"Does the letter 'S' have any significance to you?" the teller continues. "I'm sensing an 'S' name. An ex-boyfriend? Maybe you just ended a relationship?"
"Well, there is an ex. But — "
"Yes," the teller says, cutting Kate off. I'm seized by brief moment of excitement — I just ended a relationship! The teller is bringing us together!
"Are you still sleeping with him?" the teller asks, her voice flat.
Kate catches my eye, more irritated than embarrassed. Either way, I'm horrified. "No," Kate says. "No way."
"You still love him or what?" the teller asks, sounding annoyed.
"It's not like that."
Perhaps this is her fortune-telling shtick, I think. A crystal ball scrapped for emotional sadism. The realization that Kate has her own baggage, her own hard-to-escape exes, makes me think of my own pathetic inability to properly flee the past.
"I'm just feeling something," the teller says, throwing the last tarot card on the table with a shrug. "You're not finished with him."
"I'm finished with him," Kate says coldly.
When she gets back to the couch, she looks tired, but she's still smiling. I'm not. I'm thinking about exes — the last time I slept with one and whether it qualifies as "still."
"Have fun," Kate says to me.
"I see great things for you," the fortuneteller says to me. "Do you have a relationship to the West Coast?"
"Yes," I say, "I grew up there."
"I feel good energy coming to you from the West." This strikes me as improbable. I grew up on the set of Laguna Beach and have no
When I look over she's got the kid on her lap and is staring at me with a new intensity.
intention of ever going back.
"You don't like your job?" the teller asks.
"Well, no. Not entirely," I say.
"You won't stay there long," the teller says. "Do you like your apartment?"
"No."
Now she's looking right at me. "Do you like . . . the city?"
I pause. The truth? I'm not sure anymore. Of course there are things I like, and people I care about, and restaurants I still want to try, but I can't exactly lie to a psychic sadist.
"I feel an energy of dislocation," the fortuneteller says.
"Oh," I say, feeling dislocated. I want to look at Kate and chuckle about how far from the truth this is. I want to make a witty comment about how sexy we are for coming here on a date. But when I look over she's got the kid on her lap and is staring at me with a new intensity.
"I see a change of address in your near future," the fortuneteller says. "Abroad."
"Where?" I ask quietly. I have been thinking about leaving — about quitting my job, running off to South America, to Amsterdam, to Utah. But I had told myself these urges were immature and transient, and I ignored them. I didn't expect them to be unearthed on a first date.
The fortuneteller throws the few remaining cards down on the table and sighs. She turns to Kate. "Can you take the kid outside for a minute?"
"Sure," Kate says. I try to gauge her reaction as she's walking out, but she's concentrating on the child. What strange fortune will she assume is being hidden from her? That I've gotten someone pregnant? That I'm running from the law? That I'm asthmatic, bookish and too shy to make the first move?
"You have a lot of guilt, some serious unresolved emotional issues. I think you need help and I want to help you."
When we're alone, the fortuneteller mutes The Bachelor and leans back on the couch, legs uncrossed. "Look," she says to me. "Are you married?"
"No," I say.
"Do you have someone on the side?"
"Not that I know of," I say, desperate to make this a joke.
"You have a lot of guilt, some serious unresolved emotional issues. I think you need help and I want to help you." For a second I wonder if she's going to offer to sleep with me, then I'm horrified by the thought, and then by the thought of the thought. I suddenly want nothing more than to be far away — in Ohio, maybe. Or Quebec.
"I'd like to do some energy work for you. Candles," she says. "I burn them to cleanse your energy. They're $100 each, but for you, I'll do two for $150."
"I'm not spending any more money," I say, standing.
As she shuffles us out, trading me for her kid, she hands me her card. "Enjoy your time abroad. If you ever head back this way, stop by."
On the curb, I look at my date and we laugh with nervous relief.
"What the hell was that?" we say to each other, and then we kiss. Easy as that.
"I'm really not fucking my ex," she says.
"I'm really not moving," I say. But when I hear the words, something about them rings false. We stand in front of my subway stop, hesitating in a netherworld of post-date indecision. Under the streetlights I begin to feel weary. I want to kiss her again. I want to drag her home and take off her clothes. But discomfort lingers.
"I'll call you," I say, and start climbing down into the subway. With each descending step, the absurdity of the fortuneteller's prediction dims and a truth becomes concrete: I'm leaving New York and moving abroad.
It's true about relationships — those with the people we love as well as with the places we live — that things get bad long before we admit it to ourselves. And that a longer time still must pass before we act on those admissions. Next month, I'll be on a plane to Buenos Aires with a non-refundable one-way ticket. I've finally admitted to myself that things have gotten bad, that I've been skirting the line between inertia and possibility for so long that I'm no longer on the brink of resilience here in New York.
Shortly after our date, I email Kate and confess that I won't be calling her back. I admit that I won't be regenerating my life by borrowing someone else's. I admit that I will indeed soon have a new address, and that I knew that when we had our first date. About the only thing I don't admit is that it took a $20 fortuneteller to get me there. n°
Personal Inventory by James Stegall
Remembrance of things past, via the Lands' End catalog.
Strange Currencies by Lisa Carver
I dated a rich man; we both paid the price.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joey Rubin is the managing editor of Flak magazine. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Publisher's Weekly, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn. See more of his work at joeyrubin.com.
