She turned over a card onto the table.
‘The Devil’.
Ria opened her mouth to speak, but I quickly interrupted. “Don’t tell me. I remember. It doesn’t mean ‘bad’, is that right?”
She closed her mouth, looking pleased. Then she spoke again. “Tell me what you see.”
“Okay, well there’s this guy. The Devil. He’s, y’know, quite devilish looking. Horns. Holding a flaming torch. Etcetera. And there’s these two naked people...” I squinted at the card. “A man and a woman. They’re chained together. She’s got a tail... with some kind of... strawberry on the end? And the Devil is igniting the man’s tail with his flaming torch, but he seems okay with that.”
Ria was nodding, close-lipped.
I frowned at the card. “The man is horny. The woman is... fruit? Is it corny if I say that seems sexist? Oh, and the Devil has bat wings, too!”
She was still nodding, but I could see she was trying not to laugh. I couldn’t help but smile too.
“I mean, I think the card means horniness. Does the card mean horniness?”
“If that’s what you see in it, maybe.”
“Hey, don’t put this on me. Have youseenthe card?”
She did laugh now. “It’s a good reading. Let me talk through the other symbols and meanings. This is more for practice than anything, honestly.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the Devil can represent a kind of hedonism – or repression. It can also be a representation of one’s shadow self – that’s a tarot term that kind of means the parts of yourself that you aren’t exploring or dealing with. These two naked guys... they seem like they’re chained up, but the chains are loose. They could probably slip out of them if they wanted to. So it can mean making the wrong choice – a choice that gives short-term pleasure rather than long-term gain. The card often wants you to examine your negative influences. Then sometimes, it can mean just what you said – a strong attachment, a strong desire, or... ‘horniness’.”
I nodded. So many different meanings for one image. In code, it either worked or it didn’t. But, I supposed, there were lots of different ways of writing code that had the same end result. Maybe this was more like that.
“Do you want to suggest how you might relate The Devil to your life or situation?”
I stared at the card. The card was accusing me, accurately, of my less-than-pure thoughts towards Ria, I supposed. At least, that’s where my mind had gone, and that’s what I was now feeling guilty for. But I couldn’t say that. I didn’t want to cross any professional boundaries. I had to think up something else.
Eventually, I shrugged. “I think the card is telling me I’m too repressed.”
Ria laughed. “You think you’re repressed?”
It was reassuring that we could laugh together at this – that she wasn’t so serious about it that she expected me to be totally serious about it, either. Her manner had a way of getting me to relax. I couldn’t tell anymore why I’d been so nervous.
Then I glanced up from the card to look at her, and I remembered why. She was annoyingly beautiful. Sigh. “My brothers would probably say so.”
“You say that a lot. Is that how you define yourself – by what your brothers say about you?”
“Not in a bad way. We have our differences. We had different upbringings. You read about us, between sessions, I presume?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“I find it useful to draw contrast between us, I suppose. Jude is the practical one, the strong one. Sylvester is the clown, the flamboyant one, the creative one. Winston’s the cool one. And the playboy.”
“And you’re...?”
“I think they actually consider me the nice one.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, it’s not so bad, is it?”
She laughed. “No. I suppose they meankind. Being kind is a rare gift. You don’t strike me as nice in the polite, inoffensive way.”