The Grift Read online

  Mrs. Golden was staring at her, waiting for her response. “I’ll do anything,” she had said, and Marina knew it was true. Everyone did whatever they needed to survive. She took a deep quiet breath. It was time to pull herself together. It was time to close the deal.

  “There is a way,” Marina said. “There is always a way.”

  Chapter 3

  The girl was beautiful, naked and covered with an array of brightly colored fresh sushi. She lay perfectly still on a banquet table in the middle of the huge living room without so much as a tremor of her lip or a twitch of her pale waxlike fingers to indicate she was made out of living flesh. From her own spot in the corner of the room, Marina had a clear view of the girl and the guests as they milled around the red silk-draped platform, using black lacquered chopsticks to remove packets of wrapped fish from their human platter. Marina could hear nervous giggles and noticed how the women hesitated, cautious about eating off a naked female body. The men were less tentative, choosing delicately wrapped salmon eggs from the leaves on the girl’s breasts. Some guests were less than graceful—or already drunk on sake and Japanese beer—and dropped their yellowfin tuna rolls on the floor or inadvertently poked their chopsticks into the girl’s thighs as they reached for the eel between her legs. Throughout all of it, the girl never moved or smiled or gave any indication that she inhabited her own skin. Marina wondered how much the girl was getting paid for her services and if that price was comparable to what Marina was getting paid to be the party’s psychic.

  Was it worth more to have people eat off your nude body or to provide a glimpse into the unknowable future? Marina couldn’t decide. Both were titillating in their own ways. Both played on the very human need to explore what was off-limits and mysterious. Marina thought her own services required more skill than those of the girl, but she wouldn’t have traded places with her, either. And it had to be somewhat difficult to find jobs doing this sort of thing. You couldn’t exactly print up a stack of business cards, as Marina had, and hand them out. That was the kind of talent people had to find by knowing where to look. Naked Sushi Girl was probably getting paid very well, Marina decided. After all, this party was being held in one of the wealthiest enclaves in a county that was already full of millionaires. It was exactly the place for such a pretentious and expensive shindig.

  In a way, serving naked sushi and providing a psychic seemed a bit like overkill, an ostentatious display of theme party one-upmanship. But ostentation itself seemed to be the theme of this event. Marina was sitting under an actual tent, which was designed to look as if it had come out of a Depression-era carnival. There was straw at her feet, a round table covered with velvet and an extremely tacky crystal ball that Marina had surreptitiously stashed behind her brocaded chair. The living room of this mansion was so large that the tent fit comfortably, even looked as if it might belong there. At least nobody had asked her to wear gold hoop earrings and a head scarf to complete the tableau. Marina had been hired by a party planner and had barely spoken with the hostess, the lavishly named Madeline Royal. It was a holiday party, the planner had explained, but sushi and psychics had nothing to do with Christmas or even the New Year. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Clearly Madeline Royal had plenty of ready cash with which to impress her guests. Rich people were easily bored. It was why they had these kinds of parties in the first place.

  Marina had never liked parties and had never opted to host one of her own. They were predictably unpredictable. Someone would have a fight; someone would throw up, pass out or break something. Parties always brought trouble of some kind; that was the predictable part. What form the trouble would take was the surprise.

  Marina might have felt differently if she’d had any positive experiences to draw from, but as a child she’d had precious few parties of her own to celebrate birthdays or other childhood passages. When her mother would emerge from her stupors or benders for long enough to remember she had a kid and try to organize such events, they ended up being wildly inappropriate affairs filled with adults and drugs and missing key elements like cake or other children. So Marina had never associated parties with fun, a critical disconnect that persisted even when she was long past the age of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Many of the parties Marina had experienced were, in fact, tinged with darkness.

  It was at a party—a completely different scene than the one going on around her now—when her mother first realized that Marina could be useful. Marina’s memories of that night were thick with the dirty haze of smoke that had blanketed the scene. She was seven or eight, dressed up in thrift-store red velvet and big gold earrings. Her ears hurt from the piercings, done by her mother’s boyfriend, Rafe, a wiry tattoo artist covered in ink. They hadn’t left the posts in long enough and hadn’t sterilized them, either, and Marina’s ears throbbed with the infection. Her mother put her at the kitchen table, surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and a bottle of Jack, and slapped a worn deck of tarot cards in front of her. There were traces of white lines on the brown Formica table. The room was full of ugly strangers, men and women alike.

  “Go ahead,” her mother had said to the group at large. “Test her out. This kid can tell the future, I’m not joking. Go on—let her read your cards, your hand, whatever.”

  Marina knew to be quiet and give her mother what she wanted. In this case, it wasn’t difficult. When they came up to her, glassy-eyed with bent smiles, all she had to do was look at them. Even at that age, Marina knew how to read body language. Not that she considered this any kind of great feat. How difficult was it to see sadness in a pair of eyes that were red from crying, or to recognize fear in trembling fingers and tightly crossed arms? Marina just had to pay attention to what she was seeing and then feed it back with words. And these early fortune seekers were generally so wasted that they didn’t know any better anyway. A little girl in a red velvet dress twiddling the Judgment card in her hand was a cosmic experience for them. Marina didn’t like being the center of attention (bad things happened when adults started looking at you too closely), but she liked the feeling of power those early sessions gave her. She couldn’t understand why adults were stupid enough to be awestruck over something that even a child could do, but for a while, it gave her a feeling of safety.

  Soon after that, Marina’s mother started to make them pay. Her young daughter became a profitable side business for them, reading tarot cards or palms and eventually astrology. Marina had always understood her mother’s desire to extract a quick buck from wherever she could find it, but what she would never know was whether her mother actually believed in the product she was selling. Sometimes, in the midst of a reading, Marina would sense a sort of controlled nervousness from her mother that didn’t have anything to do with her usual drug-induced jitteriness, as if she’d discovered her daughter playing with live ammunition. At some point, Marina realized that her mother was worried that the fraud would be discovered and that she’d lose her new source of income. It made Marina panicky to think what would happen if she became useless to her mother and so she was spurred to do better, to act even more like the psychic prodigy she wasn’t. This was also why she hadn’t complained—not voiced even a murmur of dissent—when her mother had instructed Rafe to give her daughter that tattoo.

  Marina had lain facedown, naked, on a filthy couch while Rafe made a permanent painting of the twelve signs of the zodiac between her shoulders and the top of her buttocks. It was astonishing if you thought about it; her back was so small that there was barely enough room to contain all the symbols. But Rafe (the closest thing she’d ever had to a father figure—her own father had been killed in a motorcycle accident when she was too young to remember) had somehow managed it, working off a sheet showing the various symbols with their crosses, lines and circles. It had taken so long and it had hurt so much. Even now, she could feel the pain of the needle piercing her back.

  Marina squeezed her hands into tight fists until the pain of her digging fingernails pushed aside the memory of
Rafe’s needle. She couldn’t allow herself to drift, to remember things that would only serve to make this night longer and her work harder. She looked out into the living room again, forcing the thoughts out of her mind.

  The cluster of people thickened around the platform and Marina lost sight of the girl. She leaned back in her chair and idly shuffled her tarot cards. She checked her watch. She was scheduled to start at 8 P.M., in exactly ten minutes. Money or not (and she was getting paid well for this effort), Marina hoped this was the last party she’d have to work. There was something cheap and tawdry about being a psychic for hire at a party, and everybody knew it. Psychics at the top of their game didn’t need parties or 900 numbers to generate cash and clients. But Marina was still new to California, and although she’d made the most of the last few months, she still needed a wider base of steady clients with deep pockets. For now, there was no better place than this house to find them.

  As a way of passing the time, Marina tried to calculate the net worth of the revelers, but it was beyond her powers of estimation. There were dozens of people wandering around, yet the house was so massive it didn’t even appear crowded. It was hard to believe that there were only two people living here, Madeline and her husband. While keeping her instructions brief and the small talk to a minimum, the party planner had let slip that the house had been built—almost literally—on a foundation of gold and gems. The husband was the founder and CEO of Royal Rings, a huge West Coast engagement ring franchise that, with the help of the Internet, was moving eastward at a brisk pace.

  Marina’s hand wandered unbidden up to her chest as she thought about Royal Rings, her fingers touching the chain on which her own ring hung and then moving down to the ring itself, feeling the sharp edges of the gold and the deep red gem inside it. It had been four months since she’d first put it on and she hadn’t taken it off since. She felt a slight twinge of guilt—not for having it or wearing it, because she’d actually been implored, almost forced, to take it—because she knew she’d made herself very hard to find. Returning the ring, which she had every intention of doing someday, would therefore happen on her own timetable. That was the part she hadn’t exactly made clear to anybody when she’d left Florida.

  “Hey there. I’m a little early. Thought I’d beat the crowd. You mind?”

  Marina smiled at the tall, dark-haired man creeping into her tent. He was wearing a hundred-dollar T-shirt, jeans that probably cost twice that and a black designer sport jacket. All three items flattered his well-but not excessively muscled form in the way that only the most expensive clothes can. His tan, just a shade or two darker than the permanent glow of most southern Californians, was rich and flawless. His features, Marina thought, were fairly close to perfect as well. She noted this as an art lover might admire a particularly lovely painting without any desire to possess it. Marina felt no personal attraction to this man, who was in any case gay—something else Marina had observed immediately and filed accordingly.

  “Come in,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get started.”

  “I’m Cooper,” he said, and he took a seat opposite her at the small table. Marina saw his eyes move to her chest, which perplexed her for only a second until she realized that he was staring at her ring. Swiftly, she tucked it back inside her shirt and reached out to shake his offered hand. It was large, with strong fingers and a moist palm, and she could feel his nervousness in their brief touch.

  “Marina,” she said. In her peripheral vision she noticed another man, slight, with thinning blond hair, hovering near the entrance to the tent and trying to appear as if he wasn’t looking in. Cooper glanced at him quickly and turned back to Marina. They knew each other, but neither acknowledged it. Sometimes, Marina mused, her work was almost too easy.

  “Some party, huh?” Cooper asked. There was too much lightness in his tone. He was covering something, Marina thought.

  “It does seem pretty elaborate,” she agreed.

  “This whole thing with the naked sushi,” Cooper said, gesturing in the general direction of the buffet, “is so trendy right now. People think it’s some kind of ancient Japanese ritual, that they’re being all authentic, but it isn’t. It’s called nyotaimori—means like, naked woman on a plate or something. It’s what the Yakuza—you know, Japanese organized crime?—what they do for fun. It’s prostitution, basically. Sort of. Also, it’s kind of disgusting, even if she is totally clean and hairless. Can’t imagine how she got every strand of hair out—must be some kind of magic hot wax she’s got going.” Cooper drew a long breath and Marina smiled pleasantly at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I tend to talk really fast when I get nervous.”

  “Why are you nervous?” Marina asked.

  “Because you’re psychic,” Cooper said. “I’m assuming you can see all my secrets.”

  “And I can see that you’ve nothing to be nervous about,” she said warmly. “Only people with evil in their hearts have reason to be nervous.”

  “So I’m one of the good guys?” Cooper laughed. “You can tell that, huh? There are probably people who would disagree with that, you know.”

  “Really?” she asked him. “Do you believe that?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You see? No need to worry,” Marina said. “Do you have a specific question or would you like me to read the cards?”

  Cooper looked at the tarot cards on the table and sighed. “Actually, the cards scare me a little,” he said. “Can we do something else?”

  “All right,” Marina said. “Why don’t you give me your hands? Just relax; it’s okay.”

  Cooper made a show of wiping his palms on his expensive jeans before taking a long theatrical breath and laying his hands on the table. Marina clasped them in hers and closed her eyes. She felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the man sitting opposite her, but she tamped it down. He didn’t seem to be in any worse shape than the vast majority of the moneyed and overly privileged people who had time to attend a party like this. Shake it off, she told herself, and move on.

  “Congratulations,” she said, opening her eyes after a few moments.

  The corner of Cooper’s mouth turned up in a little half-smile. “Really?” he asked. “Congratulations on what?”

  “You’re in love,” Marina said, allowing him a small smile of her own. Cooper raised one dark eyebrow skeptically. “Not so sure that’s a reason to congratulate me,” he said.

  “Maybe not in other circumstances,” Marina said. “You’ve been in love before. But this time it’s the real thing for you. When that happens—when the heart opens so widely—it’s always a cause for celebration.”

  “Well, I suppose you have a point there,” Cooper admitted. “But the course of true love—”

  “Never does run smooth,” Marina finished for him. “And so it is now. The man you love…” She trailed off, waiting for the assent in Cooper’s eyes. It wasn’t long in coming.

  “Is it that obvious?” he asked her. There was resignation but also a bit of defiance in his voice.

  “No,” Marina said, and gave him a moment to process this. “But my job is to see what isn’t obvious.”

  “Of course it is,” Cooper said. “So? The man I love is what?”

  “He’s not free,” Marina said. “He’s tied to another person or…another ideal. Still, he’s attached to you. But there is something he’s hiding. He is in a trap of his own making.”

  “Yes,” Cooper said. Then, his voice calmer, “That’s exactly right.” He stole another glance through the tent’s entrance, where Marina could see the blond man shifting around with a plate of sushi he wasn’t eating. “He thinks…” Cooper seemed to catch himself and trailed off. Marina was familiar with this as well. People either opened up completely when they sat down at her table or they forced themselves to clam up and make her prove her psychic worth. But the skeptics always wound up being the biggest believers.

  “He thinks you are the one with the problem,” Marina
finished for him. “That’s how out of touch he is with himself.”

  Cooper’s face softened, moisture forming in the corners of his eyes. “I’ve told him that,” he said. “I’ve said those very words. It’s like you pulled them out of my head.” He paused. “You know, he asked me to come here with him. Madeline and Andrew aren’t even my friends. Well, I guess technically they are now, but anyway, the point is he asked me to come here with him and now he won’t even talk to me. He’s acting as if he doesn’t even know me.”

  “Yes,” Marina said. “This man will be your biggest challenge. There is a struggle ahead for you and him both.”

  “But what can…what should I do?” Cooper asked.

  Before Marina could answer, a young woman holding a glass of plum wine entered the tent. “Oh, sorry,” the woman said, although she clearly wasn’t. “I didn’t know anyone was in here. We’re lining up out there.” She gestured to the tent entrance with the hand holding the wine, splashing some of it on the straw. “Oops. Okay, sorry—again. I’ll just go wait.” She half stumbled back out, and Marina could see a queue was indeed forming. Marina heard laughter and the clinking of glasses.

  “Well, I guess we’re done,” Cooper said with a sigh.

  “It’s difficult to get too far in such a short time,” Marina said, smiling. “That’s the problem with these kinds of…meetings.”

  “Do you think you can help me?” Cooper stood up and fixed Marina with a look that beseeched and denied her at the same time.

  “I think I can help you help yourself,” Marina said, handing him one of her business cards. “You don’t need to be rescued.”