Jack shaved and put on an old blue shirt that Alex had told him played up his own blue eyes. He worked a snake-skin belt that belonged to the doctor through the loops of his jeans, then took it off in case it scrambled signals to the psychic. He practiced a clear countenance in the mirror, reminded himself that this was not a date, and smoked a joint while watching a sports roundup show on TV.

The psychic, who was only as spooky as any beautiful girl, had barely had time to begin when Alex called from California to tell Jack that her mother had had a stroke. Jack asked if she wanted him to come back, but Alex said no, she wanted to talk to him was all.

Jack apologized to the psychic as he walked her to the door. He asked if he could take her to dinner the next night in lieu of a reading.

“What are you doing with a psychic?” Alex asked.

“Vicki set it up,” Jack said.

“She say anything about us?” Alex said. “Not Vicki, the psychic?”

“Trina,” Jack said. “She said my departed cousin Barry is still looking out for me.”

“You hated Barry,” Alex said. “Barry’s looking out for you?”

“She said he was in the room with us,” Jack told Alex. “I told her to get him out of there!”

Jack didn’t tell Alex that he had invited the psychic to dinner. They talked about her mother, who had been as much his mother as hers.

“Alex,” Jack said after a while, “we’ve managed to talk for an hour without either one of us crying.”

And Alex said, “Hang up right now.”

When she had recovered, she phoned Jack back. She was wistfiil and reminiscent, as though her mother’s life had already ended. Alex said her mother was the oldest person kids called by her first name. She said she had so many friends, and always remembered which sorrow went with which person. Jack said their friends from high school, when they came back to visit their parents, always called on her mother, too.

When the conversation ended, Jack thought about all the things he hadn’t seen coming. He walked the residential streets until dark, saw timed lights lighting and dimming, controlled by preset clocks.

The next day: “What did you think of Trina?” Vicki said.

“High marks,” Jack said, “but there’s still the long program and the free skating.” He almost told Vicki what he hadn’t told Alex, that the psychic had predicted a turbulent year ahead with the love of his life.

Vicki was assembling an ambitious salad of smoked trout and red lettuce and grapefruit—substituted, she said, for a citrus type of fruit you couldn’t get in this country.

Earlier, Jack had heard her on the phone with the doctor; he heard her say “setback” and thought they were talking about him till he could tell they were talking about a patient.

“Me, me, me,” Jack had chanted to himself.