The Antithesis of Purple

The Antithesis of Purple


“This is because,” she said, “you’re always saying that you hear footsteps coming up behind you.”

She was beaming, proud of herself for coming up with this in time for my birthday, but I was looking doubtfully up at the gaudy sign. “Yeah, and then there’s no one there…”

“Exactly. That’s why we’re here.”

“Lana,” I said tiredly, “I don’t think there are ever actual reasons for going to see a psychic. This is ridiculous. This is insane. Please don’t mistake my paranoia for insanity.” Actually, it wasn’t so much paranoia as wishful thinking. I lived alone, I ate alone, I slept alone. I saw people I knew so infrequently that I had taken to hoping they would show up out of nowhere. But I couldn’t really say that; it sounded too self-pitying.

Lana led me inside, through the door that would have been perfectly ordinary if the side facing the street wasn’t painted dark blue with purple stars. The inside smelled like white smoke and baby’s breath, a smell that I hated from my days of helping with the Easter bouquets at my mother’s church. The lights were dim, and glancing up I saw they had been covered over with thin but dark gauze. Every surface, including the floor, was draped in indigo cloth. It was as if someone had decided that a bare room looked naked and was now making every effort to cover it up.

“All right, you got me in here,” I muttered. “Can we go now?”

Then the fortune-teller swept into the room through a curtain tacked above another doorway. She wore only the usual amount of eye shadow, which looks bad enough on anyone, and nothing on her head but an overly complicated knot of hair, and no sequins on her clothes. She introduced herself in an extravagant way and led us into the second room, which was also clothed and smelled more like baby’s breath than the first. Tufts of the tiny flowers were mounted on the walls, the way torches would be hung in the corridors of a medieval castle. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing there. Baby’s breath had nothing to do with all that so-called mystical stuff; it meant innocence. Snapdragons, a symbol of deception, might have been more appropriate.

The fortune-teller sat in a low chair on the far side of a low table and asked us to make ourselves comfortable on the floor.

“Sit,” she said grandly, “and tell me what has brought you here.”

So Lana explained I was being haunted. Or something like that. I wasn’t, really, I just had too much time to think and this had been the first time I’d left my room in almost two weeks. But the fortune-teller nodded sagely at what Lana had to say and turned to me.

“I thought I detected something more about you when you first entered here,” the fortune-teller said. I rolled my eyes. She had a way of lowering her voice as she spoke, so that it was rather high at first but deep and eerie right before she took another breath, that made me even more inclined to just get up and leave. “Give me your hand,” she continued. “I shall need to read your palm to learn more about you and your particular problem.”

I glanced over at Lana and glared when she gave me a thumbs-up signal, but put my hand reluctantly on the table, palm up. After all, it was my birthday present and Lana was paying for it. If I’d made it this far I might as well play nice and get it over with, but the sooner I could lock myself back in my apartment the better.

The fortune-teller latched onto my wrist and pulled it closer so quickly that I nearly fell forward onto the table. Her fingers were wet and warm and squishy. They made my skin crawl. “Ah yes, quite interesting…”

“What is it?” Lana asked anxiously. I rolled my eyes again and privately wondered how she could be such an intelligent person and here at the same time. Maybe she was one of those people with a switch to turn her brain conveniently on or off whenever she wanted, like most of the people I’d known in high school.

There was a long pause, dripping with dramatic importance. The fortune-teller looked up from my hand very slowly. When she met my eyes she said, in her lowest and, I suppose, most mystical tones, “You…”

Whatever it was, I wished she would hurry up and get on with it. Her nails, as short as they were, were starting to dig into my wrist, and the floor wasn’t exactly comfortable. I was definitely looking forward to leaving.

“You will not die on this planet!”

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Lana was as pale as a sheet, completely taken in.

The fortune-teller tightened her grip on my wrist. “You will not die on this planet,” she repeated seriously.

All right, that was it. Birthday present or no, this was ridiculous and the smell of baby’s breath was starting to make me feel sick. “Well I wouldn’t expect to,” I replied, deadpan. “I wasn’t born here.”

With a gasp, either at the statement itself or the cynical tone with which I delivered it, the fortune-teller released me. I stood up and left the shop as quickly as I could. When I got outside I took a deep breath to reorient myself in the real world and started walking briskly down the sidewalk in the direction of my apartment.

“Hey!” Lana ran up after me. “What’re you doing?”

“Going home, obviously. I have stuff to do.”

“But you can’t just…” she frowned and looked at me quizzically. “Were you really not born here?”

“Please tell me you’re not really that gullible,” I snapped.

She looked hurt but didn’t leave. “But… what about your birthday present?”

I groaned and stopped. We were standing in front of the grocery store, which had absolutely no mysticism to it. The grocery store was finite and objective and was often my only destination on the occasions when I left my apartment. “Look, I’m just having a bad day. All right?” And this is not helping, I added silently. I could feel a headache coming on.

“Oh. Okay.” She looked down and scuffed her shoe against a crack in the cement. “I’m not very good at gifts… I guess everyone else gave you better presents, huh?”

“No, because no one else remembered my birthday,” I said bitterly, and then instantly wondered why that had come out of my mouth. It was true, but that didn’t mean I had meant to say it.

Lana looked like she had no idea how to respond. “Oh,” she said faintly. “I’m sorry…”

I shrugged and thrust my hands deep into my coat pockets. “Yeah, well. It’s no big deal. Thanks for trying… I really appreciate it.” Then I turned and walked back to my apartment, and this time she didn’t follow me. While I was walking the wind began to cut right through my coat.

All in all it was a crappy day. It was a shame that it happened to be my birthday too but, sliding the deadbolts in behind me as I went into my apartment, I figured I could live with it.