"I'm waiting for a friend," Julie said.

"I'm a friend."

"An invited friend."

The smile turned upside down. "Don't smart-a.s.s me, little girl. This is my turf and I just want to know who's setting you up in business."

"Me. I'm a marriage counselor."

"No kidding." The smile turned up again.

"Among other things."

"That's for sure. You don't make money on marriage around here. Unless you're me, if you want to look at it that way. I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for the inst.i.tution of matrimony." He touched a buckled shoe to a cigarette b.u.t.t, nudging it into a crack in the sidewalk. "The old lady who used to operate out of here, you know her?"

"Only from hearsay."

"Did you know-I'll bet you didn't or you wouldn't keep Goldie shuffling his feet-she made her rent off'n me? A kind of referral service. A couple of tricks a week, it kept her going."

"That old lady?"

He gave a whinny of phony laughter. "I said referral. Don't you know what that word means? There's Johns don't like to pick up a 'ho' on the street or in a bar. They think everybody's spying on them. So I figured a connection house, see what I mean?"

"You don't miss a trick," Julie said, not sure the moment she had said it that she had intended the double entendre.

"Julie, chile, anybody on the street's going to tell you, don't smart-a.s.s Goldie."

"Okay, I'll remember that," Julie said. She did not want to provoke him, only not to seem intimidated by him. In fact, vaguely and very briefly, in view of the idea she'd had for a story, she thought of the connection's possibilities.

"On the other hand"-he started purring again and his voice really was rich and velvety-"you play along with Goldie and it's money in the bank."

"No way," Julie said.

"You're making a mistake."

"Could be."

He reached out his hand and tipped her chin upward. She did not draw back. If he had been a white man, she would have and maybe given him a crack across the face as well. Goldie knew it. "No hard feelings?"

"No." By shaking her head, she escaped his touch.

"You know something? If you were my girl, you'd be number one in no time. You could have cla.s.s. It'd be a pleasure for me to take on the obligation. First thing, I'd want your hair growing down your back. You need a little silicon up front. Then I'd start on the clothes... I got a fifty-thousand-dollar dress designer on my payroll. I ain't bulls.h.i.tting you. Ask any of my girls."

"How did you find out my name is Julie?"

"I knew it from the day you bought the Tarot cards. If you'd looked in the crystal ball yourself, you'd've seen a dark, handsome man coming into your life."

"No way," Julie said, aware that she was saying it too often, aware also of dryness in her mouth.

"I can wait, a gentleman of leisure. Any time you change your mind, just put out the word you want to see Goldie."

6.

PETE HAD NOT RETURNED by seven o'clock, so Julie packed up his tool box and sewing kit, locked her shop, and went along to the Actors Forum. The door was locked, but Amy Ross, an actress Julie knew by sight, was using the wall phone outside the office door. Julie tapped at the window, showed her face up close to the gla.s.s, and was let in. Amy returned to the phone. She had not seen Pete since early that afternoon.

Julie went into the Green Room and read the a.s.sorted notices on the bulletin board. A rehearsal was in progress in the back room. A lot of Forum members wanted part-time work, according to the board, typing, baby-sitting, translating; several members wanted to share apartments. "Mary Ann" advertised herself as a good reliable maid. With references. The acting business was very bad. When was it not?

Amy Ross came through from the phone and made herself coffee.

"Do you know where Pete lives? Or where he works?" Julie asked her.

"They'd know in the office, but it's closed."

"I know."

"Did you try the phone book?"

Julie hadn't. Amy sipped her coffee and watched Julie turn the directory pages. "You're Julie Hayes, aren't you? Are you really psychic? A lot of the kids are into that scene."

"I'm beginning to think I'm psychotic." She could not find a single Mallory in the phone book. Finally she realized that a page had been torn out.

"Nothing surprises me," Amy said. "Not around here. No kidding, why don't you put a notice on the bulletin board? I'll do it for you if you like."

"No..." Tentative.

"What you mean is, put it up but don't tell me about it. All they can do is take it down."

"I guess. Amy, do you ever get propositioned by the pimps?"

Amy was lighting a cigarette. She scowled.

"I'm not saying you should," Julie amended.

It was the smoke that caused the scowl. Amy waved it away. "Every time I cross the street. One called Goldie, right?"

Julie nodded, relieved.

"He's a charmer. I always say, 'The Life isn't for me, Goldie. I'm as straight as a witch's broom.' And he'll say, 'What a waste.'"

"I didn't find him all that charming."

"He thinks he's paying you a compliment."

"Sure," Julie said. "I think I'll try Information."

"If Pete isn't on time, he isn't going to show up at all." Amy took a long drag of the cigarette and put it out "I've got to get back, but see if I'm not right-it's Friday-Monday morning you're going to find a note from him in the mail, and if he's got money, which he generally hasn't you might get flowers. Kiss-and-Run Pete, we call him, but he's a love, and he's got more talent than half the names on Broadway. When you leave, be sure the door locks behind you."

Julie got a number from Information, the address 741 Ninth Avenue. She got no answer when she dialed.

Julie spent the weekend getting acquainted with the neighborhood and dressing up the back room with small purchases from the thrift shops on Ninth Avenue: an electric plate, another lamp, a table with its legs cut down to make it coffee size, and a couple of folding chairs that had once belonged to St Mary's Hall. As a child she had played at equipping her room with everything she would need for an ocean voyage, a.s.suming that her room really was a seaworthy vessel. She pretended to be days at sea; she pretended never to hear her mother and her friends in the other part of the apartment, a thousand miles of the Atlantic between them. Even in college, which had been the best place in her life, she had been a loner. Or, more exactly, an occasional partic.i.p.ant in each of the numerous cliques.

Pete did not show up. Nor did Goldie appear again at her door. On Eighth Avenue she saw a number of girls in fringe skirts and boots, some of whom looked like wh.o.r.es and some of whom didn't. On Sunday morning, a soft warm day, she kept pace a few feet behind one who definitely did-flaming red hair, a yellow satin blouse with a green vest, and a behind that bounced as she sashayed along. She was singing. A couple of boys made raucous noises after her. She turned and called out, "You should show respect!" and went on. A proper-looking young man shied away when she tried to stop him. "I got a little boy looks just like you," she said after him. Julie got close enough to hear what she was singing when she started again. Loud and clear: "Holy G.o.d, we praise thy name. Lord of all, we bow before thee... Infinite thy vast domain, holy G.o.d, we praise thy name."

All right. Julie crossed the street and headed for St. Malachy's. She proposed to attend what was left of the eleven o'clock Ma.s.s, slipping into a pew at the rear of the church. The priest had an awful voice. Someone she couldn't see from behind a pillar announced the lesson and began to read. A familiar voice. She didn't have to look, but she did. Pete Mallory. It gave her an eerie, uncomfortable feeling, as though she had seen something creepy, obscene, that she wasn't supposed to. Crazy, but she left the church as quickly as she could get out of it.

She started back to the shop with the firm intention of putting Pete out of her mind. If he had been more definitely in it, it would have been easier to get him out. She didn't even know what color eyes he had. She hadn't talked with him more than a couple of hours in their entire acquaintanceship. But they were easy together. She felt a kinship with him she had with practically no one else, a kind of respect for something underneath... Failure? "Money makes me impotent." It wasn't failure she had in common with Pete, it was a peculiar kind of success, the kind most people would call failure. Including Doctor.

Gray eyes. Eyes that wandered after they had looked at what was in front of them and then suddenly returned, as though to surprise what was in back of what was in front. Pete had visions, she was sure; he could make anything seem beautiful if he wanted to look at it that way. So what had happened to her in church? What was obscene? It had to do with knowing he had studied for the priesthood... and Jeff. The instant she thought of her husband it was as though an avalanche of snow tumbled down on her, her mind a vast, closed in whiteness. The connection had shorted.

Upstairs over the shop, a plump Puerto Rican woman was sitting at the open window braiding her little girl's hair. The youngster often played in front of the building.

"It's going to be an early spring," Julie said.

"Like summer. You had a customer."

"A real one?"

"She used to come to Seora Cabrera. I told her to come back later."

"Thanks."

"You should have a big sign in your window."

"I'm going to make one now," Julie said. She had brought the materials. Mrs. Ryan's Consultant wasn't going to pack them in.

Friend Julie Reader and advisor Tarot She put on the flowered smock she had chosen as costume and having hung up her new shingle, sat at the table. No one came. She had lost her first customer. She arranged several combinations of the cards and worked with the Major Arcana following the instruction book. From its cryptic interpretations she elaborated with some pretty wild projections for her imaginary seeker. A couple of people from the Forum stopped by, a man and a girl who lived together nearby. With the need for practice, Julie proposed to read the cards for them.

"You first," the actor said. "I'm going up to Joe's and get a beer."

"Don't get lost," the girl said.

"Did you say don't? I can't believe it."

It was a weak clue, but Julie used it in her reading. Temperance followed by the Hanged Man: she suggested that the seeker was going to have to come to a decision. She was at sixes and sevens now because she suspected hypocrisy, deception. Without Julie's quite knowing when it happened, the cards themselves seemed to take over, and simply from her little knowledge of their basic symbolism, she found herself spilling out a stream of consciousness that held the seeker enthralled. It was an experience like none Julie had ever had before. A trip. A trance could hardly have been a less conscious effort.

"Are you satisfied with the reading?" she asked some five minutes later, a question borrowed directly from Madame Tozares.

"More than. Did anybody at the Forum tip you off about us?"

"That is very close to an insult."

"But you were right on."

"You threw the cards," Julie said. "Then they took over."

The girl nodded. "Now I'd like some advice."

"Hold it. No way," Julie said.

"I'll pay you."

Julie shook her head. "Your boy friend's coming back for his turn. If I read, I don't referee."

"Him come back here? Are you kidding? He's gone for the day and good riddance."

"If that's how you feel about him, what do you need with advice?"

"You're right, I don't need advice. I need money."

"Remember the High Priestess. She seemed pretty cheerful about your prospects."

"She did, didn't she?" The seeker's spirits brightened.

Julie said, "I tell the truth as the cards reveal it. I don't exaggerate. I don't hold back."

The girl got up from the table with the att.i.tude of someone on her way home to pack.

"If you're satisfied with my reading, will you recommend me to your friends?"

"You're in business, Julie." She went out wiggling her plump little backside. There was a smile under each b.u.t.tock.

Julie was about to lock up when the former client of Seora Cabrera returned. She was a tidy little woman, pale, with a strained face. She wore a dark blue suit, good shoes, and carried a new leather purse. Sales personnel with commission extra, Julie decided. No rings and no marks to show that she had recently removed them.

"How much do you charge for a throw of the Tarot, Friend Julie?"

She was hearing that form of address for the first time; it sounded natural. "What did the Seora charge you?"

Her split second of a smile before she spoke didn't cover the lie. It exposed it. "Five dollars."

"I'm sorry, but I charge ten," Julie said. If she charged less, the reading would be worth less.

"I hope you're as good as the Seora."

"I tell you only what I see. I hold nothing back and I do not exaggerate."

Julie let the cards take it from there. Once, when she had been trying to learn a dance step, the ch.o.r.eographer had said, "Let the feet do it." She let the cards do it.

When the reading was finished the woman put her ten dollars under the base of the lamp. "I'm glad I came," she said. "I feel much better."

Julie went to the door with her. "Recommend me to your friends."