‘Is that the way you want it?’ Blake asked.
‘That’s exactly the way I want it.’
The two men regarded one another coolly for a second, eyes locked together like magnets.
‘Jonathan.’
Both of them turned to see Toni Landers standing there. She was smiling broadly, displaying a set of teeth which testified to her dentist’s expertise.
‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she said and kissed the psychic on the cheek.
‘You look beautiful, Toni,’ Mathias told her. ‘It’s a long time since we spoke.’
She turned to face Blake who returned her smile when he was introduced.
‘Congratulations on winning the Emmy, Miss Landers,’ he said, motioning to the statuette behind them on the mantelpiece.
‘Thank you, please call me Toni,’ she said. There was a soft liJt to her voice which made Blake feel immediately at ease. She was, indeed, a very beautiful woman combining a radiant innocence with that of uncultivated sexuality.
‘What do you do, David?’ she asked him.
‘I’m a writer.’
‘What sort of books?’
‘Non-fiction, about the paranormal, the occult. That kind of thing.’
‘No wonder Jonathan brought you along,’ she said, slipping her arm through that of the psychic. ‘Are you writing about him?’
‘I’m trying.’
Toni chuckled and reached for her drink which was still on the mantelpiece. A ten by eight colour photo in a gilt frame perched there. It was of a young boy, no older than eight, Blake guessed. The lad was smiling, his blond hair brushed
back behind ears which were a little too large. Freckles dotted his nose and cheeks in an irregular pattern and, even beneath the glass of the frame, his eyes seemed to twinkle with some kind of untold mischief.
‘That’s my son, Rick,’ she told him. ‘He’s staying with a friend for the night.’
Blake cast a quick glance at Toni’s hands and saw no wedding ring. He wondered who the father of the child was.
‘Do you have any family, David?’ she wanted to know.
‘I can hardly look after myself let alone anyone else,’ Blake said, smiling.
‘Rick means everything to me. If you had a child of your own you’d understand that,’ Toni said, her tone changing slightly. She looked longingly at the picture. At her son. It had been an unwanted pregnancy and she had been through a difficult delivery. She still saw Rick’s father now and again. He was one of the top publicity men at Twentieth Century Fox. He still lived in the house they had bought together those nine years earlier. It had been his idea that they live together. He was nearly ten years older than Toni so she listened to what he said. In those early days she would have done anything for him. She had worshipped him and he had adored her. The young, in-demand actress who had played two leading roles within six months of moving to L.A.
from her home in Virginia. She was already commanding fees of half a million a picture and things seemed to be running smoothly until she became pregnant. At first he had accused her of sleeping with other men but, when he finally came to his senses, the decision he made had been swift and, she realized with the benefit of hindsight, almost inevitable.
Get an abortion or get out of the house.
A child, he had told her, would wreck her career. Besides, he wasn’t ready to be a father. For the first time in their relationship, Toni had followed her own instincts. There would be no abortion and if it meant the end of the relationship then so be it. She had gone to stay with a friend, working for as long as she could, finally doing voice- overs for commercials when she was too far advanced.
The combination of the break-up and the difficult birth, (a Caesarean delivery after sixteen agonising hours of labour) had brought her close to a breakdown.
For three months she
languished in the throes of such deep post-natal depression that her close family sometimes feared for her sanity but slowly she began to drag herself out of it. She decided that she had to go on for her baby’s sake. It had been a monumental effort but somehow she had managed it. She began work five months later, helping out an old friend who was with the script department of MGM.
Another month and she had, after rigorous exercise and dieting, regained her shapely figure and, another two months after that, she was offered a leading role in a highly successful ABC series. It had been a small step from there back to films and now, to the stage.
‘How is Rick?’ Mathias asked her, also studying the photo.
‘He’s fine,’ she beamed, the very mention of the boy’s name causing her to perk up. ‘Jonathan was a great help to me when I started work again after having Rick,’ she explained to Blake.
The writer nodded.
‘So, what are you working on next?’ he asked her.
Her smile faded slightly.
‘Well, I have a slight problem there.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Blake said.
‘No, what I mean is, I have a decision to make and it’s difficult.’
‘What kind of decision?’ Mathias asked.
She drained what was left in her glass and placed it alongside the Emmy on the mantelpiece.
Tve been offered a part in the next Star Wars movie but it means being away from home for three or four months. I don’t think I want that. I don’t want to be away from Rick that long.’
‘But you’ve been on location before and left him,’ said Mathias.
Toni shook her head.
‘Only for days at a time, like I said, here we’re talking about months.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Blake asked.
‘I guess I’ll have to refuse the part.’ She sighed. ‘Shit, my agent won’t be very pleased, he busted his ass to get it for me.”
‘But your son won’t be alone. He’ll have people to look after him won’t he?’ said the writer.
Toni turned to Mathias.
‘Will he be OK, Jonathan? You can tell me. You can … see.’
Mathias sighed.
‘I hope you didn’t invite me here tonight to perform some kind of fairground trick,’ said the psychic.
‘Please,, Jonathan.’ There was a note of pleading in her voice.
‘What do you want to know?’ he said, quietly.
A look of relief passed across her face.
i want to know if Rick will be all right if I decide to leave him for a few months,’ she said.
Mathias nodded. He sat down in one of the chairs beside the fireplace while Toni turned and scuttled off towards a door on the far side of the room. Blake watched with interest. He had an idea what Mathias was going to do, his suspicions confirmed when he saw Toni return moments later with a pack of cards. He could see immediately from their size that this wasn’t an ordinary pack and, as she placed them on the coffee table before the psychic, he saw that they were Tarot cards.
An expectant hush seemed to fall over the room. The Hi-Fi was silent, only the steady click-click of the needle in the run-off grooves came from the speakers. Someone eventually removed it.
The group gathered around the piano stopped singing and turned towards Mathias who was gazing down at the cards, his brow knitted into deep furrows.
Blake took a step backward, his eyes straying alternately from Mathias to the cards and then across the table to Toni Landers. She, for her own part, settled in the chair opposite the psychic. He reached for the pack and shuffled it thoroughly.
