The thing about Greenwich Village is that it pretends to be a neighbourhood but is really a costume party that never ends. Everyone is wearing something—bohemianism, intellectuality, rebellion—but it's all fabric, and underneath, everyone is just trying to figure out how to pay rent and whether last night was the night they finally said the thing they should have said three years ago.

David Kelly sat behind his card table on MacDougal Street with a deck of Rider-Waite tarot cards and a sign that read: TAROT READINGS—FIVE DOLLARS. He had been sitting here for eleven months and seventeen days. Before that, he had been an associate professor of comparative literature at NYU, and before that, he had been a man who believed that words mattered.

The paper that had fired him had called his article "The Modern Disguises of Supernatural Entities: A Comparative Study" "speculative to the point of irresponsibility." The department chair had called it "a fascinating exercise in imaginative overreach." His colleagues had called it various things, none of them in writing.

So now he read tarot for tourists and hipsters and women who wore scarves indoors and men who wore scarves indoors and everyone in between, because in Greenwich Village, the line between intellectual curiosity and performative eccentricity was thinner than the paper his tarot cards were printed on.

The first customer came on a Wednesday in March. She was tall, dark-haired, wearing a suit that cost more than David's monthly rent and carrying herself with the kind of confidence that comes from money rather than achievement.

"Read my cards," she said. It wasn't a request.

David spread three cards. The Empress. The Hierophant. The Seven of Swords.

"You're connected to other people like you," he said. "People who don't quite fit where they are. You're part of a group—seven of you, I'd guess—and you're planning something."

She smiled. It was a cold smile. "Seven is an interesting number."

"Is it?"

"My name is Victoria. I'm an investment banker. And I'm exactly where I said I was."

She left five dollars and walked away. David watched her go. He had spent eleven months reading tarot on this corner. He had learned to recognize patterns—the way certain people's hands felt under his fingers, the way certain eyes reflected light differently, the way certain people carried themselves like they owned the ground they walked on even when they didn't.

Victoria's hands had felt cold. Not the cold of low blood temperature or a drafty room. The cold of something that didn't generate its own heat. Like marble. Like metal. Like a body that had learned to imitate warmth but had never quite mastered it.

The second customer came two days later. He was built like a football player—broad shoulders, thick neck, a face that looked like it had been carved from granite and then left out in the rain. He wore a t-shirt that said GOLD'S GYM and shorts that showed knees that had seen more impact than most people see in a lifetime.

"Read me," he said.

David spread three cards. The Moon. The Five of Cups. The Knight of Wands.

"You're not who you appear to be," David said. "You have... shifts. Moments where you're not quite yourself. Where your senses heighten. Where the moon affects you."

The man's eyes widened. Just for a second. Just enough.

"I have a allergy," he said. "To certain lights."

"Right."

He left ten dollars. His hands were warm. Too warm. Like someone had turned up the heat inside his body and forgotten to turn it down.

The third customer was a lifeguard from Coney Island—pale hair, blue eyes, a voice that sounded like waves. Her cards showed The Siren. The Two of Cups. The Ace of Pentacles.

"You live between two worlds," David said. "The water and the land. You belong to neither completely."

She looked at him with eyes that were a shade of blue David had never seen in nature. "I live in Brighton Beach," she said. "And I commute."

The fourth was a funeral director—somber, precise, with hands that had learned the particular tenderness required for handling the dead. His cards showed The Hierophant reversed. The Ten of Swords. The Page of Pentacles.

"You're connected to death," David said. "Not metaphorically. Literally. Death is your colleague."

The funeral director's expression didn't change. "Everyone is connected to death, Mr. Kelly. It's the only guarantee we have."

The fifth was a pop singer—twenty-two, blonde, wearing sunglasses indoors, carrying the particular brand of exhaustion that comes from being loved by millions and known by nobody. Her cards showed The Star. The Three of Swords. The Queen of Cups.

"You sing to make people feel something you can't feel yourself," David said. "Your voice is a gift and a curse. It draws them in, and it drains you."

She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were human. Tired, yes. Beautiful, yes. But human. For the first time in five customers, David felt something that might have been relief.

Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the first five had been anomalies—cold hands, warm skin, unusual eye colour—explanations existed for all of it. Medical conditions. Genetic variations. The ordinary strangeness of human biology.

The sixth customer was an embalmer—quiet, efficient, with the particular stillness of someone who spent his days making the dead look peaceful for their families' sake. His cards showed Death. The Tower. The World.

"You keep things that should be decomposing," David said. "You resist the natural order."

"Respect," the embalmer corrected. "It's respect."

The seventh came on a Sunday. He was old—seventy, maybe eighty—wearing a suit that had been fashionable when Eisenhower was president and carrying a bible that he didn't open. His cards showed The Devil. The Four of Wands. The Judgment.

"You preach to people who don't listen," David said. "You build communities on foundations you don't understand. And you're afraid—afraid that if your congregation found out what you really are, they would stop coming."

The old man smiled. It was a sad smile. "Everyone is afraid, Mr. Kelly. That's what makes us human."

"No," David said. "That's what makes us alive."

The old man left without the five dollars.

David sat behind his table that night and spread all twenty-one cards on the pavement. Seven customers. Seven sets of three cards. Seven patterns that, taken together, formed a picture he had spent eleven months preparing to see.

They were opening something. A gate. A door. A passage between the world he knew and a world he had studied but never believed existed until the hands told him otherwise.

Victoria—the investment banker who was actually something older, something that wore money like a second skin. The football player who was actually something that wore muscle like a costume. The lifeguard who was actually something that wore water like a second home. The funeral director who was actually something that wore death like a uniform. The pop singer who was actually something that wore beauty like a mask. The embalmer who was actually something that wore stillness like armour. And the preacher who was actually something that wore faith like a weapon.

Seven entities. Seven disguises. Seven pieces of a puzzle that, when completed, would open a passage between worlds.

David had to close it. He didn't know how yet. But he knew that the tarot cards—the cards he had studied for eleven years, the cards that had been his wife's before she left, the cards that had been his before he became a man who sat on a street corner reading fortunes for tourists—knew how.

He spread the cards one more time. The full spread. Twenty-one cards in seven rows of three. And in the centre, where no card should have been, there was a card he had never seen before. A card that showed a man standing before a gate, his hands on the bars, his face turned toward the viewer, his eyes full of a knowledge that was both gift and curse.

The gatekeeper.

The card was him.

He picked up his cards, packed his table, and walked home through the streets of Greenwich Village, past the bars and the bookstores and the restaurants where people laughed and drank and pretended that the world was exactly as small and as manageable as a conversation over dinner.

He would find a way to close the gate. He would use the cards. He would use the knowledge. He would pay the price.

But not tonight. Tonight, he would go home, and he would make himself a cup of tea, and he would look at the card that showed a man standing before a gate, and he would think about what it meant to be the person who stands between worlds, belonging to neither, responsible for both.

And he would sleep.