The Reading

        The hand-lettered sign read: “Gypsy reads tea leaves – ONLY $10.”  The man holding the sign was shaking, rivulets of rainwater coursing down his slick overcoat.
         “I’m only going to ask this once,” he said, his voice shaking in rhythm with his chilled body.  “Is this your sign?  Were you reading tea leaves five years ago with the Marvelo and Co. Flying Circus?”
         “I, I…” the old woman quivered under the man’s piercing glare, holding a liver-spotted hand up between the two of them.
         “Don’t try to lie to me!” the man shouted.  Droplets exploded off his coat as he shook the sign in front of her face.  He stormed back to the apartment door and forced it closed, withdrawing the extended bolt first then latching it back into the broken doorframe.
         The old woman crawled deeper into her armchair as he approached.
         “I sold tickets for Marvelo and Co.,” she said, extending her hand in front of her again as he grew closer.  “I never told fortunes.”
         “Don’t think I don’t remember you,” the man said, tossing the sign onto the floor at her feet.  “I’ll never forget your eyes, peering out from behind those scarves.  That gypsy looked straight through me, just like you’re doing right now.”
         “I’m no gypsy, I’m –”
         “Shut up!  I don’t want to hear it.  You had your chance to talk five years ago, now it’s my turn.”          
         The man dragged a wooden chair over and turned it around so he could hang his folded arms over the seatback.  The sun glinted off a picture frame next to the woman in the armchair.
         “Oh, perfect,” he said, reaching out and pulling the picture from the table.  The scene was a fairground, crimson tents with gold trim and poles protruding from each corner.  Three women stood for the picture in front of a tent with a hand-lettered sign.
         “So there you are, ready to dole out your next life-sentence.”
         The picture frame sailed across the room and shattered against a wall.  The old woman shrieked, but her voice was too frail to carry beyond the walls of her apartment.
         “You must remember me,” the man insisted.  “How could you forget such a prophetic reading?  You had me all figured out.  You knew I had a great job, a great family.  You described me perfectly.  And then…”
         The man’s folded arms went slack then he pulled them behind the seatback and grasped the spindles to control his shaking.
         “And then you read the leaves.”
         The old woman reached out to touch the man.  “Whatever happened, I don’t –”
         “Oh, now you’re going to pretend you don’t know everything!”  The man jerked back, scooting the chair just out of reach of the old woman sitting in front of him.
         “Let’s start with the job,” he said.  “That’s the first thing you said, that I’d lose the job.  Three weeks later the layoffs started.  Three weeks after that I got my pink slip.”
         He sprung from the chair and hurled it toward a credence table set with dinnerware and goblets.  The wooden chair sent shards of glass and china in a sunburst away from the table.
         The old woman shielded her face from the flying debris.  The man didn’t flinch.
         “The house was the next to go.  The bank got it in six months.  Of course, you said I’d lose the house too.”  The man spun around.  “This is a nice little place you’ve got here.  Rent controlled I assume?”
         “I’ve lived here for forty years, when I wasn’t traveling with Marvelo.”
         “So,” the man continued, “why don’t you tell me what happened next, just like you did five years ago.”  He marched over to the kitchen and flung open cabinet doors, raking items off the shelves onto the floor.  “Let me get you some tea leaves; that should help jog your memory.  Let’s look at the future together again, just like old times.” 
         He stumbled upon a box of Earl Grey teabags and grabbed a cup drying in the sink.  He brought them to the table next to the old woman and tore open a bag with his teeth, shaking the contents into the cup like pixie dust.
         “There we go,” he growled.  “Oh, we can’t have a mess!”  He wiped the excess flakes off the table with his sleeve.  The flakes stuck to his wet coat.
         He peered over the cup and croaked in a poor impression of an old woman’s voice.  “You’ll lose your family too.”  He turned and addressed the shaking woman, as though she were the one who had just spoken and not him.  “Oh, right you are, Madam Mischca.  They left in a heartbeat, just like you said they would.  I laughed when you told me the first time, but now I’m not laughing, am I?  You don’t seem as funny as you did at that two-bit, fly-by-night freak show that rolled into Pittsburg five years ago.
         “Sir, I don’t –”
         “Don’t call me sir!  You know my name!  Call me Dave, like you did before.  You know everything about me, but there’s one thing you didn’t see five years ago.  One thing you didn’t see in those leaves.  Can you see it now?”  He picked up the cup and turned it like he was going to help her take a long swallow of the liquid-less brew.
         After handing the cup to the old woman and gently wrapping her quivering fingers around the cold china, Dave crept slowly to a set of French doors leading to an outside balcony.
         As he swung the doors out, the sound of car horns and rushing wind raced up the side of the fifteen-story building and into the apartment.
          “Look at your tea leaves, Madam Mischca.  Tell me what you see in your future?”
         The old woman let the cup slip from her fingers and fall to the floor below, splattering tea leaves across the unforgiving tile floor.