“I realize you had a bad experience last night, but I need you to go to the bank today,” Maisie said, unsympathetically. I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. I looked Maisie straight in the eyes, well, as best I could, she kept ducking to dust bottom shelves.
“How’d your gypsy fortune telling machine end up at Koldwell’s last night? Who's Madam Leonard?” I asked. Maisie didn’t miss a dusting-beat, but I heard Emilia give a small groan. Maisie on the other hand acted like she never heard what I said. She ignored my question.
“I plan to take out a large amount of cash. I've found a restaurant I want to invest in. Emilia will go with you for security. ”
“Can’t you see the girl’s had a bad day, Maze? Maybe tomorrow,” Emilia said in my defense.
I looked at Emilia and gave her a quick smile. I was beginning to like her selflessness, and she seemed to be okay with me and my ways, and I got the sense from her that maybe she was even on my side, a little, in all of this.
“Madam Leonard looked a lot like you,” I said to Maisie.
There was no reaction from Maisie, but Emilia laughed at my comment and Maisie gave her a killer look; Emilia decided that her sword needed another quick polish.
I watched Emilia for a second longer than I should have, I guess, because she looked up from where she was stroking her sword with a shammy and smiled at me for a moment, like she maybe wanted to date me or something.
Suddenly, she couldn’t keep her eyes off me, and I realized I was staring overly long at her. She gave me the once over and when her eyes met mine again, I saw she definitely approved of me.
Emilia finally broke the tension between us when she asked, “Yeah, Maze, who's Madam Leotard?” Then she awkwardly polished her sword some more.
I corrected her. “Leonard.”
“Leon-dard, then, who is that?” Emilia asked again.
“That’s what the sign on the fortune telling machine said. Ask her.” I pointed to Maisie.
I tried to peek beyond Emilia to see if the fortune telling machine, normally kept in the shop, was still in the back. I stood on my toes, but that was useless.
Maisie ignored us both. “I have a gift for you, Jane,” she said.
Maisie seemed to know how to push all my buttons. I was a sucker for gifts, even ones I didn’t like.
“What? What gift?” I asked, maybe a little too eagerly; behind me Emilia chuckled like she knew something was up. I turned and gave her a dirty look and she got up from the box and walked away from the two of us.
Maisie stopped dusting and came over to the front counter where I stood and where she kept the cash register. She reached down behind the counter and pulled up a fancy, black shoe box. I moved in to get a better look.
Emilia’s curiosity got the best of her because she also decided she wanted be a part of this. She left her sword behind and moved in closer than me to get a better look.
Maisie stood there with both hands resting on top of the lid of the box. The gold bracelets and jeweled rings on her wrists and fingers sparkled and danced under the halogen light. That jewelry might have paid for my mortgage for a year, if I’d had a mortgage.
I waited anxiously for her to remove the box lid, but I sensed there was going to be a little ceremonial speech before that happened. At least I hoped it would be little.
But Maisie didn’t say a thing. She just looked at the two of us like she expected us to do or say something.
Emilia and I looked awkwardly at each other. I wondered if Emilia was supposed to speak, but we both looked back to Maisie who stood with an air of royalty. She seemed over dressed for a store clerk, and I saw, too, that she’d had at some time weaved subtle shinning extensions into her dark, shoulder length hair. The glittery extensions also caught the light. She sparkled like a disco ball.
Finally, she took the lid off the box.
I stood in uneasy anticipation as I looked deeply into the cardboard container which seemed to be filled with small, but beautifully sparkling and jeweled, spray canisters. I looked to Maisie for an explanation and saw Emilia doing the same.
Maisie looked right back at us and said, “Hairspray.”
“Hairspray?” I said, feeling very disappointed. I’d half hoped that Sia would pop out of that box.
Emilia fondled the tips of the dreads hanging free from the band at the top of her head.
“People use that stuff?” Emila asked, and she looked truly perplexed. I grabbed a canister, fluffed my short, sassy blond hair and sprayed. My action got Maisie very animated. She quickly came out from behind the counter. I thought she was going to grab the can from me and help me style my tresses, but if that was her intention, she quickly changed her mind. She tried to grab the can from me, but I was quicker.
“It weakens the soul to all compliments,” she said, sounding all mysterious and then gave Emilia a look, as if Emilia should understand what she was getting at. “Don’t waste it,” she said, turning back to me and she
glared
.
The can stopped spraying all on its own, or maybe it got a little help from Maisie.
Once again Emilia and I shared a look of confusion. “If you spray it on someone,” Maisie continued, “give them a compliment and you'll be able to lead them anywhere –”she seemed to be talking more to Emilia this time. So, I held the can toward the sword fighter. I was going to give her a little zap of the juice, but she put up both hands to block the spray.
“Un, uh, no way, José,” she said. So, I didn’t, but the can seemed to have stopped working anyway.
“If you spray someone, you'll be able to lead them anywhere—especially if you make them think they're going to look in the mirror, but remember to compliment them first, before you try to lead them to a mirror.”
“Oh, that’s handy,” I said with huge sarcasm, hairspray that turns anyone into a narcissist, and I looked to Emilia for backup. Then I had a thought. I grinned like my little Cheshire cat, Sia. My mood lifted and a warm sunny feeling filled my head. I guess I was grinning at Emilia because she smiled back at me.
Oops, am sending her the wrong message
once again
? “I get it,” I said turning to Maisie. “The spray will help me capture the escaped tarot characters.” I felt hopeful.
Maisie gave me a terse smile and an accompanying nod. “It will help,” she added.
The can of hairspray was working again. I was down with that, so, I sprayed my own hair a little more to see what it might feel like and how quickly it might begin to work. I tried to see my reflection in the window glass and wondered if all the other cans in the box were the same, or if they all did something different. Then Emilia said to me, “Cool. You wanna see how beautiful you look in a mirror?”
Omg, how beautiful I looked.
Those words were like water quenching a huge thirst that seemed to reside deep inside me. I felt like a hermit who’d found his missing lantern.
How beautiful I look
. I didn’t realize it at the moment, but I was well and truly under the spell of the hairspray.
“Mirror? Where?” I said, breathlessly. I began a desperate search for a mirror. I saw Maisie give Emilia an 'I-told-you-so,' look, but I didn’t give a fig. I wanted a mirror and I wanted it now! Then I spied Emilia’s polished sword. I grabbed it, and twisted it to see my
beautiful, beautiful
reflection in its flat surface. I wanted to put all her swords together and get a bigger picture of me.
“I don't look any different. How's it gonna make
me
more attractive?” I said, sounding like a wounded child.
“It’s not all about you. Besides, any male that smells your hair after you spray it will become putty in your hands.”
But Maisie was wrong, at the moment it felt like it
was
all about me. I lifted the can and sprayed more of that stuff in my hair until she snatched the can away from me. I began to see that Maisie was all work and no play.
“Everyone else can be led back here with a compliment and the promise of a look in the mirror. Then you can capture them. Enough,” she said.
She put the can back in the fancy shoe box.
Well, I guess the effects of the spray wore off because I found myself right back in my cranky mood. I decided that I’d probably had enough for the day, after all, it had started pretty early: Madame Leonard and the robbery by Devon, and now the crazy spray by Maisie, not to mention the human pincushion, Emilia, who actually wasn’t so bad, except for the swords she insisted on packing around made me want to get out of there.
I grabbed my purse and then remembered that Maisie had offered to pay me for this gig she wanted me to do at the bank. I was curious to know just how much cash she wanted me to pull out and how much she planned to pay me. I began to wonder how much wealth this glamorous older woman had tucked away and why had she selected me to get so much cash.
My thoughts were cut short by Emilia’s snickers. I turned. Emilia sat back on the unpacked trunk load of store goods laughing quietly to herself, like an insane person, muttering about enchanted hairspray. Maisie had once again ducked below the sales counter.
The box of hairspray canisters was gone.
“Maisie, do you expect any of those escaped tarot card people to be at the bank? Cause I wanna start catching these guys. No offense, but I want to be free of you all, if you know what I mean?”
Maisie stood up from behind the counter and said, “I do.”
“Expect tarot people?” I asked, as I spun around in her direction.
“Know what you mean.”
“But, tarot people, will they be there?” I repeated. I felt like I had to spell it out for her.
“Likely, but they're hard to spot. They've all used their glamour spells by now to fit in. Remember Glendie? She was taken over by the sun spirit, and will be again, no doubt. They have their favorite people in town and they like to possess them. You’ll have to learn how to recognize them. We refer to them as majors from the major arcana. You should refer to them that way, too.
I shot a look to Emilia. “Really? I mean, they -- you want to be called majors?”
“Call me Emi,” she said. I gave her a quick smile and her look once again lingered on me.
Emi,
I liked that. That was the name I’d given her when I first met Emilia.
And I did remember Glendie, my bff. She had taken on the spirit of the Sun card and now, even thought she was no longer possessed, she was somebody that was super happy and positive and just overly up all the time. That was hard to take for any length of time.
As I contemplated Glendie’s predicament I caught my reflection in the shop window and an uncontrollable urge to fix things about myself took over. I played with my hair trying to make it look better. My hooped earrings weren’t exactly perfect. But when I touched them, hair and earrings, to make them more perfect, I became enthralled with myself. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. I guess I said so because Emilia was laughing at me. Maybe the effects of the spray hadn’t quite worn off. Emi was shaking her head at me like she seen it all before.
“Get focused girl,” she said. I ignored her. She tapped her sword on the counter and it made a strange angelic hum that almost made me turn away from my reflection, but I shook the feeling off.
“How long's that shit last?” Emilia asked.
“Jane!” Maisie screeched at me.
Much as I wanted to I wasn’t able to ignore Maisie. She commanded something in me that insisted on obeying her. That was going to be frustrating. I turned away from my gorgeous window reflection, to look at Maisie.
“What do you want?” I said irritably. “Why send me with this hairspray, if you don't expect any escaped tarot people -- I mean
majors
.”
“I do expect majors, but I don't know for certain. Take the hairspray in any case.” She held two small canisters out to me. I thought that was pretty generous of Maisie, so I took them and pushed them into my purse.
“Emi, you should try this stuff. It makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself.”
Emi smiled politely but continued to polish her sword. “I don't have your insecurities, sweetie,” she said, a little smugly, I thought. Then, without any provocation from me, Emilia got up and started to ‘show off’ as Maisie liked to call it, with another demonstration of her sword fighting abilities. Emilia did a few quick moves with her sword in the cramped shop, a thrust and then another, as if she stabbed at some invisible spirit. She twirled and swung, stopping short of Maisie’s candle display. I looked to Maisie who looked horrified.
Then Emi did something I wasn’t expecting. She lost her balance in the narrow aisles and brought her sword down sharply to correct her misstep, its blade slammed down on the sales counter, which was an old oak door placed on its side.
My purse was still there, on the counter, and Emi’s sword sliced through the handles of my five hundred dollar Gucci. The two sleek handles fell to the floor like a couple of dead snakes.
I screamed, “No! Oh-my-god!” I screamed again.
“Oopsy,” said Emilia.
I guess I’d lost it for a moment. When I saw the state of my purse something kinda mean rose up inside me, and I grabbed a canister of hairspray from my purse and walked over to Emilia and gave her hair a shot with it. “Go find a mirror and look in it. Go look at your beautiful self.” I don’t know why I did that to Emi. It was a spur of the moment anger reaction to the death of my Gucci. I wanted her out of the room; I wanted to hurt her.