Matthews's. But her blond hair was only lightly sprinkled with silver, and her gray eyes were warm.

"I'm fine," she said, letting go of the woman's arms.

"I hope so. You look a little pale. I thought I'd find you here." The woman waved a hand at the wall.

"Maybe I can help you decide what to take with youa"I'll just store these old things in the attic otherwise."

She poked at the broken gla.s.s on the floor with one toe, then tilted her head to one side. "Are you sure you're all right?"

Christine managed to nod her head.

"Good. I'd better get dressed so we can get started. I wish you could stay longera"I do so enjoy having you home."

Before she left the room, Christine leaned for a moment against her new mother, the one, who, through some slip in possibility, would understand and forgive, the one she had always wanted.

IN THE CARDS.

by Michael McDowell.

The storefront was downtown, and the streets to the west of it were rapidly degenerating while those to the east were gentrifying just as quickly. In the single plate-gla.s.s window was a sign reading: MADAME CATRINA PALM AND TAROT.

INQUIRE WITHIN.

Behind this discreet placard was a curtain of bright flowered material, heavily lined so that it was impossible to see inside. The gla.s.s in the narrow shopfront door was blocked with the same material. A smaller sign here read: OPEN.

PLEASE RING BELL.

Inside, Catherine was painting her toenails as she talked into the telephone cradled on her shoulder.

"Yeah, Billy," she said, generously smiling her most winning smile just as if Billy had been there to bask in it, "that sounds good. Now, listen, I want the letters to be sort of occult-looking. And Madame Catrina at the top on a line all by itself."

It was only in printa"on the placard in the front window, in flyers tacked to telephone poles, in advertis.e.m.e.nts in neighborhood newslettersa"that Catherine Dally called herself Madame Catrina. She asked even first-time customers to call her plain old Catherine, and close friends knew her by Cat.

"How about the photograph?" she asked Billy. "Is that gonna reproduce okay?" She finished the little toe on her right foot, wagged it for good luck, then put that foot down on the floor and raised her left foot to the edge of the table. "Well, I'm glad you like it, and Billy, I want you to put one more thing in the adA palm."

She listened for a moment as she brushed the red lacquer on the nail of her big toe.

"No, Billy, not a tree. A palma"a picture of a human handa"with lifelines and everything. Think you can handle that? And this'll be ready in a week?"

She listened smiling. "Well, if it is, maybe we can have that drink."

The bell rang. Catherine looked up. A woman's shadow appeared against the curtain over the door gla.s.s.

"In your dreams, Billy," she said in a lower voice to conclude the conversation with the printer. She hung up the phone, grimaced as she slipped her still wet toenails into dark slippers, pulled a fringed shawl around her shoulders, slipped several more silver bracelets onto her wrist, primped her wavy blond hair in a pier gla.s.s, and then opened the door before the woman on the street felt obliged to ring the bell a second time.

"My name is Marlene," the woman said with that hesitancy all new customers displayed. She was fifty or so, dressed the way suburban women dress when their husbands aren't yet dead and haven't yet run away with younger women. "You're Madame Catrina?"

"Call me Catherine." Catherine led the lady to the little tea table, covered with dark cloth, that sat in the middle of the small parlor.

"I've heard such marvelous things about you!" Marlene whispered breathily, as if in contemplation of a slightly disreputable indulgence.

"I just know this will be fun!"

The ticking clock on the low bookcase chimed two, but Catherine didn't look up, wanting to avoid the impression that she worked by the clock.

Twenty cards from a pack of seventy-eight, shuffled by Catherine and cut by Marlene, had been upturned and laid out in a precise, symmetrical design that nearly covered the cloth on the tea table.

But a few moments later, when the echo of the chimes had died out, Catherine looked up with her winning smile. "Yes. Definitely. A man."

Marlene laughed softly. "No wonder my husband doesn't believe in all this."

"He's young," said Catherine, knowing in her heart that Marlene's husband wasn't. "Handsome.

Intelligent. But lean and strong, too."

She c.o.c.ked her head and peered at one of the cards that was laid sideways. "Possibly a tennis instructor . . .?"

"Are you sure?" Marlene seemed thrilled.

"I see it in the cards," said Catherine confidently. "And this one herea"the Knight of Swordsa"he never lies."

She tapped the card knowingly, then began to gather the cards together again, reversing the order of their laying-out. That started her with the Knight of Swords, and ended her with the Fool, with his snug black cap, his wooden sword, and his belled scepter.

"How do you know what the Knight of Swords is saying?"

"You have to learn to interpret, you see. That is . . . the art of it."

"Well," said Marlene, and her type always made the weakest jokes of anyone who visited Catherine, "you must be an artist!" She opened her purse in her lap and withdrew a crisp fifty-dollar bill.

"I'll get change," said Catherine, taking it.

"Everyone said you'd be cheerful and bring good news. You have that reputation, you know."

Catherine stood at her dresser and opened the lid of the lacquered box where she kept her money.

Making sure she held her back carefully turned toward her customer, Catherine peered closely at the note to make sure it was genuine.

But while Catherine's back was turned, the lady at the table reached into her purse and brought out another deck of tarot cards, identical in size and design to Catherine's and slid them onto the table.

She picked up Catherine's deck and put it into her purse. She quickly snapped the bag shut.

"This is so exciting," said Marlene when Catherine brought her the change.

Iris inhaled deeply, closed her eyes against the candle flames, and wobbled a little, in the way she thought people wobbled when they were in ecstasy. "Sandalwood," she breathed. "It smells so . . . so Indian. I love it."

Iris wasn't twenty, and it was only when you weren't twenty that you could try to look dissipated and not quite achieve it. Her hair was dyed black and chopped, her pants were tourniquet-tight, and her blouse was too then and didn't have enough b.u.t.tons. Her eyes, however, were wide and naive, and spoiled the effect.

"Catherine?" said Iris, for Madame Catrina had pored over the cards for more than five minutes now.

Catherine looked up over the tarot. "You have a question . . ." she said, distracted.

"Yes . . ." said Iris with a widening of those naive black eyes.

"It's . . . it's about your boyfriend."

"Far out," said Iris. "He's meeting me here. Had you know?"

"I can see it," said Catherine. "In the cards."

"So how's it gonna turn out?" Iris demanded.

Swish.

(A noise like that of a broom in the corner suddenly spilling to the floor. Like that, but metallic.) Catherine stared at Iris, said nothing.

"Our relationship, I mean," Iris prompted. She lightly touched the Knight of Swords, the twentieth card turned.

Abruptly Catherine gathered the cards together again, not reversing the order as she usually did but sweeping them together, shoving the twenty cards back into the pack of seventy-eight and shuffling them together.

"Iris, I'm going to ask you to cut the cards again."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I couldn't read the hand. Please, cut them again."

"You read that hand. And you saw somethinga""

"No, I didn't. We'll just do another layout."

She pushed the tarot deck across the table. Iris cut it, and Catherine turned up the cards.

"The Fool," whispered Iris. "That was the first card last time too."

"The Burning Tower," said Catherine.

"And that was the second card," whispered Iris, in awe.

And so through the twentieth card, the Knight of Swords.

"It's the same hand, isn't it?" cried Iris. "Exactly the same hand. And that proves something!"

"This is impossible," said Catherine. She pushed her chair back from the table.

"What do you see?" Iris demanded. "Tell me!"

"Iris, the cards say your boyfriend is going to die."

Iris screamed, then over that scream was the squeal of brakes, and Iris's boyfriend, who was on his way to meet her at Madame Catrina's storefront, never made it, and, in fact, never made any appointment ever again.

Swish. Clang.

(The metal broom fell to the floor again. But this time it struck a bell.) She stared at the layout of the cards, then drew the painted silk robe tighter over her short white slip.

No matter how thoroughly she shuffled, no matter how often she laid out the cards, the twenty cards began with the Fool and ended with the Knight of Swords. In between was always Death, Despair, Doom, Desolation, and the Destruction of Dynasties.

The bell rang and she scattered the cards.

"For you, dear Catrina," said the old man as he handed her a single white rose. He had a rusty black coat, polished blue eyes, a tonsure of silky white hair, and a yarmulke of black silk.

"The rose is beautiful, Isaac. Come in." She flipped onto their backs half a dozen of the scattered cards that had landed faceup.

Isaac took the visitor's chair at the table. "I know I'm early. But your cardsa"they always tell me such happy stories. A man at my age, who has seen what I have seen, he doesn't mind paying for a happy story."

Catherine tried to smile her best smile, but it didn't quite come this time. The cards lay in a neat stack in the center of the table, waiting for Isaac's cut.

"When old friends are gonea"" Isaac went on, but Catherine interrupted him.

"Isaac, did you touch those cards?" she demanded.

"No, dear," he said, placing his hand atop hers. "You know I always wait for you. The cards are yours, and they speak only for you . . ."

Neither Catherine nor Isaac had gathered the scattered cards. Yet here they were, in a neat deck, ready for the old man's cut.

Swish. Clang.

That the twentieth card was the Knight of Swords was no more a surprise than that the first card had been the Fool and the second card the Burning Tower.

"What's wrong, Catrina?" Isaac said.

"I'm dizzy . . ." she said, leaning back in her chair, ashen. "Could you get me some water, please? In the fridge.."

When he slipped behind the curtain at the back of the room, Catherine slipped the Knight of Swords beneath the tablecloth and replaced it with the card at the bottom of the deck.

The innocent lovers.

"Drink," said Isaac, bringing her a gla.s.s filled with water from the tap. "Rest, and don't worry."

"Don't worry?"

"It's not your fault," he said, pulling his chair around closer to her.

"Sometimes we can't tell happy stories."