Ivory (22 page)

“
If you’re referring to the fact that the man you were
following went through there, then you are correct. But it’s open
to him, private to you.” She sniffed, her head still cocked in a
bow and her eyes fixed upon him. “Don’t mean any rudeness. Just how
it is.” She followed the statement with a broad disarming
smile.

Martin looked around him. “Okay. I think I am done looking
around.”

The
woman shrugged. “Suit yourself. Can’t tempt you with
nuthin?”

“
I’m not sure what half of it is to be honest.”

“
Didn’t think so.”

“
The things that man wanted. Can I ask what they
were?”

She gave him a wide smile that showed almost all her pearly
teeth. “Sure thing: you can ask.”

“
But you’re not going to tell?”

“
Aren’t you a bright boy! Top of the class for you.” Her smile
stayed broad.

“
Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Guess you have to protect your
customer’s privacy.”

Her head
wavered from side to side and she whined as she considered his
explanation for her reluctance. “Sometimes, but I don’t have a
policy. That’s not why I am not going to tell you. I don’t think I
would keep a secret for him. It’s just that if I tell you what the
things are, then you sure as Hell gonna then ask me what they are
for. Then I gotta explain and look like a damn fool in front of
you, not that I care much what you think, it’s just you have
sceptic stamped on you like a hallmark and I’m sure it runs deep
all the way, like rings of age in a tree. At my age I got myself
lots of spare time, but don’t much care to be spending it talking
in circles, if you don’t take offence at that.”

Martin nodded. Said goodbye and headed for the door, her
sparkling eyes and fixed smile on him the whole while. He ducked
under some hanging wind chimes and mobiles of beads and crystals,
but he decided he must have knocked into what appeared to be
something like a Native American dream catcher but more intricate
than he had ever seen, as it had suddenly begun to swing and swirl
above his head. He apologised over his shoulder to the woman, and
quickly set about steadying the complex web of strings and precious
looking hanging stones that hung over the door and disturbed the
thick lazy atmosphere of incense above him into wildly snaking
strands and tendrils.

“
Wait…” The woman called. There was an insistence in her tone.
“Come back here boy! Let me look at you.” Her voice was stern and
urgent and he walked over to her ready to apologise again. The
woman plucked up a jostick as thick as a cigar from the counter and
stabbed and swirled it around his head leaving ghostly white trails
around him. “Someone’s been putting some JuJu on you. You’re under
a ‘fluence.” She dispelled the trails she had created by shaking a
small velvet draw string bag amongst them. The clicking and
clacking noises that emanated from within revealed that there were
stones being tossed about inside the bag. “You been losing control
of life?” she whispered. “Yes I can see it. Your will is
diminished. You been feeling lost, boy? I see it is so. Boy, you
are so lost.” She tutted and replaced the jostick on the counter
and slipped the bag back into the pocket of her chunky knit
cardigan.

“
What do you know about that?”

“
Sit here.” She pointed to a stool further down the counter,
near to the archway with the table and crystal ball in it that
Ebony had pointed to earlier. The woman moved down the counter so
she would be in front of him. “Come, boy, sit. I aint gonna bite
you. I know that something is influencing you. That’s what I know.”
Martin sat in front of her, still unsure what was happening or what
she was saying. “I can see it in the cards.” She pointed to
hand-painted antique looking tarot cards arranged before her. “I
see you have found your own future.”

He glanced down to the Mephisto’s tarot card that was still
in his hand. “Oh that, I found that. Just wasn’t sure what it
was.”

“
Signs and portents. You know what it means?”

He shook his head and decided not to mention he was going to
use one of her books to find out, suddenly frightened she would
frown on him referencing her materials without a purchase. She took
it. “The Tower. Your world has been turned on its head. Things are
changing. The tower of order falls into chaos and
despair.”

Agatha placed the card on the counter and tapped a card
from her own cast deck. “I do the cards all day. To idle the time
while I wait for customers willing to
pay
rather than
browse
. I do the cards on my customers while
they shop, just for my own interest. Sometimes I choose who to
read, sometimes the cards choose for me. My deck has been giving me
cards all day I didn’t understand. Cards I now know are from your
reading.” She pointed at a card she had played onto the counter
earlier, it was another Tower card. “I did your cards when you came
in see?” She cast both her hands over the cards before her as if
she could read the air above them with her hands. “They knew you
were coming. The JuJu on you is powerful, creating ripples...” She
seemed to read his puzzlement as concern. She raised a quieting
finger between them that asked for calm when there was no need, and
suggested she had a solution. “What you need is
tea.”

Martin
neither wanted to socialise nor hear anymore. “That’s very kind of
you…”

She shook her head and waved down his protestations like a
grandmother well versed in ignoring grandchildren’s excuses about
why they couldn’t stay longer, and started unscrewing jars and
measuring out powders and dry herbs, none of which smelt like fresh
loose tea. “Hush now. It’s special tea. A JuJu tea against the
‘fluence on you.” There was a click from under the counter as a
hidden kettle was switched on.

Martin
had visions of being force-fed some herbalist tea with LSD
qualities. “I’m sorry, you were right about me being a
sceptic.”

Her forehead crumbled into a frown and her eyes hardened.
“I’m not gonna make a fool of you, if that’s what you’re worried
about. So who’s gonna judge if you sit here with an old lady and
listen and believe, and sup a little tea?” The toothy smile
returned and her eyes brightened as she gathered her measured
ingredients and began mixing them in a dish. “See; the cards
already tell me you’re starting to believe… Your eyes have been
seeing things, things that you aren’t dwelling on. You are being
awakened to a world beyond your world.” She emptied the powders in
a small earthenware teapot and produced a steaming kettle from
under the counter, its domesticity incongruous within the strange
little shop of otherworldly goods.

The woman’s act was good, and he could imagine that
many a tourist or first-time visitor to her shop would be taken in
by her theatrics and broad statements that served as ‘insight’.
With Martin she was even luckier because her broad generalisation
was true: there were lots of things about Ivory he couldn’t
explain. “Without sounding rude
I
am
in a new age shop, and it’s
obviously
my first time. So to say that I am
being awakened to new things
‘beyond my
world’
is not exactly going out on a
limb.”

“
There is a catalyst in your life working its JuJu on you.”
Her finger travelled the lightning on the card again.

The
hairs on his neck prickled. He had considered and described Ivory
as a catalyst. “I don’t believe in magic.”

“
You think that saves you? No, boy. Magic believes in
you. That’s all it takes.” She cautioned with an air of revelation.
“You were following Eban – THE GIRL!” She made the connection as if
she had just uncovered a critical fact. “Yes I see her in the
cards...” She tapped her version of the tower card and traced her
finger through the shearing white light. She shook her head
gravely, as if this had changed everything. “No tea for you, boy.”
She pronounced darkly, her eyes as black as coal. “You
are
lost.”

Chapter
Eighteen

Martin stubbed
his finger onto Richard’s doorbell for a third time and heard its
muffled chime from outside. He stepped onto the pavement for a
glance up at his window, sure that the thick muslin had been
displaced since he had arrived. He stepped back onto the step to
listen for any movement before prodding the doorbell again, this
time he held it firm for a full minute in the hope of irritating
Richard into answering. The door neighbouring Richard’s flew open
and a scruffy young man in sports clothing leaned out.

“
Mate, if someone doesn’t answer it means they aren’t
in.”

“
Sorry.” Martin flushed.

“
Yeah well, I’m sorry I have a flat with thin walls.” He
slammed the door behind him.

Martin looked
about him consciously but none of the passers by on the busy street
showed any interest. He pulled his coat close to him against a cool
breeze and looked up to Richard’s flat one last time. The sky was
grey with dark clouds and the promise of rain, but an area of cloud
over the apex of the flats’ roof was darker and shifted suddenly in
the gust, and he realised it was smoke, a column of smoke anchored
behind the flats. Probably burning refuse from one of the shops,
but it lead him to wonder if the back of the flats might be
accessible. He could scale the fire escape to Richard’s flat and
that might force Richard from hiding and to let Martin in. Martin
walked to the end of the block, rounded the corner and found a wide
and well-maintained paved alleyway servicing the rear gardens of
all the shops. From what he could see over low walls or through
chain-link fences, most of them were concreted over or used to
house extensions or storage. Counting the rear facings as he walked
he soon found the back of Richard’s flat behind a high wall with a
full-size gate and a sign warning against trespass.

Through the
gaps in the bars he could see the fire escape, but could only make
out the beginnings of the windows of Richard’s flat. Martin gripped
the bars of the gate and sank against them. Richard was the only
person in his world that he could talk to about what was happening.
The wind picked up again and the smoke curled around the wall and
into his face. He coughed and spluttered and winced against the
smoke that tickled his throat and pricked at his eyes. He stood
back until the smoke cleared from the gate and then looked back
into the concrete courtyard. Orange flames sporadically licked at
the air above a metal bin crammed with large sketch pads and
canvases smashed to fit the receptacle. The new art materials the
blonde boy had mentioned Richard buying. Martin staggered back from
the smoke as it shifted back into his face again and studied
Richard’s unreachable flat from the far-side of the alley. Richard
had spoken of his confusion and doubts that had come around from
his first encounter with Ivory. He had warned Martin of its dangers
and now Richard had fallen for them himself. Martin finally
accepted that he also faced the same fate.

Alone with his
situation and with no idea what to do next he found himself driving
to the road next to Ivory’s and watching from the alley as he had
done before. He waited for Ivory to return to Ebony with the money
he had left her that morning and any earnings she had made that
day. He had been tempted to not leave the money. He had produced
his wallet and replaced it in his pocket several times before
plucking the wad of notes out and throwing them down on the kitchen
table in self-loathing. He had left her without saying goodbye or
the pretence of explaining that the money was to replace her missed
earnings and not payment for her body, although if it had been to
pay for sex she had earned it the night before.

Martin had
thought that after knowing she had been with others in the day he
wouldn’t be able to touch her himself. Yet he had wanted to see her
face in bed, to see if the face she wore with him was really just
the mask she wore with all those that paid to satiate their lust
for her. With each twitch of expression on her face in response to
his efforts, his ardour, had become more vigorous and aggressive in
trying to make her face change, to ensure that her face was genuine
passion and ecstasy. During his third and final effort he had ended
up behind her, and although the room was dark the weak light from
the street picked out the details of her face and the opaque glass
of the wardrobe doors had reflected it. Despite the groans of
pleasure he could hear from behind her, her face had been a blank
canvas devoid of emotion.

His hope, or
his delusion, of breaking her from her trade and luring her into
loving him died with his passion in that moment. He couldn’t bring
himself to finish with her. Couldn’t even touch her that morning.
He didn’t feel angry with her, only at himself for still wanting
her.

There was still the chance that it was her work that had
conditioned her into feeling nothing and acting in lovemaking. The
resentment that knotted his intestines and twisted his gut was for
Ebony for turning someone so ethereally beautiful into something so
emotionally flawed. It was
Ebony’s
work that forced Ivory into
her
work, and her duty to Ebony that
would come between any chance of her falling in love with
him.