What Was In the Cards

"Make sure to pick out a word for the day," M said as we stood in line at the checkout counter. She had decided to buy several of the buttons we'd laughed over, and had just noticed the small box filled with foil stickers.

I reached in, making sure not to peek, and pulled out a slip of paper. It was gold, with black letters.

Repeat.

Repeat what, precisely? Repeat getting a tarot reading conducted by a woman who shared my first name and astrological sign? Repeat the order for the perfect iced latte I'd picked up on my way from Beverly to Quincy earlier that morning? Repeat listening to Matt Nathanson's "All Been Said Before" as I found a parking spot outside the shop?

What am I supposed to think about repeating? I was getting annoyed, looking at the word. Because if the morning's reading had been any indication, I thought I knew what it was suggesting I do.

Repeat looking like an absolute idiot.

And I wasn't particularly keen on the idea.

I had settled into a wooden chair about twenty minutes earlier, in a partitioned cubicle with shoulder-high walls and a screened door. The reader settled into her seat and handed me a deck of large, purple cards. She asked me to shuffle before she spread the cards out and instructed me to pick out 16 of them, placing one on top of the other in the center of the table.

"Think about what you want to know about."

I wasn't sure what I wanted to know about. Besides, I was nervous. Fun as tarot can be - and long as it had been since I'd gone for my only other reading - I suddenly didn't know if I wanted to know what was supposedly in the cards. Whether I believed in tarot or not - and I wasn't sure which was the case.

I focused on picking out the cards and not losing count.

She took the pile, straightened it and began flipping the cards over - left to right, top to bottom, four groups of four. Her eyebrows rose at the first card, but she didn't say anything until the sixth.

"Are you in a relationship right now?"

Nope.

"No, I'm not."

She looked up. "You're not?"

Did I stutter?

"No."

"That's strange." She straightened the fourth card and looked down at the rest. "I'm seeing something and it's very much in the now. This isn't a future thing."

Well, I'm not.

But then she started to talk about me and things that had happened recently. Things I'd been pondering. She was good. I didn't know what I thought, but I knew I felt unsettled.

When she spoke about me, she was incredibly accurate. So when she spoke about someone else, I wanted to believe her. But she was telling me things that went against what I was seeing; against that which I had already decided to do.

"That's not really something I think I want to consider anymore."

She looked up quickly. "Don't give up on it," she said. "Don't. It's going to be good for you. Don't take what happened personally."

Had a friend or acquaintance told me to not take it personally, I probably would have fired an expletive back at them. Don't take it personally? I look and feel like an absolute moron. I WILL take that personally, thanks.

But I had already paid for the session and I still had a good ten minutes left, so I just nodded. Besides, it would have been bad karma to bitch out someone with the same first name and astrological sign as me. It would have felt like bitching myself out.

I changed the subject and decided to ask about my health. She answered that in about 45 seconds and segued it back to the previous topic. It was important, she said.

So after I thanked her, laughed over the odds of our chance meeting and carefully moved the screen so I could walk out, I found myself staring at a slip of paper with the word "Repeat" on it.

Repeat? I wished I'd just been told I'd come into a fortune someday instead.

During the car ride after, I popped in "When The Pawn..." and cued up Track 9.
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I don't like bees.

I'm actually pretty terrified of them.

I've been known to run, shrieking in the opposite direction, when I've heard a bee buzzing nearby.

So why precisely I felt inclined to buy lip gloss promising the look and feel of "bee-stung lips" is beyond me.

Perhaps I wanted to take my lip propduct obsession to the next level.

Perhaps I was trying to do whatever I could to not decipher the Sephora makeover artists' somewhat backhanded observations about my facial features.

(And to think I was supposed to walk out of a makeover feeling like a million bucks...)

Or perhaps it was just that I wanted to know what it would feel like if a bee or three stung my mouth.

Whatever the reason, I bought it. And now I have a problem.

I really like this stuff.

My lips feel cool on the surface, on top of a layer of heat. It makes me think of eating Fireballs as a kid. If you took a Fireball and held it to your lips, it would feel like this lip gloss.

Which is particularly amusing, as I was one of those kids who used to enjoy eating Fireballs, but couldn't take the heat. In order to enjoy the sweet candy inside, I unwrapped the Fireball and put it in water. That way I didn't have to endure the red-faced spiciness.

Conquering childhood candy demons?

Hmm. Perhaps that's why.
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T and I sat in the shade of a tree in the Common. He had forgotten his bike lock, and I wanted to be sure a stolen bike wasn't the price paid for a visit with me. It was slightly less broiling beneath the three, but I was happy I thought to get us cold bottled water.

We ran through the quick, "So how was your week?" exchange. I was telling him about my excursion to Southie for brunch, chatting with "the girls" over mimosas and the run-in with someone I hadn't seen in several years.

He tied a piece of grass into a knot. "Um, you're going to be mad at me after I share my next news."

"Hmm?" I finished my sip and cocked an eyebrow. "What's up?"

"It looks like I'm going to get to California before you."

"Bastard."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Where?"

"San Francisco."

"When?"

"Late September."

"OK. So. Send me a postcard, take a unique photograph of something quirky in the city for me and be sure to tell me about what you think of it. Deal?"

"Deal." He grinned. "That was easy. I was going to do all of that anyway. Goes without saying."
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I have to laugh at myself when I attend a Tori show. I find that I sit with a straight back, hands folded in my lap, the image of proper. I don't know why, except the fact that I want to be able to lift my eyes to see as much as I can and maybe, just maybe, I subconsciously think that good behavior - and perfect posture - will be rewarded with a performance of "Gold Dust."

I'll have to be just as poised next time, as she did not dust the song off for Boston. But I was thrilled with those she did select - when she launches into the rest of the set (after the tour standard "Original Sinsuality") with "Caught A Lite Sneeze" and (hurrah!) "Amber Waves," a good night is all but promised. And then "Winter" pops up, and then "Cool On Your Island" and the cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" she's been promising for the last week or so of shows - and it's one of the best covers you've heard her do - and, oh wait, there's "Tear In Your Hand." At that point the show is fantastic. By the time she's wrapped up her four encore songs - including a cover of "Dream On" - with "1000 Oceans," the show reaches the rank of "This had better be one of the live shows she releases."