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on talking about the properties of the sign, and he nodded, agreeing but not really taking it all in. And then she was saying, “I suppose the most interesting thing about Geminis is their relationship to the truth. Geminis are naturally duplicitous, yet they have an inner reverence for the truth that echoes their opposite number across the Zodiac. That’s Sagittarius, of course, and your typical Sadge couldn’t tell a lie to save his soul. Gemini can lie without a second thought, while being occasionally capable of this startling Sagittarean candor.”
    “I see.”
    He was influenced as well by Cancer, she continued, having his sun on its cusp, along with a couple of planets in that sign. And he had a Taurus moon, she told him, and that was the best possible place for the moon to be. “The moon is exalted in Taurus,” she said. “Have you noticed in the course of your life how things generally turn out all right for you, even when they don’t? And don’t you have an inner core, a sort of bedrock stability that lets you always know who you are?”
    “I don’t know about that last part,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
    “Maybe it’s your Taurus moon that got you here.” She reached for another chocolate. “Your time of birth determines your rising sign, and that’s important in any number of ways, but in the absence of available information I’m willing to make the determination intuitively. My discipline is astrology, John, but it’s not the only tool I use. I’m psychic, I sense things. My intuition tells me you have Cancer rising.”
    “If you say so.”
    “And I prepared a chart for you on that basis. I could tell you a lot of technical things about your chart, but I can’t believe you’re interested in all that, are you?”
    “You’re psychic, all right.”
    “So instead of nattering on about trines and squares and oppositions, let me just say it’s an interesting chart. You’re an extremely gentle person, John.”
    Oh?
    “But there’s so much violence in your life.”
    Oh.
    “That’s the famous Gemini duality,” she was saying. “On the one hand, you’re thoughtful and sensitive and calm, exceedingly calm. John, do you ever get angry?”
    “Not very often.”
    “No, and I don’t think you stifle your anger, either. I get that it’s just not a part of the equation. But there’s violence all around you, isn’t there?”
    “It’s a violent world we live in.”
    “There’s been violence swirling around you all your life. You’re very much a part of it, and yet you’re somehow untouched by it.” She tapped the sheet of paper, with his stars and planets all marked out. “You don’t have an easy chart,” she said.
    “I don’t?”
    “Actually, that’s something to be grateful for. I’ve seen charts of people who came into the world with no serious oppositions, no difficult aspects. And they wind up with lives where nothing much happens. They’re never challenged, they never have to draw upon inner resources, and so they wind up leading reasonably comfortable lives and holding secure jobs and raising their kids in a nice safe clean suburb. And they never make anything terribly interesting of themselves.”
    “I haven’t made much of myself,” he said. “I’ve never married or fathered a child. Or started a business, or run for office, or planted a garden, or written a play, or . . . or . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never expected to get . . .”
    “Emotional?”
    “Yes.”
    “It happens all the time.”
    “It does?”
    “Just the other day I told a woman she’s got Jupiter squaring her sun, but that her Jupiter and Mars are trined, and she burst into tears.”
    “I don’t even know what that means.”
    “Neither did she.”
    “Oh.”
    “I see so much in your chart, John. This is a difficult time for you, isn’t it?”
    “I guess it must be.”
    “Not financially. Your Jupiter—well, you’re not rich, and you’re never going to be rich, but the money always seems to be there when you need it, doesn’t it?”
    “It’s never been a problem.”
    “No, and it won’t be. You’ve found ways to spend it in the past couple of years”—stamps, he thought—“and that’s good, because now you’re getting some pleasure out of your money. But you won’t overspend, and you’ll always be able to get more.”
    “That’s good.”
    “But you didn’t come here because you were concerned about