2025.05.08
Justine had asked him outright, once, what nationality he was. "You're the fortune teller, you tell me," he said.
"I read the future, not the past," she told him.
"Well, the past should be easier!"
"It's not. It's far more complicated."
'A lady doesn't *go* without a hat, my dear. Only common people.' Common! What's so uncommon about us? We're not famous, we're not society, we haven't been rich since 1930 and we aren't known for brains or beauty. But our ladies wear hats, by God! And we all have perfect manners! We may not ever talk to outsiders about anything more interesting than the weather but at least we do it politely! And we've all been taught that we disapprove of sports cars, golf, women in slacks, chewing gum, the color chartreuse, emotional displays, ranch houses, bridge, mascara, household pets, religious discussions, plastic, politics, nail polish, transparent gems of any color, jewelry shaped like animals, checkered prints ...
Then the groom, who seemed unsuitably light of heart, followed him around before the ceremony insisting that Christianity was a dying religion. (" It's the only case I know of where *mental* sins count too; it'll never sell," he said. "Take it from me, get out while the getting's good." [...])
"Scientists," said Duncan, "have been investigating the stimuli that cause birds to vocalize in the morning. So far they have determined only one. They sing because they're happy."
But was she a fortune teller! I don't mind telling you, I used to go to her myself. Okay, so it's mumbo-jumbo. You know why I went? Say you got a problem, some decision to make. You ask your minister. You ask your psychiatrist, psychologist, marriage counselor, lawyer--they all say, 'Well of course I can't decide for you and we want to look at all the angles here and I wouldn't want to be responsible for--' They hedge their bets, you see. But not Madame Olita. Not any good fortune teller. 'Do X,' they say. 'Forget Y.' 'Stop seeing Z.' It's wonderful, they take full responsibility. What more could we ask?"
"Otherwise," said Madame Olita, "why take any action at all? No, you can always choose to *some* extent. You can change your future a great deal. Also your past."
"My past?"
"Not what's happened, no," Madame Olita said gently, "but what hold it has on you."
She had the pathetic alertness of a child who has had to depend too much on adults; she picked up every inflection, every gesture and untied ribbon and wandering eye, and turned it over and over to study its significance. (Was that how she could read the future? She had foretold Great-Grandma's death, she said, when she noticed her buying all her lotions in very tiny bottles.)
Justine did not seem to be easily disappointed. Which was fortunate.
"You want to hear about my movie?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to buy a camera and walk around filming to one side of things, wherever the action isn't. Say there's a touchdown at a football game, I'll narrow in on one straggling player at the other end of the field. If I see a purse-snatcher I'll find someone reading a newspaper just to the right of the victim."
"What's the point?" Justine asked.
"Point? It'll be the first realistic movie ever made. In true life you're *never* focused on where the action is. Or not so often. Not so finely."
"After all, we're living in reduced circumstances."
He seemed to savor the last two words: reduced circumstances. Lucy thought they sounded smugly technical, like devaluated currency or municipal bonds.
He took the hand, although she was a stranger. He would go along with anything; he always had.
"Won't you just come away with me?" People had been saying that to him all his life. He had still not learned to turn them down.
"If you really want to know," he said (but speaking in Caleb's general direction), "I don't believe in people sacrificing themselves for the sake of other people."
Justine ran through the hallway, breathless and shivering. Someone had died. Something was wrong with Meg. She had never realized how many possibilities there were for disaster, or how calm and joyous her life had been until this moment.
Reminder that wellness grifters like Trump's new Surgeon General Casey Means spread misinformation about vaccines and health because it is extremely profitable for them to do so.
falling asleep is never going to feel as good as it is right now