Greetings on this second day of January. Monday it was tropical, today it was frigid. Whatever. I work inside, what do I have to complain about?

Besides coming out of spin class and the sweat at my hairline forming ice crystals, that’s all. Other than that, though, all is well.

On this second challenge, I flipped a little further into the book. Seems I ruffled some feathers yesterday with not telling the whole story. Hey, the choice wasn’t mine!! Think about yours truly over here, wanting to tell about the rest of the gruesome night and I had to stop. This is why I don’t play by the rules. Rules generally suck.

You’ll be soothed by today’s. Instead of typing it all out, I’m just gonna show you what it says.

Wicked fun, right?

Since Beth was the first to give me feedback on yesterday’s, she got to choose the letters. She didn’t know what she was choosing letters for, and I obviously didn’t tell her what they stood for. This was my version of pulling them out of a hat.

Now I have to write quickly because it’s my bedtime. Spin took a lot out of me. Leave your worries and cares on the bike! Hey, I went almost ten miles in 45 minutes.

But this, this is my passion.

BSATD

{Or, as they are known here: hubcap, hair dryer, broken bottle, wallet, and dice

#105 You are a psychic. Your first client of the morning is strange. They seem off…with them they have a bag of five items they want you to get a reading off of. What visions do you get from each item? Who are they trying to contact?}

It was a slow day. Hot, too, so most people weren’t stirring in the Big Easy. It’s always hot here, and the plum colored velvet curtains that separated my reading room from the tourist friendly retail shop permitted even less air flow. Everything seemed especially close today. I shuffled my tarot cards and lifted my red hair off my neck. The fan moved around damp air. Stale air reeking of cigarettes, incense, sugar, and bourbon.

Bourbon on Bourbon Street at nine a.m. Imagine that.

The French Quarter was alive with the sounds of industrialism. Beer trucks’ back gates rolled open, kegs of beer rolled out. The brush of a broom across the ancient, pitted, stained, concrete. Musicians tooted their horns and sirens wailed, dimmer now. Dimmer.

The cathedral’s bells rang out. Ten, then. The clop of a mule, maybe Eleanor and Sam, with her sparkly purple hooves to match Sam’s sequined top hat.

New Orleans, how I love you.

I shut my eyes.

I didn’t think I slept at all, but when I opened my eyes a man had appeared. He was fidgeting at the curtains, unsure if he was invited, but not wanting to leave.

It’s never too late to turn back. Usually it’s young girls, piled in here with a heap of friends giggling and referencing Hocus Pocus. Then they get spooked by my Ouija board. I sometimes TRY to get them to leave. It’s hard to get a good picture of a person with so many milling around and snickering, making light of my profession. But I know how to shut them up and scare them off good. They probably run straight home to grab their rosaries. I would.

I smile, and beckon the twitchy man in. “Sit,” I instruct, sweeping my arm to the olive green velvet settee positioned across from my table.

He more like collapses, then sits up ramrod straight. “I wanna know…” He whispers. “I wanna know…everything.”

I chuckle. It’s impossible to know everything. I only get pieces and then have to weave those into something that resembles what this person could be made up of. People today, you need to listen to me: you CAN judge a book by it’s cover. Trust me.

“Love?”

He nodded so quickly it was like jerking a chain loose from a crevice.

“Lost love?”

“Not yet.”

It’s always love. Those who don’t have it, want it, and those who have it want to make sure they can keep it.

“But also…my toenails.”

His eyes darted around the small room. I could hear my assistant up front trying to sell healing crystals. I tried to channel to her to quit trying, she was wasting her time. You needn’t be a psychic to know that. Heck, I couldn’t even see them.

“Your toenails?” I repeated.

“Yes. And my elbows.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“Anything else?”

“My son…”

“Is he with you?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m here.”

I suppressed a sigh. But I was under the impression this gentleman needed help. He was sweaty, which is to be expected any time of day in New Orleans. He looked like a Wall Street Stockbroker that cracked. I would like to know more, despite my stern constitution not to get involved. That heightens certain senses but clouds others.

I inhaled deeply, again smelling the sweet mix of beignets and bourbon.

“You paid out front?”

He produced the gold dubloon we used for the thirty minute $200 fee.

And then another one.

A full hour with this whacked out stockbroker wannabe? Great. And I brought salad for lunch. Clearly this was a shrimp po boy kind of day.

“Let’s begin,” I said, putting my cards away, and reaching for his hand. The tablecloth bunched up as he grudgingly produced it, palm up.

“I brought some stuff if you wanna look at it. It may help you.”

This is fairly common, especially with those who are out to contact dead relatives and friends. Everyone wants security of heaven but they’re sure living like hell here. I try to stay out of it, they’re paying me to tell them what they want to hear.

Except I don’t think this guy was. He came for truth.

My favorite kind.

“Dave?” I asked him and he raised his eyes above the glasses that had slipped down his nose.

“How’d you know?”

I smiled serenely, then couldn’t stand myself. I smiled wider, showing my teeth. “I didn’t. You just look like a Dave. A Dave that’s had a very long Wednesday, although it’s only Tuesday.”

He hung his head. I don’t know why for.

“Should I get the bag?”

“Hold on.”

I had just picked up something in his lines, quite by accident.

He had beautiful hands. Not the hands of a piano player, but the hands of a man who worked using an expensive MontBlanc pen, not a concrete saw.

I squeezed his right hand between mine. It was clammy. My hands stuck to his momentarily. I resisted the urge to use my antibacterial gel.

He sat up as if awakening from a frightening dream. “My bag. I have it. You need it.”

And he dropped my hand and dashed back through the curtain. He returned in a flash with a burlap sack. Of course. Why carry a regular backpack? Let’s be as conspicuously weird as possible. Which, I will remind you, is no small feat for NOLA. I saw a unicorn riding on the back of a yellow and lime green scooter last week. Who buys a yellow and lime green scooter, I ask you? I guess people who want to haul around unicorns.

And no, I hadn’t been drinking. And Mardi Gras wasn’t for eight more weeks! You expect that kind of thing then. Most of the time we’re just kinda mellow.

Back to the sack.

He dumped the contents out all at once across my mahogany table. I tried not to narrow my eyes and visibly cringe. The table was old and it had plenty enough character markings to go around. That’s why I used the tablecloth.

And why would someone bring a hubcap? Is this a joke? Was I going to have to try and commune with a car???

The next item I noticed was the wallet. Scarred like my table, someone had carried it for a long time. Brown leather worn so much it appeared polished, curved at the corners and still holding the bloated shape from too many oil change cards and crumpled dollar bills. It had belonged to a scallywag, this I knew.

…a hairdryer? He can’t be serious. This guy has gone round the bend.

The next item would have been simple enough if it weren’t so unnatural. A bottle. But not a beer bottle. A gorgeous moss green glass bottle that had been tumbling around on the bottom of the the ocean for at least a century. The bottom was gone, but it still set upright, giving the impression that everything was still fine and dandy.

Lastly, three dice. They had rolled to a stop next to the bottle, bunched together like peas in a pod, like they were afraid of becoming separated.

I took a deep breath and looked again at each item in turn.

“I’ve gotten shoes before, but this is my first hubcap,” I told Twitchy Dave. “It symbolizes travel, of course, but being round, a continuous journey. Perhaps one that will end where it started. It’s a long one, or you would have, too, brought me a shoe.”

His shoulders slumped.

“And this isn’t from the car you are interested in. This is just a hubcap. The dice, though, and the wallet, they were warmed by a man you loathe. A man who has problems, the least of which are gambling. A man who stole your girl and therefore, your heart. I think it’s been gone a long time. And Dave, she wasn’t ever yours to hold. She is like a butterfly, moving toward the next thing, and while she is beautiful now, the next step of her short metamorphosis is death. She isn’t long for this world, Dave.”

I paused. This was hard to say, and probably impossible for him to hear. I wouldn’t care for it, myself.

“You got his wallet but it was empty. It didn’t even hold answers. So you came to me. The perfume bottle from the sea, she cherished it from the moment she discovered it lying on that deserted beach you sailed to. She sat it on her vanity and it was glad to be loved again. It will always be an empty vessel, like her heart. She can’t hold love. It cannot hold potions. It is only a thing of beauty for those that want to see it. Many would throw it away because it is damaged, but she loved it in spite of that, just as you loved her.

“She’s not beautiful, Dave. Her soul is black and jagged, and you can’t save her. You thought you had, but she strayed. The hair dryer is for the hot wind of the desert, she didn’t need it where she was going to and so she left it. You see it as a token she will come home. She won’t come home as the person you thought you knew. Let her go, David. She’s gone from you now.”

He wept. I held his lovely hands. I longed to push his hair back from his forehead and kiss his scar, just as his mother had done when he was eight and wrecked his bike.

“Your son is finding his way, he is the one who will come back to you. It will take a long time, longer than you have patience for. And you may no longer want him when he does.”

“I don’t know what to say about your elbows and toenails ailment. Maybe just take some vitamins?”

He smiled ruefully. “I just wanted to see how far you would go.”

“I’ll go all the way, honey, but that’s as far as this sight takes me.”

I watched his face transform. He had wanted the truth, and the truth set him free. I gathered the three tremoring dice. Could he feel them? Did he know? I out them in a stainless steel box to keep their energy apart from the other objects.

“Keep the dice,” I told him, folding the box in his hand. “Keep the bottle only if you love it, and know WHY you love it. Don’t love it because she did, because she didn’t know true love. She knew outward beauty, but she did not know love.”

“I’m throwing the hair dryer and hubcap out, and the wallet needs to be burned. Just know the dice have some power that can be transferred to you. Know their power, and keep them close. They could be your greatest possession.”

I handed him a lacy hankerchief to dry his face. “Our time is up. Use what’s left well. Go out, drink some Scotch, eat a plate of oysters. Enjoy some jazz and go back to Washington. Put your life back on track. New Orleans is a nice place to visit, but you don’t need to stay long here. Your healing will come, but this city will break your heart.”

And so he went on his way. He would never be one I would come across again, but I could see him. I could conjure him in my mind and then I could glimpse his profile if I cared to turn on C-SPAN. He was well.

She lay at the bottom of the the ocean, clutching a bottle that wasn’t broken, but had been filled with a nasty concoction of poison to get her there. She hadn’t thought of Dave since she left him; she only wanted her next fix. Her thoughts solely focused on what it would take to get it.

And when I woke up from my nap, the sea glass bottle with the broken bottom sat at eye level next to my crystal ball on the shelf behind me, looking perfect.