n o i s e i s a r t

We tell you, tapping on our brows, the story as it should be. Marc’s lips moved with the syllables, a primitive oscilloscope measuring the peaks and troughs of the meter. As if the story of a house were told or ever could be. He drummed his raggedly chewed thumbnails on the gel and foam wristguard in fromt of his keyboard. Were told or ever could be. A house, he thought. A haunted house. An old Victorian mansion on a hill by the ocean. The house of Usher. The other kind of house. The house of Windsor. Of Tudor. Of Bourbon and…

The phone rang. Marc instinctively slapped the talk button, reciting his scripted greeting into the headset. “Welcome to Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot. My name is Sirius, and I have been chosen to be your guide. What is your name?”

“Wuwanda,” a shaky voice replied. Marc, as Wanda was speaking, took the opportunity to hold the mute button down and blow his nose

“Let’s see what the cards have in store for you, Wanda.”

Marc’s dialogue was scripted. The computer tracked her telephone number, told him she’d never called before. As he spoke, he used the mouse to click through a dialogue tree, marking the conversational trails so later calls wouldn’t repeat.

“Wanda, I’m getting a lot of energy from the deck suddenly. There’s something bothering you, something you want to ask me.”

“Yes.”

This was going to be a hard one. She wasn’t volunteering, so Marc would have to guess. Would, that is, if he weren’t staring at the next dialogue box with his next gambit spelled out in 14 point Monaco.

“I have separate decks for Moey, Love, and Fortune. Which would you like me to read?”

“Love, please.”

Marc hated his job. Clicking on ‘Love’ and reciting the net lines from memory, he reflected that it certainly beat fast food, and that his guidance counselor, parents and social worker all felt it was gainful employment and left him alone as long as he clocked more than twenty hours a week in.

“The first card is the Knight of Pentacles. This is a mysterious figure for you, someone you can’t figure out. Someone who brings confusion into your life. Do you recognize this person?”

“Oh my god!” Wand cried, “That’s Dave! You’re talking about Dave! What else does it say?”

“DAVID,” Marc typed, under “LOVE.” “DAVID. K.5.”

He closed his eyes again, massaging the bridge of his nose. His sinuses were killing him, he was congested and feverish and this was the last place he wanted to be. “Pentacles are aligned with the element of fire. David is therefore a fiery person, alluring and dangerous. It is best to treat such characters carefully, and think before you act around them.”

“Oh my God,” Wanda was depressingly enthusiastic. Marc almost preferred the creepy old guys who get off trying to have phone sex with people who aren’t phone sex operators. “Totally. Totally Dave. What else?”

“The next card,” Marc began, even as he brought a game of Minesweeper onto the screen, “is the nine of swords. Besiegement. External forces prevent you from acting. There is something outside of you and David which you’re worried about.”

“Judy. That bitch of his ex. This is amazing? What’s it say about her?”

Marc’s supervisor took that moment to tap him firmly on the shoulder, point to the game on Marc’s screen, and point beyond it to the sign affixed to the wall. We are in the business of reading cards, the sign read, Be sure to (the next three words were hand-underlined, in ink, three times. And highlighted. Orange.) Actually Read The Customer’s Cards!

Marc nodded wearily, clicked shut the game, and reached for the deck of cards to the left of the keyboard.

“What’s it say?” Wanda asked again. “Hello? Is Dave going to propose or not?”

Marc cut the deck once. His supervisor walked away. Marc turned the top card. The Lovers. Sadly for Wanda, the Lovers, inverted. As Marc laud the card carefully face up beside the deck, it happened again.

The brush of hs fingertips across the front of the cards brought the inverted figures to life. Animated on the card, the Lovers dropped each others hands. There was Wanda – frizzy red hair, bound back into a ponytail in a laughably sad attempt to contain it. Wanda, in a knockoff designer dress and fake pearls. Wanda, watching as the suited man walked to the open doo for a joyful reunion with a blonde Judy. Wanda, standing alone and weeping mascara into the palms of her hands as the door closed.

“Absolutely,” Marc said, hating himself for each clipped syllable. “Wanda, I can promise you, your love problems are over.”

Wanda hung up after waiting for the rest of the reading as Marc, turning cards with his eyes closed whenever his Manager walked past, spun her a fable of true love conquering all. She hung up in joy and rapture, her faith in the universe second only to her faith in the Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot.

Marc swept the cards into a pile with a shudder. The only thing Ancient around here was the computers. Careful not to look at them, he piled the cards carefullly beside his keyboard again. Where had he been? Like a changed familiar tree. Or like a stairway to the sea. Where down the blind are driven.

Marc’s supervisor returned. Pranjit was classic night school MBA material. Hard working. Dedicated. First generation child of Pakistani immigrants. No understanding of why Marc, who had at one point talked about applying to (swell of angels here, hosannah on the highest) New York University, could end up here, working for him. Pranjit never travelled the maze of rust-red upholstered cubicles without the fat three ring binder from which he would read the appropriate policy for whichever rule the employee was, at the moment, violating.

“Marc,” he began, flipping through the binder. Marc was talked to enough, and had been working here so long, he assumed that in there somewhere he merited his own plastic divider tab. “Your call volume is down again. You should be logging five calls an hour. What’s the problem? Is it the software? I can schedule you for a refresher course.”

“No, Pran.” Marc sighed, the flu and his lethargy causing Pranjit’s name to sound like prawn. He hoped his supervisor wouldn’t take this as a slight. “It’s the cards. Sorry. Takes me forever to get through a reading.”

“Marc, just read from the screen. It’s all automated. Just turn the cards and click the mouse.”

“Okay, Pran. I’ll be faster.”

Pranjit nodded, put a check in a box somewhere, and closed the binder. This was Marc’s cue to turn back to his computer with another sigh.

“Don’t forget to read the cards, Marc. I can’t bring people in to see the shop if you’re not reading the cards.”

Marc wondered if Pranjit knew what reports of a fluorescent-lit cubicle farm full of high school kids, college dropouts and unshaven parolees in formless suits would actually do to business. He realized that he himself had no idea. He’d never understood what led the clients to call. Maybe the fact that they were all parolees would help. Who knew?

His phone rang again.

Pranjit turned back, looking over his shoulder and Marc nodded, moving the cards in front of the keyboard even as he hit Talk and recited his opening.

“Welcome to Ancient Mysteries of the Tarot. My name is Sirius and I have been chosen to be your guide.” Tarot names were like stripper names. Marc had trouble thinking of a good one – all the girls were always Raven or Lilith. It had been Jimmy, a flamboyantly gay member of the theater clique at Marc’s school, who told Marc to use Sirius, which he’d seen in the Astrology section of Cosmo. Jimmy’s Tarot name was Alistair.

… Even though all the lamps were on, the nicotine on the walls jealously hoarded the light, letting only vague scraps of jaundiced yellow reflect eerily onto the ceiling. Whole swaths of the room were unable to beg their share of the terracotta lamplight. Somewhere in the looming shadow that was the bed, Austin moaned. Cricket heard Morgan beside him, whispering in that sibilant twin-tongue of theirs, and knew she was brishing her hair with her silvered comb. Marc’s knock was muffled when he returned; only when Cricket saw that even he had succumbed to the room’s mood and let exhaustion stretch his features did she first let herself imagine that all this might not end well for them. Newman followed Marc in. While Marc set down his shopping bags and sank down one wall to crouch and let his shoulders hang, Newman resumed his running tally of inconveniences and outrage. “Red Bull, had to get Pepesi, not even Coke, Pepsi, we couldn’t even afford Asprin and Marc wouldn’t give me back my credit card and I didn’t think we had…” None of them had eaten since the border. At first it was panic, driving around Mexico, stopping as Austin lurched from the backseat and vomited, again and again, always with the torrential sweats, betrayed by the water that was suddenly compelled to abandon his wracked and ash-pale body. “…food I just want to go home shouldn’t we call an Ambulance what if Austin’s sick he looks sick what if he dies.”