One Afternoon continued... 2
Breaking from my thoughts, I get up from my park bench because I see a man, probably just retired, coming my way intent upon a conversation. Undoubtedly he's either estranged from his wife due to the uncaring air a man was taught to carry in "the old days", or an unmarried antique who waited too long to find a partner. Either way, he's lonely, desperate, or eager to regale another with the victories of prowess so long ago even he can't remember the details.
I take off; passing the man as he begins to open his mouth in salutation.
"Hot day..." The guy hurried.
"Hmmm." I make some noise in the affirmative, fold my paper under my arm and keep going.
I loathe to have people look at me.
~
My apartment, since it's in an old building and I am in the basement so to speak, has access to the old dirt storage rooms that only the superintendent knows about. There is old furniture, apparel, and countless other items from tenants who died and had no family to cart off the crap the landlord couldn't quietly sell. I pick through the photos and wonder about the black-and-white happy faces in weddings, family reunions, or some special Christmas. Whole lives are in boxes and chests of drawers. I have found old clothing that fits me. In fact, I'm wearing some of it right now. I wash it first, of course, but the vintage quality of some of these get-ups is too good to let go. Besides, it's not like I took it off their corpse!
I don't have a job. Well, not a nine-to-five sort of thing anyway. I read tarot cards for some seedy business practitioners, and others of questionable morals, who are too wealthy not to be paranoid. If I see a "future difficulty" and the man across the table is sure it's a rival or witness for the prosecution that needs "removal", I can do that too. Death is easier than the cards.
I walk into their bars or office, fedora squarely on my head and two-tone leather shoes tapping beneath me, and then whore out their future. My cards are ancient and my methods almost extinct. A gypsy shut-in who lived in my building told me I had "the sight" when she saw me once as I passed her door on the way to the rooftop. I wanted to see the predicted meteor shower, but instead I was shown how to read the future. The gypsy, Stella, confided in me that she was, as far as she knew, the only other soul who had so much of "the sight" in her.
I was so excited I slit her throat immediately to make sure I had no competition or another pair of eyes who had seen so deeply into mine. She didn't see it coming and never made a peep. I find it ironic she didn't "see" it coming. Poor old girl thought she had found a friend in this city that had all but forgotten her. I remember she said it was odd that I didn't have an aura. I guess it's because I don't have a soul, or at least that's what my aunt used to tell me just before the state locked her away.
Today I use my sacred sight and tell it like it is, good or bad, and watch my clients either relax with a smoke or gulp down a drink in panic. I keep my own hours and rent an apartment that's conected to crypts holding all the old suits I could want. My life isn't bad.
~
I don't have any family. Both my parents died when I was young and the aunt who raised me was admitted to a psychiatric hospital three years ago. I still go see her on the weekend, but for the most part I slip into mystic teachings from the books carted into the basement after the gypsy woman was finally found. Her library was just dumped in one of the rooms nearby. I was eyeing those tomes while I was there but afraid to take any and tie myself somehow to the scene. If I have an addiction, it's to books.
I haven't much interest in a wife. Anything beyond a nod-of-the-head based relationship is an anomaly in my life. I don't believe in sex without at least the intent of love. "Love" is like some exotic, gorgeous-but-lethal flower just out of my reach. Attempting such an act of tenderness would no doubt lead to more death as it does with so many others... who usually hire me to do the killing. (So much Shakespeare comes to mind when these hard truths seep into my mental peripheral vision.)
I could care less about a "kindred spirit". Friends are only those who haven't snitched on you yet. So I leave all that to the idiots addicted to human contact and spend my free time listening to old Sonny Stitt or John Coltrane records, eat sushi on occasion, and sleep when the urge hits me. I don't wear a watch or bother with television.
~
