“It makes me nothing. That’s business.” Des lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke in my direction, like she wanted to blow me away. “And I believe the proper term would be madam. But really, what is this to you? Our big-time New York City girl? You must think this place is so small. Clara is small, to you. A project. A game to keep you busy until you get back to your ‘real life.’ Tell me that’s not true.”

Clara had told me that Des didn’t have any power to see into people the way that she did, but for someone without any psychic talents, she knew how to pin me, how to put me in my place. Was Clara a project? Was she, like the spa, like that night when we went upstairs with those two men, an experiment I was conducting? Something to give my life texture, a dinner party story I would tell one day. “The time I was sort of friends with an underage prostitute from Atlantic City. And get this: She was a psychic. She could see your deepest secrets. We got in some hairy situation together with these drunk guys from nowhere, Pennsylvania. And then we swam in the ocean in the dark.” No, I thought. That isn’t true. Making projects out of people was Matthew’s game, not mine.

“That’s not why I’m here. I … I … care about her.” I could smell the booze wafting out of Des’s pores, astringent and sharp. It filled me with fury. “Someone has to care about her, right?”

Des rolled her eyes. “Okay. What’s her name, then?”

“Her name?” I repeated dumbly. It took me a moment to even puzzle through what Des was asking me. At first it seemed like a trick, but as soon as I understood I could have smacked myself. Of course her name wasn’t Clara Voyant.

Des didn’t need to say anything else. She smiled and cut the deck of cards, turned the top one over for me to see. “The Devil.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” I looked at the card. The ugly blue-lipped creature had the tiny wings of a bat and the curved horns of a ram.

“Depends. Right side up, he means bondage, fear, addiction, materialism. Upside down, it means breaking free. What do you want to break free from, Lily? What’s holding you back?”

“I thought you said you were too hungover for a reading.”

She shrugged and, of course, that, too, reminded me of Clara. “The cards are just a tool. You don’t need to be a psychic to ask the right questions.”

“I’ve got to go. Will you tell Clara I stopped by? Tell her I’ll be at work tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Des said; the implied second half of her sentence seemed to be If I feel like it.