THE SOOTHSAYER’S ROOM WAS elegantly simple, with none of the flamboyant finery one typically finds in such an establishment. There were no tarot cards strewn about, and no voodoo dolls. There were no Zodiacal charts or spirit bones or telepathic hairballs. The walls were whitewashed and blank. Somehow this austerity lent an unexpected credibility to the little industry and its alabaster proprietress. One sensed that a lucid insight could be more genuinely ascertained in such a tidy and colorless venue.

A dark curtain divided that part of the room in which we stood from another part kept out of sight. A large silver bowl rested on a squat table, and an orbicular lamp hovered above it like a miniature moon. The bowl was half full of water. A pair of spoke-back chairs faced each other from opposite sides of the table. The lady bid me to sit on one chair, and so I did.

She sat on the other.

A brackish fragrance wafted from the bowl between us, indicating that the water it held had been drawn from the bay. My senses were somewhat aroused, and I could also detect – like a breeze blown over a bank of tropical flowers – the unmistakable attar of a well-cosseted femininity.

I was amused to see a yellow minnow darting about in the bowl.

The lady smiled and reached toward me. “Take my hands.”

I pushed up my sleeves and interlaced her thin fingers in my own. It had been some months since I had enjoyed a proper manicure, but she did not seem to mind my grubbiness. She squeezed my fingers affectionately as she lowered our hands into the tepid water.

The sensation was quite visceral. It had been a long time since I had coupled with a creature quite so lovely, and it was most agreeable to do so now, if only in a benign, handholding fashion. The near warmth of the water heightened the sensuality of the moment, and I blush to say it, but the entire experience worked to cause a certain stirring in the long-dormant manliness sequestered in my trousers.

Our hands floated weightless in the bowl.

The minnow wove in and out around our wrists.

I began to relax.

At last, the lady leaned forward, entered a trance-like state, and then, as if peering into the pages of a book, she began to read.

*****

Now the language she spoke to me was not one I recognized at first. It was a melodious mix of awes and oohs and lahs. Her charming libretto rolled and flowed in exotic, rhythmic waves. The tip of her tongue appeared intermittently between her pearly teeth. The pale lucent rose of her lips pouted and puckered in resonant labial spasms. A deep part of her, it seemed, was communicating with a deep part of me.

From a primordial place long submerged.

In an original language before words.

It made no sense at the start. But by and by, I began to believe I could indeed remember that old vernacular from long ago. It was water music sloshing. It was the jargon of bare wet skin brushing lightly against bare wet skin. The laughter of unborn babes. The lullaby of whales. The hallowed hush of a church left empty after the choir has shuffled out. It was God cracking his knuckles on high while stardust sprinkled down onto the eyelids of sleeping maidens.

“I see rain,” she told me in this oblique language. “Followed by sunny days.”

I took that as hopeful information.

“I see a little death.”

Not so hopeful. But then, I thought, perhaps she is only referring to the recent death of my former self.

“And a rebirth.”

Hmmm.

I confess, I cannot prove she voiced these things exactly, but that was the translation as I heard it with my own ears. Her breath uttered forth little echoes of wind full of secret meanings designed, it seemed, for me alone. Such was her method of prophecy. And yes, I suppose a more skeptical sort could argue that what she uttered was so undeniably vague and unfathomable that what I thought I heard was only what I so badly wanted to hear.

Phrases like –

“I see a fondling bosom in your future.”

And – “I see the possibility of great riches, and a much-sought comfort and contentment.”

Who, outside of a lunatic, could hear such exactitudes through her nonsensical blarb and blabble?

Well, I thought, time will unravel the particulars.

Maybe it will prove true, maybe not.

I was keen to find out.

And anyway, I had experienced enough baffling mystery in my life to know that only a faithless dupe would choose to doubt such favorable, and possibly heaven-sent, blessings of foresight.