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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 Señora 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 attitude 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