"02 - Mischief in Maggody Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hess Joan)
He related a crazy story about the girl and her boyfriend being incompatible due to their numerological analysis. "I think it's total nonsense," he concluded with a sigh. "I wish the girl did."
I didn't much like the idea of the pyschic upsetting the girl, even if it was done in such an absurd way. And David Allen had a point about the suicide threats. "I suppose I ought to check her out," I said without enthusiasm. "I'll also see what the laws are concerning this sort of thing. It may be illegal, although I doubt it. Maggody's local statutes were written in the middle of the last century. Nobody's had any reason to read them since, much less update them. But I'll drop by Madam Celeste's house tomorrow and see what I think."
He reached across the table to squeeze my hand. "I appreciate your taking this as seriously as I do, Arly. If you have some spare time tomorrow evening, could you come by the house and tell me what you've decided about this psychic?"
Me with spare time? It wouldn't have been polite to laugh, so I settled for a nod and a smile. On the way out, I stopped by the bar and gave Ruby Bee a stern look meant to discourage any manipulations in the future. She managed not to see me. Estelle was busy studying the popcorn bowls. I could have climbed onto the bar, ripped off my shirt, and beat my breast while yodeling. Neither one of them would have looked up.
When I got back to the PD, I found Kevin Buchanon in the front room. He gulped, flapped his hands, turned scarlet when the broom, in compliance with the law of gravity, clattered to the floor, ran his hand through his crew cut, gulped some more, and shuffled his feet like an anemic tap dancer. "Uh, Jim Bob told me I was to come on in if you wasn't here," he mumbled. "I mean, I'm glad you're back, Arly. I just didn't want you to think I wasn't supposed to come in unless you was back."
I gazed at the gawky specimen of Buchanon inbreeding. "I'm not back, Kevin--it just looks like it. I am gone." I took my beeper and went home. Be it ever so humble, it ran rings around Kevin Buchanon.
3
The next morning, after a bowl of stale cornflakes and three cups of instant coffee (with instant cream), I drove over to Estelle's house, which was a quarter of a mile north of the Emporium on a county road that the county had disinherited along about WWI. The psychic and her brother lived a little ways farther up the road, just before a dilapidated chicken house and a rusted Nash set on concrete blocks that was the closest thing to a historical marker we had in Maggody. After that there were stunted pine trees and scrub, a low-water bridge across Boone Creek that provided excitement in the spring months, and ten teeth-rattling miles to Hasty. Hasty makes Maggody look like the Loop in Chicago. Estelle's house was an old but tidy clapboard thing, and she'd done some landscaping with plastic flowers, concrete statues of gnomes and toads, and a genuine imitation marble birdbath. Wishing I had some plastic dandelions to poke into the flower bed, I went up onto the porch and lifted my hand to knock.
The door flew open and Estelle came outside, her purse clutched under her arm. "I swear, Arly, sometimes you're slower than sorghum at Christmas. I told Madam Celeste we'd be there at ten o'clock sharp, and she has a very busy schedule. Not to mention other folks, who have a business to run and Elsie McMay at ten-fifteen for a haircut, shampoo, and set. As you well know, Elsie practically has a stroke if she's kept waiting."
"I'm terribly sorry. Shall we walk or drive?" I asked humbly.
I caught up with her on the porch of Madam Celeste's house. In contrast to Estelle's house, the place was a sorry mess. Paint peeled off the sides in curling gray tongues or bubbled like alligator skin. The yard was a collage of crabgrass, wild onions, bleached patches of dust, and beer bottles. The only thing that saved it from essence of squalor was a satellite dish sitting in the side yard, although the weeds were getting a mite high around the base. Maybe they used it to beam down The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road.
Before I could mention the possibility (or hightail it back down the road to my car), Estelle rang the doorbell. "You are going to love Madam Celeste," she confided as she straightened the belt of her uniform. "She is astounding, just plumb astounding--as long as you don't turn up your nose and act all snooty. The only thing you have to do is to believe in her powers, Arly."
"Is that all?" I said in a distracted voice. I was busy envisioning a heavy-set, elderly, swarthy Gypsy, complete with scarves, beads, gold hoop earrings, and a long, embroidered dress that hung down not quite far enough to hide swollen ankles. A mustache and brightнred lipstick. A hoarse Hungarian accent, if one was attuned to such things. A mole on her chin. Lugging a crystal ball, a Ouija board, and a floor lamp with a fringed shade.
A short woman with bleached-blond hair opened the door. "You are late," she snapped, one hand on her hip. "I have other appointments today, and there may not be enough time to do a complete reading. I really don't like to start and then have to quit just when I've begun to feel the cosmic force. It gives me a headache. But come in, come in."
"I'm so sorry," Estelle said, dragging me through the doorway. "This is Ruby Bee's daughter, Arly Hanks."
Two icy green eyes turned on me. "And this reading is for you--is that correct? Do you want cards, sand, an astrological reading, or a numerological analysis?"
Estelle leaned over and cupped her hand around my ear. "Take the sand, Arly; it's the most revealing," she advised in a hiss. "You might as well get your mother's money's worth."
"The sand, by all means," I said to Madam Celeste.
Estelle patted me on the back, then announced she simply had to dash off because of Elsie McMay. She preceded to abandon me to the clutches of the psychic. Madam Celeste appeared to he under forty, although there were some lines around her eyes--perhaps from all that peering into the future. She was shorter than Ruby Bee, but her waist was trim and her hips were contained in tight designer jeans. She wore a faded T-нshirt and rubber thongs. No mustache, no mole, no scarves, no beads, no hoop earrings. The accent was odd; I couldn't place it, but it didn't sound like Budapest. She would have been attractive if her features had been less linear and harsh; as it was, she reminded me of a sharp-chinned cat, if that makes any sense to you.
"Are you ready to begin?" she said impatiently. "I don't have time to stand in the foyer all day while you goggle at me as if I, Madam Celeste, were a sideshow freak. Come along to the solarium." She wheeled around and stalked through a doorway, muttering under her breath.
I stalked after her, muttering under my breath. Odds are we weren't muttering the same things.
Forty minutes later, I came out of the solarium (which bore an uncanny resemblance to a breakfast room, owing in part to the tea-kettle wallpaper and the dinette set), armed with the knowledge that in the past I'd been treated unfairly but had shown courage. In the future I would see great changes in my life, make a meaningful career move, encounter two strangers who would have a profound influence on my life, travel, survive a test of character, and find great happiness down the line. Every time I'd asked for specifics, Madam Celeste had rubbed her temples and told me that it just wasn't coming through because of negative vibrations in the atmosphere. For those agog with curiosity, Mesopotamian sand is blue and looks like the stuff in the bottoms of aquariums. It was in a Tupperware salad bowl. She'd had me make a handprint in it, then done a lot of staring at it.
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