I hadnt realized, I said. Thank you. Thank you very much. After paying her, I took the coffee and the Kleenex and found my way to a chair near the back. I dabbed at my eyes. My eyes were damp but not yet completely overflowing. I was the only customer. In desperation I glanced around for something to read. The newspapers, however, were in the front.
She came toward the back to clear the tables near mine.
So, she said, whattya do?
I teach philosophy, I said.
Oh jeez. I could use a philosopher, she said, like right this week. Right now. This minute. She stopped and put her hand on her hip. Like, Im about to do something? Maybe you dont mind my asking. And this thing Im about to do, its bad? But its going to result in something good? So, in your opinion, should I do it?
Whats your name, young lady? I asked.
Chloé. Clow-ay.
Not Clow-ee?
Naw. I customized it. Everybody should customize their names.
The answer is no, Chloé. The ends never justify the means. Almost every ethical philosophy of consequence will tell you so. Kants categorical well, bad actions make the result turn out bad.
Whats your name, young lady? I asked.
Chloé. Clow-ay.
Not Clow-ee?
Naw. I customized it. Everybody should customize their names.
The answer is no, Chloé. The ends never justify the means. Almost every ethical philosophy of consequence will tell you so. Kants categorical well, bad actions make the result turn out bad.
I thought that was what youd say. Thanks. Uh, she said, do I owe you anything?
What?
Like money? For your opinion. Because its your job as a philosopher to give advice, right? And besides, you live next door to Mr. S. Since its your job to think, I should pay you. Anyway, do I owe you anything?
No, Chloé, you dont. But thank you for offering. I bowed my head. In silence, she went away. I drank my coffee. Never once had Aaron as an adult child asked me for advice. To my best recollection, never as an adult had he ever asked me so much as a single question.
Bradley returned. He stopped by my chair. He sat to make neighborly conversation. He asked me how I was. And I told him, the genial man, I told him everything, because I hardly knew him, and because Chloé was taking care of his customers, and because he had hung up The Feast of Love in the back, and because he was so vacant as a human being I do not mean this as criticism that I could fill him, that morning, with my difficulties, and not cause a flood condition. Toward the end, he put his hand on my shoulder. It was a consolation of sorts.
And how are you, Bradley? I asked.
Im in love, he said. Its recent. Ive met this wonderful woman.
And who is the lucky lady?
Her names Diana, he said. Were going to be married, I think.
Well, you must bring her over to meet Esther and me.
And with that, I rose to leave.
THIRTEEN
I CAN BE SO UNMOTIVATED. For example. You know the dust that can, like, float in the air? Me, I was totally capable of sitting in a chair for hours, watching the dust-fuzz hanging in front of me. If there was sunlight in the room, just the particles of visible molecules or whatever, I was excellent and enthralled.
Im not saying that Im deep, Im just saying I watch the dust, and Im not stoned either, when I do it. Just observant. Im concentrating on it, figuring out its mystery, its purpose for being here in the same universe with us.
When I tried to get Oscar to study the dust, he went: youre so, like, Looney Tunes, Chloé. Jeez, dust. He was smiling when he said that, criticizing my dust interest. But you could tell that he didnt get the profundity of dust at all. Poor guy. Well, some people cant sing, either.
But what Im saying is, I can get motivated when I have to. I can stop dust-meditating and get off my ass and get the job done. Which means that when I had to figure out the future, I took steps.
Oscars friends, these boy-men from his high school jock clique Speedy and Ranger and Fats (who was not fat where do guys get names like this?) came by our apartment, grab-assing Oscar and demanding that he come out to play basketball, it being early summer, and the two of us, Oscar and me, not having to work at Jitters that day. Oscar! Hey, man, they said, first of all hollering up to our window, dude, you just gotta come shoot some hoop, dooooooode, Oscaaaaaaaar, we just gotta have another guy. Oscar hears the call of male needs, he barks his yes downward to them, so then he puts on his shorts and his Nikes and kisses me and gets his shoulders punched in the parking lot and his ass whapped and he is gone. Like poof, like a husband. Empty nest.
I had to figure out if Oscar and me had any prospects at all, as a couple, together. So there I was, me, Chloé, alone. But with the keys to Oscars ancient AMC Matador, and I sat there, and Im like, I gotta find out the future from an expert. So I took some money and put it into my pockets and my shoes in case I got robbed, and I drove over to Ypsilanti, where the psychics are. You cant do psychics off of TV. The TV psychics are mostly wrong, and way too expensive besides.
I had been reading my tarot cards on Oscar and wanted a second opinion. And I figured Id need to take something of his, so I took a mungy sweat sock and his track team relay baton and one of his knives, which he had told me not to touch, but which I did touch, for his own good and mine too.
YOU GOTTA GO TO YPSILANTI to find out the future. Or Willow Run. See, what you do is, you leave the ho-hum middle-class environs of Ann Arbor and Pittsfield Township, and then you explore your way down the strip, past the used car lots and the Arbys and the Dairy Queen, and then theres Eastern Michigan University with its stiff-dick watertower (but theres a brick condom on it go see it for yourself if you think Im kidding), and then downtown Ypsi, but then, when you get east of there, thats when it turns really interesting and nasty over there in the Twilight Zone, thats where the future-experts ply their trade.
I mean, most cities have got their own Twilight Zones, right? Where the old wrecked factories and warehouses live? Cause East Ypsi has got these ancient car assembly plants, these old humping kickass grounds of steel and scrapyards, and the scrapyards sort of find their way next to topless bars and tattoo parlors, and these freakazoidal video stores where you dont want to know what or who theyre renting in there, and outside on the curb the underfed cats and dogs are staring at you and begging for puppy chow when you drive past, and then theres razor wire around most of the warehouses, so you just know the karmas really complicated there. Its like the future has already happened, and its all past by now? Like that?
Anyway, you gotta drive over there on a sunny day. Otherwise it doesnt work. You get bad head colds in your psyche if you go there on a cloudy day. Then your psyche sneezes your good karma out into the ozone layer, where, of course, it burns away.
And thats how come I was driving the Matador in the sunshine past Odd Lots Supermart and a pawn shop and a gun shop and then a vacant patch of struggling grass, with a thing in the middle of it you couldnt identify except it was metal, and no one had ever found out how to work it, and it was ultra-dead. Rust never sleeps, said the bard. Im bummed. Wheres the professional psychic whose office I thought was here? I saw it once last time I found myself located in this locale. In this hyper-slum there were, like, shoes everywhere, shoes without anybody standing in them, old shoes. On the sidewalk here and there, brown leather shoes. Very Plan 9 from Outer Space. So how come people, such as men, leave their shoes out here? Whats going on with these shoes out on the pavement? My advice is: Guys, find a wastebasket.
And now Im near Willow Run, where they made the big World War Two bombers back when life still had a purpose in this area and people knew what their work was good for, and Im seeing more pawn shops with iron bars on the front, and bunched-up tallboy-beer-in-the-brown-bag guys standing but mostly sitting on the sidewalk doing their smiling openmouthed but no teeth chickenshit thing, har har har, hey man, theres a girl in that big ol Matador, is that door on the drivers side unlocked, and then I see the place I was looking for, that Id seen the last time I was over here. And which I knew was here. Which had to be here.
Professional Psychic
Fortunes Told
Tarot or Palm Reading
Walk-in
I park the Matador out front, which is a dangerous move to start with, but I figure the psychic has got to have some control over what goes on outside her store and in the neighborhood shes psychic, after all, right? and I go inside.
Its dark. No crystal balls. Shes in possession of this gross corduroy sofa that smells of spilled meatloaf and cat food, and over to the side theres a partially assembled table and two chairs, and a church rummage sale table lamp with birds and bunnies painted on it, and over on the walls theres a Laurel and Hardy clock, with their eyes moving back and forth, like pendulums except not quite. Theres other Laurel and Hardy stuff in the room: L&H porcelain cups, and a souvenir L&H dinner plate mounted on the wall, and a one-foot-high L&H statue set in the corner. On the other wall is a picture of down-by-the-old-mill-stream that youd buy at Woolworths. By my ankles a black vampire-cat is stroking against my legs and purring. God, I hate cats. Im the only girl my age I know who hates cats.
Meanwhile, country-western, moron music if you ask me, Tricia Yearwood or somebody, your-cheatin-this-and-your-cheatin-that, is playing off some staticky AM radio in the back. I hear this voice, Ill be right with you, and then the sound of a toilet flushing and somebody gargling.
In comes Mrs. Maggaroulian, which I know is her name because her business card is out on the table, and her name is also in little print on the front window, and she says, Hi, Ill be with you in a minute, honey.
I look at the wall. Shes posted the prices. Tarot readings are twelve dollars, and palm readings are twelve dollars, and the guaranteed predictions of the future based on psychic determinism, which she happens to know how to do, are also twelve dollars. Its all twelve dollars each. If I get everything shes offering, one from column A and one from column B, plus dessert on column C, this is going to cost me a full days salary.