3. How I Lost Twenty Dollars

          I had no intention of consulting a psychic.  There were the eight business cards in a row on the dark green tablecloth.  I collected them all, instantly attracted to the white square with colorful stars. Later I realized that this act was the only psychic phenomenon I would encounter that night.

          Peer pressure conned me into adding my name to the list.  A Shaman dressed in the striking blue costume of her indigenous Nordic forebears had conducted the drumming circle, which preceded this psychic fair of sorts.   My spiritual cup was full; I could continue contentedly in my corporeal life, encouraged, invigorated, and becalmed.  But, “Hmmm,” got the better of me.

          I was directed to Karen’s table, she of the square, starred card.  After exclaiming over that coincidence (my one in eight surprise chance of hitting it on the head) it went down hill from there. 

          “Your feelings are accurate,” she declared. 

          The dutiful subject, I wrote this revelation down on a yellow pad. 

          “Something about a coworker.  You are going to step forward.”

          “You mean defensively?” I queried.

          I told her I worked independently at my two jobs.  Karen did not pick up on the fact that I conducted poetry classes in the very room in which we were seated, at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

          “Your daughter is in NYC, in the medical field.”

          “No,” I said carefully, cocking my head slightly to the left.  “My son is attending Hofstra Law.”

          “Then I see him involved in the medical field.  Maybe he will live near a hospital,” she said with confidence.

          My pen recorded this new insight.

          “Florida!” she exclaimed breathlessly.  A male relative will have an issue.  It’s an emergency.”

          “No,” I said almost guiltily.  No connection.

          I could sense frustration.  Karen was drawing a blank.

          “Distant memories will bring thoughts,” she intoned.

          “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” I parried back, psychically of course.  Maybe that’s why Karen began to scowl. 

          I found myself trying to help her along, putting strong thoughts in my head for her to reach for.  I had designed and sewn the Shaman’s glorious blue Saami dress.

          “I see you as a small child.  An elderly male relative is giving you a coin.”

          “No,” I said evenly.  “I never met either of my grandfathers.  No other elderly male relatives either.”

          Karen was losing patience with me.

          “There’s a coin,” she insisted.  “Think back.”

          “No,” I said regretfully.  I was not trying to be difficult.

          “Who’s Roger?” she asked intensely.

          “I don’t know a Roger,” I admitted, but quickly, “I have a Roberta, and a Ray.”

          Karen deftly missed the recent fight I had had with my sister, and went for my next-door neighbor, a pleasant sort.  However, she assumed Ray was a woman.

          “I’m getting, ‘see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil,’” she said. 

          My pad got it too.  A few blinks from me in response.  I saw, heard, and said nothing.  Now I was summoning Karen’s ire.

          She leaned forward.  “Who is contacting you in your dreams?”

          My eyebrows danced the mazurka across my forehead.

          “Male relatives are trying to give you a message.  Why aren’t you receiving it?” she demanded.

          I assured her that other than Dragon and Teddy Bear, my two cats who slept in and on my bed, no male relatives were anywhere near my dreams.  Karen didn’t buy it.

          “You are not receiving messages from the other realm.  You must request that they come through tonight when you go to sleep.”

          I assured her that I would do just that.

          “I see balloons,” she said, with a concerted attempt at calm.

          “Yes,” I agreed, feeling expansive.  “We have a celebration.  Nick is graduating this month from law school.”  How many celebrations occur in May and June?  My wicked thoughts would not let me rest.

          “He will choose between two women.”

          “His relationship is on the rocks.  He has no other girl at this time,” I offered almost timidly.  Karen was tiring.

          Ironically sympathetic to her poor batting stats, I pushed my looming thirty year wedding anniversary, even sooner birth date, fairly recent graduation with another master’s degree, and fortuitous friendship with the event’s Shaman generously toward Karen with every psychic corpuscle that I could muster.

          “You will be moving to a sideline,” said my desperate psychic.

          “I started a business a year ago after going back to school.  That was the sideline,” I said with the finality of a vet about to put a creature out of its misery.  “So glad to have met you.  Good luck.” 

          I rose to leave Karen the psychic and my twenty.  I shook her half-opened hand. 

          I was wrong when I said that nailing the one in eight psychics was the only intuitive moment of the night.  Karen had opened our consult with the words, “Your feelings are accurate.”

          By all that is holy, she was right!  I knew that I would get a dose of snake oil.

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