Into the Mystic

Into the Mystic

‘I ’M A MEDIUM,’

the tiny old woman says. ‘An expert in meta-physical connection.’

Of course she’s a medium. Look at me!

her jacket cries, all purple swirly velvet and glimmery bits of gold. The silver tassels that hang down from the sleeves at her elbows call, Only a mystic would dress this mystically, you fool!

‘I’m a palmist too,’ she continues.

‘A pianist?’ Marjie asks, and I’m quite sure she has misheard on purpose.

‘I read people’s palms,’ the tiny old woman explains with patience. ‘Our hands hold the keys to our future.’

‘Mine are just holding this mug,’ Marjie says, and I stifle a giggle. Marjie does not suffer whimsy gladly.

‘Would you like a reading?’ the medium asks as Marjie gives her the change for the star-printed scarf she has just purchased.

‘Thank you, but no,’ Marjie says. ‘It’s just not for me. No offence.’

‘None taken, dearie,’ the woman says. There’s a cheekiness to the way she smiles at Marjie.

‘How about you?’ She turns to me. ‘Are you open to the idea of a wide and mystical universe?’

I glance at Marjie, who communicates, Get this lunatic out of our shop

with her eyes, but then I look at the clock. It is only ten past ten, when it feels like it should be at least a quarter to four.

‘Go on then.’ I hold out my hand.

The medium looks incredibly pleased and scurries over to me, dropping her shopping bag on the floor and taking my proffered left hand.

‘What’s your name?’ she asks.

‘Can’t you guess it?’ Marjie asks, taking a sup of her Foxo. The medium ignores this and looks up at me.

‘Eddie.’

‘Eddie, well, let’s see now.’ She strokes the tips of her fingers across my left palm. It is odd and ticklish having a stranger touch my hand. ‘I see a good long lifeline, but I suppose one might venture that that is obvious.’ She darts a look at Marjie, who says nothing but blows on her Foxo.

‘Now here, this is interesting.’ The medium runs her fingertip along the pad of my hand by my pinky finger. ‘I don’t see much of a marriage line.’

‘I’m not married,’ I agree.

And she beams. ‘Never married?’

‘Never married,’ I supply.

‘I thought so.’ She looks greatly pleased.

Marjie says nothing about the absence of a ring on my fourth finger.

‘And here,’ the medium continues, running her finger down the centre of my hand. ‘Your money line is a good

length and the indentation is fair. You have never wanted for money, but you have never been rich.’

I agree that this statement seems true.

Buoyed by her success, she looks more closely at my hand, peering as though all the destinies of my life are written in small print across my palm. ‘Now, your heart line is interesting,’ she says, looking closer still. ‘I haven’t seen one like this before.’ She traces her finger across my palm from east to west. ‘This is your love line. It tells the story of your heart. It’s very faint, yet here at the beginning we have a deepening of the line – I would put this somewhere around your twenties, but then it fades out to almost nothing right down here.’ It tickles as her index finger runs along the line. ‘Heeeeere,’ she says, swooping down to the edge of my hand, ‘right at the end, almost the very

end, the line deepens again.’

She pulls back and frowns at my hand for a moment. ‘So unusual,’ she says, mostly to herself.

‘So, if I were on the look-out for love …’ I trail off.

‘Now would be the time,’ she says.

She closes my hand, bending my fingers into my palm as though she is closing a book. She puts both her hands over my left hand and squeezes tightly as though to underline and underscore the point.

Marjie sneezes, and the moment is broken. The medium lets go of my hand.

‘Very interesting,’ I tell her. ‘What do I owe …’ I reach into the pocket of my red corduroy trousers for my wallet. She waves me away. ‘No, no, dear,’ she says, ‘I’ll just … take …’ She scans the shelf behind me and sees a ceramic

duck figurine who we think might be a salt shaker, but we haven’t got the pepper. ‘… This,’ she says, and she slips it into the pocket of her purple swirly jacket.

‘Oh, um, I—’

She’s taking many, many tiny steps towards the door before I can object.

The door chimes ring out and she is gone, shuffling off down Corporation Street with a duck salt shaker in her pocket. I can’t help smiling when I spot her shamble over to a young man waiting for a tram and touch him on the knee. He looks up in alarm and slides his headphones off so he can hear her presumably offering him a palm reading.

I take ￡5 out of my wallet and put it in the till. It is probably more than the duck would have made us, but I can feel Marjie’s eyes on me. And my cheeks are somewhat aflame.

Marjie comes over and places our large pump bottle of hand sanitizer down by the till with a thud. Giving me a look all the while she does it.

And then she rattles through the bead curtain in search of lunch.

Alone in the shop, I compress the pump and spread the slimy, alcohol-smelling gel around my future-revealing hands.

Now would be the time.

I retrieve my phone and I write to Val. Inviting her on our – and my – very first date.