The Tiger at His Throat

If your handle is Stardust Woman, it makes sense that your destiny would be to die in a plane crash at LAX. Maybe that’s how Finch came up with his whole prediction thing, the thing he told Stardust Woman at Corinth after his shift. The prediction that got us all into this mess.

Finch started working at Corinth as an essence mixology apprentice in 2021 right when things really opened up again. He had this drag act that I guess pulled crowds at some point, because he said he had an alien of extraordinary ability visa, but I never really understood why he couldn’t have just done his little act in Vancouver. He said he wanted to be an influencer, but, like, come one, everyone says that, especially behind the bar at Corinth where we serve elixirs to the gods. Maybe he came to La for the warm weather. But the sun is going to ruin his freckled skin.

So, I was the hostess, hostex in my case, we joked, at Corinth when Finch started working there, and he quickly became a soul twin to me, although I don’t believe he ever saw or accepted the cosmic bond between us. As the queers on staff, we bonded over joints after our shifts, and soon, Finch moved into my apartment when one of my roommates moved back to Pennsylvania, poor thing.

Stardust Woman was one of those influencers who breezed in on her own aura but never asked for a discount in exchange for posting one of our soul-quenching drinks or smoothie bowls to her stories. Her thing was divine feminine in nature, or OnlyFans, probably both, so she traveled a lot, but she always came in to see us when she was in Santa Monica.

One evening not too long ago, she saw Finch fooling around with his deck of tarot cards about twenty minutes before we closed. He got this deck, a classic Raider-Smythe-Waite one, you know those ugly little yellow things with medieval looking art. He was back on his drag thing, I guess trying to come up with a new act, one that might actually sell some tickets this time, and he said the archetypes in the deck were the key to unlocking his creative potential. Or maybe he said something about honing his powers? He was always scheming, so, to be honest, I tuned it out most of the time.

While he waited for the vitamixes to finish their cleaning cycle, Finch thumbed his deck on the counter, his mint green nails shimmering in the full spectrum lights of Corinth in the evening. It really is magic, I must admit. Stardust Woman approached, curious.

“Do you do readings, babe?” She asked.

“Yes, I actually have psychic powers.” He lied.

“OH MY GOD. Are you for real? Are you taking bookings? Do we need our publicists to arrange a live or stories collab for the reading? Or can we just do it now?”

“Don’t even worry. You can use it.” He didn’t have a publicist at the time, so what else could he say?

He shuffled the deck. Not in the fan in the center way, which should have been a dead giveaway that he didn’t know what he was doing. No, Finch shuffled his deck by cutting it repeatedly. He tapped it three times before fanning it out and asking Stardust Woman to pull a card.

“Hmmmmm, ok, my shooting Stars, I am using my intuition to see which card is calling to me. Isn’t Finch such a babe for doing this reading with me? I knew this was what I needed, coming out of eclipse season, and look at how the universe has provided for me. Ok, ok, Stars, I am going to pick, eeep, ok, and,” placing a long, moonstone acrylic nail on the fanned out card, “this one, Babe, this is the one.”

Finch pulled the card out from the fan, but, as he did, another card leapt from the deck. With fake bravado, he said, “Ah, that card wants to be included here.” He is actually very clumsy, even if it doesn’t look like it on stage.

“Ten of Swords. The Tower.” Finch could at least name the cards.

Stardust Woman flipped her blonde extensions behind her ears nervously, watching Finch as he braced himself, both arms tense and straight on the marble counter, looking at the cards with his long, curly red hair hanging like a curtain around him.

“Stardust Woman,” he uttered in an odd, hollow voice. She jumped as if he had pinched her. “You can’t get on that flight. Please. Don’t get on the flight.” He looked up at her, bewildered, blue eyes swirling.

She shook the masses of blonde hair out from behind her ears, pursed her lips slightly, and addressed herself to the camera, “Ok, my little Shooting Stars, we were not expecting this. I am going to put a poll up for you all to let me know if you think this person is an honest-to-God psychic and I should refrain from boarding my flight to Dallas in two hours, or if this is just another LA weirdo,” and to Finch, with a strained wink, “no hard feelings, babe.”

Her followers voted, thousands of them. I think she had 700k before this whole plane thing happened, and she ended up with over 3 million followers. Anyway, so they voted 68 percent in favor of her skipping the flight just to be safe. It almost felt like a dare. Would she really cancel her flight and miss her shoot day in the desert because some freak barista, I mean, essence mixology apprentice, blurted out something about a flight? Of course, he could have guessed she was about to hop on a flight. Girl, it’s Santa Monica, everyone is hopping on a flight.

Alright, but here’s the thing. That same evening, a flight from LAX to DFW crashed on the runway. Some kind of issue with a wheel while they were getting up to speed. I saw the clips, and the plane is about to take off when it just careens to one side and shreds on the pavement before it bursts into flames. Everyone made it out alive, but half of them ended up in the hospital with burns or smoke inhalation.

I looked it up, and there are flights from LAX to DFW every few hours at this time of year, so I am not sure this was even the one Stardust Woman was supposed to be on, but she, of course, made a huge deal about it. Entire communities sprung up on every corner of the internet, true believers eager to comb through the tiniest of details, exclaiming again and again that Stardust Woman’s intuition and “that psychic twink” had saved her life.

And, you already know it: Finch was propelled to overnight fame. He said he just wanted to use the opportunity to share his powers with the world and be a benevolent force for good.

“This is my calling.”

He started wearing this long robe he bought at one of the boutique spas close to the pier. It was silk, striped, with large flowers laid out over the stripes with no regard for the order they were disrupting. Between the robe and his flowing red hair, I guess he did look, well, charismatic, or something.

At first, he charged $100 per reading on Insta. Then, some business coach dm’d him and started mentoring him. After that, he said it was all about knowing your worth, and he was raising his prices to $1,500 per reading. After all, he’d saved Stardust Woman’s life.

Finch was getting more and more famous by the minute. Within days, he had an agent who was handling media and event bookings, and he was turning away hundreds of prospective clients. I could see him in the evenings setting up his ring light in the spot with the saguaro cactus in our backyard to film his live sessions. Then, he would put his phone face down on the wrought iron patio table, lean back into the round chair, and light up a cigarette with a haunted look in his eyes. I’d never seen him smoke before.

I could tell the pressure was getting to him, but Finch has always wanted to be rich and powerful, so I really don’t know what he was crying in the shower about.

When he was on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Finch asked me to go with him. I had to take a day off work, and he didn’t even offer to cover my lost wages! He just said once he made his first 100k, he’d take me to Peru for a week. I drove him out to Culver to this podcaster’s studio, and he spent the whole drive picking at the hem of that silk robe he had turned into his soothsayer uniform.

“You are never going to be able to find that exact color-way again if you destroy your signature robe,” I tried to warn him, but he kept picking at it. He never did listen to me.

I guess that podcast has gotten pretty big since I stopped listening to it, because Finch got even more famous. I truly did not think it was possible, but he was getting invites from the who’s who of Hollywood, psychics who worked with the Kardashians, and talent scouts with big ideas for reality TV.

And the ashtray in the back garden was overflowing.

“I just want to help people with my gift,” he kept telling me. But, his blue eyes had lost their lustre, looking more steel grey than aquiline.

About three weeks after the plane crash, Finch took a booking. I had been helping him out while his agent tried to find him a reliable virtual assistant, so I was sifting through his dm’s and linking people to calender openings for readings with Finch the foreteller of doom.

This particular profile was a silver-fox type older guy. He had a strong jaw, and his profile pic was the perfect mix of an understated stance and natural background with a professional pose and edit. His message was polite and to-the-point:

“Hi Finch and team, I would love to schedule a session with you. I am facing a big business merger decision, and I need your help. Cheers, Francisco Aguilar. Wow, so a hot, older Latino? Even better.

He asked for an in-person session, saying, “I want to see the magic for myself.”

Ok, well, sure. He could see something, that much was certain.

When he came into the sunroom at the front of our house, now covered in crystals, esoteric books, and ouija boards, Aguilar brought with him a sweet scent of jasmine that stood in stark contrast to the burly edge of his shoulders and knuckles and the set of his brow. He struck me as someone who had seen some things, done some things, despite his bespoke suit exterior.

Finch began to shuffle the cards. He was still using that clumsy method of breaking the deck and stacking it again and again, even after all this fame. Aguilar sat with his legs comfortably pointing to 11 AM and 3 PM. His face was impassive.

Finch fanned the deck and let Aguilar draw three cards.

“Death. Three of Cups. Queen of Swords.”

“Wow, ok, Mr. Aguilar. Change is inevitable. This merger is going to happen, and if it doesn’t, you won’t be able to keep doing business as usual regardless. That’s what the death card is pointing to here. So how should you approach this? Well, the three of cups is here to remind you that you have everything you need, even if you aren’t looking in the right places at the moment. And, in a more material sense, the queen of swords is here to tell you to be discerning. You can’t…”

Finch trailed off with the look of a fish in an aquarium on his face. He braced himself on the teak desk. What is he on now, I wondered to myself. This guy was going to be the death of me with all of these tricks and games.

“So, sorry,” he said, and, to my surprise, picked up where he had left off with a faux cheery tone of voice. “You can’t take it all with you, and this merger is going to mean you have to make tough choices and cuts you don’t want to make, but you have excellent judgment, and it will all be for the best, as long as you don’t resist the process.”

Aguilar let out a deep chuckle. Both Finch and I snapped to. No one had laughed during a reading before.

“Is that all, then?” Aguilar asked.

“I am happy to explain or pull additional cards for more insight if you have questions, but that is the core of this read, yes,” Finch replied.

“This is exactly as I thought.” His demeanor was languid, triumphant, yet professional. “You see, there is no merger. I am a TV exec, not a startup guy. My team keeps pitching some show with this little psychic who can predict plane crashes, and I want them to see how quickly the audience will see through this song and dance.”

Finch stood up behind his desk, robe falling to the floor like a waterfall cascading around him.

“I don’t know what you are talking about!”

“You are a fake; the least you could do is admit it.”

Finch was bone-white, and I could see one of his eyelids twitching.

“I guess we are done here then,” and after a long pause, “sir.”

Aguilar stood up, saying, “I have my response for the execs, that’s what I came for.”

Finch’s face looked mottled now. Some heat seemed to be rising behind the cool shock, and I could see sweat on his pale brow. Even his eyes were bright again, blue again.

And that’s when Finch threw everything he had away with one sentence.

“If I told you you were right, you caught me, would you listen to what I am going to tell you next?”

His voice was deep, suddenly and irrevocably seated in his chest.

“What?” Aguilar snorted.

“I will throw it all away to prove to you that I am not lying to you about what I am about to say.” Finch was pulling his iPhone out of the teak drawer of his desk. He never stopped looking at Aguilar, as if the man might bolt, as he clipped the phone into the tripod and snapped on the ring light.

“Hey, hey, hey, I am going live. Everyone, I have something to tell you. This has all been tricks and careful maneuvers. Tarot is just a set of archetypes you guys can relate to, kind of like astrology. I could pull any card, and you would relate. There is no magic. I have no special powers.”

He prodded at the phone to turn off the live as Aguilar stared at him, his handsome face momentarily bland with surprise.

“I…” he stuttered.

“Aguilar, have I earned even a little bit of your trust with my public admission? I hope so, because this next thing is going to be hard to hear. I use trickery, yes, I have even hired TaskRabbit helpers to make my predictions come true over the past several weeks. Chasing after the reputation I earned with my plane crash prediction. But here’s the thing: the plane crash prediction was real. From time to time, sometimes only once or twice a year, I get a flash from the spirits, and I see a vision of the future.”

Aguilar was collecting his face, but he didn’t seem ready to speak yet, so Finch continued uninterrupted, speaking too quickly. He always does that when he is nervous, and, like, why was he nervous when he had already nuked his golden ticket to stardom and had nothing else to lose? Really!

Finch’s eyes bored into Aguilar as he continued, “I need you to take this very seriously. Your life depends on you hearing what I will say next. There is someone you know who keeps cats, big cats. I saw these cats, a vision came over me, and I saw three bengal tigers, one white, two orange, tearing out your throat. Your friend is losing control of his pets, and they will target you. Do not, under any circumstances, visit this friend. Not until those cats are long gone.”

Aguilar let out a low whistle. “My cousin, in Mexico, has a zoo. He rehomes big cats that narcos have abandoned. You know, they love those cats; it’s a vanity thing. And my cousin keeps some of his favorite animals as pets in his house. I was going to visit for his daughter’s quinceañera in three days.”

And, you know what the worst of it all is? Finch, idiot, didn’t even think to go on live while he delivered this real prediction. He says he wants out of the biz, and he shut down all of his accounts. He says he won’t fake it when it doesn’t “flow naturally from spirit,” because he realizes now it had become more about the fame and influence than the predictions, so he has decided to trust in the divine cosmic energy to use him as a vessel as it sees fit, rather than make a business out of it. No idea if he even booked our trip to Peru before he decided he would only channel his powers for free. Sigh.