Chloe Rook

Chloe Rook moved here from Minneapolis in 1980 and set up a palm and Tarot parlor next to Cuchessi’s Bikes near the pier. On warm days, she leaves the door open, which allows a beaded curtain to sway a little between the bright sidewalk and the darkness inside. People walking by will smell the #10 Hare Rama incense sticks she burns continually near the window. The fragrance is what she would call “efficacious.” She believes it repels evil. She also believes it helps her write deeper poems. I know all this because we are an old woman and a young woman and best of friends.

The day I cut my arm open on mussel shells stuck to a piling, she cleaned my wound. She called a friend of mine to arrange a drive to the doctor. She looked at my open hand as we waited, and she told me two of the many things I loved, oranges and bare feet, and made me think things I would never think about myself. Like how, in a field, I was the absence of the field. Like how, if I wanted, I could eat men like air. All this at our first meeting. All because I caught a wave too close to the pier.

She may just be getting up those mornings I am fresh out of the water and starting the long walk up Del Mar with my board. I’ll see her in the apartment window just above her parlor, one hand waving while the other holds a small cup of tea like a tiny yellow chick. She’s had me up for muffins before, maybe some fruit, but I’m usually ready for something more substantial. Chloe has an older woman’s sort of diet. Most mornings I keep walking.

She gave me the recipe for the first tabouli salad I ever made or ate. I try now and then to get her to walk with me on the beach, to get out in the sunshine and fresh air: For someone who works right next to the ocean, she has the palest complexion I know. She asks me why I never bring a boy by for her to meet, or talk about college, or let her do a Tarot spread for me. We push and pull at each other in these ways.

Frankly, I think some of my friends might be frightened by her. She can seem like a 50-year-old Goth until she talks, but then when she talks she can scare you by what she knows about life. Frankly, I don’t know about college. As for a reading, maybe someday, but for now I want the cards to stay put in their deck, face-down in Chloe’s parlor and in my mind, there on the short round table in front of the half-round couch.