SCORPIO RISING
There was a carefully drawn astrological chart posted up on the blackboard in the side room of the Hilton Garden Inn that Ivy noticed the minute she walked in.
The planets were all meticulously drawn, the hours and minutes precise, it seemed. A birthdate and time listed but no name.
Still fixated on the chart and the planets, she was startled when a voice rang out.
"Brittney Spears" the man said, "Can you tell?" And he started to laugh.
Ivy smiled back at him, a smiling man, gray hair, green eyes, with a notebook and pen in hand. "Look at the conjunctions," he said.
There were 10-15 people in the room, almost all middle-aged women, chatting amongst themselves, pointing at the chart so it startled her to have this man speak directly to her. But she looked good and was younger and easily more attractive so perhaps that was why the man spoke up.
"Have a seat," he said, pointing to an empty chair next to him. "Let's look at this together."
He was bold, Ivy thought but since she was genuinely interested and he seemed friendly, she smiled back and sat down next to him.
"Ivy Drew" she said, extending a soft hand.
"Jake," the man replied, breaking into a wide and she had to admit, winning smile. "Jake Kilrain. This astrology stuff fascinates me."
"Me, too," Ivy said, a little surprised as how easily she was able to talk to this complete stranger. "It's fun."
"It is," he said. "And, you know what? It works."
"Really? How do you know that?"
Jake slapped his hand on the table and laughed again. She liked the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled.
"Years of experience."
The way he said it was so comical, she started to laugh. Maybe this astrology class was a good idea after all.
The instructor, a tall older man, probably in his 70's, stood up in the front of the room and asked everybody to take a look at the board. He started to talk about Brittney Spears' chart, how the Mercury Mars conjunction was being opposed by Uranus and squared by Saturn. Pretty technical stuff that was a little beyond where Ivy was, at least at this point. But the instructor, at least at this point, wasn't taking any questions.
"So the Mercury-Mars conjunction means..." she asked Jake softly, leaning in towards him. And as she did, she noted he took a quick look at her cleavage. She had put a little drop of perfume there, you know, just in case. He quickly refocused on her eyes and saw she was smiling.
"Mercury is how you express yourself verbally, or maybe in writing," he said, drumming on the table for emphasis. "Mars is more your physical way, you know how you might act. So when the two of those planets are that close together, you know, in the same sign, that means they were in that constellation in the sky at that time. Kinda cool. And it means there's power there."