“Your aura is magnificent,” she tells me.
I look down at my body as if my aura is seeping out of me like sweat or something, but I don’t see anything. “Oh. Uh, thank you.”
Two men come up to flank her. One is bald, looking a bit like Bruce Willis, and the other has a full head of white and gray hair, looking like he’s spent his entire life surfing, his skin leathery and his smile lines on full display.
“Sorry, she insisted she come talk to you,” the Bruce Willis look alike tells me.
“No need to apologize,” I smile. “Doesn’t every girl want to be complimented on her magnificent aura?”
I hear the Armani suit guy snort, and I shoot him a glare.
“I bet his aura is real shitty, huh?” I ask, hooking my thumb in his direction.
The woman glances over at him and tuts under her breath. “Oh, dear. His aura is indeed begrimed.”
“Ha!” I say, pointing at him with a grin. “She said your aura sucks.”
He glares at me, but then the food truck guy hands him a heaping bowl of spider-shaped ravioli, and he smirks at me with a shitty grin. “My aura may suck, but at least I have food,” he says before walking away.
Fricken ass.
It looks delicious—the ravioli, not the ass.
I force myself to look away from his overfilled bowl and focus back on the trio in front of me. The woman is now motioning up and down my body like she’s stroking my aura mist or something. “The past life of your reincarnated soul shines brightly within you,” she says cheerily.
“Oh, well, I guess you could say that my past life was very recent,” I tell her.
She nods knowingly, then she opens the cargo bag that she has slung over her shoulder and starts digging through it until she pulls out a deck of tarot cards and fans them out in front of me.
Meanwhile, the silver fox surfer dude looks across the street at the ocean with longing, and Bruce Willis gives me an apologetic smile, as if he’s worried I’ll be bothered by her. But how could I be? She has feathers threaded into her hair and bracelets that jangle when she moves. She’s so mellow and free-loving that you can’t help but like her.
“Pick a card,” she tells me as she holds the cards in front of me. “I shall read your fortune.”
“Oh, man, my fortune? That sounds ominous.”
“We all have one, dear.”
I feel like this is a very poignant time. Like life is literally holding out choices for me to pick. “What if I choose wrong?”
She shakes her head, making her poufy corkscrew curls bounce around. “There is no wrong. You’ll pick what you’re meant to pick.”
My armpits start to feel all sticky and wet at the weight of decision that’s blanketed over me. “Damn. I think I have FOPWTC,” I tell her.
She gives me a look.
“You know, kind of like FOMO, but this is Fear Of Picking Wrong Tarot Card.”
“There is no wr—”
“Yeah, yeah. No wrong one,” I say, cutting her off. “But see, the thing is, I need a lady luck to be on my side here. I don’t need her, or karma, or Fate and Destiny to screw with me right now. I have a very important personal mission. So if I fuck up and choose a bad card, this could ruin everything.”
The woman’s smile fades and her twinkling eyes narrow. Instead of her free-loving, whimsical self, now she just looks like a stern grandmother. It’s a bit scary. “Pick a damn card.”
“Okay, okay!” I slam my eyes closed and shove my hand forward, swiping out the first card my hand touches.
“Well done,” she tells me, her singsong tone back in place.
I drag my eyes open carefully as I flip the card over, scared to see what’s on the other side.