A Reading (Pulp 05)

"When I got to Madame Venga's, it was nearly one o'clock in the morning, but the lights were all on, and Bobby was standing out front, looking like a Mack truck someone had carelessly parked on the sidewalk. He was near on to eight feet tall, and the black trench coat he wore turned him into a solid squarish shape, with a head bobbing atop that looked small until you got close and realized it was probably bigger than your torso.
"He waved me in without even a courtesy frisk. That was a bad sign. It meant Venga had told him to expect me, and didn't think I was a threat. Which meant ... Sure enough, the Smiling Man was sitting in a corner of the 'foyer', grinning away at a newspaper that looked upside down until I realized it was in Chinese. Without looking up he pulled a small bright bead out of a pocket and flicked it with two fingers. It bounced off a bell hanging over the 'parlor' door that was at least twenty feet away, and made a bright cheerful noise that was out of place in the seedy-looking room.
"The door opened immediately and out came Grandma. Madame Venga was wearing a flower-print dress, an off-white sweater, and a lime green shawl, and looked about 70. I didn't trust it for a second. Her birth records (Claudia Louise Carroll - I had looked them up once out of curiosity) said she was more like 40, but she wanted people to think she was old and feeble. Today, however, her face didn't have the usual friendly Grandma look. She was wearing her Venga face, the one she wore when she was doing readings. The somber, intelligent, and a little crazy face.

"She took a long look at me and then just turned and walked back through the door, leaving it open behind her. I glanced over at the Smiling Man, but to all appearances he was absorbed in his paper. I wouldn't have been surprised if he couldn't read Chinese, and was just holding it there to look like he could. It would be typical of the man, as much as anything was.

"Finally I sighed and walked into the darkish room behind her. I had come here for answers after all, and just maybe I'd get some. And if she wasn't going to give them to me willingly, maybe I'd see if there was another option..."

"Madame Venga was already seated in her reading chair when I got into the room. The crystal ball and all the crap she put out for the tourists was gone, and only the solid grain table remained, with a deck of cards on top, so ancient the backs had mostly worn off. What you could still see was a weird-looking collection of circles tied together with lines that didn't mean anything to me.
"She pointed to the cards and I picked them up and started to shuffle. After a while I felt like I was about done and laid 'em back on the table. She looked at me then, and her eyes seemed to open up just a little wider, and I could see a little glint in them that almost reminded me of stars, just for a second. And then she took the top card and flipped it over.