YD6~02 The Gypsy's Tarot Business: Opening the Mirage to Aetheria
💠The narrator, reflecting on past business dealings, embarks on a drive in their Mercedes. The journey takes on a surreal quality as they encounter a mysterious Gypsy fortune-teller. Inside the Gypsy's caravan, the narrator receives a card reading but is distracted by a vision of a little girl who prophesies a life-changing encounter. The narrator, preoccupied with this prophecy, finds it difficult to focus on the Gypsy's words. As the session ends, the Gypsy requests a "gift," leading to a tense exchange about payment. The encounter leaves the narrator with a lingering sense of mystery and anticipation.
I clawed the slippery craggy abyss of my making, to Hilton Rogoff’s ledge, the dark hollows to sight. A sliver of hope bottom out, with Hilton’s gift, a blank document titled, SFB Properties (PTY) Ltd., which I’ll never see. Though seated in my executive chair, my desk ghosting blueprints, and in the near corner, staggered ten building contractor files, a poison pill, my mind sulked. Exposed the Aticon (Pty.) Ltd., for a rogue takeover.
I have no qualm ripping off the Saber Brothers, and Hilton, for ousting me, although I’m oblivious of ousting two of my partners. The door slammed and latched as I stepped across the porch’s shaded terracotta quarry tile Helios’ beautiful and peaceful stroke the lonely Mercedes, orange ripe stalled under the lean-to carport, spanning a Marseillaise architecture across bare spaces. Boosted my courage, remind myself. ‘_We’re off for a fresh start, and a long ride to the East Rand._’ sidestep the 280SE tag, to the driver’s door, behind the bright fenestrated wall, the derelict of Aticon (Pty.) Ltd., offices to my regret, Jean’s phantom, I shared on the upper floor. I can’t imagine how to revive my secretary downstairs, replacing Joe Reynecke, construction and John Gregory sales manager, volatilized after Jean moved out.
With a key turn, the door sighed, challenging my restlessness, lifted the sill’s buttons around the car. Pull the door, step inside, picking the ignition, turn, drop a hand, palm the gear knob toggle into reverse. Swing my elbow prop on the backrest, further twist a dance stretch exercise in my seat. Alter my view to the rear windshield, throttle a series of kitchen windows slip forward, to low and large dining room glaze, across the recessed porch, to the tall shying the boys’ electric cars and track room in darkness to bathroom windows. I drop my elbow, uncoil, my palm toggle, neutral to drive, while the heel of my hand spins the steering wheel to car crawl the clinker brick corner, to the driveway pass in alternance a few pines to lampposts to the gateway grill, and veer into the leafy Sunnyway eastward.
To my consternation, cruising up the rolling hill passing suburban villas surrounded by lavish green foliage to yards shy behind high walls, to an ethereal smoking ground across the street’s grass sidewalk, am distracted by searching amidst properties a pinched side street at recollecting the rear exit from Kelvin. in doubt, as I crest the rollover hill, coasting near the interstice though precast walls upheld smoking the intersection. I spin the steering wheel, throttling to crawl by the precast wall corner. Engaged in the straight, Helios called the ground smoking again, until the block ended with Northway traversing. I faced the veld downslope across the T-junction. I pull from the yield road sign while turning the steering wheel, to sight the sweeping early days dirt road, Helios pulled an ethereal blanket, leveling off the valley.
I’m driving across the bridge, raised from the streaming Jukskei’s concrete weir, the asphalt sweep rising from the veld through the smoke blanked leveling with the transversal highway’s overpass. The city’s landfill roused until framed in my windshield, seeking the off-ramp’s access. I coasted with an eye running the mounted rail over the highway concrete parapet end, extended by the silver shining guardrail, discovering in its midst an interstice. I steered the car across the oncoming lane, accelerated along the tabletop landfill dug in the field swell, Helios’s chariot rising behind, as I’m merging with oncoming far-scattered vehicles across two lanes, to wonder. ‘_Why was this highway ever built_?’
The carriageway asphaltic groove void of matter into the dark underworld, surreal as I’m riding golden veld, the median and cropped and sandy bright beyond the waysides streaming silver low fencing mesh. riding the surface over the rolling hill, across a trickle of oncoming traffic, the veld rolls off, upstream to the blind Jukskei, straggling scorched dirt habitation siding crazed and cracked mosaic crest the distant hill with houses erected by Italian Wold War II prisoners. Amidst Alexandra township's landscape sore twin towering blocks poke the single men’s hostel, a few blocks from the foot, “I” ‘_build the Montessori elementary school._’
The township disappears behind the hill. Over the rolling hill I’m cruising a grassland plateau, until shiny industry sheds creep closer, cornered alongside the fence. The horizon arouses a misty neckline cleavage, in my approach soars an efflorescent fascia athwart, and before the overpass, lurking the roadway to vanish into the cast shade, I’m leaning away, while the doorsill sizzled tacky tire gum, Helios’ ethereal oozing from matter. I’m riding the split curving lanes, pulling away from Johannesburg’s fringing suburbs glutted in the far quarters. From Helios’ efflorescent parapet swag across the valley, a trumpet flare out the highway rushed up behind from Johannesburg’s populated hills.
Among a traffic trickle, I’m settling leaning on the beige interior’s leather armrest, a few fingertips on a spoke steering. The leading stipples of white lanes easing from the right fender cross, cross the Mercedes hood ornament. On my watch, peaceful shimmering traffic. along deep shaded foliage swells, twinkling shiny pieces of mosaic to red, black bleached pitched roofs sketching suburban houses, scattered Edenvale — “I built, or contracted,” ‘_house, and renovation, a small factory, set up Ivo, with Auto-Fix car repair workshop.
Unrecognizable, the bunched highway lanes shun along shade, skipping multiplying road signs, “Jan Smuts International Airport.” As an adolescence, embarked in Brussels with my siblings, on a DC4’s propeller roar, four-day cross continent, disembark on a chilly blustery July in 1961.
In quest of Springs, shifting glances to the rearview mirror and the wing mirror, unbeknownst speaking for itself, the roadway’s right trumpet flare narrower through the upcoming shaded overpass. sweeps across airport and industrial entourage glinting traffic at merging with the oncoming traffic band. A Chinese lantern hangs in the overpass's darkness, and the spanning efflorescent slender concrete parapet fascia breaks the roadway to a mounting golden veld swell.
My foot jerks, flips off the throttle pedal, slamming the brakes, while ahead, the white stippled line slides off by the left fender. my quirk, crossing the fast lane, I jolt in fright slew mirrors’ glances. While, to my relief, free traffic lanes, the car’s wheels in a stampede of shock-absorber, the windshield crashes through the cast shade. The thunder eases as my foot feathers the brake pedal, the wheels thump underneath my seat appeasing on the grass tufts. An angry dust cloud swirling in the car’s wake, fast catching up convoluted billows engulfing the rear fenders, paw the rear windows, dust finger streak to exhaustion on windowsills, failing to hijacking my glass bubble. Underneath my seat the shakes appease as I’m coasting, the car wobbling by the bright window shading the hitch bar beneath. Extend, my eyesight creeps around the box-shape caravan, fixated on the slender light crack wide spill cascade, inviting silver treads raised from the dark undercarriage shadow.
Across the dashboard, preemptive, I sneak into the crack along the face clipped door leaf, and in the passing passenger windshield pillar. I grip a blind mystery, to doubt my audacious stunt. ‘_What am I doing here_?’ The car rocks my seat, broadening the caravan’s doorway, but embedded my curiosity into the light by a built-in-cabinet yellow panel thickening the wall framing the entrance. My foot hitches to flip the throttle and catapult myself from the cast shade beneath the ribs deck’s pre-stressed beams into the landscape’s glow. ‘_Forget it_!’ I’m watchful, a snail’s crawl toward a white glow, to a fist full punch in the chest. My foot a dead weight, my ego seized, whispers to mind. ‘_Wait — You’re so impatient_?’
The engine idles, while a Buddha-figure sits dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, gazing into my eyes, telling. ‘_I dare you to storm off_?’ He doesn’t flinch. In slow motion, I turn the ignition key. The engine’s purr dies, the persistent air-conditioning quietens, and I excuse myself. ‘_I’ve just got a few questions to ask him._’ His porter phantoms opening my door, and I with an eye from the passenger window, alight the car, a crackling cropped straw tuft elevating my eyesight over the roof. I ghost across. I stood with my back to the car’s passenger door, the man reeling in eyes. ‘_I’m still in control._’ I assured myself, I didn’t succumb to his tender eyes. ‘_Wasn’t to ask. How much is a session — for my next passage?_’
I tread unbeknownst crossing a snake pit’s hollow dark threshold, easing up the shiny tread facing the moon face’s enigmatic smile. Young, in his early thirtyish, I capitulated from expecting an old gypsy woman, to the blob tight in his black suit, white shirt, relentless hypnotic stare. My shoulder squeezed, but short of taking my breath away, I paused tall in a spacious, glowing hub. Not too soon, the seated man, voices. “Welcome... I read the cards.”
“How much will it cost?” I asked.
“A gift,” the Gypsy says, spreading puffed sleeves, power lifting fists indents a thin cushion embed deep to a storage bench’s lid, stooping his upper body to raising to his feet. He stood up and constricted my space. I stepped back to plant my spine up a sword’s of the cupboard panel edging the door. side rolling, envisaging my escape, frown his petty mystery, asking. “What do you mean, a gift?”
The Gypsy, with a head drop, mumbles, “A gift.” I’m repeating, and again, harsher. “What gift?” He raises eyebrows and shrugs. ‘_I don’t know_.’ Rolls his eyeballs, lifting a beam of sight, passing my shoulder into the aisle past flank cabinet doors, toward a wide rear window. He insists with head waves, pivoting my shoulder. The cupboard’s edge released my spine. I’m loosening from the voluminous figure. Walk past an amalgam of cupboard doors to pause, barred by a hinged down tabletop. over my shoulders, the Gypsy voices. “Sit down.” I dwell. ‘_Where are you going to sit_?’ The Gypsy breathes down my neck, by the full height cupboard door, squeezing. I’m edging left into the niche, bestowed with a chair besides lidded stove burners’ cabinet.
My pelvic bones cramp the stackable chair’s laminated seat and backrest, while the Gypsy’s magic at the sharp table corner squeezes the belt to the stressed button up the seam shirt . his left palm paws a deck of cards to hiding. His belly flab’s shirt over the belt, rounds the head of the table, indented, his right-hand outreaches to paw the bench seat, props on his arm, his flab slips off the table edge. While my feet heel to toe scuffle, I’m side stepping knee knocking underneath the table, while the Gypsy’s left hand scuffed the deck of cards, scooting along the table, I’m wiggling on my chair to squaring up. The Gypsy’s right hand raises over the table’s edge, oars the hand released deck of cards across, pressing inland, in parallel arm flab splash on the matt white melamine, fingers split the card, to a card riffled. with a final shuffle, the man’s eyes call with a slight card deck push, saying. “_‘Will you..._’ — Cut the pack.”
My curled fingers reach, the cards’ deck, thumbnail gauge the table, pad roll the riffled edge and half-deck lift to pose alongside. The Gypsy’s heel of the hand slips, advance sausage fingers, re-stacks his deck bottom half, to my top half, repose a pair of fingers slipping off the deck’s top card to his thumb to a face flip. I’m fixated on the engaging, a worn doctoring voice, a bell ring, boating. ’_Hear out what I’m telling you. . ._’ With an ear prick, for words to my new enterprise, not forthcoming — from the window’s gaze into cool and dark gray. In the shaded underpass, the leading roadway emerging behind the blob of a man, into a slit-eye distraction from the golden oceanic swell. Retrieve to the Gypsy’s figure, awaking as he mumbled, reading a fourth card, to sight flab laden arms correlating misty coronal, ghosting rolling wrists, with nimble fingers flip to a Major Arcana to the court, lip talk. boating. ‘_Ain’t I good_?’
‘_Did you just say?_’ — “I have three children!” — ‘_Lionel, Gavin… where is the third?_’ amusing, the man’s unaware his spirit sprouted out his body, the force of his voice retrieves across the table. I’m fading attention, reading tarot cards, luring me with a broadening grin by romantic spells. While I’m waiting to hear, a few words forecasting my start-up, but alchemized. Dead matter’s shield vacuumed — volatilized into black-luminescence, two creatures in a transcendent holographic world on earth. I’m seeing-through the caravan’s neon plasma spectrum outlining, and pass the cast shade beyond the overpass ribs to a concrete deck. From an azure sky opening in earth’s mirroring zodiac, a little girl zestful chuckles, “_‘You don’t know me yet! — Do you?’_” Kind yap, characteristics to the latent unbeknownst Virgo-Dog, a biting, witty little girl’s teasing. “_’Expect me. And — When you’ll lay eyes on me… Your world will turn inside out.’_”
The little girl leaves me with a warmth to the brink of joyful tears, with an indifference toward the fortune-teller’s monologue. He attempts to steal my attention. The glow strikes the interior opacity of dead matter reconstituted, while I’m drifting. ‘_Who could be raising a daughter of mine_?’
Sausage fingertips in stealth rake the court cards’ spread, rolling wrists stack, piling the remaining deck of cards under his palm, while my mind sent messenger pigeons. While the Gypsy was restless in his seat. His free left-hand snail-creeps stir his blob body, while subtle eyesight strokes to the table head, oozing a message. ‘_Your time’s up_!’ He wiggles while stuck to his seat, to a mounting impatience, alluding to scooting, his fingers roll over the head table’s edge, to an imminent anchor trolling his weight.
I crossed the Gypsy coercive gaze. ‘_Move on..._’ Tilt my knees heading from underneath the table, feet scuffled to stand and step out into the aisle. His ousting gaze passes alongside my hip, and nudging to backtrack along facing cupboard doors. In the squarish hub to the storage bench, my ego, reads my thought. ‘_Escape!_’ an eye with a light spill through the recess to my Mercedes’ passenger door window to the interior. Holding back tolerates the blobby Gypsy squeezing by, my Gemini thinking. ‘_I owe him._’ My Warthog arguing. ‘_What for_?’ Accomplice, I fear tripping over his shadow, emanating from the artificial glow, before reaching Helios’ cosmic protection. rather absurd in my thoughts, then misfortune trail me, as the Gypsy came around, readying to lower himself to the seat, I asked. “What do I owe you?”
The Gypsy’s shameful slants of his head, apologetic, saying. “A gift!” He ought to dangle a number at me, but doesn’t. He’ll sing a requiem in chorus. “A gift...” As often I reiterated, when his gazes streams into the light spill, passing me by, and arouses orchestrating, ‘_Money, money... Funny, funny… It’s a rich man’s world..._’
Alerted by a beggar’s cupped hands below his belt, to a plea for a few coins, I call his averting eyes. ‘_You of all people ought to perceive the big Mercedes a masquerade_?’ Unshakable, mounting an exhaustive frustration, I’m starting anew, asking. “How much…” He doesn’t relent, answering. “A gift.” My body shakes. On the verge of extricating myself from his swampy drag, he says. “You can give me a small gift, or a medium gift, or a large gift — ‘_that is my entitlement’_”
‘_Ho no!_’ I hear myself exasperating, cooling my head, I say. “How much is the small gift? How much is the medium gift? How much is the large gift?” My right foot itching to step over my left toe, and dive. With mounting anger, I croak, “What do you want — ‘_Nothing?’_” The Gypsy reads my face, timid answering. “For the small, you can give me ten rand. The medium fifteen. The large thirty.”
My hand slew to my back, digs into my hip pocket, brings my buff leather wallet with a wrist flip of the right flap, to a left flip, opening my Seven-Star diary. The gypsy’s eyes weighing on my hand, while in my purse, fingers flicked, ‘_One, two, three!_’ counting banknotes. Fluttered the ten Rand banknotes out, thinking I’m rid of the Gypsy. in a flaming call, he says. “On the occasion that you should meet my mother... ‘_Here’s a bonus for you_.’ — Now think of something.”
The Gypsy’s quiz can’t hurt, and I’m sparing a thought. ‘_What is a question which from the oubliette of time I’ll be able to recall, to check out the Gypsy’s telepathic power?_’ After thinking of the mysterious little girl’s voice, I said. “I’m OK!” The Gypsy extends a hand. He pushes a business card to my fingers, saying. “Ask my mother what you thought, when meeting her?”
Comments
Post a Comment