Queen of Hearts

CHELSEA COMEAU

I was reading someone’s fortune the other day in a Walmart parking lot with a deck of playing cards from a Las Vegas gift shop, patterned on the back with women dressed in tassels and floss. We stood around her Volvo while she chain-smoked Marlboros, drank cola from a red can that wept with condensation.

Usually, there’s nothing to it. Everyone is in some sort of pain and the cards will always tell you that.

Jesus, I said when I turned one over.

The woman smashed her third smoke against the hood of her car, left a streak of dark ash behind, and stepped slowly onto the Coke can until it turned into a hockey puck. Some crows pulled apart a paper bag in the parking stall beside us, shone black-blue with grease and feather in the sun.

The queen of hearts, I shook my head. That’s some fucked-up shit.

Tell me about it, she said.