TONIGHT
Colin and I head inside. The smell of the store and the sound of the chimes instantly take me back to my night with Andy.
But the woman who comes out from behind the curtain is not the same one from the previous night. This one is much younger, with short black hair.
“Can I help you guys?” she asks.
Colin looks at me and waits.
“I, uh . . .” They both stare at me expectantly. “I was looking for the lady, with the long hair.” Colin raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, that’s my mother,” the young woman explains. “We both work here. She’s not here tonight, but I can help you. Would you like a reading?”
Colin looks semiamused, until I say, “No . . . but he does.”
“Me?” Colin says.
“Yes, you,” I say. “Twenty dollars right?” I ask.
“For a psychic reading, yes,” says the lady.
Colin says, “Frenchie, I don’t want a reading.”
“Yes, you do,” I tell him. “Please.” Even I can hear the desperation in my voice. I clear my throat. “Please,” I say again.
He holds my gaze for a minute and then says, “Fine, but you have to get one too.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure if I will and besides, I’m kind of broke now. “You first,” I say.
Colin takes a twenty out of his wallet and says, “I can’t believe you’re asking me to do this,” as he hands it to the woman.
She takes the twenty and tucks it away in the register before going to the door and flipping the sign to CLOSED. And then Colin and the psychic disappear to the back room.
And here I am, like Andy was that night. What would he have been thinking? I walk around the store, wondering what things Andy paid attention to while he was out here and I was back there with the other woman.
Did he know yet he would go through with it? Was he looking at everything like it was the last time he would see it?
There are healing crystals, tarot cards, incense burners, books on palm and tarot reading, and little sculptures of moons and hearts and gargoyles. I pick up a book about gargoyles and read how they’re supposed to scare away evil.
Did Andy read this? I wonder what he thought about all this New Age stuff. Did he believe in it? Was he looking for something to believe in that night? Did I let him down?
Maybe Andy and I shouldn’t have come here. Things might have been different if he hadn’t run into me. If the old woman hadn’t given him a doomish future. Maybe she confirmed that dying young was his destiny. Is that why we came here? In this tiny shop on Orange Avenue, did Andy really expect to find his destiny here? Or was this just the beginning of a cause and effect, like dominoes. And once we set that first domino into motion, there was nothing to stop all the rest from falling.
Colin comes out from behind the curtain and I can hear him thanking the woman. I head back to the front of the store.
“Your turn,” he says.
“No, I don’t . . .”
“Come on. You made me do it, so now it’s your turn.”
“Fine,” I say and take out my wallet to use the emergency credit card my parents make me carry. I can only imagine what Mom will think when she sees the statement with this psychic shop listed on it.
But just then, the woman stares at me and says suddenly, “Put that away. Come with me.”
Before I can refuse, she’s already heading toward the back room and I feel like I have no choice but to follow. I sigh and head to the reading room.
We sit down, and I find myself just as fidgety and unsure as last time. Especially when she studies me and doesn’t say anything or ask for my hand.
“Your aura . . . ,” she says. Then she sits back and looks at me some more. I wait for her riddles.
“I’m not going to give you a reading,” she finally says.
“Okay?”
“That’s not why I brought you back here. A reading wouldn’t be good for you,” she says and shakes her head decidedly. “But you’ve been here before,” she says. I swallow the lump in my throat. “That boy”—she says as she points her finger at the closed door and I know she’s referring to Colin—“he’s not the same one as before.” She leans toward me. “There was another one.” She’s not asking me. She knows. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” she says.
I nod.
“My mother came home upset four months ago. She knew.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach when she mentions this.
“And now, I’ll tell you the only thing that matters. It’s that you make your own future. People come here for answers, looking for something, looking for hope or promise. He came here looking for confirmation.” She looks down and shakes her head again. “Confirmation is something we can never give you. Warnings, perhaps, but never confirmation. I can’t confirm anything. Because the future is like clay, every day you mold it, every day people leave impressions that change its form. It’s never concrete, it’s always changing. We might see some things, possibilities, but you are the one who decides what form your life takes.”
I take a deep breath and try to wrap my mind around what she is telling me.
She sits back and looks at me. “What are you looking for?” she asks.
Answers. Andy. Myself.
I shrug.
“But if your mother saw, then . . .”
“She saw trouble. She warned him. He chose his own future,” she finishes. I shake my head because I’m not sure I believe that.
“You will see,” she says. “With time, you will see.” And with that, she motions for me to leave.
I head out of the room and back to the store. Colin is flipping through some books. He notices me, but I’m already heading outside. I need some fresh air, even if it is stifling, humid air.
“What’s the matter?” he asks as he follows me. I stand on the sidewalk, wondering what the hell I’m doing. The psychic’s words stick with me but I feel like I missed something. Part of me wants to go back inside and demand to know what I should do, what I should have done.
I close my eyes. “I don’t know. I just, I guess I was hoping for more of an answer.”
Colin looks at me. “But you didn’t want to get a reading,” he says.
I nod. “I know.” I run my hand through my hair in frustration. “This totally sucks.”
“I’m sorry,” Colin says.
We stand there a while longer, watching people head in and out of local bars and clubs.
“So,” I say finally. “What’d she say to you?” The question echoes in my ears.
Somewhere, I hear the echo of my laugh from that night, but when I look at Colin, the laughter is coming from his mouth. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says. “But I’m not telling.”
“That’s probably better,” I say and start walking.
Colin follows next to me, saying something, but all I can think about is if the psychic is right.
I cut him off and face him. “Do you think we really make our own future?”
“Of course,” he says without hesitation.
“How are you so sure?” I ask him, shaking my head. “I mean, don’t you think that on some level there are these paths to your life, already mapped out, that you follow?”
He thinks about this for a minute. “I don’t know, that just seems so final. I mean, I honestly think of life like this big wilderness. And maybe you’re on this path, but I always think you have a choice. To stay on that path, or to venture out into the wilderness and make different paths.”
“Oh . . .” is all I can say. His answer has made my head feel full.
Colin smiles. “I’m taking a philosophy class right now at the community college. Don’t be too impressed. Every class is a discussion like this.” Colin and I make our way down Orange Avenue and cut through rowdy crowds of half-drunk people downtown. There are homeless people slumped on the sides of the sidewalks, little dirty heaps that blend into the buildings. A tall girl in a shimmery gold top is walking toward us. She links arms with the guy next to her and is close to one of the dirty little heaps before she realizes it, and then just steps right over him—literally.
“What about him?” I ask Colin who has noticed the same thing. “And her? Do you think she is this wise person who chose all the right paths and he chose all the wrong ones?”
“I think that’s the gray,” Colin says. “Some paths are more available to some while they’re more hidden from others.” He looks back at the guy. “Some people get tired of fighting through to better paths; some people get lost.”
I nod, having the image of a huge jungle in my head. Some people strolling on by, while others fighting like hell. And some just giving up.
I push the image out of my head and look at the buildings as we walk.
“Last question,” I say. “If you knew you were going to die tonight, what would you notice about this?”
“What? About here, like downtown, you mean?” he asks, giving me a funny look.
“Yeah, sure. This, or anything, or everything,” I say.
“Oh, well thanks for narrowing it down,” Colin says, but he stops where he is. He turns slowly in place, looking at everything carefully. Then he looks up at the sky, then finally, back at me.
“Do I have to be honest?”
“Please,” I say.
“I guess, at first, I would try to notice everything, take everything in, you know? But I’d probably realize that’s impossible because there’s always something I’d miss. So then I’d focus on one cool thing,” he says and moves in closer to me.
“One cool thing?” I say. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
He nods. “Yeah, so when it happened, when I’d die, I could just think about this one cool thing. . . .”
I close my eyes and breathe in the humid air. “Right.”
“Yeah,” I say and walk past Colin quickly. “Let’s just go. We have to keep going.”
I lead us to Black Chapel Tattoo just a few blocks down and go in without explaining anything to Colin. He follows behind me. There are a couple of people waiting around, looking at the various designs on the wall. Some, I think, working up the courage to get one, and others that are so tattooed, I wonder where else they could manage to put more.
On the wall there are a bunch of tattoo designs to choose from.
“Know which one you’re going to get?” Colin asks me.