Pearl made a bee-line towards him.
“What in the name of Sam Hain do you think you are doing?” she hissed.
Tobias peered over the top of the sunglasses.
“I... am being... inconspicuous,” he replied imperiously.
“Inconspicuous!!!??” Pearl nearly self-combusted. “Pray tell me how a common or garden moggie can be remotely inconspicuous wearing 1970s sky-blue-lensed aviator shades and skulking from tree to tree like some kind of – of hairy midget ninja? If anything is going to attract unwanted attention, it's a pirouetting pussy-cat with a James Bond fixation! Now get rid of those foolish glasses and go and do what cats do best. Why not hang around the Hoop-La stall where there are plenty of goldfish up for grabs? That's an ideal vantage point, and exactly the kind of place where people would expect a feline with a yen for the piscean variety of nourishment to be hovering about.”
Pearl held her hand out and Tobias begrudgingly gave up his beloved sunglasses. She popped them into her drawstring bag and watched him slink away towards the Hoop-La stall as directed, chunnering something under his breath about “witches having no sense of style.”
**********
Back at the colourful Fortune Teller's tent, 'Gypsy Rose Lee' had her first enquiry of the day:
“My name is Driver. I make springs. I wish to know what the future holds for me; primarily business and financial. I shall answer just yes, or no to your questions for I am well aware, via the television and other such media, of the various sneaky tricks and underhand methods charlatans such as the likes of you are prone to stoop to. Now tell me my future.”
Mr Driver sat before her, glowering at her through thick, black-rimmed spectacles, with lenses as large and lumpy as cubes of ice. His hair was greased down, shiny and completely flat. His voice was a nasal monotone drone, that reminded Ruby of an electric drill going into a brick wall. A job as a spring manufacturer suited him – she could have predicted something of the kind, even without consulting her crystal ball or tarot cards. If not a manufacturer of springs then he would most likely have held one of the less imaginative accountancy posts in a large conglomerate company, or maybe even found job fulfilment as a self important council worker.
He offered her his dry, spidery palm. Ruby declined it, placed a carefully-measured teaspoon of leaf tea into a teacup, and began:
“Very well. Now, you must be completely silent. Concentrate on the question in your mind, and listen exceptionally carefully to each and every word that I say.”
With a show of great concentration and consideration, Ruby picked up her tea-cup and drained the remaining liquid, save for about a teaspoon's worth. She then held the cup in her left hand, and slowly and meaningfully swirled the contents anti-clockwise three times, intoning sonorously:
“Parum Tommy Tucker,
Sono pro suus supper,
Quis should nos tribuo him?
Tamen frons panis quod butter.”
Then, with great ceremony and a theatrical flourish, she inverted the teacup and emptied the contents onto a saucer. After a minute or so, she lifted the tea-cup back up, gazed at the contents and began to read the shapes and images left by the remaining tea-leaves, emitting the occasional “ooo”, “hmm” and “I see” to add gravitas and atmosphere...
“And....?” Mr. Driver shifted irritably and anxiously on his stool.
“Nothing, nothing at all... Apart from the odd death...”
“Death!!!?” squeaked the all-too-easily-alarmed spring-maker, suddenly achieving a greyer pallor than even nature had gifted him with.
“Only joking, my dear.”
It had always been Ruby's view that one has to have a sense of humour when performing such parlour tricks as tea leaf readings and other such 'non meditative' forms of divination.
“My reference to death was merely metaphorical in nature.”
By this point, Ruby had had time to take a quick look at the imagery the leaves had created at the bottom of her teacup. Her curiosity had been aroused.
“Mr. Driver... You are a married man?”
Mr. Driver's face wrinkled in distaste:
“That I am, madam, but, as I have told you, I wish to enquire about my company, and not my private affairs. Now... kindly do as I have asked, and, I might add, as I have paid for.”
Ruby eased herself further into the cushion on the stool. This was going to be a tough customer.
“Mr. Driver... The leaves will only tell me what THEY wish to. The company you keep and the affairs external are fatally and irreconcilably interlinked. To save one, you must sacrifice the other.”
Ruby peeped over her teacup to discover a furrowed-browed, sour-faced Mr. Driver.
“A little advice from someone a tad older, and, if I may hazard a guess, a good deal wiser. It is neither healthy nor, in the long term, satisfying to feast on hamburger at a corner kiosk, when there is good, wholesome, rump steak at home.”
Ruby raised her eyebrows, staring hard at Mr. Driver until she was certain that he had understood the analogy.
Driver bridled angrily under her gaze. “Madam, I do not like your tone, or your dubious innuendoes regarding hamburgers. Please tell me what I have asked, or I shall bid you good day.”
Ruby was in no mood to be lectured in her Craft by a man whose sole mission in life was to make springs. She sat back, folded her arms and frowned:
“Young man. I am only telling you that which the ethereal and eternal spirits deem suitable for our consumption. Now, if you do not care for their revelations, please, kindly... buzz off!”
“Well - !”
Mr. Driver's face was mulberry-purple with indignation. He leapt up, turned sharply on his heel and took his leave. As he was smartly exiting through the purple curtains, he suddenly glowered back at Ruby, and to her surprise, blew a rather long, wet raspberry.
“Charlatan! Boob! Nosey Parker!” he shouted. And in a swish of the curtains, he was gone.
Ruby sighed, poured herself another
