***
THE CARD IS in the breast pocket of his jacket, right above his heart.
Duchess let him take it. He didn't ask why. He didn't ask why she looked at him with so much pity when he gently tucked it inside. He didn't ask why Salome gave him a hug as he left their little house. He didn't ask why David didn't even bother questioning Hadley about the tarot reading, and instead, led him outside of Molly and onto the curb, and started telling Hadley what was going to happen.
Betrayal, Hadley says, to himself. The word is heavy and bitter and it sits in his mouth like a burden. It sticks to his throat like glue.
He's supposed to be paying attention to whatever David's telling him, but he can't. He keeps reciting the word to himself like it's a mantra, like if he keeps repeating it long enough, it ceases to become a word at all, it ceases to lose meaning.
Betrayal, Hadley says to himself. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.
"—so there isn't much I can do," David is saying, "except watch how it pans out." He takes one last drag of cigarette and drops it onto the pavement, crushing it underfoot. He takes out a pack from his pocket, and plucks a fresh cigarette from it. "It'll get worse."
"At the rate you're smoking those things," Hadley says, "you might just kill yourself."
"What?" David says, absentmindedly.
"Those cigarettes. Are you trying to give yourself cancer?"
David smiles around the cigarette. "I thought you said you used to smoke."
"I smoked in the past," Hadley says. "I did it to impress girls."
David's smile grows wider. "Did it work?"
"Not really. Became sort of pretentious, after a while."
"Enjoy whatever you can, while you can," David says, offering a cigarette to Hadley. "Who knows what'll happen to you next?"
It sounds like a warning, despite the lighthearted manner in which he says it.
"Thanks," Hadley says, "but I'll pass."
"What kind of a white boy passes up on a chance to look like a pretentious jerk?"
A moment passes in comfortable silence. David watches cars and people pass by. Hadley watches the myriad of colorful signs made of cloth, fluttering in the breeze.
A couple of college students walk by, and David and Hadley both turn to look. They're tired, the college students, but they're loud, too. They're laughing and they're talking with each other at a hundred miles per hour and they pay no attention to anything else. It's like a vision of a future—a vision Hadley might not live to see, he realizes, if Duchess's cards are anything to go by.
They grow distant, and with them, their voices. David stares after them.
"Do you have any plans for Christmas Eve?"
Hadley blinks.
"Why?" Hadley asks.
"Me and some other people are throwing a little thing for Christmas. Eggnog. Christmas carols. What not." David says this all too casually, too easily. "Vic's gonna be there."
