AT LAST, THE FORTUNETELLER finished her predictive incantations.

She lifted our dripping hands from the water.

The Chinese man came in with a towel and we dried ourselves. I found this intimate and most enjoyable to do, holding our hands out before us over the bowl and patting them with the one towel. After that, the man took the towel and draped it over his shoulder, and then he squatted and, with a grunt, lifted the bowl from the table. He struggled not to slop the water and minnow onto the floor as he staggered into the darkness beyond the doorway.

I looked into the lady’s face. She seemed strangely familiar. Her eyes were very nearly clear, holding only the faintest suggestion of blue, like shallow water pooling over clean white sand. Her gaze roved over my person, and I had the discomfiting sense that she was sizing me up as a man – an assessment for which I felt, on that particular evening, ill-prepared.

Most mystics I had encountered in the past were either scabby old men or wart-laden hags. They all reeked of smoldering incense mixed up with the odor of something dead left out a little too long in the sun. But not this one. Had I known she was going to be so exquisite, so appealingly wraithlike and fair, I most certainly would have prefaced my visit with a haircut and a shave, and maybe even cleaned my teeth. Yes. Call it the misguided whimsy of a desolate man, but I found myself hoping the lady and my destinies might prove to be intertwined, and that the fondling bosom she had so vividly mentioned in her premonition might turn out, coincidentally, to be her very own.

My stomach growled loudly.

“Pardon,” I said, and felt myself redden.

“You are alone in San Francisco?”

“Uh…” This caught me off guard. “Yes, madam, I am.”

“What is your profession?”

“Well… honestly, I am between vocations at the moment. Formerly I was a wandering Romantic Poet – a nomadic wordsmith, of sorts – but recently I have decided to make a career change. Sadly, it turns out that penners of heartfelt verse are greatly underappreciated in this part of the world. I have kind of lost my taste for it besides. It is a fool’s pursuit, a compulsion that I have sworn off, involving too much soul-searching to be healthy, too much mental and spiritual anguish not to cause a persistent ache in one’s heart and spleen.” I shrugged. “Anyway, it is a hard way to earn one’s bread.”

“And what will your new career be?”

“I am open to the possibilities, but…” I held up my palms. “Your guess is most assuredly better than mine.”

“You have no friends or family in your life?”

I squirmed in my seat and considered the pathetic truth. “None to speak of. Of course, like most fellows, I did have a mother. But I have not seen her in many years. She may well have passed on to paradise by now.”

The lady nodded, apparently thinking. Her interrogations were making me somewhat uncomfortable, but I assumed it was all part of her services. Although mention of my mother made me feel queer and sentimental, I felt I needed to speak with a forthcoming candor. Perhaps the lady was not yet done with me and was gleaning further information for another prediction concerning my bright and happy future. Besides, it had been so long since I had conversed with anyone, it was somewhat cathartic to do so now.

Still, for all the narcissistic enjoyment I was experiencing in talking about myself, I somewhat wanted to know a thing or two about my hostess. Things like – where was she from? What was her name? Did she find me handsome? Had she ever read Keats? What did she look like naked? And could she ever see herself living the rest of her life in connubial bliss with a tender, if failed, poet?

She pushed away from the table and stood.

Eager to appear the gentleman, I pushed back too, but in my haste, I upset my chair and it banged backward onto the floor. I scrambled to right the chair and regain my poise. When I turned around, the lady had moved to the dark curtain and was drawing it back along a cord.

A quaint parlor lay beyond – a separate arrangement entirely from the austere room in which she performed her business. A dreamy seascape caught my eye right off, complete with the sails of a ship disappearing over a distant, stormy horizon. It hung on the wall over a satin divan loaded with tasseled pillows. A fish bowl rested atop a marble pedestal at one end of the divan, filled with more of the yellow minnows. A little table with a pair of silver hand bells stood at the other end. A rug covered the floor. A squat porcelain brazier was mounted near the wall, and I detected from the quiet click and snap I heard coming from behind its grate that it held a cheery flame.

The lady glided into the room and let herself onto the divan, extending her legs over its length. Her gown fell open partway down, revealing a pair of thin vanilla knees that brought to my mind a statue I had once seen in an Italian fountain. I inadvertently tipped back on my heels and sucked at my teeth.

“Would you care to warm yourself at my fire?” she asked.

Oh, man!

Now, I was generally dank. My clothes and I had been out in the rain for days on end, and I could not be certain that moss was not beginning to sprout between my shoulders and shirt. Hovering near to the lady’s fire, so to speak, might just cure my constant juddering and overall stiffness. And yet, for all of the luxurious promise of comfort, for all of my aforementioned longings concerning the lady’s bosom, I felt a trifling of doubt flutter in the deepest depths of my common sense as I wavered on the threshold of the lady’s parlor.

Do not go there, I heard a self-preserving voice whisper in my ear. Something is not right. Turn and leave.

“Would you care for some brandy?” asked the lady.

No! shouted my inner voice.

I rubbed my chin as I hemmed and confusedly hawed.

Oh why, oh why, I asked myself, does life always have to do this to me? No sooner do I determine to change my ways and become a wiser and more prudent man then I am thrust into a situation that is full of dubious allurement. Sure, this encounter could lead to nothing more than friendly conversation and a bit of tongue-warming libation, and maybe it could even go so far as to end with me held for a time in the lady’s marble arms, but I had experienced enough such situations to understand that it was more likely to plunge straight to hell and drag me with it. And yet, as I regarded the lady’s kneecaps, I found myself thinking that a brush with hell might not be so bad. At least this one last time. What, after all, is ever gained without taking a chance?

Well, if it does not go as hoped, I told myself, we will most assuredly change our reckless course once and for all.

My inner voice offered its opinion, but I was unable to hear it clearly, as it seemed to sound from under deep water and came to me like nothing more than popping bubbles.

“A bit of brandy would be very nice,” I heard myself say at last. I stepped over to the brazier and opened my hands, waggling my fingers over its warmth. The rug felt luxurious under my toes. “Thank you.”

The lady smiled and reached toward the two bells on the side table. Her hand rested on the handle of the smallest. She hesitated; she had a thought. And then she picked up the larger of the two bells and made it ring.

Yes, I admit, in hindsight this could have been interpreted as a suspicious clue to the events that were soon to transpire. Why one bell over the other? But by that point, I was bewitched beyond help. I could already taste the lady’s brandy-damped lips. I could pre-feel her doting embrace. I had made my leap, as they say, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the splash.

Or possibly the thud.