Intimate Victims (19 page)

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Don't Rely on Gemini

He was thinking of Liddy again.

Mrs. Muckermann said, “You're not really listening to me, Archie.”

“I'm sorry. My mind wandered for a moment.”

A woman at the next table was smoking a Gauloise, as Liddy always had. The strong scent of the cigarette reminded Archie of her. He even put on his glasses to be sure it was not Liddy, though he knew the last place in New York City where he would find her would be in this basement tearoom on Irving Place.

It was called the Singing Tea Kettle: good homemade food, no bar, no air-conditioning; but everyone there knew Anna Muckermann. The old English sea captain who owned the place often stopped by her table to discuss astrology with her. The teachers and other customers who worked in the neighborhood and lunched there sometimes asked her questions: would a Pisces get along with a Capricorn; what was someone born under Taurus like; if you were born at midnight on July 22, were you Cancer or Leo?

Mrs. Muckermann enjoyed the attention. But when she was unhappy she complained that everyone wanted something for nothing, and she was tired of having her brain picked. Did people stop a doctor in a restaurant and ask him about their symptoms?

Today was one of those days. There were no gracious smiles for anyone, no small talk between tables, and she was impatient with Archie. Even before he had started thinking of Liddy, Mrs. Muckermann had been in a bad mood. She was not pleased with his progress on the CBS special about her.

“We need more substance!” she had told Archie. “I will not come off as a quack, no better than a gypsy fortune-teller!”

Archie was the writer for the show. He seldom worked in television, and he knew nothing about astrology. He was a novelist, and he wrote short stories and nonfiction pieces for magazines. This assignment was a fluke. When he and Dru had moved into the Gramercy area, Dru had managed to get a key to the private park. There she had struck up a friendship with Mrs. Muckermann. When CBS approached Mrs. Muckermann about doing an hour-long examination of a modern-day astrologer, she agreed on the condition that Archie Gamble would write the script.

After Mrs. Muckermann finished her chocolate pudding, she said, “Archie, I know why you're distracted, but you
can
fight these things, you know.”

He didn't answer. He was suddenly furious with Dru. He imagined that she had told Mrs. Muckermann that Liddy was back in New York. He could just hear it, picture it.

—He never got over her, Mrs. Muckermann. I met Archie when their marriage was breaking up, and he was some mess! You wouldn't
believe
it!

The two of them, no doubt, in their little private park, which Archie hated because it had an iron fence all the way around it. Only The Privileged received keys to get inside.

—Well, Druscilla, Archie
is
a Gemini. You can't rely on Gemini. I always say that. You can't.

—He wouldn't leave me, go back to her?

—You can't predict a Gemini. But I'd have to see his current aspects again, review them, to give you a better prognosis. That was the way it probably went.

Archie frowned and dug into his gingerbread, irritated now because when he was with Mrs. Muckermann it was always at a place where he couldn't get a drink, and invariably, at some point during these sessions, he wanted one.

Mrs. Muckermann said, “Or aren't you a fighter?”

“What?”

“I said you can fight these things. Are you a fighter?”

“What does Dru say?”

“I don't know that Dru's aware of it.”

He said, “What are you talking about?”

He was no longer sure himself.

“I'm talking about the reason you're distracted,” said Mrs. Muckermann. “Mercury and Saturn are stimulating an opposition in your chart.”

Archie smiled, relieved that she hadn't meant Liddy was distracting him. “So that's it,” he said.

“I pointed it out to you last week. It's a bad aspect.”

“When will it be over, Mrs. Muckermann?”

“It'll be there through 1974. But it's very strong now.”

“I'm going to be distracted until 1974?” He chuckled.

“Off and on, yes. Worse than that. You'll be compulsive, at times heartless. Self-concerned. But you can fight it. You have Jupiter working for you, Archie. It's a very lucky planet. It saw Pope John through. It was a strong influence in his horoscope, too.”

“Was Pope John a Gemini?”

“Oh, no. No, Archie. He was a Sagittarius.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin and gathered her pocketbook from the floor. She was always ready to rush out of a restaurant after she finished her dessert, whether or not Archie had finished his. She studied her reflection in her compact while he gulped down the rest of his gingerbread. She was a short, thin little stick-legged woman who looked like a bird with enormous blue eyes. “Geminis,” she said, “don't often rise to positions of power. And if they do, they don't last long in them. We've had only one Gemini president.”

Archie reached for the check. “Who was that?”

“John Kennedy,” said Mrs. Muckermann flatly.

• • •

Mrs. Muckermann lived in the Gramercy Park Hotel, and Archie walked her there, lingering with her for a few minutes in the lobby while she registered more complaints about the material for the show.

“I'm most disappointed,” she said, “about your failure to locate at least one pair of astro-twins.”

Astro-twins were people who had not only the same birthdate, but also the same hour and minute of birth, and were born in the same longitude and latitude.

Archie said, “I've already spent a few hundred dollars advertising for them.”

The ads had been placed in the
Times, The Saturday Review, The Village Voice
and
Variety.
Archie had even persuaded a reporter from the New York
Post
to write an article about the search. They had chosen twenty-five people from CBS, published their dates, places, and times of birth, and asked anyone with a matching date, place, and time to call a special number or write to a box listing. There had been no answers.

Mrs. Muckermann said, “A few hundred dollars isn't enough.”

“I can't go over the budget.”

“Then we should have a bigger budget. Astro-twins prove the validity of astrology. In one hundred percent of the cases investigated in England, we found that these people live parallel lives.”

“Absolutely?”

“No, not absolutely, Archie. You have to make allowances for genetic differences and differences in the stations or positions into which they were born. But their similarities are breathtaking. Didn't you read the Goodavage book I lent you?”

“Not all of it.”

Not any of it. There just wasn't time to read everything Mrs. Muckermann had lent him. This show couldn't become his life's work, much as she wanted it to be.

She said, “You didn't read any of it. Mr. Goodavage began the book with a discussion of astro-twins.”

“I don't remember. I've read so much on the subject lately.”

“You'd remember if you'd read it,” she said. “You'd remember cases like Samuel Hemmings and King George IV.”

“They were astro-twins?”

“Yes, indeed. Hemmings was a commoner, an ironmonger. On the very same day that George IV ascended to the throne, Hemmings went into business for himself.”

“Ummm. Impressive.”

“Don't be cynical with me. I know too much about you. Your vulnerabilities and Saturn's influence in your chart,” said Mrs. Muckermann. “Hemmings was married on the same day the King was. Each became ill and had accidents at the same times. Their successes and failures matched, and their personalities were very similar. They died in the same hour of the same day of the same cause.”

Archie said, “Is it possible for it to be authenticated?”

“Of course. Every book on the subject mentions it. There's a vast amount of research material on it.”

“Then we could write it into the show.”

“Oh, there's so much material on astro-twins. We could write it all into the show,” said Mrs. Muckermann sighing heavily, “but I want living proof, contemporary proof. It'll take more than a few hundred dollars to come up with it, but it'll be worth it.”

Archie shook his head. “No way … the budget is set.”

“Then CBS will have a flop on their hands!”

“Not exactly a unique experience for CBS,” said Archie.

“But it would be for me, you see,” Mrs. Muckermann answered, “which is the very reason I'm contemplating withdrawing my participation. I'm perfectly serious, Archie.”

He knew she was. He knew, too, that without her the show would go on, that CBS would find another astrologer … and another writer. He had put two months into this project already, and been paid only two thousand dollars down on the guaranteed ten thousand for the finished script.

“Mrs. Muckermann,” Archie said, smiling unhappily, “I thought I had Jupiter working for me.”

“Only if you fight, dear boy.”

• • •

He knew what Dru would say when he went home and told her that Mrs. Muckermann was beginning to give him a hard time.

He wasn't ready for it, so he went to Pete's Restaurant on the corner of 18th Street and Irving Place and ordered a beer. Dru would say, “I don't
believe
her!” Or, “Are you
ready
for this?”

Her stock sayings with the stock emphases on certain words. She always picked up all the current New York jargon, something Liddy would never do. Liddy would never imitate anyone. What she said, what she wore, the way she was, were unmistakably Lydia Denyven.

—Liddy, I'm worried that I'll lose this show.

—Then you don't need it, Archie. You don't need anything that makes you worry. I won't let you worry.

He swallowed some of his beer and laughed weakly to himself at the idea of Liddy not letting him worry. Yeah, right. If worry was motion, he had spent most of his marriage to Liddy in a state of perpetual motion.

Liddy wouldn't pick up any jargon or fads, but she had never been too fussy about other pickups.

Well, what are you going to do with a Scorpio? As that old philosopher Mrs. Muckermann would say: passions flow through Scorpio. In Mrs. Muckermann's studio there was an asexual marble nude sitting atop a gold pedestal. Small labels pointed out the parts of the body ruled by the signs of the Zodiac. Above the toes was the symbol for Pisces and the word “feet.” Under the chin was the symbol for Taurus and the word “neck.” Above the heart was the symbol for Cancer and the word “breast.” Next to it was the symbol for Leo and the word “heart.” There was Sagittarius on the thighs, Capricorn on the knees, Aquarius on the legs, etc. And there between the legs was the symbol for Scorpio and Mrs. Muckermann's subtle description: “secrets.” Go win.

Archie took another pull on his beer and decided the hell with Liddy. So she was back. God, how he loved theatrics, walking in the rain last night, remember, with his coat collar pulled up, cigarette in his mouth, brooding, thinking of himself walking in the rain at night with his coat collar pulled up, cigarette in his mouth, recalling Liddy's voice, body, thinking of her seeing him that way, one of her friends seeing him that way, remember?

—He must know you're back, darling. He looked so melancholy.

Wasn't he a little middle-aged now for these melodramatics?

He was suddenly almost forty-two, the same way he had suddenly become twenty-one, and then thirty; did it happen so fast to everyone?

Not Dru.

Dru was dying to be older.

She was twenty-seven. She had no memories of bobbysocks or butter rationing or phonograph records that broke if you dropped them, or rumble seats or saddle shoes or a skyline unmolested by television aerials or the sovereign state of Lithuania.

She was Cancer, or as Mrs. Muckermann preferred to call anyone with that sun sign, a Moon Child.

What was that little poem Mrs. Muckermann recited about Cancer/Moon Children?

“Cherchez la mère,”
Mrs. Muckermann was fond of quoting the French astrologer Barbault on the subject of Cancer,
“et vous trouverez le Cancer!”

But Dru always said, “The last thing I want is to have a baby. I guess I'm too selfish. I just never wanted to be a mother.”

Good.

Neither did Archie want children any more. (Liddy had wanted them so badly!)

“How can I buy this astrological mishmash, though?” Archie had complained to Dru shortly after he accepted the CBS assignment. “I like to have at least a little enthusiasm for my work. It's impossible with this subject.”

Dru had said, “Concentrate on the historical aspects, Arch. You know, how that seventeenth-century Englishman foretold London's Great Fire of 1666—what was his name? Lee?”

“William Lilly. But this is a show about contemporary astrology.”

“Then mention the fact that the Crown Prince of Sikkim and that Hope Cooke postponed their wedding for a year because the astrologers told them to. Things like that.”

“Dru,” Archie had answered, “I have to get down to the nitty-gritty. Leos are lionlike and Pisceans are mystical, and you Cancers are whacked out because the moon rules you.”

She had said, “I'm not whacked out. I'm Rita Reliable, and you know it.”

She was, too.

He could not envision her changing like a changeful season, or letting go without a reason, or any of it.

“Hi!” he said, hugging her in their foyer. “I missed you.”

“Damnit all, Archie, you stopped for a beer!” She pushed him away and walked toward the kitchen, looking more than usual today like Julie Harris fifteen years ago. He followed her. He came up behind her and put his arms around her. “Since when am I disallowed a draft or two at the corner bar?”