The Fortune Teller
My head has a liquid feel to it as I stumble down the street. The bottle of red wine in my belly making it seem like my limbs have become balloons, and at any moment they might float away. Next to me, Michael has a stupid whiskey grin stretched across his face, making it look all bloated and red. I know this is going to hurt in the morning, but right now I couldn’t feel finer.
“…an’ tha’s the crux o’ the matter, yer see?” says Michael as he narrowly avoids a collision with a telegraph pole. “The past ain’t really exist. Ya feel? Go get me histery, would ya? Go fine me a Caesar an’ ‘ave him explain the intrakacies o’ his Gallic expeditions. Yer cain’t do it!”
I nod slowly to myself as the contents of what he’s saying dissolve in my mind. “I get it, I do. What about his commentaries, though? Didn’t he write some grand propaganda about Gaul? That’s Caesar, in a way.”
“But yer reed them propagandas in the present, see? It’s not like he’s in the room with ya, lookin’ over yer shoulder.”
“True, true,” I say. “Michael, my friend, I do believe we’ve just discovered presentism.”
“Tha’ the fancy philosophical term fer it?”—cars blur past the sidewalk, streams of light in the darkness—“See, why waste thousan’s an’ thousan’s in HIGHER EDUCATION if yer can just talk? Yer should be doin’ engineerin’ like me. Not philosophy. I sa–”
Michael’s discourse on the current state of tertiary schooling is cut short as he trips over a letterbox and sprawls on the sidewalk in a mess of limbs and pain. It seems unreal, somehow, and I can’t help but laugh, like I’m watching an absurd form of slapstick. Michael groans from his position on the ground, and I realize he might actually be hurt.
“You okay, mate?” I ask, bending down to help him.
“I’m good, ya bugga. Get yer bleedin’ hands off of me!”—he picks himself up and dusts himself off—“Poor plannin’ that is. Puttin’ a fuggin’ letterbox there, where innocent drunks could hurt thimselves on.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, eager to continue our debate. “Whose plan?”
Michael strikes a pose and declares; “Jee-suhs!” Which sends him into hysterics.
“Come on, you alko.”
We continue our ramble down the street, a symphony of cicadas and tire screeches for accompaniment. The air hangs hot and humid around us; the windows of the town houses we walk past have their blinds pulled down. It has always seemed to me that these hours—the ones between 1 and 4 AM—should’ve been called twilight, the word suits this time much better.
“Oi!” calls Michael from up ahead of me. “Check out this place!”
He gestures to a purple shop, all plaster gold, and tacky trimmings. A sign on the jutting multi-colored awning reads: MADAME TIME, FORTUNE TELLING & TAROT
