Chapter 3

Over the next couple of days, Angilee busied herself with soccer and the third grade play and because she did not really believe in fortune telling, forgot her friend's promise to arrange a meeting with the woman Donna called Madame Leseur. So it was somewhat of a surprise when the phone call was from Donna telling Angilee to meet her at a certain address at 9:00 tonight. Angilee made arrangements for a sitter and spent the day working on some craft projects.

Finding the address was no small chore. Donna was right about one thing, she thought, it was the seediest part of town. Every street seemed filled with bars, dives and strip joints. She breathed a small sigh of relief when she finally spotted Donna's car, a small Honda with specially modified controls, parked near an alley. She pulled over, Donna waved and she parked directly behind, assisting Donna into her wheelchair and the two proceeded down the alley.

"Kind of spooky," commented Angilee.

"Yeah, I'm not sure I would want to spend a lot of time here, but the shop is just down at the end."

The sign was badly weathered, like the buildings themselves.The door was beyond needing paint. The paint, what little was left, needed a new door.

"Now give it a chance. Keep an open mind," chided Donna.

"Okay, Okay," responded her friend as they entered the small, dark room. A small table covered with a heavy brocade material and lit by a single candle stood in the middle of the room. There were two old cane back chairs, one on either side of the table.

"Madame Leseur?" inquired Donna into the darkness.

"I am here," came a quiet reply from behind a curtain. A gray haired, portly woman of indeterminate age stepped forward. She was dressed in a heavy black fabric which Angilee could not identify.

"This is my friend Angilee. Angilee, this is Madame Leseur."

"The fortune teller," smiled Angilee.

"Among other things," replied the old woman as they sat down and Donna positioned her wheelchair beside her friend.

"Uh, where do we start?" inquired Angilee feeling uncomfortable under the old woman's intense scrutiny.

"The Tarot tells us three things, the past the present and the future," said Madame Leseur. "I sense your most pressing concern is with the present, but the present is always influenced by the past and will, of course, influence your future."

"So... ?" asked the housewife.

"So we begin with the past," replied the woman, opening a small wooden box and withdrawing a deck of oversized cards. "Shuffle the cards as many or as few times as you wish."

Angilee complied handing the cards back to the woman who proceeded to deal them into a circle of thirteen piles.

"Let us begin," said Madam Leseur turning over the card in the pile closest to Angilee, revealing the picture of a woman dressed in white standing among a field of flowers.

"I've never had my fortune told, but when I was a kid a friend of mine had a Tarot deck. I don't remember a figure like that."

"These cards are from a very ancient cult. They are different from any you have ever seen. The cards with which you are familiar are for children and parlor games."

The woman indicated the card. "The Maid of Fields. You were a virgin until your late teens."

"And..." asked Angilee nodding.

The card from the adjacent pile revealed a half man, half goat.

"You however were not a virgin when you were married and your husband was not the only man with whom you coupled."

Angilee looked to Donna, wondering if her friend had arranged all this as some kind of practical joke.

"I haven't told her anything," pleaded Donna throwing up her hands in innocence. "All I told her was that you were a friend of mine who wanted a reading. As a matter of fact she forbid me from telling her anything else about you."

"Prior knowledge often pollutes the interpretation of the cards," said the old woman, turning over the third card.

That card held a symbol which Angilee did not recognize.

"You had a single sibling, but the sibling is no longer living."

Angilee again turned to Donna who once more pleaded innocence.

"Yes," she responded, "a brother who died when I was four."

The next card revealed a bridal couple.

"You are married with..."

The next card was again a symbol.

"... two children," continued the woman.

"Oh come on now anyone could have found that out," smiled Angilee.