“Hey, Buddy,” I said to the cat. After the briefest hesitation, I reached out to pat his head. Silky soft, solid and warm. No glow, either.

I was heartened. Glad I’d taken the risk of touching him.

He meowed again, and knocked down all three Tarot cards with one swipe of his tail.

I left the Queen, the Page and Death where they lay. I’d studied them half the night, along with their corresponding chapters in The Damn Fool’s Guide to the Tarot, with a sensation of dread in the pit of my stomach the whole time. I was still in the dark. I didn’t know much about the symbology, but I did know that Lillian always read them intuitively, without recourse to books. She’d told me once that Tarot cards were like little windows into the psyche; you just had to learn the language of the subconscious mind.

Since the day was already underway, whether I wanted to go along for the ride or not, I decided I’d better jump aboard. Do something constructive, like eat and make coffee.

The phone rang as I entered the kitchen, Chester prancing twitchy-tailed behind me, and I picked up the cordless receiver and opened the refrigerator door simultaneously. It’s a mobile age, all about multitasking.

“Yo,” I said.

“Yo,” Greer mocked, with a peaky smile in her voice. “That’s a fine way to answer the telephone. What if I’d been one of your doctor clients? You certainly would have made a businesslike impression.”

Greer cared a lot about impressions. Interesting, since Lillian and I had found her in a bus station in Boise, Idaho, when I was nine and Greer was barely thirteen, working the waiting room in an effort to cadge enough money to buy a meal at the seedy lunch counter. She’d been wearing tight hip-hugger jeans that cold winter day, I recalled, along with a fitted black leather jacket, a blue Mohawk, a fat lip and an attitude.

Now, she was married to a famous plastic surgeon; she’d become the classic Snottsdale wife, with a tasteful blond pageboy, winsomely brushing her gym-fit shoulders, an Escalade and enough jewelry to add ten pounds to her weight on any given day.

“Thanks for the timely vocational pointer,” I said, reaching for the milk carton standing lonely on the top shelf of the fridge and taking a cautious sniff. I flinched, dumped the stuff in giant curds into the sink and tossed the carton. The water made a decisive whooshing sound as I washed the works down the drain. “If Alex told you to call about his Medicare billings, you can tell him I already e-mailed them to the office. And I’m not altering the codes.”