The Madame Hour
I wish you the best and only the best
As Tara walks through downtown Manhattan, she finds herself not knowing what to think about, so she thinks about Love Escapades. In the most recent episode, Lucy is stuck in a love triangle with Ben and Tom. Lucy told Ben he was special, that her head would not be turned, but then she said she was keeping her options open. Getting to know Tom, she explains. Ben says “he’s stolen Lucy from me!” and he sounds so hurt, even though they have known each other for a week. But as Lucy says, time moves differently on Love Escapades, and knowing someone for a week is like knowing them for a few months, and telling them you will not get your head turned is like dating for six months.
This is the episode that inspires Tara to find love and to finally turn away from her ex, Steven. Tara is walking past SING SING Karaoke, except that both the G letters on the neon pink sign are out. The nighttime street does not feel like the villa from Love Escapades on her television screen.
Here and now is where she meets Derek. Tara and Derek exchange awkward greetings and a halfhearted hug which Derek intends to be a loose handshake. As Tara and Derek walk into the neighboring fortune teller’s store as they had previously planned, the doorbell chimes. The stuffy room is dark with dim purple Christmas lights lining the ceiling and a single lamp in the corner. A vintage poster of a water fairy stares from the wall at a velvet cloaked table with a covered crystal globe and a deck of cards. The last thing one would notice is Madame, whose tan face is shrunken into a dark cloak. It would be easier to notice the permeating scent of roses, or the grand clock on the wall, or the cluttered bookcases in the corner, or anything else in the curious and tightly packed space.
Tara jumps when she sees the elderly woman’s beady eyes. “Shit!” she says, holding on to Derek. “She’s actually in here.”
“Where else would I be?” Madame responds with a toothy grin.
“Well, uh…” Tara says.
“We saw the sign outside and are interested in a ten-dollar reading,” Derek clarifies.
“An eighty-dollar one, actually,” she says. Derek suppresses a snort but the sound escapes anyway. “The comprehensive couple’s one.”
Madame reaches over to the table and pulls a pair of thin, rounded silver spectacles onto her face, examining the pair patiently.
“A nonbeliever,” she says, looking at Derek. “No worries. Please, have a seat,” she gestures towards the two empty chairs across from her, upholstered with green velvet purchased straight out of a thrift store. Derek gives Tara a look and then shrugs, sitting down in the hot room, fanning himself with his hand. Tara joins him gingerly.
“You have been together for a long time,” Madame says. “Since your very young days.”
“We actually just met on an app last week,” Derek quips smugly. It’s true. They had both swiped right on each other on Tinder or Bumble or Hinge; it is hard to remember the difference these days. Derek is, to put it frankly, looking for a quick fuck, and Tara is looking for love, so Derek masks his objective to reach his goal by the end of their date. Derek almost regrets bothering, but this moment of righteousness changes his mind. Perhaps he will get to toy with Madame, and what’s an eighty dollars he would have spent making bland conversation over dinner anyway? This way he would not even have to put forth the effort. Oh, but the steak he could be eating right now!
“You will be together for a long time,” Madame recovers assertively. Her cold read is not going as she had hoped. Business had been hard lately. Perhaps she was losing her touch. Or perhaps she never had a touch to begin with. She was not sure which, but she liked to dwell on the former.
“I can see that,” Derek says, feigning a soft smile at Tara. In reality, the smile comes out strained, but Tara is not looking anyway. Madame takes note, not entirely sure what to make of the interaction.
“The comprehensive includes a five-card tarot reading,” Madame picks up her new Ryder Waite deck of cards–she had dropped the old one in a puddle the other day on her way to work. The cards are cold in her sweaty hands. She shuffles expertly and lays out the cards, instructing Tara to pick three and Derek to pick two. She quietly lays out a five-card spread on the table and then pauses to queue up the quiet instrumental music on her phone to fill the silence. In the darkness, Derek rolls his eyes. Nobody notices.
“The Eight of Cups reversed,” Madame announces, flipping the center card. The lights barely illuminate the image, casting it in a cloak of purple. Tara squints at the depiction, trying to make cosmic sense of it.
“Interesting,” Madame whispers dramatically. Her clients usually like an air of mystery and contemplation around the ritual.
“What is it?” Tara and Derek ask, one with curiosity and the other with irritation.
Madame looks Derek squarely in the eye and says, “you’re giving up on a relationship too soon. Maybe it is referring to–yes, it is referring to this date! If this date does not go as expected, perhaps you should have a second date and persevere, even if at first you feel no chemistry.”
Derek rolls his eyes. Fat chance, there is no chance of a second date with this bland, awkward, astrology-believing woman. She is really hot though, so perhaps? The card and its advice on persevering could be better applied to Derek’s current marriage, but he has no intention of mentioning this.
Eloise from Season 2 cheats on her boyfriend in the show, Jarrod. She says that Michael treats her more like a woman. She says that she is here to find love, and what if she does not find the best possible lover she can while on the show? Why should she settle? If someone else catches her eye, surely her previous boyfriend was not a good enough fit for her? She tells Jarrod this when they enter the honeymoon suite for a getaway, after sex, as they are soaking in the hot tub. He is quiet for a moment. He then gathers himself and screams at her, piercing the tense silence, a fit worthy of a reality television show. She is a cheating slut, a whore, a liar, you name it. And then he storms out and tells the house what has happened, leaving a crying Eloise soaking in her probably-Gucci bikini amongst bubbles. She gets voted out of the house, but when she leaves, she has this to say: “I feel free because I don’t have to pretend anymore. And it’s okay that it happened in a messy way, but I’m free now.”
This is the episode that inspires Derek to cheat and to finally explore women (or sex with women) other than his wife, Melissa. In other words, giving up is freeing. And he has many reasons to give up.
Madame observes Derek, “this is resonating with you.”
“What are you talking about? I love how this date is going,” he feigns a smile. Especially if he gets a quick fuck out of it at the end. Maybe fucking another woman will get what Melissa said out of his system: “Do you still want me?”
“Eight of Swords.” Madame looks at Tara. “You are in a prison of your own making.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are holding yourself back with a mental block.”
Tara had listened to the same song for weeks, wondering whether Steven thinks of her or not, how he is doing with his new girlfriend. Sometimes when she feels particularly intensely about him, she makes timelines in her head.
It would probably take them another month to break up, and then she can contact him a month later, and then they will be friends for a month and then date again. If he just follows her plan, it will all be OK. Because she cannot accept that he’s really gone. Just like when Lucy leaves Ben for Tom and does not look back. A girl in a bar bathroom told her this last week when she was crying in a stall, alone: “He’s really gone, girl. Just like Tom on Love Escapades. He’s not coming back and you can do so much better than some loser like that.”
He is really gone. She wanted someone to slap that into her, to hit her over the head and say he has moved on and that he is not coming back, ever. It is really over. But when she tries to fathom hatred for him all she can find is love. It is harder when he is not a villain, and despite her efforts, she sees villainy only in herself.
The classical music picks up in a dramatic violin riff. The next card is the Three of Cups. “Both of you have great communication skills. You are unusually clear and honest about your intentions on this date. You’re going to be in love and be together until your last days.”
I will spoil this reading for you: Madame has no psychic touch. The chemistry in the room has done nothing to indicate that they will even go on another date, but Madame is thinking of her own love and projecting, hard.
Madame’s love is dead. He passed away a few years ago in a drunk driving accident. Madame has consulted the tarot repeatedly, trying to make sense of the past and the present and the future, but has found no answers. Perhaps this is why she lost her touch. Because she stopped believing in order and reason and started believing in chaos. The truth is that she threw them in the puddle, sick of their false predictions, ready to buy a new deck that is not infused with her toxic energy. A deck that may finally tell her what she wants to hear. Maybe that there is an afterlife, maybe that there is another love out there for her, or maybe, despite herself, that the entire thing is a joke like death-faking on crime television shows.
“The Tower, Inverted,” Madame says with a flourish of her hands and a thoughtful look on her face. Derek is getting impatient and staring at Tara’s breasts in the purple light, lustful. “There will be an opportunity to rise from chaos.”
Derek knows what kind of opportunity he wants from his chaos already, and we already know what Tara wants. But what of Madame? Perhaps the psychic readings say more about the reader than they do about the ones whose fortunes are being told. In every reading, there is a touch of the personal. In Madame’s early days, she used to take this responsibility seriously. Now she thinks that her craft is bullshit.
Madame catches herself wondering if she should warn Tara rather than lead her astray. If she should say ‘he is full of shit’ instead of telling her that he is an opportunity in the chaos. She knows that Tara is struggling: it is evident in her expression and the way she is so anxious to hear what the future holds. People come in to get psychic readings for two reasons: as a joke or as a serious plea for something different. But today, Madame feels cruel and does not care if Tara learns for herself that Derek wants nothing with her.
The Emperor, Inverted: “A misuse of power is taking place,” Madame says, inadvertently losing the mysterious intonation of her voice as her thoughts give way to introspection. The one who cares less has the most power in the relationship. The one seeking a hookup, not the one opening themself up to love, to falling completely with no guards in place. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. In Tara’s case, Steven had moved on long before the breakup. He found a new girl, a new job, a new city, a new life. But Tara is in the same apartment, in the same job, and in love with the same man a year later.
She had drunk-called him last night for the first time in a year. When it went to voicemail she does not remember what she said, only that she got this text the next day: I am in a happy relationship and it’s been a year so please don’t fucking contact me again, blocked. It was just like when contestants get texts from the showrunners telling them what is going to happen, except that the message is heartbreaking, like an elimination.
Derek decides that he does not have the power in his relationship, and perhaps this date is an attempt to claim it. But he will not change his actions based on this realization. Not when Tara’s boobs are popping out of her new little black dress like this.
Derek shuffles his feet as Tara continues to contemplate the cards and whether she should or should not pursue Derek. The classical music slows down as the three sit in silence, preoccupied.
Madame had been watching an old episode of Love Escapades the night before. Giselle hates when Izzy moves into the house. All the boys love her, especially Caleb, whom Giselle has had her eyes on since the beginning. Giselle pulls Caleb aside for a chat and he tells her I’m sorry and that I’m interested in getting to know Izzy, but I’m ok with keeping my options open if you still want to talk. But Caleb eventually settles down with Izzy into a comfortable couple, and Giselle cries on the balcony. She decides to leave the house. She tells Caleb that he’s an asshole and that she wishes him the best, just the best, and only the real best. It does not sound sincere. Madame understands what it feels like to be angry, to be left behind, to be bitter, even if it was not by any actions her lover had taken. Sometimes, on her dark nights, she cusses him out. How fucking dare he leave her and she hopes that he is rotting in the depths of hell.
“I wish you the best, just the best, and only the real best,” Madame says, “and that concludes our reading,” to Tara. “Venmo at the account information on this card.” Madame taps off the music on her phone and the Bluetooth speakers disconnect as she signals that they should leave her to her peace now that the transaction is complete.
*
His head’s turned. We’re just having chats. He’s just getting to know her. The massive pool in front of the villa where the contestants sit all day in bikinis swims through Tara’s mind. She does not know what to think about so she thinks about the neon pink ‘SING SING karaoke’ sign with its dead Gs, and the song she has been listening to for weeks on end, practically always on loop.
Derek is in the bathroom of her small, cluttered, overpriced studio apartment. She does not want roommates, has not wanted any company whatsoever since the breakup. Tara is staring at Derek’s wedding band, which lies on the floor, glinting in the dim lighting. Unbeknownst to him, it fell out of his pocket. She kicks it under the bed as the toilet flushes behind the door. It will stay under the bed, she decides, as she considers her options.
Her head is spinning with the choice. The neon sign, again. A five-card spread in the purple light, each card a decision, a prophecy. Madame’s words in a dramatic stage whisper. A prison of your own making. A mental block. Opportunity from chaos. The bright blue of the pool water on Love Escapades as the contestants dive in bikinis, laughing–the bright green of Ben’s envious voice. Madame’s words again: an abuse of power is happening. What to do? Pursue love or give up on every notion of it entirely, just for one night, just to be free of the exhausting loneliness of wanting, of needing so badly to be loved?
Derek walks out of the bathroom, a grin on his face as he walks towards her and kisses her passionately before she has a chance to think. She has not been kissed like this since Steven. It feels wrong, but she continues in hopes that it will feel right. SING SING. She will never see Derek again, she tells herself. The ring on the floor is his business, not hers. Despite herself, as he holds her passionately, pushing her against the wall, she lets go of something. Of the expectation of love, of anything, from anyone. She kisses him back as hard as she can.
Derek has not had a kiss like this in a long time either. On Love Escapades, the villa of contestants plays a game. The men are blindfolded and the women take turns kissing each one of them, getting ratings for their skills. Harry, in a couple with Melinda, knows he must rate her to be the best kisser. But he gives the wrong girl a 10, and Melinda a 5. Melinda cries, “it’s me, you asshole! I scratched your neck lightly like I always do to let you know it was me. Fuck you for saying I’m a bad kisser and–” and he says, “but I really thought she was you! I didn’t mean to upset you!”
As Derek experiences a 10, he cannot foresee himself returning to a 5. Intimacy is a funny thing that way. It can be nonexistent but still feel heartbreakingly real for a night by the touch, the lips, and the eyes. Derek’s body can lie to Melissa about his passion but he does not have to lie to Tara.
I feel free because I don’t have to pretend anymore. Derek holds Tara like he used to hold Melissa, looking at Tara so tenderly that for a moment she is convinced he loves her already, that they will be together forever. These are the games that they can both play in their minds to find something in the night. These are the lies that make life liveable for now.
Derek does not leave immediately afterward. They turn on the television, holding each other tightly, and watch what Tara already has on: Love Escapades. Tara turns on a random episode of a random season. They will hold each other for the whole night and see each other again and again and again, they each tell themselves in a fleeting moment of weakness. At this moment, Madame is watching the same episode from her phone in her cluttered store while waiting for another customer. The three hear the following together:
“I’m sorry, Ben. My head is turned. I can’t do this anymore, I’m so sorry.”
Madame’s Song
Bookish Quote
“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” ― Chuck Palahniuk | Invisible Monsters