“What was he like?”
“Old, Tibetan-looking. He’s the doorman here, sees that no one who shouldn’t be here gets in—or stays too long, at any rate.” He had a rough-hewn way of speaking, and the tenses he used often didn’t make sense. But his manner was so direct, his confidence so weighty, that this lack of grammar went almost unnoticed.
Fleur became a little flustered, and Colin sensed the atmosphere about her change. He leaned forward and picked up the single stem of freesia in its tall glass which Vanella—frugal with her housekeeping—had noticed was not withered and set in its own vase.
Colin casually related the path of her life, reading from the characteristics of the single stem. Having laid his metaphysical credentials on the table, he replaced the vase and said, “A flower reading for Fleur.”
His subject was astonished by the accuracy with which he had reviewed her past, and she sat extremely still. The Wiz paused for a moment, and when he began speaking, the words were intermittent, as though relaying a message from someone on a telephone. He told her that, befitting a house under the influence of five (the sum of the numbers on Fleur’s front door), there had been many social activities, but much loneliness also. This was hard for her, but could be good—good for growth. Yet it had to be understood—that is to say, viewed—differently. There was going to be an occasion—not soon, later; next year, in summer—an auspicious gathering. A full moon close to the Earth, a special moment in the stars for two souls who were trying—longing—to come together. Something was owed to them. It could be repaid between sunset and sunrise, but they needed an appropriate place to meet. When Colin stopped speaking, Fleur still didn’t move. The atmosphere thickened, and beams of sunlight working through the louvre doors created a staircase of light, each step a swirling mass becoming invisible as it passed into shadow. With her head resting against the padded back of her chair, and eyes slightly out of focus, Fleur perceived, correctly, that the atmosphere around her was teeming with life.
The sailor eyes of the star reader were also out of focus, but he was seeing altogether different things. He rubbed the space between his eyebrows with his middle finger and said, “If we take consideration for the moment of your birth—eleven o’clock today, thirty-nine years ago—a message all your own was written in the sky. Like Fata Morgana, it appears and disappears. We have said ‘written’ because it is written and—as nothing ever actually disappears, as every spoken word and every feeling re-echoes forever under this here canopy we call the universe—so the positioning of the planets on their motorways across the heavens were fixated in a matrix of the precise moment baby Fleur entered this physical plane. And from the situation of these silent masses, we contrive a symbolical insight into the ‘major’ for this lifespan.”
He then went on to explain to Fleur that a ‘major’ is much the same as that created upon college entry. She had chosen her place, time and date of birth, parents, marital partners, and people around her as much for the problems their nearness would present, as for the pleasures given by them. In truth, it was from the difficulties brought by these interpersonal frictions that her greatest experiences and toughest tests would emerge and therefore the highest ‘earning points’.