Page 41 of The Cocktail Bar
“This magnificent being is telling you that you’ve been living a life that’s, well, not been too true to your higher self for quite some time. Seeing as you left the band and Hollywood behind to return to your hometown, that’s some pretty accurate picking, Alice.”
“Let’s see how the present follows it up then, shall we?”
Alice shifted her posture, upright, eager, ready to see what The Now had to say for itself – despite the fact this was all complete nonsense. Nothing more than beginner’s luck, even if Sheba’s knowing smile as she extended the fan across the table yet again, said otherwise.
Alice’s fingers weren’t so sure what to do this time, hovering back and forth as if she were a kid in one of those modern handmade ice cream parlours, dithering over Cookies and Cream, Mint Choc Chip and Bubble Gum. Finally, intuition had her reaching for the penultimate card on the far left. She didn’t dare tempt fate with an alternative procedure, and gently placed it face up on the silky table top once again without looking.
“Oh, looky-looky, what have we here?” Sheba couldn’t contain her excitement. “It’s only The Angel of Push and Pull.”
“I had no idea there were so many different types of angels.”
“Oh there are, you’d be surprised. Many are the commercial angel card packs who keep it all nice and romantic and spiritual with their phrasing, but a lot of the more practical angels that surround you are forgotten about. Take the Parking Angel for example. How many times have you called on him to help you find a car parking space? Exactly.”
Words escaped Alice and so she sat there, mute, wondering what the Angel of Push and Pull could possibly have to reveal to her.
“Any idea as to how you’d interpret this one in your current situation, Alice?”
It was all Alice could do in response to bite her lip and shake her head sideways.
“My instinct tells me this angel speaks of the drama centred round a man… I see him being pushed and pulled in two different directions… by two different females, as it happens, a bit like a tug of war. Except she who wins his heart will give up the resistance, let it be.”
Sheba pushed her half-moon glasses closer to her eyes and directed them at Alice, waiting for a response.
“Oh, okay,” Alice mumbled. Still, this could all be coincidental, she tried to convince herself. “Let’s just get on with this now, shall we? It’s late after all. I should be letting you get to sleep. I should be getting my own beauty sleep.”
“My darling, you could go a hundred years without needingthat. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a celestial being stay in one of my caravans,” she laughed, and then got serious again. “Now then: focus, breathe in and out. That was your present; we’re on to your all-important future next.”
“No pressure then.”
Alice made it snappier this time, almost tugging a whole cluster of cards in the process.
“Steady on, you are one eager beaver, aren’t you? If I have to take the whole of that heap into consideration, we’ll be here all night.”
She pushed the cards that ‘didn’t speak’ to her back into the pack, laid the final card upright once again and breathed deeply, her heart almost in her mouth as to the news she was about to witness.
“Will you just look at that, now isn’t this all quite something?” Sheba was a mathematician who’d finally sussed out the Riemann Hypothesis. “And here it ends… or shall we say begins… with the Angel of Twin Hearts.”
“Meaning?” Alice had taken to biting her nails.
“Meaning, my dear, the one who takes up space in yours is your true twin, your soul mate. Though another may attempt to come between you, love conquers evil, always. Maybe it won’t happen today, and maybe not tomorrow either, but from the one you are supposed to be with, you can never stay long apart.”
How uncanny was that? Sheba knew nothing of Georgina, well, at least Alice presumed not.
All of which pointed to that wonderful, wonderful mixology course. London couldn’t call for Georgina quickly enough.
