"Phyllis Eisenstein - No Refunds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eisenstein Phyllis)

No Refunds
By: Phyllis Eisenstein
****
IтАЩm sure Phyllis Eisenstein, living in Chicago as she does, has seen the leaflets.
Solemn children hand them out on street corners or stick them into the
advertisements tacked up on buses or rapid transit: Mrs. So and So, or Madame X,
or Sister YтАФтАЭreaders and advisersтАЭ to tell your future, solve your problems, stop
your pain.
Or sheтАЩs seen the Tarot readers sit in parks and in shabby-curtained rooms
two floors up, visited by women (mostly) in suits out for an eveningтАЩs fun, who
giggle about rip offs as they wait to hand over their palms and their money for a peek
into a magic they donтАЩt really believe in.
But maybe, just maybe, these readers have other clients, too, slipping in
quietly. They believeтАФor theyтАЩre desperate. And who knows what price they pay for
their fortunes?
In many ways, тАЬNo RefundsтАЭ reminds me of O. HenryтАЩs тАЬGift of the Magi.тАЭ
Is it more blessed to give than to receive? As Phyllis Eisenstein shows, the blessing
is never unmixed.
****
She knew he was a junkie before he opened the door. She knew that he lived on the
street, cadging change from strangers, eating out of garbage cans, shooting up with
people who were his friends when they had the junk and his competition for
returnable bottles the rest of the time. She knew because knowing was what she was,
and what she purveyedтАФknowing what had been, what was, what would be. The
small sign in the curtained plate glass window said reader and adviser, but that was
only because the police would arrest anyone who bluntly claimed to tell fortunes.
The junkie opened the door, and the Utile bell above his head jangled to
announce him.
тАЬMadame Catherine?тАЭ he said in a hoarse, uncertain voice. He squinted
toward the drapery of beads that half-obscured the rear two-thirds of the narrow
room.
She waited a moment, letting him take in her carefully cultivated
ambienceтАФthe floor covered with worn, grayed-out tiles; the walls and ceiling
festooned with dusty silks and velvets; the small table draped with faded satin, the
pitted crystal ball sitting on a brass pedestal at its center; the gypsy fortune-teller
swathed in skirts and scarves and junk jewelry. This was the decor she kept going
back to, far better than the wood-paneled high-rise office and the chic suit, or the
black-and-white New Age studio and the designer jeans. Clients came most readily
to this shabby storefront, their basest carnival expectations confirmed by it. The
right kinds of clients.
She raised a hand toward the junkie. тАЬCome in, Steven,тАЭ she said.
He pushed a few strings of beads aside and leaned into the inner sanctum.
тАЬYou know my name.тАЭ
тАЬOf course.тАЭ Finding his name among the myriad voices he had heard in his
life hardly took any effort at all. His mother had used it, his father, his friends, his
wife, a vast, echoing chorus of Steven. Catherine gestured toward the overstuffed
chair on the far side of the table. тАЬWonтАЩt you sit down?тАЭ
He hesitated another moment, then slipped sideways through the beads and
slowly limped to the chair. He dropped to its worn cushions and sat there in silence,
his head, his whole body, drooping. He was painfully thin, the skull visible behind