Aquarius Falling

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

July 13, 1964

Misty in the Morning

I felt Misty leave our bed. A reflection of natural light on the wall told me morning had come and that it must have been after eight. Despite the hum of the window fan, the room was growing warm. Hearing the blinds being raised, I rolled over and looked to the window. Hundreds of tiny specks rose and floated to greet a sun that gave Misty’s alabaster skin an orange glow. With a fixed gaze, she stared out the window, looking at nothing but the back of another boarding house. In the morning light, her natural beauty was revealed without the eye shadow, without the eyeliner, without the flaming red lipstick. A beam of light reflected off her coal black hair that lay naturally without combing. A strong jawline and prominent cheekbones provided an enduring foundation. Watching her at the window, I realized for the first time that she was a beautiful woman, beautiful in a different way from Wendy. Wendy was a bud beginning to bloom, Misty in full flower, one with an excited naïveté for the unknown future, the other with the wisdom of experience.

Misty looked at me. “You’re awake. Get dressed. Let’s go for a walk.”

I put on my cutoffs and a T-shirt. Misty slipped on a muumuu and picked up a box of Parliaments, matches, and her broad-brimmed straw hat. As we walked out the door, I looked back at Sylvia and Jack. Sylvia’s leg twitched, and Jack’s heavy breathing bordered on a snore. They were both in a deep morning sleep, the kind that is deepest and soundest just before waking.

When we reached the corner of First Street, Misty stopped and lit a match. Sheltering the flame with her cupped hands, she put the match to her Parliament and inhaled deeply. She gave me a serious look and started walking toward the beach. Then she started to talk.

“I tend to believe, as do many others, that the beginning of the Age of Aquarius was July 16, 1945. I believe this for essentially two reasons. First, it is a provable astronomical fact that the sun passed into the sign of Aquarius during this period. Second, this is the date the first atomic test bomb was exploded. This event signaled a significant change in the power of the universe. Man could now destroy himself and the planet. Never before did that possibility exist.”

“So what?” I said. “What does it mean? The sun being in one place, a constellation in another, the moon somewhere else…does it really have anything to do with us?”

“Delaney, think about what happens when change occurs. Nobody likes change. Change is bad for someone but maybe good for someone else. I’ll educate you. The precession of the equinoxes occurs approximately every 2,160 years. The last one was when the Age of Aries passed to the Age of Pisces. This ended a two-thousand year Egyptian Empire and marked the beginning of the Christian Empire.”

We had reached the boardwalk and were walking south in the direction of the pier. I chuckled. “The precession of the equinoxes—wow, that’s something I want to see.”

“So what is happening to us?” Misty continued. “We’re at the cusp of this change, and already we can see disasters building. After ending World War II, we went to war in Korea. Then we came very close to nuclear annihilation two years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then our president was assassinated. Now we’re again entering a war in Vietnam. Why? People won’t stand for it again. Their children are being sent off to God knows where to die for God knows what.”

I was grateful this conversation was taking place at this early hour, for there were few people on the boardwalk who would overhear it. When we reached the pier, Misty turned, and we walked out toward the end of it. There were a few people fishing, taking advantage of a rising tide. I tried to get her off the subject with some levity. “Why do you have a clock radio?”

“Last summer, Martin Luther King led over two thousand people on a march in Washington. It was peaceful, but race relations in this country will not remain peaceful.”

“I mean, it doesn’t make any sense—you sleep until you wake up. You never set the alarm for a wake-up.”

“As long as Negroes are treated as second-class citizens and denied equal rights, there will be protests, and eventually the protests will turn violent. As long as there are people who think they can change things by murdering the president of the United States, there will be people who think by murdering someone like Martin Luther King, they can stop this movement. There will be more assassinations and rebellion. Families will be torn apart—father against son, daughter against mother. Like Bob Dylan’s song, ‘The Times They Are a-Changin,’ our times are changing—and it won’t be pretty.”

“That’s nice.” When Misty mentioned equal rights, my mind flashed back to the march in Princess Anne, and I didn’t hear anything she said after that. My head was filled with a jumble of thoughts—thoughts of Wendy, her father, Fred at the restaurant, the picketers, the prayer before the march, the Negro woman locking arms with me, the police dogs, the fire hoses, people falling and crying, and the maid at Wendy’s home.

“This is important, Delaney.”

We were at the end of the pier. There was nothing but the Atlantic to our east, and it felt like we were standing at the edge of the Earth. The west wind stiffened and moved a lock of raven hair across her face. I felt like I wanted to kiss her. She took both of my hands in hers and continued. “I don’t want to see you hurt, but I can’t help you if you won’t listen to me.” Her pleading eyes showed her worry, and for the first time, I realized she really cared about me.

“Go on.”

“I’ve studied your complete chart, and you need to be very careful. You probably shouldn’t have come to Ocean City this summer.”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters, your Venus-Pluto-Neptune configuration is not good for romantic relationships. It’s set up for a potential loss, and we both know that has already happened. You were in love with Wendy, and from what you told me about her, she was probably in love with you. You see how that ended.”

“Misty, it’s easy to look in the past and say some planet alignment mumbo jumbo caused it all.” With the mention of Wendy, my desire to kiss Misty fled.

“I’m only saying, if I had worked your chart before you met Wendy, I could have told you it wasn’t going to work out before it happened.”

“I don’t want to talk about Wendy.”

“OK, forget about Wendy.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say.”

“You need to know about your future, and I’m going to tell you it doesn’t look good financially.”

“Oh, really? Well, can you explain why I now have more money than I’ve had in my entire life?”

“Uranus is in the second house, and that is a concern because it means unexpected financial losses. Libra is in the second house cusp, and that means the loss will be due to a partnership.”

I laughed as I said with raised eyebrows, “Your anus is going to experience financial losses?”

“No, yours.”

Misty let go of my hands and undid her zodiac necklace. She began working on one of the symbols. “Delaney, I don’t really believe in lucky charms, but I want you to have this.” She removed the water bearer symbol from the necklace. “This is the symbol for Aquarius. The fact that your birth sign is in the middle of the Aquarius sign means all the negative aspects of the Age of Aquarius will have the greatest impact on you. This isn’t going to protect you.”

“You mean like a Saint Christopher medal?”

“Whatever that means. It won’t protect you, but you should keep it to remind you of pitfalls to come so you can take steps to protect yourself.”

She looked at me as she handed me the Aquarius symbol. I looked deep into her eyes, touched by her sincerity. I felt the Aquarius in my hand, and then it wasn’t. I looked down as it hit the decking of the pier, saw it bounce a few inches in the air and disappear in a gap between the boards. Misty gasped. The water bearer was in the ocean.

“Oh, Delaney…Aquarius has fallen.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.