He reached, parted the curtain, and for a moment his hand seemed disembodied, nothing but grasping fingers and raised veins, blue and meandering across the back of his palm. Then the beads clattered and the rest of his body joined his hand inside the shop. He was a short, older man in khakis and boat shoes. Lips pressed into a grimace, forehead glistening with sweat. He cleared his throat once, then again, more loudly, as though he were trying to convince himself of something.

“Hello,” I said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m uh … well. I’m here for a reading?”

“Why don’t you have a seat?” I smiled. “What brings you here today?”

“Well. I’ve never done this before. That probably goes without saying. I, uh, no offense.” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, staunched a bead at his temple.

“That’s okay. Most people who come here haven’t done this before.”

“Oh, well. Okay. Okay, I see. Um. You’re really the psychic?”

“I am.”

“Excuse me, but you’re so young.”

“An old soul.” I always tried to smile in a certain way when I said this. Magnanimously. Patiently. Like I believed it. “The gift runs in my family. I come from a very long line of seers. Please sit.”

His fingers left a smeared sweat mark on the chair as he pulled it out, and he lowered himself gingerly, as though sitting down signified a commitment he wasn’t sure he wanted to make. He stared into the clear plastic sphere that passed for our crystal ball—something Des had bought out of a catalogue a decade ago. From the other side of the table I watched the way it distorted his face, made his eyes huge and extraterrestrial, his mouth puckered and small. I thought of the freak show at the end of the boardwalk, of the alien corpse they claimed to have, embalmed, and yours to look at for only $7. How I had saved up to see it when I was younger, but when I peered down into its casket it was clear that it was only a doll.

“So, please tell me more about what you’re hoping to find out today.” I noticed that his nails were clean and neatly trimmed. He wore a gold wedding band on his left hand. His hair was mostly gray and receding, but he looked like he took care of himself. Like someone who swam laps at the gym and had fruit for dessert and took walks around the neighborhood after dinner. He didn’t look like someone who spent his weekends in Atlantic City, gorging himself at bottomless buffets and snapping his fingers at cocktail waitresses to bring drinks to the poker table. It was what I wanted, too—to seem like a person who didn’t fit in here.