The upper west side was beautiful during the day, if you had the stomach for the yuppies and the preppies and the bankers and the glossy chains that had eaten up all the idiosyncratic storefronts of Alice’s youth, but it was more beautiful at night, when all the shops had closed and the quiet streets glittered under the glow of streetlights. Alice had always loved walking home from Tommy’s apartment—her father had given her a rape whistle when she was twelve, just in case, and she kept it in her pocket, next to her sharpest keys, always ready. Despite having to be aware of every man within a block radius and how close they were to her body, the inner radar that every woman naturally possessed, Alice loved to walk alone at night. The later the better. She stepped into the middle of the street, her phone in one hand and Dawn of Time in the other, pumping her arms like a mall walker on a mission. She walked up Central Park West until she passed the Museum of Natural History, which was closed, but the rounded towers at either end were still illuminated, little dinosaur-filled lighthouses. Alice turned on 81st Street and hurried past the row of uniformed doormen, hands at the ready. She crossed Columbus and walked over the hill to Amsterdam, where the bars were hopping and crowds of revelers were vaping outside, some of them even ignoring their phones for long enough to flirt. So many places from her childhood were gone, like the Raccoon Lodge, where her coolest babysitter had hung out with her biker boyfriend, and the tiny horseback riding stable in a converted garage on 89th Street where she’d begged Leonard to let her take lessons as a kid, but that was New York, watching every place you’d kissed or cried, every place you loved, turn into something else.
Two young women—younger than Alice, college students, maybe—were leaning on each other against the abandoned husk of a phone booth, on the verge of making out or vomiting or both. “I love your dresssss,” one of them said, and Alice smiled. Women could say anything to her, and she would smile—if a man had said it, Alice would have scowled and crossed the street. Her phone vibrated in her hand—a text from Tommy. Where the fuck are you? She’d missed a few previous missives—Alice? Alice, where are you? It’s time for the toast. Alice could imagine his face hardening into anger. How angry had she ever seen him? When they were in high school, Tommy had never gotten mad about anything that Alice could remember. Fucking up his SATs by getting two questions wrong? Only getting a two on an AP exam? Not making varsity basketball? Their lives had been in such a thick bubble that real problems would have to have been professional safecrackers to break in. Rich people had problems, of course—Tommy’s parents were cold and absent, his grandmother was a famous drunk, whatever else was hidden deeper—but Alice had never seen what happened to Tommy in the face of actual anger, if he turned sad or sour, if his anger went inward or outward. That’s what took years to learn, which habits would calcify into immovable traits. Part of Alice was thrilled to be in this part of a relationship—the boring part, the plateau at the top of the mountain. And the kids. Alice sped up, jogging as quickly as her low mules would allow across Amsterdam at 85th Street, the feathers on her dress tickling her now-cold calves.
Two doors in from the corner, in a tiny storefront that had previously housed a Tibetan bead store, was a psychic. A large neon crystal ball filled half the window. Alice could see that the room had been blocked off, so that whoever went in would be sitting in one of two squishy chairs just on the other side of the glass, in full view of passersby. One of the chairs was occupied by a young woman with overplucked eyebrows. Perpetual surprise seemed an odd choice for a psychic, but Alice stopped anyway.
The woman rose to her feet languidly, as if the future would wait. She tucked her phone into her back pocket and swung open the door. From closer up, the scene looked even dingier, and there was the sound of an episode of Law & Order coming from an unseen television on the other side of the flimsy wall.
“Tell the future?”
“How much?” Alice said.
“Twenty for palm, twenty-five for astrology chart, fifty for tarot. Ninety bucks for all three.” The woman looked her up and down. “Nice dress.”
“Okay,” Alice said. “Thank you. Whichever one is fastest.” She squeezed past the woman and sat in the chair on the far side of the window, with her book on her lap.
The woman held out her hand, and Alice followed suit. The psychic flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and pulled Alice’s palm closer. “When is your birthday?” she asked.
“Yesterday,” Alice said, and neglected to make a joke about psychics.
“Yesterday!” the psychic said, looking up. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks. It’s a weird one. A weird big one. A big weird one? Both.”
The woman examined Alice’s hand, both front and back, holding it between her own hands like the world’s most delicate pancake. “Sun in Libra, moon in . . . Scorpio?”
“I have no idea,” Alice said. It felt like the nice part of a manicure, when all the prodding and clipping was done and someone else was just holding your hand and paying attention to you for a few minutes.
“Do you know what time you were born? What year? And where?”
“Um, about three p.m.? 1980? Here. Manhattan.”
The woman smiled, proud of herself. “Moon in Scorpio. I’m 1980, too. March. What hospital?”
“Roosevelt.” Alice could picture her parents in the delivery room, her father on repeat, holding her mother’s hand, putting cold washcloths on her forehead, and then watching Alice’s slippery red body slide out into the doctor’s waiting arms. What did it mean that Leonard went back to that day, and she went back to her stupid party, where she had gotten drunk and thrown up and been a sad girl, just like every other day of her teenage existence? It seemed like a waste, for both of them. Leonard had had such exciting days, more exciting days than Alice had ever had.
“That has nothing to do with it, just curious.” In the light of the rosy crystal ball, the woman’s face was red. Better lighting would have helped her business, Alice thought, especially in the Upper West Side of today, where everyone wanted their dental office and their coworking space to look like interior design showrooms. “So here’s how this works. You ask a question, and I answer it. By looking at your palm, at your sign, and since it’s your birthday, I’ll pull a card, too. Now close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and think about a question. I can’t answer questions about other people, like is my man cheating on me, that kind of thing. Make it a question about why or how. You get what I mean?”
Alice did as she was told. She had nothing but questions. Do I want to be married to Tommy? Do I want children? How do I keep my dad alive? What the fuck am I supposed to do with my life? Which life, even? Do I have a job? In some other life, do I have a better one? How do I know which life to choose? Each question was more embarrassing than the last—she couldn’t say any of those out loud, not even to a complete stranger. Her chest expanded and contracted in time with the psychic’s. Alice took an extra breath and decided. She opened her eyes. “How do I know if I’m living the right life?”
The woman let go of Alice’s hand and reached for a deck of tarot cards. She set them on the table in front of Alice. “Cut the deck,” she said. “And again. Now pick the top card.” Alice flipped it over. A colorfully dressed boy with a bundle on a stick stood on the edge of a cliff, clearly about to traipse right off onto the rocks below. The Fool, it read, in large letters along the bottom of the card, closest to Alice. There was a small white dog nipping at the boy’s heels, perhaps in warning, and the boy held a rose in his hand.
“That doesn’t seem promising,” Alice said.
The woman leaned back in her chair and laughed. “It heard you. The deck. You see? This card, I know, people look at it, and they see the word fool and they can get bent out of shape, but that’s not what it’s saying. If you draw Death, it doesn’t mean you’re about to die, and if you draw Fool, it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb.
“Let me tell you about the Fool. He’s number zero in the deck, which means that he’s always starting from nothing, from innocence, from a blank slate. That’s us, all of us—the Fool is always starting fresh. He doesn’t know what’s coming—none of us do, right? The dog could warn him, he could stop to pick another flower, he could change directions—all he knows is what he sees.” She pointed to the different parts of the card. “The blue sky. The clouds. He’s at the beginning of his journey. And that can be a brand-new beginning, or a change. All he needs to remember is to be aware of what surrounds him. The journey is what changes him. And it depends what kind of life you mean, right? Some people come and want to know about love—the Fool can mean a new love, a fresh love—some people want to know about their job, their career, their money—the Fool can mean new opportunities in those areas, too.”