. Assorted services. Gods.

But then Byron said: “Okay. What else?” So they were still in business, curly-outy hair notwithstanding. “Shall I give you the turban skins?”

Andromeda shook her head. He had meant to say “serpent’s kiss.”

“Come on, I want to give you the turban skins,” he said, in a forced-playful manner. He was reaching for her wrist. Huggy’s voice came to the rescue.

“We’re not doing the turban skins anymore,” It said, using Andromeda’s voice, more emphatically and harshly than the real Andromeda would probably have said it. Then It had her reach for her kitten pin warningly.

Byron got the message and backed away. He was sulking, however, with obviously hurt feelings.

Now just don’t say anything
, said Huggy. That was really challenging, and ran counter to her own inclination, which would have been to try to appease him. She really wanted to say “Sorry.” But, Daisy-like, she forced herself not to.

It took a while, but before their meal was over, Byron was the one who was apologizing, and criticizing himself, and promising to follow the rules, and asking if she was mad at him, and trying to persuade her to come around and be nice to him again.

Boy, he sounds like me, thought Andromeda.

Yes, see how that works?
said Huggy, and she did see, even though she really had to wonder what was the point if all you wound up with was a short, slow-witted, eager-to-please, male Andromeda Klein on your hands.

She hadn’t really wanted to do his tarot particularly, but that is the drawback to having disciples, she was already learning: they expect you to provide them with activities and to keep them entertained, and even if you are the one theoretically in charge you really have to hop to it. With the thought, though, that perhaps the pictorial wisdom of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus might reveal something of the contours of Huggy’s alleged plan, she did a brief invocation and banishment, and removed Daisy’s cards from
Sexual Response in the Human Female
. Then she had Byron shuffle them, and began to lay them out on the Burger King booth table.

Andromeda decided, as she had been doing ever since the Two of Swords had popped up in her world with such impact, to allow the deck to “choose” and to use the top card of the shuffled pack as the significator.

“This is you,” she said, drawing it out. The Five of Pentacles. Perhaps the worst, least fortunate minor card of them all. Worry was its traditional title, which Crowley likened to the image of a dog strangling a sheep.

“Is that good?” said Byron.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Very good.”

Just then, a text came in from UNAVAILABLE. Finally! She got just a hint of that heart-stopping feeling, as she always did when St. Steve popped up, but she was also feeling rather in control of things, and easy. It was Byron whose cards were a little off, not her.

“RU being a knotty girl” said the text.
Knotty!
Cute. And encouraging. St. Steve was only rarely playful like that. Holding up her finger to say “Hang on” to Byron, she one-thumb-texted back with her other hand: “knot I, said the Millie,” and added a “<3.”

She put the phone down and continued. “This crosses you.” Another five, the Five of Cups—gods and goddesses, this guy is cursed! “We are looking at a stable situation being disrupted, set in motion,” she was beginning to say, thinking she should probably consult A.E. and Mr. Crowley’s book, when St. Steve’s response arrived.

“Take off your bra,” it said.

Andromeda got that can’t-breathe feeling and dropped the pack of cards, scattering them all over the table, bench, and floor. Byron gave her a weird look and scrambled to pick them up. “Whisky tango foxtrot,” she texted back, feeling her face turn bright red.

“Bad news?” Byron said, with that familiar “Maybe this girl is crazy” look in his eyes. She waved him and his question away and excused herself to go to the vacuum.

Why am I doing this? she thought as she unhooked it and threaded it through her sleeves, holding her hooded sweatshirt between her knees.

Because you want to be good and you don’t want to blow it this time
, came Huggy’s, perhaps sarcastic, reply.
See, look at you: you’re all excited
.

“ok zebra she eez off,” she texted back, on her way to the table, feeling funny.

Two hours later she texted a “now what?” But there was no response. Not then, and not for a long, long time.

xvii.

Andromeda had the Three of Swords out on the Burger King table and was trying to explain synchs to Byron and he wasn’t getting it.

“So it’s a coincidence,” he said. “Like, I put three gallons of gas in my car, and then I eat three Whopper Juniors, and then you show me this picture of three swords stabbing a heart. And then what: I get to third base with you?”

“No,” she said, reaching for her kitten pin, and feeling Huggy do a little fluttery twirl of approval somewhere around the region of the left side of her chest as Byron cringed back toward the wall. Sometimes she felt she could almost “see” Huggy, somewhere in there or out there, just beyond reach, shiny, silvery, and fluttery.

If St. Steve had said that, of course, she’d have melted into a puddle in an instant.

“No, a synch would be like: we’re discussing Coronzon, who in Mr. Crowley’s system has the number three-three-three, and then maybe you look at your watch and the time is three-thirty-three; and then you remember you had a dream last night where three men are hitting you with sticks, and then you see a three-legged dog running over the hills. So, you know, the Universe is nudging you a little there. There’s a kind of three-ness about things as they stand at your current point in time and space. Maybe it’s telling you something that’s going to happen, or maybe it’s showing you something about what is happening. Or maybe it just wants to wake you up a little.”

He was staring at her.

“You have dreams like that? People hitting you with sticks?”

“Yes,” she said. “Don’t you?”

Byron said that his dreams were all about not being able to find his shoes or losing his keys. But he was poking her and pointing, because a homeless man had just walked in out of the rain with a soaking wet black plastic garbage bag over his head with a hole cut out for his face, and he had a dog on a leash trailing behind him, and the dog had three legs.

“You must have seen him outside earlier,” said Byron. And maybe, just maybe she had, though she didn’t think so.

“That’s a synch,” she said. Goddesses, that example had worked out great.

“Weedgie,” he said. And she mentally gave him a gold star for proper use of authorized vocabulary. “So what’s going to happen, then?” She silently took back the gold star.

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said, but she had to admit she was wondering what was going to happen herself. Two to Three can be a rough transition, two opposites joining to produce a third via a pregnant Empress, a line becoming a plane. No reason to think Swords, except for her Two of Swords Daisy situation, and the fact that things were very swordsy lately.

Just then her phone vibrated, and if it had been from St. Steve that would really have been something, both synch-wise and just hotness-wise. But it was from Rosalie. “look up,” it said.

Andromeda looked up. Rosalie and Bethany were sitting in the Gimpala in the parking lot just outside their window and Rosalie was smiling big and waving her over. Byron said he had to go anyway, but that he would do his reading and would write in his journal and would try to obey the ring. He slinked off to his car through the rain, as though embarrassed to be seen with her, as Andromeda climbed in behind Rosalie and Bethany.

“So Gas Station Boy managed to fix the Gimpala after all?” Andromeda said.

“Not yet,” said Rosalie. She explained that her mother had extended her trip for a few more days and she wasn’t ready to give up her transportation while she still had it. “Anyway, Joshua has been a little too busy to return anyone’s phone calls lately, so he can suck my dick. The car is fine.” She began to back out of the parking lot. “Scream if I’m going to hit anything. Bethlehem, you take the right side, Dromedary, the left. I’m really getting the hang of this,” she added. And it was true, she was doing remarkably well at reverse driving. When Bethany yelled “Cop!” she managed to pull into a parking space deftly while they all ducked their heads down until the police car had passed. “Close one,” she said. “It’s trickier in the rain.”

“What kind of violation would that be?” asked Bethany as Rosalie backed the car back back onto El Camino. “Driving backwards?”

“Not too bad, probably,” said Rosalie. “Unless I kill somebody. But I’m not going to.” She paused. “Or … am I? Klein! Cards! Now! Eenie meenie miney moe, will the fabulously glamorous Rosalie accidentally kill someone with her retardo-mobile?”

Andromeda checked. Ace of Cups.

“No,” she said. “Actually, you won’t kill anybody, and maybe that person who you don’t kill will hand you like a big box of money or something.” Some people just really were that lucky.

“Excellent! That’s what I like to hear.” She and Bethany play high-fived. “But it won’t be that lottery because fuck-head still has our ticket.”

Ah, lovely Bethany, looking over her shoulder and still resembling the hell out of Katherine Mansfield, holding hands with Andromeda over the front seat in the solidarity of mutual terror.

“Hey!” said Rosalie. “We can go anywhere we like. Let’s go to Reno!”

“You’re gonna back up all the way to Reno,” said Andromeda, not meaning it as a question. Bethany nodded at her to say “Yes she really would maybe probably do it.”

Rosalie waved the topic away, and commanded Andromeda to “dish,” by which she meant to tell her everything that had happened on the Church-State. “Church date,” she meant. Did they hold hands in the pew, did he feel her up when they were kneeling, did they do a kiss of peace and make out when the nun wasn’t looking? The nun!

“It’s not that kind of a church,” said Andromeda dryly. “And he’s too … short for any of that stuff. I’m seriously just teaching him about magic.”

“I’m sure you are, honey lamb,” said Rosalie. “I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’re way nastier than he could ever dream, down deep in your corrugated soul.” Corrugated? “Go ahead: show Bethany your whore face.”

Andromeda rolled her eyes. Not that again. Rosalie slammed on the brakes and said, as their three backs slapped against the seats: “See? Driving backwards is going to catch on. Simple law of thermometer dynamics: no seat belts needed.” She switched on the ceiling light. “Now, Andromeda: whore face. Quickly.” Andromeda sighed and pulled her hair over her eyes and struck the lip-pursing kissy pose she had sent to St. Steve. “Okay, not bad,” Rosalie said. “Here’s mine.” She pulled her lower lip down with her index finger and winked, twisting her shoulders to the side. “See, I don’t know how he could possibly resist. Don’t let him see me or you’ll lose him forever. I’m just kidding. And don’t show me yours, Beth. You’re so sweet and innocent it would probably just make me cry.”

Andromeda checked her phone as discreetly as she could: nothing from UNAVAILABLE, which sucked quite badly, but she had to admit that Rosalie was cheering her up at least a little.

“Message from lover boy?” said Rosalie; then, noticing the red phone, she added: “Okay, talk me through this. That’s the mom phone? And your regular phone is the blue one? Or wait …”

Andromeda had to explain that she had broken the blue phone and had to use the red one and switch the SIM cards depending on what she was using it for.

“You live in a dark coagulated world, Dromedary,” Rosalie said. “I
thought
it was weird that you were feeling up the mom phone. Seriously, you hold that phone like a hand pants on fire.” “Hand pacifier,” she meant. “But what happens if your mom sees it?”

“I just have to be really careful,” said Andromeda, demonstrating her shielding method, her slender fingers cupped around the colored areas on the phone.

“You could always paint that blue one,” said Bethany brightly.

Andromeda declined the offer to back up, up and down the road with them for the next few hours and Rosalie agreed to drop her home.

“By the way,” said Rosalie, en route. “I thought you might want to know that another one of your breathtaking predictions came true. My brother said he heard that Empress fell down the stairs after PE and broke her leg on Friday. And she’s blaming Lacy Garcia for it and is gonna kick her ass or sit on her or something as soon as she gets her cast off.” She whispered to Bethany that Lacey was Andromeda’s sworn enemy because she put her bike in a tree.

“I predicted that? When did I predict that?”

“You said that Empress was going to get into something involving
betrayal?
And I think you even maybe said the person’s name would begin with an
L
? And that she was going to maybe get
pregnant?
And that she was going to
fall
? And that she was going to
die?”

Andromeda hadn’t said any of those things. But she focused on the weakest link.

“But she didn’t die. None of that stuff is even close to true.”

“Details, details,” said Rosalie in an attempt at some unplaceable accent. “She fell down the stairs, and even if she’s not pregnant she’s a big girl, like four Elisabeths’ worth. And she
could
die. You know what hospitalization is like. Anyway, you said there were different kinds of death. This was the tragic death of a leg. You predicted the names of Charles’s on-tour sluts, too. You’re on a roll. I hope you use that power wisely, Klein-o.”

“Speaking of which,” said Andromeda. “I’ve been meaning to ask: How did you manage to get hold of Daisy’s deck anyway?”

“Oh, she just left it with me for safekeeping,” said Rosalie, an intriguing notion to be sure, as Rosalie was perhaps the last person on earth you’d select for that purpose. What else had Daisy left with her?

But Rosalie waved the topic away with a fly-swatting motion. She pressed some buttons on her phone and pointed it toward Andromeda, and said: “Recording. So Andromeda, how does it feel to be an all-knowing and all-powerful fortune-telling genius? Would you say it has had a positive affectation on your self-esteem and well-being and that you feel more confident and in control of your own destination?”

Andromeda just stared at Rosalie, who began whispering, “Say yes, say yes,” moving her head and eyes as though to say “Come on, get on with it.”

“Um,” said Andromeda. “Um. Yes?”

“Rosalie pressed another button and lowered her phone.

“Atta girl,” she said. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Sorry, A.E., Andromeda thought as she climbed the stairs to Casa Klein. I’m just so sorry.

The dad and the mom were arguing as she went in. The dad was red and sweating, an indication that he was being crazy and that the domestic yelling would be unlikely to die down for some time. The mom was completely incapable of handling these situations. The thing to do was to agree with him about at least some of what he was saying, to say something like “Well, what are you gonna do?” and throw up your hands, and to laugh at one of his jokes; even better, to tell him a joke of your own. The way not to handle it was to say:

“That has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

And that was exactly what the mom was saying as Andromeda ran to her room to put her bra back on. St. Steve had left her hanging too long.

“Your father,” said the mom when Andromeda had returned to the kitchen, “thinks that the CIA has been sneaking into the carport to confiscate his old girlie magazines.”

“There is some literature missing, yes,” he said, looking at Andromeda meaningfully. “There’s no full inventory of my papers, so I don’t know the extent of the issue.”

Uh-oh, thought Andromeda. She had the second bagel worm agony in her backpack to give to Den when he stopped by the library the following day.

“I borrowed one,” said Andromeda, deciding to take a calculated risk. “It wasn’t the CIA. Sorry.” They were both looking at her strangely. “For a, um, school project. On, the, uh, role of women in you know, society.” Then she added: “Your little girl is growing up” in a slight Groucho voice.

The dad stared for a moment and finally laughed and the redness began to drain from his face. “Our little girl is growing up,” he repeated, sounding way more normal.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said the mom, stomping off.

“Hey, Papa Klein,” Andromeda added just to make sure, on her way back to her room. “A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre. And the bartender gives her one.” She had been saving that one for a special occasion and it totally did the trick now. He was smiling, proud of her, and she was relieved. She intended to try to conjure the King of Sac ramento tonight and she couldn’t afford a lot of disruption.