Read Online Best to Laugh: A Novel by Lorna Landvik - Free Book Online

visible underneath; a palm frond unfurled like a magic carpet underneath a picture of Joan Crawford sitting on Franchot Tone’s lap; pineapple leaves formed a spiky tiara from the top of Norma Shearer’s head.
    “Why don’t you go home?” came the old woman’s voice from the kitchen. Having been given my answer—I was being dismissed—I turned toward the door.
    “Get some clothes on, and when you come back I will have tea made.”
    “Okay!” I said brightly, adjusting the towel I wore like a shift. I wasn’t being banished after all.
    “ I HOPE YOU LIKE BLACK BREAD,” said the old woman, setting a silver coffee service on the table in front of the horsehair sofa. “Black bread and tea with honey—is good for what ails you.”
    Glenn Miller was playing on the console record player but at a volume so low that “String of Pearls” seemed less a jaunty dance tune than a tease. In a narrow gold vase on top of the upright piano, a stick of incense unfurled a scent that managed to smell both musty and sweet.
    “Zo,” said the woman, touching the knot of her beaded shawl. “I am of course Madame Pepper and you are the girl who was wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, yes?”
    “How did you know that?”
    “I am fortune-teller,” she said, fingering a tress of the long gray hair that trailed out from under the scarf she wore like a pirate. “Also, Melvin Slyke told me.”
    She poured a cup of tea and handed it to me. “He is your neighbor, yes? He is hoping you someday make that cake, and that when you do, he will get a piece. I too would accept same. It’s not so common that a young person makes cake.”
    “I love to bake,” I said. “My grandmother taught me . . . well, not so much taught me—she was no cook—as allowed me. So yes. Absolutely. When I bake my next cake, you will definitely get a piece.”
    I knew I was nattering, but how was I supposed to have a normal conversation with someone who announced, “I am fortune-teller”?
    Madame Pepper cut a thick slab of bread and slathered it with a half-inch of butter. I followed her example; the bread was good and yeasty with a chewy crust, and as the two of us sat eating and drinking to the companionable clink of silverware and china, I began to relax. That is until the seer looked at me from under the awning of her eyebrows and said, “I could read your fortune but it might frighten you.”
    “Really?” I said, coughing a bit.
    “Yes. Some people don’t like to know what lies ahead. Mr. Gable, for instance—”
    “—the King of Hollywood,” I said, hoping to impress her with my grasp of Hollywood history. “I couldn’t believe when the apartment manager told me Clark Gable used to live here!”
    “Now and then, when he needed to stay in Hollywood,” said Madame Pepper. She stirred milk into her tea and fussed with the pot of honey, signals I took to mean, You interrupt me, I make you wait. Silence hung heavy as the drapes before she spoke again.
    “His home-home was a big ranch in Encino. Now, as I was saying, Mr. Gable, he always tell me, ‘Magda,’—not many I give permission to use my given name!—‘Magda, even if you see a bus hitting me tomorrow, don’t tell me of it. I only want to hear the good stuff.’”
    “Who else did you see?” I asked, a cub reporter wanting the full scoop.
    “See? I saw many.” She spiraled a hand in the air. “Anybody who was anybody came to see Madame Pepper. Still do. Most wanting of courseto know not their fates so much as their fates in Hollywood.” Her hooded eyes squinted at me. “You are wanting to be an actress? Because I am seeing cameras.”
    Even though I thought she was as much a clairvoyant as I was a go-go dancer, my scalp tingled.
    “Well, I . . . I am going to be on a game show this weekend.”
    She slapped the carved wooden arm of the sofa.
    “Bingo. Although I am seeing for you more than one dinky little game show. Which is odd because I am not needing to look to the future