“This is really more of a fun reading,” she says, in regard to the Five Dollar Special advertised on the sign propped outside on Sherman Avenue.
A fun reading? I’d come to her — the palm reader — wanting to be immersed (in some small way) in real mysticism and the mystic language that accompanies it. In my mind it was for fun, yes, but her characterizing my palm reading as such felt like a violation of the atmosphere, the breakdown of a norm I yearned for her to uphold. My fortune is supposed to be her business.
I’m in an apartment. I walk up a flight of stairs, ring a doorbell and am led immediately towards the “palm reading chamber”, which is unmistakably a repurposed closet. I notice a trail of faded socks and dusty-looking laundry leading to an unmade bed down the hall as I’m being ushered in the opposite direction, and I sense how anxious it makes her that I notice. She looks to be about my age, early 20s. If I could somehow hybridize her with Captain Jack Sparrow the result might be the palm reader I hoped to see, but in real life she could probably pass for a sorority sister. She’s casually dressed and tan, with round eyes and cheeks, her dark hair softly flipped under at the ends, lips lined and glossed. Pretty. Besides for, you know, the lip liner.
“For $20 I can do a palm reading, and for fifty you can get tarot cards,” she informs me. I let out a sigh of disappointment as I decline both services, defaulting to a clumsy line about the state of our economy, my nearly-empty wallet, and how I gotta feed the kids I don’t have at home. I suppose these are tough times for the palm reading industry; the service palm readers render is unreservedly superfluous unless you happen to strike the emotional intersection of impulse and optimism.
So what exactly does $5 get you at the palm reader’s? Two questions. Nothing about the “Palm Reading Special” involves the words “palm” or “reading.”
The reality is harsh, for nothing at the palm reader’s aligns with the juicy clichés we expectantly adore. There is no crystal ball, no freaky cat, no smoldering incense, no beaded curtain…not even those plastic glow-in-the-dark stars. The palm reader herself has neither a gold nose ring nor dreadlocks, nor does she wear an aquamarine sarong. My salubrious preteen curiosity about Ouija boards, Miss Cleo’s midnight infomercials, superstitions, Hocus Pocus and hippies begins to wilt.
We sit across from each other in the closet on mismatching chairs. The walls are painted light blue with white clouds with an assortment of Christmas ornaments and angel figurines suspended from the ceiling. They sway uneasily and clink together in the breeze of a five-blade ceiling fan. She asks for my name and date of birth, and then the fun begins: She asks for my first question. My mind is overtaken by the fact that I’m paying to be in here, participating in the charade, but I spit it out.
“Should I take Modern Cosmology winter quarter?”
She doesn’t miss a beat serving up an answer, whether she knows what a math/science distro is or not. She responds, “It shows that if you go through with it, there’s something else you need to do in this career. It shows it’s not gonna be this fun little path. It will lead you to something bigger, what you’ve always wanted to do as a child.” The mysterious “it” provides her with more antecedent-free fragments, and they roll off her tongue with impressive fluidity. In writing, her answers would receive F’s for grades from any remotely conscientious English teacher; spoken, here in the closet, they go down like lemon and honey.
“By everyone pushing you to do it, it shows it’s meant for you. Some people say you shouldn’t do it, but they’re a little unsure, so you shouldn’t take their advice. It’ll open new things for you. It shows that, by taking this class, it’s gonna bring you closer to your family members.”
Modern Cosmology is going to bring me closer to my family?
“They want you to be successful, but they’re not thinking about the way you think you are, they’re thinking amongst themselves.”
I no longer know what we’re talking about. This experience is beginning to feel like a bad date, where the only imaginable way out would involve saying, “it’s not you, it’s me.” I’m still paying for this. Next question, she demands. I gaze up at the dangling ceiling decorations and take a deep breath.
“What does the future hold for Danity Kane? Will they ever get back together?”
She smiles, but she doesn’t laugh at me. “They’ll be back together, but just two or three of them. P. Diddy’s gonna bring them back together.”
Praise Jesus! High five!
“People throw things at you, and if you can handle them, challenges, to go through things, one step at a time — you go too fast, you understand? There is a lot you don’t know. It’s in your aura; it makes it negative. There’s a lot of negative energy coming from your aura, so it’s a little bit dark, and it’s blocking your desires.”
Oh, so I’ve brought this upon myself. My negative aura is blocking my desire for a Danity Kane reunion. I am the heart of the problem. Tilting my head back, I wonder how I could do this to Diddy. An angel figurine catches a chance gust of wind from the fan and slams against the wall.
My Five Dollar Special concludes in just under five minutes. I show myself to the door while she suggests I go for the$20 palm reading. I retire to my bedroom unenlightened and empty handed, reflecting on what I could’ve had — a sandwich, some raffle tickets, gel insoles, five Wendy’s Frosties — things that might actually be both $5 and special.