Tarotica Page 5

  He ran his tongue down to her belly, toying with her navel as he slid off the bottom half of her swimsuit. Spreading her legs, he continued his descent. His dreadlocks tickled her thighs as his hot, wet tongue slithered into her seam. The tip of his nose nuzzled her clit as his tongue lapped up her juices. Next he explored her ass. Then he started making delicious, maddening circles around her clit with his tongue, flicking it lightly, and sucking it until she was ready to scream. By the time he thrust his throbbing cock into her, Miranda was delirious with pleasure.

  Now, she downed her Alka Seltzer and crawled back into bed. But she couldn’t sleep. Finally she got up again, pulled the curtains aside, and gazed out over a park ringed with trees. A thin mist hovered near the grass. In the faint, yellow-gray light, she could see the ground moving. It rolled and swayed, rising and falling in undulating waves.

  Miranda’s first thought was I’m still drunk, followed by Oh my God, it’s an earthquake!

  As she grabbed her clothes, the movement took shape. From the shadowy mist human figures emerged—dozens of them—all bending, twisting, turning, and gliding together in a synchronized manner, like dancers performing a strange sort of ballet. Most of them wore baggy white trousers and tunics, as did the slender, bald man who appeared to be leading them. It took her a few moments to realize they were doing tai chi.

  Miranda stared at them, transfixed. Men and women, young and old, Asian and Caucasian, moved in harmony with effortless grace. Once or twice she could’ve sworn the leader looked up at her, but how could he know she was watching? When the group finished, parting like the mist dissipating beneath the sun’s rays, she felt an inexplicable sense of peace. Maybe I should try that, she thought as she headed into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.

  * * *

  By lunchtime, Miranda felt almost normal again. She spotted a Korean restaurant and decided to try it. A string of red, yellow, blue, and green cloth squares hung over the entrance, gently fluttering in the breeze. Inside, she was greeted by exquisite paintings of Asian landscapes on the walls and delicate statues carved from ivory, wood, and jade displayed in ornate cases.

  She took a seat and scanned the menu a Eurasian teenage girl brought her. My stomach’s probably not ready yet for anything spicy, she decided. When the girl came back with a pot of tea, Miranda ordered seaweed soup and a noodle-and-vegetable dish called chapahae.

  “What are those squares of cloth above the front door?” she asked the girl.

  “Prayer flags.” Seeing Miranda’s look of confusion, the girl continued. “A Buddhist tradition. We write prayers and blessings on the cloth, so that when the wind blows it will carry the prayers around the world.”

  “What a lovely tradition,” Miranda said. “And the artwork here, it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s my father’s work.”

  “Your father is very talented.”

  “Yes, I think so, too.”

  Several minutes later, the girl set Miranda’s lunch on the table and handed her a business card. “My father’s gallery, if you wish to stop by.”

  “Thank you. I think I will.”

  The Golden Gallery, she noticed, was only a few blocks away. So far she hadn’t devoted much time on this trip to artistic pursuits. Only a little sketching here and there, some photographs, a couple visits to museums. I’ve been more concerned with indulging my body than my mind. Miranda tucked the business card in her purse and dug into the chapahae.

  * * *

  I’ve been here before, Miranda thought as she entered the gallery with its yellow walls and polished wooden floor. But that’s impossible. This is my first trip to Colorado.

  Yet as she gazed at the paintings and sculptures, she couldn’t shake the feeling of déja vu.

  Even the incense, burning in a bowl beside a Buddha statue, smelled familiar.

  “Good afternoon,” a bald, middle-aged man with pale amber skin and gently sloping eyes greeted her.

  He wore a mustard-colored silk shirt with a persimmon ascot, dark brown trousers and loafers. But Miranda saw him barefoot, dressed in the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. He smiled and his face suddenly seemed much younger, his features more distinctively Asian. My eyes are still playing tricks on me. I’d better stick to wine in the future—no more rum!

  Even more peculiar was her immediate and intense attraction to this stranger. Her heart seemed to leap from her chest and dash toward him, as if he were a long-lost lover for whom she’d been desperately seeking. What the hell is going on? she wondered, struggling to regain her composure.

  “Your daughter gave me your card,” she managed to say.

  He nodded. “I am Lee Golden. Welcome to my gallery.”

  “Golden doesn’t sound like a Korean name.”

  “My mother is Korean, my father American.”

  “Is all this your artwork?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m very impressed.”

  “You honor me. Are you an artist?”

  Miranda answered, “Yes. Most of my work is abstract.”

  She turned her eyes away from him, trying to rein in her feelings, and studied a painting of a beautiful woman pouring water from a vase onto the ground. “Is this a Korean goddess?”

  “That is Kwanseieun, one of the most beloved deities in many Asian cultures. In China she is called Kuan Yin.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” Miranda said. But where ? How do I know that name?

  “This is Dae-Soon, the Korean moon goddess.” Lee indicated a picture of a female figure silhouetted against a silvery moon. “And Yondung Halmoni,” he pointed to another painting, “is the goddess of the wind.”

  As Miranda examined the paintings and sculptures, Lee explained the mythology behind them. Oddly, the deities seemed as familiar to her as the Catholic saints she’d been raised with. Yet I know absolutely nothing about Korean spirituality.

  His fingers brushed her elbow, sending sparks shooting up her arm, across her shoulder, and into her chest. Butterflies danced in her stomach. As he guided her into another section of the gallery, she saw a tall, stone statue of a man wearing a hat shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss. He looks like a giant penis, Miranda mused.

  As if reading her mind, Lee said, “This is a Tol-Harubang statue. They are considered powerful sources of fertility.”

  When she touched the statue, it burned her fingertips and she drew back quickly.

  “It’s hot.”

  “Is it?”

  Suddenly, she felt dizzy. Her vision blurred. The walls of the gallery fell away.

  Casting her eyes down, Miranda saw a long silk skirt where her jeans should have been.

  At her feet, a youth wearing the robes of a Buddhist mendicant monk knelt and held out his begging bowl. She filled it with rice and milk. As the youth thanked her and rose to continue on his way, their eyes met. Her heart fluttered and a most unspiritual sensation flickered between her legs. Then someone called her name, “Sang-hee,” and she hurried inside a richly furnished house.

  Each day she waited for the young monk, and when he arrived she put rice and milk in his begging bowl. All day and night she fantasized about him. She prayed to the goddesses—Kwanseieun, Dae-Soon, Yondung Halmoni, and Mulhalmoni—to dissolve the betrothal her parents had arranged for her to a wealthy old merchant. She prayed for the youth to be released from monastic life so that she might marry him.

  One afternoon, Sang-hee slipped out of the house and visited a tiny shop frequented by women who sought lovers, or who could not conceive. She smelled the incense as she entered the shop and saw pictures of goddesses hanging on its yellow walls. The matron gave her a small vial of oil and a smooth stone as long as her hand, shaped like a man. That night as she lay in her bed, burning with desire for the young monk, Sang-hee rubbed the oil on the man-stone and slid it into her opening.

  When the monk appeared at her door the next day, Sang-hee told him to meet her at a secluded spot beyond the town walls. There, they embraced passionat
ely. With mounting hunger, their hands and mouths devoured each other’s bodies. He is smooth and hard, like the Tol-Harubang, Sang-hee thought as she guided his living man-stone into her opening that was so wet with longing, she needed no oil to ease the way.

  In the months that followed, Sang-hee’s belly swelled. Now they must let us marry , she thought. Instead, her mother flew into a rage, screaming, “You have disobeyed the law and our traditions. You insult your family.” She slapped her daughter and pulled the girl’s hair, calling her terrible names. Sang-hee’s father hit her with a stick and cast her out of the house. When she went to the monastery to find her lover, she was told he’d been sent away.

  Sang-hee’s heart ached with unbearable sadness. Everywhere she turned, she met with loathing. Finally she found refuge in a neighboring village, where she was forced to perform the lowest, most degrading chores in order to feed herself and her baby. She never saw the young monk again.

  When Miranda came to, she was lying on a futon in a room at the back of the art gallery, surrounded by canvases, paints, and brushes in glass jars. Lee Golden sat beside her holding a cup of tea.

  “You fainted,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  Confused and embarrassed, Miranda answered, “I’m afraid I’m not quite well today.”

  “I hope my daughter has not served you something that made you ill.”

  “No, I drank too much last night. I’m still hung over.” But that doesn’t explain the weird dream I just had.

  She sat up and accepted the tea Lee offered her, struggling to make sense of what she’d experienced. Sipping it, she again felt a curious attraction to him. And she knew she’d seen him before.

  “I saw you in the park this morning, doing tai chi,” she said. “What a coincidence.”

  “Coincident means occupying the same space or time,” he told her. “Some people, such as myself, believe the past, present, and future exist concurrently, not consecutively. Time is an artificial distinction, a limit our minds impose to simplify our lives. It doesn’t really exist.”

  His smile exuded such serenity and compassion that Miranda decided to tell him her dream. When she’d finished, he laid his hand over hers.

  “I think you may have temporarily erased the boundaries of time,” he suggested.

  “You mean that girl was me in another lifetime?” she asked, squeezing his hand.

  “Were you the young monk?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Can we pick up where we left off in that previous incarnation?” Her heart beat faster at the thought.

  Lee smiled kindly at her. “I am married.”

  “Another limit imposed to simplify life?” Miranda asked, disappointed.

  “If you wish, you can see it that way. The choices we make do create limits and responsibilities. Voluntarily assumed, they give meaning and structure to human existence.”

  “But fate has brought us back together,” she insisted.

  “Yes, but not necessarily as lovers.”

  “What then?”

  “As fellow artists. I suspect we have things to teach each other. Would you like to paint with me?”

  Miranda glanced around the room filled with art supplies. “Yes, I would.”

  Card 6: The Lovers

  Even before Miranda called and asked him to meet her in Santa Fe, Eli had decided it was time to leave Sybil’s home. He felt ineffectual, even a bit cowardly, hiding out like this.

  “I need to find out who poisoned Meditrina’s grapevines, who attacked me, and whether the two are connected,” he told Sybil as he stuffed some clothing and a few necessities into a backpack. “Maybe it really was a coincidence, as Troy suggested.”

  Maybe the Frenchmen in the white car have lost interest and stopped looking for me.

  “I understand your need to act and to discover the truth,” Sybil replied. “But please, be careful.”

  “Yeah, Troy told me to watch my ass, too.”

  She handed him a deerskin pouch about the size of a cigarette lighter, hung on a leather cord. Strange symbols drawn in beadwork decorated the pouch. “This is for protection.”

  “Wouldn’t a .45 be more useful?” Eli teased. He fingered the pouch, trying to distinguish the objects secreted inside. “What’s in it?”

  “Magic,” she smiled. “It’s your personal amulet. Wear it at all times. And don’t open it.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Eli slipped the cord around his neck, wondering how a beaded leather bag could possibly protect him from assailants bent on destroying him. But Sybil knew things he didn’t, and right now he needed all the good luck he could get.

  He zipped the backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Ready to go?”

  “Are you sure you want to ride in a bus all the way to Santa Fe?” she asked as they drove into town.

  “It just seems safer,” he explained. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but renting a car or flying would leave a trail for someone who wanted to track me.”

  “I could rent the car in my name.”

  “No, Sybil, I don’t want to drag you into this any deeper. You’ve already done so much for me. Besides, this is cheaper and I’ll have a chance to see parts of the country I’ve never been to before.”

  He paid cash for his ticket as the Greyhound roared into the station. When the driver called “All aboard,” Eli hugged Sybil hard.

  “Give my best to Miranda,” she said.

  “I will, and don’t worry. I promise to stay in touch.”

  “I’ll be following your progress in the scrying pond.”

  He laughed. “I hope you won’t watch everything I do.”

  * * *

  Miranda got into Santa Fe two days ahead of Eli. The time she’d spent painting with Lee Golden had jump-started her creativity; now she worked her way hungrily through the city’s smorgasbord of art galleries and museums. Strolling down Canyon Road, she saw Native American baskets and handwoven shawls, fine silver jewelry and painted silk scarves, sculpture, furniture, pottery, and pictures of all kinds. She even splurged on a pair of custom-made cowgirl boots decorated with yellow butterflies and red flowers.

  The morning Eli was due to arrive, she was sitting at the communal table in Café Pasqual’s eating a chorizo burrito when a blond woman next to her pulled out a deck of cards. As she began shuffling them, Miranda saw the cards were illustrated with colorful pictures.

  The woman noticed her and asked, “Shall I tell your fortune?”

  “I don’t think I want to know what my future holds. I like surprises,” Miranda answered. “But those cards are beautiful. May I see them?”

  The woman handed over the deck and Miranda thumbed through the cards. “Oh my,” she exclaimed when she turned up one called, “The Lovers.” On it, a voluptuous woman with long, dark hair wearing a skimpy bikini stood in a lake with her head thrown back in ecstasy; a muscular man knelt before her, holding her in a passionate embrace.

  The woman laughed, took the card from Miranda, and laid it on the table between them. “She looks like you.”

  Miranda blushed and a card slipped from the deck. It fell face up, showing eight double-pronged staves soaring through the sky.

  “Well, well,” the blond woman said.

  “What?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know your future.”

  “Not if it’s bad.”

  “So far it looks pretty interesting.”

  Miranda fanned the cards on the table and studied them. One that depicted a knight riding a horse draped in russet livery caught her eye. She reached for it and placed it beside the other two cards.

  “Okay, what do they mean?”

  The blonde smiled at Miranda. “I’d say your prince is about to come.”

  The double entendre made Miranda blush again, then she dissolved into giggles.

  The blonde joined in.

  “How did you know?” Miranda asked when they’d both stopped laughing.

  The woman
tapped The Lovers card. “This one’s pretty obvious. And the Eight of Wands,” she said, indicating the card that had dropped from the deck, “suggests passion, excitement, things happening quickly. The Knight of Wands shows a man traveling. I’d say you’re in for a hot time in the old town tonight.”

  Miranda grinned and glanced at her watch. “Sooner than that, I hope. His bus gets here in a half-hour.”

  “Have fun,” the blonde said as she scooped up the cards and slid them back into a black velvet pouch.

  “I intend to. And thanks for the reading.”

  “You’re welcome.” She handed Miranda a business card. “If you ever want to know more, call me.”

  * * *

  They barely made it into the room Miranda had booked in a B&B near the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Halfway up the stairway, Eli backed her to wall, rubbing his erection against her, and she almost begged him to take her right there on the landing.

  “I really missed you,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck.

  “I can tell.”

  He kissed her and slid his hand under her shirt, slipping his fingers inside her red lace bra. Miranda sighed into his open mouth. When he lifted her breast out of the underwire cup and bent to suck her nipple, she moaned softly.

  Footsteps on the stairs below sent them scurrying into Miranda’s second-floor room. As she flipped the lock, he pulled her shirt over her head and unhooked her bra.

  Her breasts sprang free, her hard nipples straining toward him for attention. The crotch of her jeans was already soaked by the time he pulled them down around her ankles.

  “Feels like you missed me, too,” he said, running a finger inside her panties.

  His fingertip brushed her clit ever so lightly, urging it to swell like a flower in time-lapse photography. Miranda arched toward him and pressed against his fingers, trying to suck them inside her. Eli obliged, inserting two while continuing to flick her clit with his thumb.

  “Help me get these boots off,” she said impatiently.

  Kneeling before her, he tugged off her new cowgirl boots while she gripped his shoulder for support. Then he pressed his face to her pussy and inhaled her scent.