As Kate sips the wine, she watches the television behind the bar while keeping one eye on the lobby to see if the girl walks by. She’s hoping the wine will relax her, help her remember what they are doing there, what great mission they are on. But the more she tries to remember, the more anxious she gets. By the time she finishes her drink, staring at her empty hands is the only thing she can do to keep herself from completely panicking.

—

Kate spent that fall and winter palm reading on her purple blanket on the Left Bank, warming her hands with her breath before peeling off her customers’ gloves, sharing a thermos of tea and whisky with Lydia to keep themselves warm. For months she thought about nothing but palms, until she could swear she had stopped thinking in words and phrases and instead thought in lines, mounts, skin patterns, fingerprints. She read so many palms that she became convinced that she had seen every possible permutation of converging lines that existed, that there was no version of the future that she had not already envisioned in someone’s hand.

It started to depress her, the way life had become so predictable. You would die either young or old or somewhere in between; before that happened you may or may not fall in love, have a successful career, a healthy body. Your mind is on a spectrum somewhere in between very weak and very strong, your heart somewhere between loving and generous, and cold and unfeeling. And none of it mattered anyway because everyone’s life line stopped eventually, and no matter what you did, you couldn’t change that. You couldn’t change any of it. It was all etched there, in your palm, from the very beginning. Of course, she still didn’t believe any of it. And yet.

“Do you think people can change their destiny?” she asked Lydia one night, sharing a bottle of wine in their room at Madame Clou’s.

“I do,” Lydia said, taking her hand.

Kate flipped Lydia’s hand over, caressing the lines there. She had read Lydia’s palm many times before, but she kept going back to it, in the hope that maybe something had changed. But it never did.

“If that’s really the case,” Kate said, holding Lydia’s palm up for her to see, “then this is a sham.”

“My little con artist.” Lydia curled her hand around Kate’s wrist and pulled her close, kissing her softly.

Kate let herself briefly melt into the moment before pulling away, pressing her forehead against Lydia’s. “I’m serious,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“To make enough money to survive until you go back to Canada?”