The Fortuneteller
4

"Please, Mr. Michaelson, if you could just give us a few minutes--"

"No! Dammit, I'm not ready yet! That is," he tried to speak more calmly, "my business is new--only three weeks old--and I don't think I'm ready for an interview yet."

Marita's mouth hung open and the reporter watched him with the tiniest hint of a smirk. Tom hurried away, tossing his sack into a garbage can.

It was several more days before Tom found the confirmation he was looking for.

He had stepped outside his hot apartment to stretch his back and take a few deep breaths, when he saw a young woman slouching against the sidewalk railing, watching him and puffing on a long thin cigarette. Perched on her hip was a young child.

"Can I help you?" he asked when she didn't look away.

"Yeah," she said. "You the fortuneteller?" She jabbed her chin toward the sign on the window.

Tom nodded.

She squinted her eyes against the sun and said, "Some friends-a-mine gave me some money. They said I should come down and see if my kid here is gonna have it any better than I did, or if he's gonna grow up on welfare all his life too."

She was maybe in her mid-twenties. Her jeans were too tight and too short, barely reaching to her ankles. Her sandaled feet were filthy, her toenails and fingernails both painted the same garish dark red. Tom did not like her, but motioned for her to bring the child down the steps into his office.

She gazed around the room, lit another cigarette from the one she had just finished and grinned at him. "Guess fortunetellers can't afford much either, huh."

"Could you put the boy on that chair," Tom said.

As she sat the child down she said, "I told my friends I don't believe in this stuff but--" she shrugged. "It's their money."

The boy immediately began picking at the upholstery. "Stop that!" the mother said.

Tom sat down and scooted his chair closer to the child. The small he hand he held was sticky and unwashed and there was dirt around the child's mouth. There was also a bruise healing on the right cheek. No wonder the kid was staring so balefully at him, Tom thought.

Tom Michaelson saw a boy growing up in the streets of an impoverished neighborhood, saw him join the military and go through basic training, saw an unhappy marriage and divorce. He watched a bitter man making the military his life, and an old man with silver gleaming upon his shoulders standing beside an army vehicle at the edge of a plain or desert.

Tom felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck even before he saw the blinding whiteness in the distance, and the horizon as far as he could see suddenly burning with a blue and orange fire. Tom controlled his panic and gripped the boy's hand even tighter as he watched the old man watching the world burn. And he knew that soon the fireball would reach the spot where the other man stood, yet he made no attempt to escape.