As she was getting into the elevator Tricia, slightly preoccupied, realised she had left her bag in her room and wondered whether to duck back out and get it. No. It was probably safer where it was and there wasn’t anything she particularly needed in it. She let the door close behind her.
Besides, she told herself, taking a deep breath, if life had taught her anything it was this:
Never go back for your bag.
As the elevator went down she stared up at the ceiling in a rather intent way. Anyone who didn’t know Tricia McMillan better would have said that that was exactly the way people sometimes stared upwards when they were trying to hold back tears. She must have been staring at the tiny security video camera mounted up in the corner.
She marched rather briskly out of the elevator a minute later, and went up to the reception desk again.
`Now, I’m going to write this out,’ she said, `because I don’t want anything to go wrong.’
She wrote her name in large letters on a piece of paper, then her room number, then `IN THE BAR’ and gave it to the receptionist, who looked at it.
`That’s in case there’s a message for me. OK?’
The receptionist continued to look at it.
`You want me to see if she’s in her room?’ he said.
Two minutes later, Tricia swivelled into the bar seat next to Gail Andrews, who was sitting in front of a glass of white wine.
`You struck me as the sort of person who preferred to sit up at the bar rather than demurely at a table,’ she said.
This was true, and caught Tricia a little by surprise.
`Vodka?’ said Gail. ` `Yes,’ said Tricia, suspiciously. She just stopped herself asking, `How did you know?’ but Gail answered anyway.
`I asked the barman,’ she said, with a kindly smile.
The barman had her vodka ready for her and slid it charmingly across the glossy mahogany.
`Thank you,’ said Tricia, stirring it sharply.
She didn’t know quite what to make out of all this sudden niceness and was determined not to be wrong-footed by it. People in New York were not nice to each other without reason.
`Ms Andrews,’ she said, firmly, `I’m sorry that you’re not happy. I know you probably feel I was a bit rough with you this morning, but astrology is, after all, just popular entertainment, which is fine. It’s part of showbiz and it’s a part that you have done well out of and good luck to you. It’s fun. It’s not a science though, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for one. I think that’s some- thing we both managed to demonstrate very successfully together this morning, while at the same time generating some popular entertainment, which is what we both do for a living. I’m sorry if you have a problem with that.’
`I’m perfectly happy,’ said Gail Andrews.
`Oh,’ said Tricia, not quite certain what to make of this. `It said in your message that you were not happy.’
`No,’ said Gail Andrews. `I said in my message that I thought you were not happy, and I was just wondering why.’
Tricia felt as if she had been kicked in the back of the head. She blinked.
`What?’ she said quietly.
`To do with the stars. You seemed very angry and unhappy about something to do with stars and planets when we were having our discussion, and it’s been bothering me, which is why I came to see if you were all right.’
Tricia stared at her. `Ms Andrews – ‘ she started, and then realised that the way she had said it sounded exactly angry and unhappy and rather undermined the protest she had been trying to make.
`Please call me Gail, if that’s OK.’
Tricia just looked bewildered.
`I know that astrology isn’t a science,’ said Gail. `Of course it isn’t. It’s just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what’s that strange thing you British play?’
`Er, cricket? Self-loathing?’
`Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don’t make any kind of sense except in terms of them- selves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that’s now been taken away and hidden. The graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology’s nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just to do with people thinking about people.