“Okay,” I said, staring blankly at the fortune teller. An odd feeling like being back in a high school classroom came over me. “So, these are ‘my’ cards. What do they mean?”

The fortune teller’s smile adopted a cheeky quality, and she took a slow sip of her tea. “Is there a lady in your life? Not the tempestuous Aries, but one who touches you emotionally?”

I felt my eyes widen. “Yes,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse.

“And she…” the fortune teller trailed off. She gently shook the card featuring the woman with the gold chalice between her thumb and forefinger, the way most people would shake a Polaroid snapshot. “Something to do with water. She recently moved near water…or across water… I see a large body of water.”

“The Atlantic Ocean,” I whispered. I had a tingling feeling on my scalp. “She went to Scotland for grad school.”

The fortune teller nodded, as though she’d already known. “This was months ago, yet you still think of her everyday.”

“Yeah, I do,” I admitted. I dropped my hands into my pockets and averted my gaze. This woman, with all her mystical certainty, must think I was such a fool. I didn’t know her; she didn’t know me. Why was I telling her these things? I had always been such a private, tight-lipped person. Had I changed so much? Since when?

Since I’d met K.

I heard myself say, “I was thinking about her just before you came in.”

“Why do you act ashamed?” the fortune teller asked, placing her fingertips beneath my chin. “You love her. Celebrate it!”

“I only met her the one time,” I mumbled, my eyes on the floor.

“So what?” the fortune teller cried. She tapped the bottom of my chin, gently compelling me to look at her. I did. Her eyes were shining. “Tate! So what, Tate? Love is love. It doesn’t need to make sense or follow a formula. That's what is so wonderful about it: it has no set of restrictions. It sets us free.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“I know so,” she answered. “The Queen of Cups tells you that great possibilities in your life will be revealed by the presence of a powerful woman.” She took me by the shoulders and gave me a playful shake. “No woman is so powerful as the one you love, cariño. She may challenge you or inspire you, but whatever she does will lead you on a journey of great self discovery! And the fact that you found this card,” she held up the Queen of Cups, “or rather, this card found you, means that she is thinking of you as you are thinking of her.”

I felt a faint fluttering in my stomach. “Really?”

“As surely as the Earth orbits the sun.”

It was the first time I’d let myself dare to hope. I wanted to believe K was thinking about me. I wanted to believe that our one night, our single conversation, had meant as much to her as it had to me. I wanted to believe I’d see her again. Was it foolish to let this tarot-card-reading fortune teller convince me of what logic warned against? In that moment, I didn’t care. Little goosebumps rose on my arms and my fingertips tingled in anticipation. The good kind.

“And how about that?” I asked, pointing to the card with the round silver moon on its face. “Does that mean we’ll see each other again on the next full moon, or something?”

At the mention of my second card, the fortune teller’s smile lost some of its luster. “I wish I could give you a simple ‘yes,’ Tate, but I do you no justice with a half-truth.”

My skin prickled with an entirely different sensation than what I’d felt a moment before. “Is the Moon a bad card?”

“Oh, no, cariño,” the fortune teller said. “Not a bad card. But a…confusing card. An elusive card. It suggests risks, secrets, and some level of mental confusion.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean, the ‘mental confusion’ thing, yeah. Sure. Up until ten minutes ago I knew absolutely nothing about any of this, but, well, what does the Moon mean? For me?”

The fortune teller drew in a sharp breath. “Something in your life is not what it seems,” she answered. “The Moon card indicates that something of importance is being kept from you by another.”

A sour feeling of unease filled my stomach. “The girl in Scotland is keeping something from me?”

“No, cariño, not her,” the fortune teller said. “Someone else entirely. Your two cards may not even be connected. Though, I believe they are, at least by proxy. Someone has something of yours, Tate. Be it an item, a piece of information, or even an abstract idea, it belongs to you. And yes, I believe it is somehow related to your girl in Scotland. I’m sorry that I cannot tell you more; I have told you all that the cards have shown me.”

I sank onto the nearest chair, glancing at my watch. 12:11 am. “How will I figure it out?” I asked, more to myself than my current company. I wasn’t sure if I believed in any of this, but it seemed stupid to close any doors that might reunite me with K.

The fortune teller placed my cards with the rest of the deck and sat down across from me. “I may be able to help. What is your astrology sign, Tate?”

“My what?”

“Forgive me,” she said, an apologetic smile gracing her red lips. “When is your birthday?”

“Oh. August thirty-first.”

“You are a Virgo,” she said. She seemed to contemplate that for a moment, then laughed. “I should have known!”

I rubbed my eye with the back of my hand. “You should have?”

The fortune teller nodded in amusement. “You are polite, shy, quiet... You haven’t stopped cleaning and tidying up since I came in. You’re always checking the time. You apologized for your coworker’s temper, as though you yourself had done me offense. You’re thoughtful, thorough, without judgment, and — unlike your coworker — you took my odd appearance in stride. Textbook Virgo.”

My brow furrowed as I considered what she had said. Couldn’t all of those traits simply be attributed to my autism? But did it matter? Autistic or Virgo or both, she was right. That was me.

“It’s no wonder that you and Ali cannot see eye to eye,” she added with a conspiring smile. “Aries and Virgos are known for their incompatibility.”

I laughed at that. “Figures.”

“You are highly intuitive and observant, Tate, and not only because you are a Virgo. You are a natural investigator with an eye for detail. Use these skills, check your horoscope, and you will find your answers.”

“Yeah?” I asked. I’d never checked a horoscope in my life. But I could try it. For K, I would do any number of strange things. “Okay.”

“Good.”

For the second time in recent memory, I felt like Neo in “The Matrix.” The fortune teller was the Oracle, and she was pointing to a banner in Latin on the wall that read: Know Thyself. Any second now she was going to tell me, “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: being The One is just like being in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it. Through and through.”

The fortune teller took another sip of her tea. “What time is it?” she asked.

I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me or if she really wanted to know. Bemused, I glanced at my watch. “12:15 am.”

She winked at me, rose from her chair, and put her tin of tarot cards back into her carpet bag. “I must be going. I have a reading first thing in the morning,” she said. She walked to the bar and took a cocktail napkin from the pile. Retrieving a pen from her bag, she wrote down a series of digits. “If a dark-haired, brooding young man comes in here looking for me, give him this number and tell him to call. We can reschedule. I’m sure he just got caught in the snow.”

I took the napkin. “Sorry you wasted a trip.”

The fortune teller gave me a look of significance. “Tate, my dear,” she said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, “it was anything but a waste.”

“Right,” I said. I made a nondescript gesture of camaraderie. “There are no coincidences.”

The fortune teller mimicked my gesture. “That is correct. I’m sure we will meet again, Tate. Until then, take care.”

“You, too.”

With a gust of wind and some flying snow, she was gone.

I realized she hadn’t paid for her tea. I hadn’t paid for my impromptu reading. Seemed fair.

I folded the napkin and put it in my pocket, then I took the teacup to the back room to discard what was left.

The door to the basement burst open and Ali Cat emerged. To my surprise, she looked like she’d been crying.

“What?” she demanded, when she noticed my curious stare.

“Nothing,” I said, quickly looking away. I busied myself by washing the teacup and saucer in soapy hot water.

Ali Cat sniffled. “Is she gone?”

I nodded, my focus on the dishes.

“Good,” Ali stated. “God, what a crazy bitch. I can’t believe that crap she said to me. So rude.”

“You know, just because you didn’t like what she had to say doesn’t make her crazy.”

Ali’s eyes narrowed, and she looked ready to retort, but the sound of the front door blowing open took precedence over putting me in my place.

“Dylan?” she called, running up front.

I dried my hands with slow, deliberate movements. I didn’t really care to see Dylan tonight. Or ever. For a few seconds, I found myself wondering what Dylan’s astrological sign would be. Was there a Giant Douche option?

With reluctant footfalls, I emerged from the back room, fully expecting to see a grotesque display of collegiate making-out, but there was no Dylan. Instead, Ali Cat had paused several paces away from the man who now occupied the center of the pub.

“He’s looking for the fortune teller,” she reported with a sneer.

“It’s okay, I got it,” I said to her.

She shrugged, took out her phone, and returned to the back room.

I appraised the new arrival. It was Johnny Depp. Well, the lookalike. He brushed snow from his dark hair and coat, a mournful look in his eyes.

“I missed her,” he remarked. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah,” I said. “She left you this.” I scooped the napkin from my pocket and handed it to him. “She said she’d be happy to reschedule.”

Johnny Depp studied the napkin. “Alright,” he said, his voice barely audible. He folded the napkin and put it in his coat pocket. “Thanks, man. I’ll call her. Is it cool if I meet her here? My apartment’s kinda…”

He didn’t have to finish. I understood.

“Yeah, absolutely,” I said. “Anytime.”

“Thanks,” he said, offering me a half-hearted smile. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

“Everything okay?” I blurted. My face scrunched up in a grimace. What a stupid question. I could tell by his expression and the sadness in his dark eyes that he wasn’t okay.

He looked down at the floor. A puddle had formed under his snowy black boots. “No,” he said. He smiled again — the most melancholy smile I’d ever seen. “I lost my girlfriend.”

My heart sank into my stomach. That was heartbreaking. “So, the fortune teller is going to help you talk to her? To say goodbye?” I asked as gently as I could. “Like a…seance?”

His head jerked up, and he stared at me with startled eyes. “No! Uh, no,” he said. “I didn’t lose her like… She’s not dead. Fuck, I hope not…” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, she’s not dead. I 'lost' her as in I can’t find her. I haven’t seen her in months.”

Something about his words seemed oddly familiar. “So, you two lost touch? Wait a minute! Is that why you come in here so often?”

“Yeah,” he said with an absent nod. “Hoped she might wander in. Dive bars were kind of our thing. We both thought the name of this one was cool.”

“Dive bars were kind of ‘your thing’?” I repeated, my heartbeat increasing in speed. “Did you two meet at one?”

“Yeah,” he said, his expression flabbergasted. “How’d you guess that?”

“Your girlfriend, is she a singer?”

His face lit up. “You know her?”

“Beautiful, curvy, mixed, likes Etta James, goes by Nightingale?”

“Holy shit! Yeah!”

“Yes,” I said. “I know her. And she’s been in here looking for you three times since she got back from New York.”

“New York?”

“Yeah, that’s where she was,” I said, recalling the story she’d told me. “She went to New York City to help her cousin open his club.”

“I don’t believe it…” he murmured.

“What happened?” I asked. “She told me she left you texts and voicemails, but you never got back to her. Then your phone was disconnected.”

Johnny Depp closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That son of a bitch,” he cursed. “I knew it. I knew something wasn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” I prompted.

“I had this roommate, right?” Johnny began. “Really wiley little dude, but money was tight and I had an extra bedroom. He had a big thing for Nightingale, and didn’t bother to hide it. But I figured, so what? You know, whatever, she’s gorgeous, why wouldn’t he be attracted to her? Never gave it any real thought. Well, I lent him my phone one day, ‘cause he ‘forgot’ to pay his bill. I get home from work and the phone’s destroyed. In pieces. He said he dropped it on the stairs, but it looked more like someone had stomped on it. It was an old flip phone, so I lost all my numbers. I went to all of Nightingale’s usual haunts to tell her what happened, but she was gone. Just...vanished. I never saw her again.”

“Geez,” I sighed. I ran a hand through my hair. “There were messages on that phone from her.”

“Yeah. I get that now,” he huffed, his brow furrowed. “My roommate must have heard them and broke my phone on purpose. But how did he know she wouldn’t drop by my place? To check?”

I thought back to what Nightingale had told me. “She did,” I recalled. “She did stop over before she left town. You were out. She had written you a letter, and she gave it to…oh, no.”

“To my roommate,” Johnny finished. “And that son of a bitch never passed it on to me.”

The air vacated my lungs in a whoosh. “Man, I am so sorry.”

“I knew it,” he said again. “I knew I couldn’t trust him. That’s why I moved out. Shit, she probably thinks I just ghosted her. End of story.”

“No. She doesn’t,” I stated, my voice firm. “Nightingale really wants to see you. Listen, she sings at The Blue Note, downtown. Mostly on weekends. Go. Tell her what happened. You two can still fix this.”

Johnny Depp nodded, an odd mix of elation and apprehension shining in his eyes. “The Blue Note? I know of it. Hey, take my number. If she comes in, will you call me?”

“Of course,” I said. I programmed his number into my phone as he rattled off the digits.

“Thanks, man,” Johnny said. “For the first time in a long time, I feel good about this. Like I might find her. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’m happy to help.”

With a smile, he turned up the collar on his black coat and went back out into the cold. The draft that blew in upon his departure swirled around me.

“Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille began playing over the speakers.
 

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