She gave me a shovel to dig myself out. If you’re in the Bay Area, Tarot Mercedes Dantes can be found most evenings after 7 PM at the corner of International and 23rd. Look for the purple door. Knock three times. Cash only. No refunds on the truth.
She leans back. “That’ll be twenty dollars. Or the name of the first person who broke your heart.” tarot mercedes dantes
“Prison is the best divination school on earth,” she tells me, finally lifting her gaze. Her eyes are the color of whiskey left too long in the decanter. “You learn to read men in three seconds. You learn which ones will stab you, which ones will save you, and which ones will cry when the guards come. Tarot is just that skill with pictures.” Mercedes’s signature deck is a modified Rider-Waite she calls The Concrete Arcana . She has scrawled over the traditional imagery with Sharpie and glitter glue: The Hanged Man now dangles from a fire escape. The Tower is a public housing project collapsing in slow motion. The Devil wears a police badge. She gave me a shovel to dig myself out
“I’ve been doing this twenty years,” she says, lighting a cigarette even though indoor smoking is illegal in California. “I’ve never had anyone pay me the secret. People are terrified of being known.” I ask for a reading. She doesn’t ask my question. She doesn’t ask my birth date or zodiac sign. She simply splits the deck with her left hand (the hand of the heart, she explains) and lays out five cards face down. Knock three times
Fifth card: “Outcome. Happiness. But not the kind you see in commercials. Not a white picket fence. More like… a kitchen table where people fight and then laugh and then fight again. Real love. The ugly, beautiful kind.”