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Theflameofthe Zippo comes to life, warming the underside of my chin as I light another cigarette. I only smoke when I’m procrastinating.
This is my third in five minutes.
I inhale, blackening my lungs with chemicals I can’t pronounce. As I exhale, I drop my head back against the wall and watch the haze melt into the night’s sky.
Fuck it.
We’re all going to die anyway.
On the other side of the street, the wagon creaks, then the door flies open, casting an orange glow over the cobbled stones. My eyes slide up to it and meet the gaze of a pissed-off gypsy.
“Are you going to stand there all night?” She crosses her arms and leans against the door frame. “You’re scaring off customers.”
The last thing I should do today is smile. You don’t smile on the day you bury both your parents, because there’s nothing funny about watching dirt being shoveled on top of your mama.
But I can’t stop amusement from curling my lips.
“I’d bet my entire investment portfolio that my mother has been your only customer since the Great Depression.” Scowling, she opens her mouth to snap back, but then she pauses and does a sweep of the empty street. “Where is your mother, anyway?”
My amusement turns into a bitter laugh, fueled by irony. I drop my cigarette and grind it into the cobbles with the heel of my shoe. “Does your crystal ball need a polish? She’s six-feet-under, darling.”
I push off the wall and close the gap between us, taking the rickety steps up to her wagon two-at-a-time and stopping just inches from her. She wraps her shawl tighter around herself, her wary gaze jumping up to meet mine.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Yeah? Perhaps I was wrong about you being a hack.”
“You don’t need to be psychic to tell,” she snaps, taking a step back into the wagon and giving a small shake of her head. “I can smell it on your breath. If you’re here for a reading, well, I don’t read for the intoxicated. Liquor makes it hard to see fortunes.”
I tug out my money clip, snap a few bills off the roll, and drop them at her feet.
“You see money though, surely?”
Her eyes narrow. I take advantage of her silence and push past her. I hitch up my suit pants and sink onto the low stool in front of the table.
Another laugh escapes me, this one tasting even more bitter than the last. Of all the places I should be tonight, a gypsy wagon in the scummy part of Vegas isn’t one of them. I sneer at the string lights and the candles because they do nothing to hide how pathetic it is in here. Raggedy throws and cushions in faded prints, stacks of dog-eared cards collecting dust.
Behind me, I hear long fingernails scraping the floorboard as the gypsy picks up my money. She lowers herself onto the bench opposite me, her old bones cracking.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother.” She picks up a deck of cards and splits it in two. “But I’m a cartomancer, not a medium.”
“I don’t speak con-artist.”
Her nostrils flare. “It means I tell fortunes with playing cards. I don’t make contact with the dead.”
“Good thing I’m not here to make small talk with my mother’s ghost then.”
Her eyes flick to mine, first with surprise, then they darken to a shade more sinister. “So you are here for a reading. When you came here with your mother three weeks ago, I offered you a reading and in return, you threatened to burn down my wagon, along with me inside of it.” She tilts her head, casting a suspicious gaze over my features. “But now you’ve changed your mind.”
I guess I have.
Mama was obsessed with fate. Lived her whole life by the turn of a tarot card or the shake of an eight-ball. It consumed her. She couldn’t even go to Starbucks without trying to make sense of the dregs at the bottom of her paper cup.
Me; I’m a clean-cut skeptic, which is ironic, considering I own a casino. But any sensible businessman in any sector knows that relying on luck to be successful is like closing your eyes, leaning into the wind, and hoping it’ll blow you in the right direction.
There’s skill, and there are odds. That’s it. Luck isn’t for the optimistic; it’s for the lazy and the desperate.
My mama was an exception; she didn’t fall into either of those categories. She had hope in her heart and money in her pocket, which made her a walking, talking payday for quacks like this one.
