“What are you doing here?” she croaked.
Mrs. Grundy’s thin, painted eyebrows rose to the middle of her forehead.
“I thought you were a burglar.”
“Passed out on the floor?”
Mrs. Grundy sniffed. “I mistook your snoring for a saw.”
Tammy closed her eyes. “Sweet Lord, tell me I’m still dreaming.”
The Lord was not so kind. After a moment, she pushed herself onto her side and then upright. The room swayed once or twice and then settled into an ice pick behind her right eye.
“Are these playing cards…”
Tammy blinked hard and realized that she’d let her beauties fall every which way after that last reading—or visitation, depending on how you looked at it. She fought back nausea as she put the deck back together, counting all fifty-four cards like old friends.
“Go check on Mrs. Patil, if you please,” she said.
Mrs. Grundy gave her a long look and then left without another word.
The deck secured and safe again in her pocket, Tammy staggered to the bathroom, deposited the contents of her stomach in the bowl, and splashed cold water on her face. The boiler had gone out in the night; they’d need to light it again before she cleaned the rest of her. She dared a look at her haggard face in the mirror and then looked back down at her stockinged feet.
“So now what, Oracle?” she asked herself. She’d meant it to be mocking, but the cards were with her now, and they knew a truth when she spoke it.
Her choice was a joke, a cosmic trick played by bitter ancestors. Take on the curse or let her best friend die? But it wasn’t Tamara’s fault that Phyllis had covered herself with mob justice. And it wasn’t her fault that Dev had killed Victor and brought that old bastard’s curse down upon them. None of this was the baby’s fault, either, but it wasn’t up to Tamara to save anyone. She had problems of her own. A West Village club to get back to, once this business was done. She had wanted to help Pea. She had come here because she hadn’t been able to see her way around it. She loved that woman, for heaven’s sake! But to take that heavy fate on for her? She was an oracle, a snake dancer, a regular girl taking shelter in the mob’s long shadow, not Job.
She had tried to be good, but this was too much. Too much for anyone. The cards and whatever moved them were wrong to ask it of her.
We didn’t ask for anything, that slinking deck seemed to say when she finally left the bathroom. We just show. Maybe it’s you that’s asking, Oracle?
She told them to hush.
Pea was just coming down the stairs. They took one another in: Pea bloated with that baby, pale and pinched with the after-effects of laudanum and a night spent wrestling a curse; Tamara puffy from a night on the floor, wrung out from a night spent wrestling a choice.
Pea was delighted to see her. “Slept well, I take it?”
Laughter bubbled up like last night’s dinner. “Like a princess on a pea.”
Mrs. Grundy looked between the two of them and flared her nostrils. “You should sit, Mrs. Patil. I wouldn’t want to have to carry you up those stairs again.”
Phyllis winced. “Yes, ah—I’m sorry to have been such trouble. Thank you for your assistance.”
In truth, Phyllis had the best white-people voice of the three of them. It made sense: she was the only one whose survival, for a time, had depended on convincing white people to overlook her yellow skin and thick lips. Even being white like Mrs. Grundy couldn’t compare to that brutal schooling in the ways of white folk.
“I brought another bottle of laudanum to leave here in case you’re in need of it again.” She drew it from her bag and put it on the table. “Well, then. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Patil.”
She held out her hand. Easy, Phyllis shook it. Tamara closed her eyes; they were burning. Her hands she strangled behind her back.
“Are those sorts of fits … normal for you, Mrs. Patil?”
Phyllis sounded darkly amused. “Normal? Not really. Regular? Unfortunately.”
“Well. I’ll just make something quick in the kitchen, Mrs. Patil. I’m sure you haven’t eaten.”
“That would be delightful, Mrs. Grundy,” she said with an amused glance in Tamara’s direction. “We’ll be in the parlor.”
A sick weight settled in her stomach as she followed her friend’s slow progress to the parlor couch. She kept thinking: but this is Phyllis, this is Pea, the terror of the Village, the angel of justice, Victor’s knife. She was a violent goddess, a creature of legend, not some poor woman to be brought low by a damned baby. Tamara kept churning between swooping disbelief and the hard slap of the cards until she thought she might just need to bend over a porcelain seat for the second time that morning. She swallowed hard and busied herself with making a fire. Phyllis lay against the couch, hands on her belly, breathing.
“You strike those matches any harder, you’re liable to burn the whole box.” Pea’s voice made her jerk.
Tammy’s hands trembled as she struck another. The stick flared between her fingers and let off a stench like a devil’s fart. She stared at it, frozen, until the flame burned down to her fingers and she let it drop onto the rolled-up newspaper with a yelp. The paper caught and curled like a sleeping child as the flames kissed the logs and kindling above.
“Something happened.”
Tammy lifted her chin, tried on a smile. “I had to choke you till you passed out and then had a good conversation with a couple of bottles of Bordeaux, but other than that, nothing really.”
But she was thinking: Pea, Phyllis, Pea, that goddamned baby! There had to be a way out, a way to save her. She had to ask the cards again. Search until they gave her a
