The Fortune Teller

“She’s never wrong, you know,” said the gal behind me. “Stacy says she’s 5 for 5, far as the people she knows who’ve died.”

I felt squeezed. Too many people at this goddamn party. I wedged out my elbows, but got stepped on anyway.

Assholes.

I stared at Madame Olenska as she offered her two-word prediction to a sweating, fat man with a damp whistle in his breath.

“Heart attack,” she said. “Next.”

A woman with an insulin pump fastened to her belt sat in the plush chair across from the crystal ball.

“Kidney failure. Next.”

The fortuneteller had one talent of prophecy. The means of death. That’s it. Not the time, nor the place. Just the fatal click.

She scarcely looked at me as I assumed the position. So I cleared my throat. But she was too busy dissecting the silvery entrails of her orb to offer so much as a nod.

I puffed the hair out of my eyes. Scratched my neck.

She squinted harder.

The walls of the room jiggled. My heartbeat slammed a wicked bass line inside my ears. Why was I here again? A stupid midnight party parlor trick, was all this was. I was plastered. Done for. None of this was even real.

So why couldn’t I suck any oxygen?

“Sorry,” I said, starting to rise. “I don’t—”

“Gunshot,” she said. Her eyes flicked to mine briefly, before glowering at the red velvet curtain behind me. A line slithered into the living room, where dance music hammered. “Next.”

I laughed and hiccupped simultaneously.

She lifted a two-pronged eyebrow. “Funny, is it? Madame Olenska is never mistaken. You wait and see.”

“Next!”

People looked at me with a little more respect the rest of the night. Suddenly, I had all the room in the world. Of course, I just laughed the whole thing off. But that stupid Stacy had to go and tear up. Hugging me like it was the last time.

Never liked her, anyway.

I preyed over the fortuneteller’s words on the trek back to my apartment in the lower east side. Tasted their gritty talc on my tongue. Digested their dark cancer as my gaze flicked around the nearly abandoned city streets. Shadows inked walls darker than any graffiti, while alleyways gaped like dumpster graveyards. Strange men’s eyes soiled my body, even as their hands remained hidden things in oversized coat pockets.

Dry-mouthed and heaving, I tried running in the three-inch heels, but their clicking was too sharp an invitation of the softness of my skin. How pitifully breakable I was, chalked the car headlights outlining my horror as my heart lunged for home.

How pathetically human.

When I finally got to my apartment, I didn’t attempt sleep. I was too busy barricading the door, and listening to the scratches and rustles camouflaged as wind outside my window. Didn’t fool me. Things were out there. Underneath the soulless sirens and the dogs who barked to hear the proof of their thinning mortality.

So many things.

***

One year later, and I’ve barked long and loud enough to run everyone away. Not to be trusted, people. Especially the men. Much more likely to own a firearm. Had to quit my job, and dropped the boyfriend from sometime status to get-the-fuck-out. Even my sister, lately, has started looking at me funny. Like I have things crawling from my ears or something. Makes me wonder what she’s keeping from me, to be looking at a sister like that. No matter.

I’ve bought a pistol. (Yeah, so what.) Going to deliver myself some relief. Hold that hard barrel to my sweetly supple temple, and squeeze.

Right after I finish this drink.

So let’s all raise a glass. To Madame Olenska!

6 for 6.