The Edifice

6. Cards on the Table

Despite his offer, Lee doesn't seem at all interested in the brunch spread I'd made for us. He clutches his mug of tea tight in his gloved hands, breathing the steam in deep with a wistful expression, but not once do his lips touch food.

For all his derision for the enormous occult collection beneath our very feet, I'm coming to notice he's just as strange as Bob was. The rock salt, for example. On top of the scatterings across the kitchen counter, he keeps a small pouch of the stuff in his pocket.

I'd once had a pet kitten who had disturbing tendency to stare at the empty corners of a room and yowl as though faced with an intruding cat. At nine years old I'd taken this as a signal that our house was haunted with invisible ghosts. Now, at twenty-four, it's as equally unnerving to watch a grown man mimic the same behavior. Every so often he'll pause over some patch of carpet, close his eyes with a frown and sprinkle salt in a small ring before him.

Clearly he expects me to be the person vacuuming it all up.

We sit on Bob's back porch, the tray of cookies between us, watching the final glowing embers of his impromptu bonfire. Even after our last conversation, I can't quite escape the ache in my heart at the sight of it.

"So," I ask, eager for anything to break this depressing silence. "What do you do for work? Or are you studying?"

"I work," Lee replies.

It's like pulling teeth with him.

"Doing what?" I prompt, before remembering the two rolled up little joints in his jacket. Given that and the rest of his demeanor, that might just explain his hesitation. Whoops.

"I- uh..." He breaks off with a nervous chuckle, shooting me a sideways glance before trying again. "I'm actually a... magician."

"What?" I gape across the table at him, eyebrows raised cynically. "Like Penn and Teller? In Vegas or someplace."

"Well, it's a little bit further than Vegas, but no."

"Oh, for kids' birthdays, then?"

"Oh fuck no." Lee inspects his hands awkwardly, twisting a thick crystal ring over an exposed knuckle. "I do tarot readings, palmistry, that sort of thing. A bit of antique consultations. Magician is probably the wrong word."

So you con people for fake fortunes, is the only interpretation I can make of the care with which he chooses his words. Even so, I can't help but feel a thrill of curiosity. Bob had claimed to read my fortune in tea leaves before, but despite all my love for him, he was a biased source at the best of times.

"Can you do me?"

A single eyebrow raises perilously high in response to my question and I scowl at the look of amusement on Lee's face.

"I meant a tarot reading, jerk," I'm forced to clarify.

"I'll see if there's a spare deck here somewhere," Lee responds, getting to his feet and disappearing back inside. The musky scent he carries with him hangs in the air long after he leaves. I close my eyes and breathe it in deeply.

Now you really are being an idiot, Olivia. I think I've been living alone for far too long because I've completely forgotten the way men under eighty can smell so good.

Months back, when the freezing emptiness of my apartment had finally spilled over into unbearable, I'd finally downloaded Tinder at the urging of my co-workers and Girlfriend magazine. Of course, living where I do, my closest match was thirty miles away whose pictures invariably consisted of showing off some dead animal he'd hunted.