The proprietor’s voice was light and silky smooth. “You’re welcome to laugh. But only if you listen to my pitch and try an introductory session. Then, you can mock all you want.”
I met her eyes, in further shock at the fact she, unfazed, had gone straight in with the sales pitch. And then my stomach fluttered. Her gaze was soft but lively. She hadn’t been at all fazed by the CEO of the company whose networking event she was attending coming up and openly scorning her business. Maybe she didn’t even know who I was.
I nodded approvingly. “You’ll go far with that attitude.”
She smiled sweetly. “Only if men like you would listen to what I had to say rather than laughing off the premise before they’ve even considered it.”
Ouch. Butter me up, then in for the attack. Was that a sales tactic? It didn’t seem like a successful one. “You have to admit, it’s quite a ridiculous combination. Technology and... tarot cards?”
She folded her arms. “Well, maybe that exact attitude is why you need this.” She was still smiling, but her eyes were sharp and narrowed. “The tech industry used to be full of innovators. Now you’re all clones of each other, in your shared ivory tower, following the same paths to the top, hoping for the same success.” Her gaze was intense, her eye contact an unrelenting pull. “Do you never think outside the box?”
She wasn’t wrong there. Computers used to be exciting. The Internet used to be exciting. Now everything was the same.
I didn’t tend to be a ‘metaphor’ kind of man. I thought about it. “In your tower analogy, you reading tarot cards for me will bring me, what? A rope ladder to ascend it from the outside?”
“Maybe. Are you stuck on a problem you can’t find a solution for? Do you need a way out? A way up?” She held my gaze long enough that I didn’t say ‘no’, which seemed to affirm her suggestion. “In the analogy... the capacity to build a rope ladder is in your hands. But since you don’t have the blueprints in the exact format you require, you think it to be impossible.”
Not for the first time in the past five minutes, I was stunned. Stunned to find myself actually considering what she was saying. I didn’t consider myself a snob, but tarot cards – and crystals and astrology and all of that nonsense – was a realm I very much considered total crap. Entertaining, if you liked that kind of thing, sure. I didn’t begrudge people their hobbies. But the way people put their faith in these things that they couldn’t prove or control struck me as ultimate foolishness.
Was I slightly convinced because her sales pitch was good, or because I kind of enjoyed the dressing-down I’d just gotten? Well... both.
I held up my hands in defeat. “You’re good. Give me your pitch, then.”
Then she smiled, a wide-mouthed beam that made me feel just a little weak. Or maybe that was the tiredness. Most likely, both.
“Excellent.” She clapped her hands together, then got to work. “Let me first say that I can understand your skepticism. I don’t go in for believing that tarot cards can tell the future. I don’t claim to have psychic abilities. What I am good at is understanding how people tick – on a deeper level than likes, dislikes, history. And what the tarot cards unlock is a way of understanding yourself, your decisions, your life, through symbols. Images.”
She spread some cards out across the table for me to look at as she spoke. I glanced between the images – lions, stars, swords. According to the woman before me, these things were supposed to offer me some clue. But I wasn’t seeing it yet.
“We all have more understanding of the world than we can consciously unlock. All of those areas of our brains that lie dormant, such as the subconscious. Your subconscious knows more about ‘you’ than you ever will. Tarot cards allow us to connect to the subconscious – to what’s already there. It’s like dreams, but in our waking life, so we can more rationally process what we find there.”
My dreams were haunted by Apollo, and so was my waking life. It didn’t seem so different to me.
“Say you have a problem you can’t find a solution for. After a certain point, continuing to wrack your brain in the same way you always do will get you nowhere. And your industry, technology, is very focused on the rational brain. The creative brain, the intuitive brain, gets little look in. We need both halves of the brain to work together in harmony to achieve success, and so many people rely on just one.”
I nodded, following her line of thought.
She continued. “But by connecting the cards – the images – of the tarot in ways that relate to you and your personal circumstances, you can bring your rationality together with your intuition to see your circumstances in a new light.” She held out her two hands separately, then clasped them together in front of her. She had nice hands. A graceful amount of rings. “New angles. New insights. New solutions. And me? My name is Ria Moon. I’m simply a facilitator. In general, you already know the answer to your problems. Deep down.”
It was an appealing idea. But I didn’t really have anything to add to her pitch. I didn’t know enough about tarot, if I was honest, so I changed the topic. “Ria Moon? Is that your birth name, or a stage name?”
She shrugged. “Both.”
I thought about it. Honestly, the idea of sitting in a darkened tent while a very attractive woman called Ria Moon showed me pictures of lions was sounding like the level of thing I needed right now. My body, temporarily buoyed by the adrenaline of walking over here in the first place, was beginning to feel its deep tiredness again.
“You win. Well, for now, I’ll take an introductory reading. Then, you said if I’m not convinced I can mock all you want?”
“You can mock to your heart’s desire. So long as I can argue to my heart’s content, too.” Her smile was wicked, in a way that made me think I’d be biting off more than I could chew arguing with her. “In fact, I’d welcome it.”
A shiver ran up my spine. I fumbled my words. “Well, let’s go.”
“Not so fast. I take payment upfront. No bailing if you don’t like what you find.”
“I bet that happens a lot.”
“It does. And if I take payment upfront, you know I’m not going to sugar coat things.”
“Oh, I don’t get the feeling you’re the type to sugar coatanything.”