Seeking Love’s Fortune : It was curiosity really, but maybe a psychic would know. Had she married the rightman? After four readings, she knew she had the answer.
Our marriage enjoys the tranquillity of a peacetime truce.
Generally, we have agreed to friendly nation status. But border skirmishes do arise from time to time, followed by sanctions, otherwise known as the silent treatment. This lasts until one of us decides to wave the white flag and the peace treaty is again signed, honored and revered.
Joy and all that other Cinderella hullabaloo enters into our marriage only as a byproduct of respect and compromise. War metaphors and fairy tales notwithstanding, we have had the good fortune of happiness.
So why screw it up with crystal balls, hazy auras and Tarot cards? Because curiosity gotthe best of me. If I had done the right thing by getting married to this man, then a psychic was sure to know. But if, on the other hand, I had made a mistake, I felt it my responsibility to find out.
I searched through the Yellow Pages under “Psychic” but was referred to “Spiritual Consultants.”
Of course! What was I thinking?
There were several to choose from: “European Master Clairvoyant,” “Egyptian Psychic,” “America’s Native Psychic.” One of the ads offered house calls. Another, inexplicably, pictured a Star of David superimposed over a menorah. Most showed crystal balls and beautiful women adorned in hoop earrings and scarves.
I chose a psychic who promised to answer all my love questions. She was in Beverly Hills, which seemed an appropriate place to start since this region of Planet Los Angeles has always subscribed to its own cosmic set of rules.
My psychic greeted me at the door of her tiny apartment with a portable phone stuck to her ear and gruffly motioned for me to sit down at the kitchen table. Then she left me there for several minutes while she whispered hotly into the phone in the adjacent room. Urgent matters concerning past lives, no doubt. When she returned, she sat down and instructed me to shuffle the deck of Tarot cards while I concentrated on my deepest desires and my most hidden fears.
Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, I thought.
In a town where no one goes five feet without a cellular phone and Hollywood deals are made over plates of pasta, I was surprised that there was to be no schmoozing with my psychic.
She plunged into the reading with nary a preamble, flipping cards with maddening haste while she predicted what fortunes would enter my life. She quickly dispensed with the standard predictions: I’ll be rich, I’ll sign an important document, I’ll travel somewhere exotic.
But essentially, I was going to be meeting dozens of men: men from my past, men at weddings, older men with lots of money. Even a dead man who served as my spirit guide, although I would never really know his true identity. The only mention of a woman had to do with a red-haired friend who would betray me.
So much for sisterhood.
I didn’t want to say anything to her, but this hardly resembled my life. Basically, I know four men: my husband, my dad and my two bothers. When I have free time, I spend it with my girlfriends. As for some wizened old dead guy as my protector, I have to confess that when I believe in it, I tend to lean toward angels as my guardians. When she had finished with the reading, the psychic told me to pick three cards and ask a question.
“What about my marriage?” I demanded.
“Oh,” she said. She seemed surprised--hardly a response I would have expected from a psychic. “You’re married?”
“Three years,” I said.
Her response was emphatic, sudden, slightly embarrassed. “I see a separation,” she said. Then she looked at her watch. “Anything else?”
I shook my head no.
“That’ll be $35,” she said and showed me to the door.
For a moment I stood outside in front of the glitzy storefronts of Beverly Hills, feeling much like Dorothy must have felt during those first few seconds in Oz. How did I get here?
My psychic couldn’t have been further from the truth regarding my life, although I have to admit to enjoying that fleeting fantasy of all those future men. If anything, she was adept at fostering hope--for single women perhaps--but it didn’t apply to me.
I decided to go for a second opinion.
As I drove aimlessly through the urban madness of the Fairfax District, I stumbled onto my second psychic. I was drawn to the mixed metaphors displayed proudly in her gallery window. A Sphinx, a Merlin doll, a crystal ball. From behind a curtain, which presumably led to her living quarters, I heard an “I Love Lucy” rerun blaring from a television set and the voices of small children.
My psychic greeted me cheerfully in the gallery while her two kids ran out into the street, tore down the Merlin doll, grabbed for my keys and began to cry hysterically. She apologized and took hold of my hands while a man came from behind the curtain and retrieved the little brats.
Like the first one, this psychic mentioned that I would soon be signing an important paper, that I would get rich in the near future and that I should expect to travel somewhere distant. But she was more specific: I’d be going to Spain, China or Washington, D.C.
Then she got right down to the nitty gritty.
“Your aura is filthy,” she informed me. “You’re surrounded by negativity.”
I was shocked. This was like going to the mechanic for a broken radiator hose and finding out you need a new transmission.
“But I wanted to find out about my relationship,” I said.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “You guys are made for each other.” She then closed her eyes and squeezed my hands.
“I could get to the bottom of your negativity. Your aura is real pale.”
“But what about my husband? Did I marry the right guy?”
“You guys are soul mates, I tell you,” she said. She seemed a little irritated, as if she were tired of stating the obvious. “But, listen, I could clear up that negativity for an additional $70.”
*
Ideclined the offer and high-tailed it out of there. Something wasn’t right. They both said the same things about money, travel and my signature. But in matters concerning love, they were diametrically opposed. Maybe I had just turned to the wrong psychics.
Maybe Venice Beach, land of the inscrutable, home of the slightly sleazy, gallery of life’s shady underbelly was where the more practiced seers dwell. They seemed to congregate there at any rate.
As I sauntered down the boardwalk, dodging big dogs and kamikaze skateboarders sporting Nazi tattoos, I stumbled onto a kindly psychic who greeted me with an almost toothless smile and warm blue eyes.
“You married your best friend,” she said. I fell into her smooth voice like I would a feather bed. “He loves you very, very much. He has a big heart. But you two have a long, rocky road ahead of you. This is because of your past life. See this?” she said. She pointed to one of the cards, a picture of a cup with conical shapes, like icicles falling into it.
She nodded knowingly. “Uh huh,” she said, as if I had given any indication at all that I’d derived meaning from the card.
Then she proceeded to ask me some embarrassing personal details involving our sex life, which for some reason I felt obliged to answer. My answers seemed to surprise her, given the fact that my “lower chakras weren’t in order.” I was too afraid to ask her what a chakra was. It all sounded vaguely unsavory, even though I later learned they had to do with “energy centers.”
It was precisely these chakras that stood in the way of total happiness for me and my husband. And for a small fee, she could clear up the problem. When I declined, she lost interest in me. I paid her the basic rate of $15 and left.
*
By now, I realized that I was no closer to the answer than when I had started, even though I had unwittingly uncovered several problems related to my various energy centers, all of which, miraculously, could be cleared up for a “small additional fee.”
Any sane person might have stopped right there and done something more conventional like go to Palm Desert and uncover the truth in a honeymoon suite. But no one has ever accused me of being sane.
In a desperate move I made one last attempt to discover whether or not, according to the mystical world of stars, planets and Tarot cards, I had married the right guy. The minute I got home, I dialed a 900 number where for $2.99 a minute I was guaranteed my own “spiritual consultant.”
From the outset, she told me that we were on a 12-minute timer and if we were disconnected, I shouldn’t take it personally. I told her I could handle that.
While the psychic computer ran my and my husband’s compatibility chart in the background, using the extremely scientific data of our birth dates, places of birth and how late we would sleep if we didn’t have to work, my psychic warned me that I should make extra allowances for my relationship next month.
“You know that Mars is in Cancer next month, right?” she asked worriedly.
As if this meant anything to me.
She then continued by telling me that even though the stars showed a marital breakup, I’d nevertheless have a marriage of permanency.
Huh?
After a six-month long-range forecast in which, among other things (and not surprisingly), I would make a lot of money, sign an important document and travel someplace far away, my psychic informed me that the computer had finished the compatibility chart.
“OK, dear. Your compatibility chart says. . . .”
Click.
The phone went dead.
For a wild moment I contemplated calling back. But then it occurred to me that I’d reached the end of the road as far as my astral travels were concerned.
I had just completed four sessions with four psychics in which I discovered only one truth: There was no truth unless I needed to believe in one. But the fact is, when all was said and done, all I ever needed to do was ask myself three questions: Who is my best friend, whom do I trust most in the world and, above all else, who would I share my winning Lotto ticket with?
I didn’t need a psychic to tell me the answer is my husband. For us, an occasional border skirmish is never really a serious threat, especially since he and I have always loved a good peace treaty.
