Dark Tomorrows, Second Edition Read online

  “Oh,” Micah said. “Sorry about your uncle.”

  “He was a prickhole.” Cara flipped a pack of Joker rolling papers on the table, then began breaking up a bright green bud. Livvie kissed Micah, then dropped onto the couch beside Cara.

  “That's crazy,” Micah said. “You asked about money. I should have seen that coming.”

  “Madam Rosetta did,” Cara said.

  “Who?”

  Cara dug into her purse and tossed what looked like a small, stiff business card toward him. It twirled in midair and landed on the carpet. Micah rolled his eyes and picked it up. The card was the color of parchment.

  “I asked her if I'd be getting any money,” Cara said.

  Micah read the card:

  MADAM ROSETTA SAYS...

  Your wish will be granted today.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It's Madam Rosetta, being more psychic than you.” Cara laughed.

  “Who's Madam Rosetta?”

  “Just the stupid fortune-teller machine outside Cirque du Filet,” Livvie said. “You know, that lame restaurant by the movies?”

  “Never been there,” Micah said.

  “I was at the movies this afternoon,” Cara said. “Hit the fortune teller machine before I went in. After the movie, I get the call from Uncle Ted's lawyer. It was so perfect.”

  “That's not possible,” Micah said. “I didn't see—”

  “Didn't see the future?” Cara asked.

  Micah rubbed his head.

  “It's okay, Micah,” Livvie said. “You can't be right about everything.”

  “I've always been right.” Micah felt a bad headache coming on. “Unless you do something to change what I predict. This doesn't happen.”

  “Happens now.” Cara licked and sealed the joint. “Maybe I shouldn't share with you, huh? Since I bought this with money you said I wasn't going to get?”

  “Whatever,” Micah said.

  “She's just kidding,” Livvie said. “Don't get uptight.”

  Cara lit her joint, then slumped back on the couch. “You know,” she said, “The fortune teller machine only costs a buck. Could run you out of business.” She passed it to Livvie.

  “I don't think so,” Micah said. “A machine can't be psychic. You have to have a...”

  “What?” Cara asked.

  “Mind, soul, whatever. I bet it gives that exact same answer every ten times. Just has a stack of cards.”

  “I know where I'm getting my fortune read from now on,” Cara said. “You were way, way off.”

  “Fine with me,” Micah said. “You weren’t a paying client, anyway.”

  “Oh, that's right,” Cara said. “You get paid to be not psychic.”

  Livvie, who'd been puffing on the weed, snorted and laughed, which made Cara laugh, and then both of them were laughing at him.

  “Sorry.” Livvie gasped. “Sorry, Micah...we're not laughing at you...but that was pretty funny.”

  “It wasn't.” Micah snatched the joint from Livvie's fingers. “Let me stupid up my brain, then maybe I’ll laugh.”

  “We should go there,” Livvie said.

  “Where?” Micah asked. “The movies?”

  “No, friggin' Cirque du Filet,” Livvie said. “The waitresses dress like acrobats and crap.”

  “It's too expensive,” Micah said. “And stupid. You just said it was lame.”

  “I'll pay,” Livvie said. “I got some good work this week. You can come too, Cara!”

  “Forget it,” Cara said. “I'm not eating circus meat.”

  “It's like a whole theme,” Livvie said. “Didn't you like the circus when you were a kid?”

  “No,” Micah said. “I hate clowns.”

  Livvie rolled her eyes. “We're going. I've been wanting to go.” She sucked down more pot. “We're so going.”

  ***

  They went on Saturday. It was usually Micah's busiest day at work, with at least four or five clients, but today he'd only had two. His cash shortage made going to Cirque du Filet seem like an even stupider idea, but Livvie insisted.

  The inside of the restaurant had big striped sheets billowing from the ceiling, as if they’d stepped into a giant tent. Life-size figurines shapes liked tigers, elephants and bears were scattered among the tables, and a carousel was parked in the middle of the room, with dining booths built into it. Calliope music played over the speakers. The floor was covered in crushed peanuts, and a man in a striped shirt and bowtie pushed a cart of cotton candy.

  “Welcome to Cirque du Filet!” yelled the girls at the hostess stand, who wore glittering acrobat's costumes and top hats. “It's the greatest steak on Earth!”

  “Do you have to say that every time?” Micah asked.

  “Two tonight?” one of the hostesses asked. She grabbed a pair of menus designed to look like circus posters. “Would you like to sit on the carousel?”

  “Um...” Micah said.

  “Definitely!” Livvie said.

  “Okay! Right this way!” the hostess chirped.

  Micah looked at Livvie, intending to roll his eyes, but Livvie followed the hostess across the confetti-painted floor and didn't look back. They sat in a curved booth on the outer edge of the carousel. A flat-screen TV mounted near their table showing jugglers in action.

  When the waitress came, Livvie picked a Daredevil Daiquiri from the specialty drink menu. Micah ordered water.

  “This is fun, don't you think?” Livvie asked. “It's nice to go out somewhere.”

  “Yeah, it's great.” Micah looked around the restaurant. The bar was a bright red semicircle illuminated by footlights. The bartenders followed some kind of sexy clown motif, the young men shirtless except for extra-wide suspenders hooked into oversized orange pants, the women in the same outfit except for a half t-shirt under the suspenders. All of them had big, bright, curly wigs and red clown noses.

  At the end of the bar, he saw his client, Mrs. Gafford, drinking from a fishbowl full of bright purple liquor festooned with paper parasols and streamers. She leaned over the bar, talking to one of the male clown-bartenders. She was rubbing the bartender's hand as she spoke, and he was smiling back at her.

  “That's Mrs. Gafford,” Micah said.

  “Who?”

  “One of my regulars. She wants a fling with a younger man, but not enough to act on it.”

  Livvie's drink arrived—another fishbowl, this one full of red liquid and decorated with plastic devil horns and pitchforks. She took a sip through the looping straw, then she turned and looked at Mrs. Gafford.

  “She looks ready to act on it,” Livvie said.

  “She didn't call to schedule her appointment for Monday.”

  “Maybe she forgot.”

  “I should remind her.”

  “She looks busy, Micah. Let's just enjoy our dinner.”

  “It'll only take a second. I'm starving for business.”

  Micah went to the bathroom first and washed his hands, so that he could pretend to notice Mrs. Gafford on the way out. He waved at her as he stepped out of the bathroom, but she didn't notice. Her eyes were on her bartender, who was mixing one of the restaurant's ridiculous large and over-decorated drinks.

  “How's it going, Mrs. Gafford?”

  “Oh. Micah. Hello.” She glanced at him, then resumed her drooling over the bartender. She was usually a gusher of excited babble, but she didn't seem too friendly tonight. Not to Micah, anyway.

  “Are you coming by on Monday?” Micah asked.

  “No, thanks.” Her eyes didn't move from the bartender's clown-orange pants.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  She sighed, and then finally made eye contact with him. “Your last reading was way off. You said I wouldn't meet anybody, but I did.”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy.” She pointed at the bartender. He turned at the sound of his name, smiled at her, then went back to work decorating a big blue drink with plastic sea lions.

  Micah's h
eadache began to return, and he rubbed his right temple. He hadn't foreseen anything like this. Maybe she was only flirting with the bartender, and wasn't going to hook up with him, and so Micah's subconscious had filtered it out.

  “Did you just meet him tonight?” Micah asked.

  “Last night. I had dinner here with my girlfriends,” she said. “While we waited for our table, we used that fortune teller machine outside. I asked the same question I asked you, but she told me this.” Mrs. Gafford lifted a small, parchment-colored card from her purse. It read:

  MADAM ROSETTA SAYS...

  Variety is the spice of life. New spices are on the way.

  “Then we came to the bar, and I met Jimmy.” She licked her collagen-injected lips. “When he gets off tonight...well, so do I.” She laughed and took a big slurp of her bubbling Freakshow Fizz, decorated with plastic mutant heads and floating olives designed to look like eyeballs.

  “I'm glad you seem happy.” Micah touched her shoulder and saw a flash of her near future—getting her brains screwed out on Jimmy's sticky kitchen counter, and then against his fridge, and then on his living room floor. “Wow. You're going to have a good time.”

  “I don't need a psychic to tell me that.” She pulled away from Micah's hand and locked her eyes on Jimmy.

  Back at the table, Livvie was eating a heaping basket of Clown Fries, which were tater tots slathered in strange red, white and orange sauces.

  “Get an appointment?” she asked.

  “No. She left me for Madam Rosetta.”

  “I think I'm getting the Monkey Burger,” Livvie said.

  ***

  After dinner, Livvie didn't walk to the parking lot, but into the covered courtyard where the side entrance of Cirque du Filet was located, as well as the front entrance of the movie theater, and a clothing store and a frozen-yogurt place.

  “Where are you going?” Micah asked.

  She stopped at the fortune teller machine, whose hand-painted-looking sign read MADAME ROSETTA. The machine itself looked like an antique china cabinet, only deeper. There was a beveled glass window at the front, but the red curtains inside it were closed.

  Beneath the window, there was a slot for change and a slit for dollar bills. There was also a silver button engraved with a question mark. Below this, a brass plate engraved with instructions.

  “'Insert one dollar,'” Livvie read. “'Ask question. Push button. Receive fortune.' Want to try?”

  “No,” Micah said. “Let's just go.”

  “Come on.” Livvie fished a dollar from her purse.

  “Livvie, don't.”

  “Don't what?” She fed the dollar into the machine.

  “Let's go.”

  “What should I ask? Madame Rosetta, is it true Micah and me will love each other forever?”

  “Don't ask that!” Micah said.

  “It's just a stupid machine.”

  “I don't know.” Micah rubbed his temple. “She keeps changing my predictions.”

  “But your prediction about us was right. We already know that.” They'd met six months earlier when Livvie came in for a reading. Micah had foreseen the two of them together for the rest of their lives, seeing much deeper into the future than he ever had. He told her what he saw. Luckily, she found it cute instead of freakish, and they'd been together since.

  “This feels wrong,” Micah said.

  “You're getting a total complex about this thing. Hey, Madam Rosetta, answer my question!” Livvie slapped the silver question mark button.

  The red curtains parted. A cheesy gypsy lady mannequin sat inside, her head wrapped in a beaded scarf, her fingers hung with gaudy costume jewelry. Her hands sat on black felt on either side of a crystal ball. A few Tarot cards were also scattered on the felt—the Magician, Death, the Devil.

  The crystal ball glowed, exactly as if a light bulb had been switched on inside it. Madam Rosetta's head leaned toward it, her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped open. At the same time, her hands waved up and down, doing nothing in particular except being animated. The sound of violins and clarinets—gypsy music, Micah supposed—played out of the speaker, which was brass and had the floral, flaring shape of an old phonograph amplifier.

  A parchment-colored card spat out, face-down, into a little tray on the side of the machine. Livvie reached for it, but Micah grabbed her wrist.

  “Just leave it,” Micah said.

  “You're going crazy, man.” Livvie pulled her wrist free and plucked up the card. She turned it over, and they both stared at it.

  MADAM ROSETTA SAYS...

  No.

  Livvie's brow creased as she frowned.

  “It's nothing,” Micah whispered. “Don't believe her. Livvie?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Livvie blinked and shook her head, as if she'd been momentarily hypnotized by the card. She dropped it in her purse. “Just a stupid machine, right? What does it know?”

  Madam Rosetta raised her head, and she seemed to stare right at them with her black and white mechanical eyes. Then the music stopped, the crystal ball went dark, and the curtains closed.

  ***

  Micah didn't have any clients on Monday, and only one on Tuesday.

  Tuesday night, he went home to find Livvie on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chin, her glazed eyeballs watching some rhinoceros mating show on public television.

  “What's up?” He sat and put his arm around her, but she was stiff and didn't budge. “Livvie?”

  “Hi, Micah.”

  “You don't look happy.”

  She shrugged.

  “Did something happen?” he asked.

  She drummed her fingers on the ripped knees of her jeans. When she spoke, her voice was soft: “What if she was right?”

  “Who?” Micah followed her glance to the coffee table, where the small card sat face-up. “Come on.”

  “I'm not kidding. I mean, you barely help with the bills, you know? And you're not getting any customers.”

  “Yeah. I've noticed.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “What's your plan for the future?”

  “You know I can't see my own future,” he said. “Except the flashes I get from you.” He rubbed her shoulder, but he wasn't getting any glimpses of the future from her at the moment. “I can see us together, happy, old--”

  “Can you see what kind of job you have? Or where we live? Or whether your shit's together or not?”

  “I can't see anything about myself, except that I'm with you.”

  She nodded.

  “I'll figure something out,” he said. “You can trust me. I love you, Livvie. Nothing matters more than that, right?”

  Livvie didn't say anything. On the TV, the male rhinoceros grunted and pulled out.

  ***

  Micah had two clients Wednesday, but only one on Thursday and none on Friday. He sat in front of his stupid sign in the Book Cauldron and smiled at the chubby browsers and punk high schoolers, none of whom looked like they had a hundred bucks to spare.

  Livvie was right. It was time to try finding a regular job. Not that there was much work in this Rust Belt carcass of a city.

  She wasn't home when he got there, and he ended up passing out on the couch, listening to a scratchy Ramones LP.

  He awoke much later when the front door banged open. Livvie stumbled in drunk and laughing. She toppled a skinny purple end table, and the lamp on top of it clattered to the thin carpet.

  A man's laughter followed her in, and she turned and stumbled into his arms. The guy was huge and steroid-popping muscular, with a shaved head and a goatee. He wore a black t-shirt, and he had bicep tattoos—one of the broken snake from that Don't Tread on Me flag, and the other of a biker with a blazing skull riding a motorcycle, a blatant Ghost Rider knockoff.

  He lifted her up, and she squealed.

  “Where's the bedroom, baby?” he asked.

  “Right there.” She pointed, and the man carried her to the door.

  “Hey, whoa,
” Micah said. He rubbed his eyes. “What's happening?”

  “Oops.” Livvie looked at the man holding her and giggled.

  “Oops,” the man said, and then his drunken laughter kicked in again, too.

  “Yeah.” Micah pushed himself up to a sitting position. “What?”

  “Mi-cahh...” Livvie sang. “I'm breaking up with you.” She did an exaggerated frown with her lower lip pooching out. “Sow-ry.”

  “When? Now?”

  “Earlier.” Livvie gazed into the tattooed guy's eyes. “At the bar. You just weren't there when I said it.”

  “Oh,” Micah said. “So...”

  “Yeah,” Livvie said. “I mean you can crash on the couch if you want. But Ashley and me are taking the bed.”

  “That's right, baby.” The huge guy carried her over the threshold, but then Livvie grabbed the doorframe, stopping them.

  “His name's Ashley?” Micah asked.

  “Oh, wait!” Livvie kicked Ashley's behemoth thighs a couple times as she wormed free of his arms. “Micah!”

  “Yeah?” Micah stood up, ready for her to stumble into his arms, hug him tight, puke, and pass out.

  But she didn't.

  “Remember I told you about that giant eagle tattoo?” she asked. “Look. Look at this.” She tugged up the back of the man’s t-shirt.

  “Aw, yeah, check 'er out, man.” Ashley pulled off his shirt and threw it over the armchair. Then he flexed his arms and posed as if he'd entered a bodybuilding pageant. A bald eagle spread from one shoulder to the other, its tail feathers and talons reaching almost to his butt cheeks. The feathers all turned red, white, or blue at the tips, and the eagle fired a plume of bright green gas out its beak.

  “Wait,” Micah said. “So he's the...what's that eagle breathing out?”

  “Fuckin' chlorine gas, man,” Ashley said. “Ever seen what that shit does to a battlefield full of people? Talking about World War ONE, here. The original slaughterhouse.”

  “It's pretty bad?” Micah asked.

  “Hell yeah it's bad. Guys all--” Ashley made choking noises and stuck out his tongue while clawing at his own throat. “--and shit.”