Six Feet Under the Stars

It was so silent a pin could be heard dropping.

Sighing in annoyance, Madame Esmerelda pointed a finger across the table. "You, boy. You're up first." She held her Tarot cards reverantly in her hands like a cross and seemed a little hesitant to hand them over to Alex. "Shuffle." She instructed, then worked up added, "Don't look at the pictures. That defeats the whole purpose."

"Sorry." Alex apologized quickly turning the cards face-down. "Watch this."

Trying out a shuffling move meant for a Las Vegas casino, Alex messed the trick up and Tarot cards went flying into his lap. I was pretty sure Madame Esmerelda was about to have a stroke by the look of the vein pulsing down her forehead. After Alex had hastily piled them back together, the gypsy leaned forward and snatched the deck of cards out of his hands.

"Good enough." She pulled the first three cards from the top of the stack and laid them out one by one.

"Why does this shit always happen to me?" Alex questioned as The Death card was revealed.

Madame Esmerelda ignored his question and pointed at the three cards in order, "The Sun, The Death, The Hanged Man."

"None of those sound particularly good." He grumbled and shifted forward in his seat. "I can only think of burning alive with The Sun one. And the other two speak for themselves."

"They do speak." The Madame spoke pointedly, "The foolish only spend their time on the surface layer of meaning and don't delve further into the cards. They are much more intricate than you give them credit for."

It gave me a shiver running up my back to hear her talking about the Tarot cards like they were people. The aura around her completely shifted when she studied the three drawn cards laying on the purple fabric covering the table. The Sun was a bright card with the sun shining in the background as a young boy rode a horse in front. The Death card on the other hand, depicted a skeleton dressed up in battle armor riding a horse away. That card was colored in dark, ominous hues. The Hanged Man was a strange card. The painting showed a man hanging upside down from a tree, but smiling all the while.

"What does it mean?" Alex asked curiously.

"The Sun indicates you'll have many successes in your life. Maybe with a career, perhaps, or in anything you try to achieve. It is a positive card foretelling happiness and self-confidence, which I see you already have plently of." She spoke dryly and the jeweled rings on her fingers glowed in the candlelight.

"That doesn't sound bad." He smiled a little and drummed his fingers on the table. "Can't say I'm overjoyed about The Death card."

"Like I said, only the foolish glance only at the surface." Madame Esmerelda snapped. She took a long pointed nail and tapped the card in question. "The Death in this case is not likely a physical death. It often means the ending of a cycle, or maybe the end of a relationship. After the death of that part of your life, you can focus on a new self-awareness that you might not have known before. It's a time of transition and change."

"Huh." Alex paused at that card and looked thoughtful. I wondered if he was thinking about the end of things with Caitlyn. Hopefully the fortune teller was right and he would be able to transition to another part of life.

"Now The Hanged Man," She prodded the last card, "that is a very interesting card. You see the man on there? Though he is hanging, he is still happy. The glowing around his head is a halo of knowledge."

"I'm going to get smart?" He questioned, confused.

"No, no. It's too late for that," She told him as I snickered behind my hand. "It means you must change the way your are looking at things. If you want something, don't force it together because it'll end up repelling like a magnet the more you try to force ends together. Just follow the current down and flow with what's happening. Though it's difficult, by doing nothing it will bring things together. Great changes are on the horizon for you, but only if you can make the sacrifice."

"Okay." he answered skeptically and furrowing his eyebrows. "I'm not sure I got all that."

"You will in time." She told him, trying to sound wise by covering up the fact she just didn't want to deal with his questions. Her eyes darted to meet my gaze, "Ready for your fortune?"

I nodded, "I think so."

"Don't think; know." She advised me while passing the deck of Tarot cards over to me.

The cards felt creased to the touch like they had been used for countless years and passed down in a family line. I shuffled the cards normally, no flashy tricks or frills. After a few moments, I stopped and handed the deck back to her suddenly nervous about what my future would hold. Lining three cards out on the table, Madame Esmerelda studied them with a hard look.

The first card was The Magician which showed a man in a cloak holding a stick in his hand. The next was The Devil which scared me a little. The picture showed a horned beast snarling from in between two slaves chained next to him. The image was frightening. The last was The Lovers which showed a naked man and woman standing apart between two trees blossoming with fruit.

"The Magician is not a good card to have." Madame Esmerelda met my eyes over the table in what was supposed to be a sympathetic look. "In this position it means that there is a manipulator out there after you. A deciever. This person may be helping you along the way with something, or just trying to. But be wary; this individual does not have your best interest at heart. Stay away from them.

The chills broke out along my body. "Is there any way to know who it is?"

She shrugged, "Could be anyone."

My mind wandered a bit and I wondered if the card was refering to Dorian. It was no secret that he didn't keep my best interest at heart, though at times I had a feeling he was trying to. His words from earlier about trying to win me back were haunting.

On the other hand, I thought about Alex. So far he seemed kind and like a great guy. But was it all for show? To be honest with myself, no matter how much I thought I knew about him, in actuality I didn't know too much of his background or family life. Hell, I didn't even know about his previous girlfriends except for Caitlyn. Maybe he wasn't as innocent as he seemed.

Shaking the paranoia from my mind, I continued, "Well, what about The Devil. What does that one mean?"

"It's the card of bondage." was her reply. In response to the word 'bondage', Alex elbowed me in the side and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Madame Esmerelda sighed deeply and continued on, "It means you are holding yourself back from something. This suggests that maybe you are keeping yourself too reserved and thinking about things rather than just going by emotions or feelings. Holding back is a form of chains that last forever."

Her last sentence scared me a little and I licked my lips before saying, "And The Lovers?"

"It represents raw desire and sexual impulse."

The small room seemed to grow uncomfortably warm. Alex and I both squirmed in our chairs uneasily and avoided each other's eyes a little guiltily. I couldn't help thinking back to earlier when we had almost had sex right up in his hotel room. It had just been a windstorm of tension and sexuals feelings built up. With Alex, there always seemed to be an underlying feeling of lust that we both couldn't seem to escape.

Madame Esmerelda studied the two of us and carried on, "Also, it reminds each of us of the need to be touched. That sensitive physical sensations remind us that we're all still human and we need to be held once in a while."

After the fortunes, she offered us a palm reading for half off but we declined. It seemed like she didn't get customers around the shop all that often and the two of us visiting was a rare opportunity for her. After that we left pretty quickly. Neither of us wanted to hang around the shop and buy overpriced candles or homemade incense sticks.

Once back out on the street Alex laughed somewhat bitterly, "What a load of shit." He tried to mock her voice, "'We all need to be touched'. I bet she hasn't been touched in over forty years."

"Alex!" I exclaimed jabbing him in the side. "That's mean."

"It's not like she was nice to us. I couldn't stand it another minute in there with her breathing down our necks." He shivered at the mere thought.

I sighed, "Well, what did you think of your fortune?"

"I'm not sure. I'll have to sit and think about it. Then maybe I can abstractly connect it to parts of my life to make me believe what she's saying." He answered with a smirk.

"Guess you're a skeptic."

"What, you believed her?"

"Part of me. She seemed pretty legit, that's all. I mean she didn't go into a trance and mumble shit in a different language, so she seemed pretty believable." I told him as we made our way in the general direction of the hotel.

"Yeah, at least she didn't have a bag of chicken bones she shook around or something." He agreed laughing and taking a quick side street to the left. "Yours seemed more true than mine at least. It's pretty cut and dry: Deciever, Dorian. Devil, party more. Lovers, you and me. Pretty simple stuff."

I flushed red, but kept my voice strong. "Yeah, the 'strong sexual tension'. Maybe she was making that up."

"You don't feel it?" Alex asked trying to joke to hide his seriousness.

"No, I do." I assured him honestly. After hearing about The Devil and keeping myself bonded, I decided to start being more honest with the things I wanted. "It's pretty much overwhelming."

Alex halted completely on the middle of the sidewalk. "I thought I was the only one."

I laughed, "What do you think I meant earlier with 'do you still have those condoms'? I thought it was pretty obvious."

He looked frustrated and relieved at the same time, "I thought I was pushing you into things. I didn't want to do that to you." Alex paused and said slyly, "It's one of the only things I don't want to do to you."

I shivered feeling his eyes rest on me. Instead of jumping his bones then and there, I decided to study the chips in my black nailpolish and avoid getting arrested for indecent exposure or something as equally as devious.

Alex tilted my chin up and met my eyes, "And you won't leave will you? You know, once the deed is done."

"If you call it 'the deed' I might have to." I joked and then answered honestly, "But no, I told you. I don't want to leave you after it. If we sleep together it wouldn't change much except for the fact that I would know what you look like naked."

"Melanie, I could just kiss you right now."

Without further words, Alex slid a hand up my cheek as he pressed his lips to mine passionately. A businessman almost stumbled into us while he was texting on his Blackberry and then shot us an evil look as he clutched his briefcase to his chest and hussled on. Laughing at the stranger's foolishness, I brought my lips to Alex's again and could feel the heat rise up inside of me and coil much lower. His hand teased the fabric around the small of my back as he held me pressed against him.

"Let's head back to the room." Alex breathed in my ear.

Almost laughing at the unfolding circumstances, I smiled into his chest, "We're moving on from the hotel soon, right?"

Looking slightly aghast, Alex pulled back to study me as enlightenment to the situation dawned on him.

We stood there, the living example of irony. Just two people wanting to have sex and having nowhere to do it.