***
HADLEY'D BEEN TO A PSYCHIC, ONCE. It was with Morgan, Sebastian and with Gregory he'd gone. Morgan, who wanted to get a tarot reading on the state of her love-life and who, as usual, dragged the rest of them along with her. Despite Gregory's complaining on how it was going to be a waste of money, Sebastian's complaints on how it was going to be a waste of time, and Hadley's complaints on how he really needed to take a piss, they all went along.
The memory of the tarot reading is vague, as real and tangible as a dream. There was something about wands, and something about choices, and something about good omens, but all that slipped off of Hadley's mind like butter on a slide. What stuck was the place, the location itself. Dim lighting, mason jars lined neatly on shelves, beaded curtains. No, it wasn't that either. It was the room in which all five of them—psychic included—were crammed in, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder; it was the crease in Morgan's skirt, the cologne coming off of Sebastian, the slow breaths out of Gregory, mirrors throwing Hadley's reflection back at him in a dozen different angles, and the quick, fluttering hands of the psychic as she shuffled the cards and laid them out, face down, for Morgan to pick.
Of course, he realizes that buzz he'd felt could've been a result from whatever incense she'd been burning. But there, in the dingy little room with the psychic's face glowing faintly, he'd almost believed that magic was real, high or not.
That's what he expects when he follows David. A buzz, dim lighting, incense burning, crystal balls and fragile things. A sense of wonder.
He doesn't expect shag carpeting and books stacked everywhere, pizza boxes strewn on the floor and coffee mugs on a coffee table and neon signs covering every available inch of all four walls, flickering uncertainly, throwing light onto the floor like sunlight streaming past stained windows. He doesn't expect David to take his shoes off. He doesn't expect feeling like he's walked into a curious hybrid of a porn shop, a college dorm and a night club lounge. He doesn't expect feeling like the walls are trying to whisper to him.
Hadley shivers.
"Well, wonder boy?" David looks at him expectantly, face a deep blue under the neon light of a sign. "Are you going to take your shoes off, or do you I have to do it for you?"
Hadley doesn't ask why he has to take his shoes off. He assumes it's a cultural thing. Or a psychic thing. Or a magic thing. Not that he believes in magic or anything.
"I'll do it myself," he says. "Thanks for the offer, though."
Hadley takes his shoes off and puts them in a corner of the room. David does the same.
"So," says Hadley. "What now?"
"We go upstairs." David looks up at the ceiling. "A friend of mine should be here."
"There's a second floor?"
"There's a third floor, sometimes." David doesn't offer to elaborate.
Hadley, ever the wiser, doesn't ask about the sometimes part of the statement. Answers first, questions later.
David leads him deeper into the room and to a door with a stubborn handle which he tries, fruitlessly, to open. He mutters under his breath, "C'mon, not now."
"Trouble?" Hadley asks.
"Nothing a little sweet-talking can't fix," answers David. He breathes in, takes a step back and says to the door, "Molly! Who's a good hideout? Who's a good little hideout?"
Molly, Hadley mouths.
The ceiling makes an ominous noise.
"That's right!" David is gushing. "It's you! And if you're a good hideout, you're going to let us in, okay? You're going to let me and pretty boy here through, aren't you?"
