I stand up, knocking the stool over as I do, shaking out my hand, which is aching from the firmness of her grip.
“Is it coming?” I say, panicked, taking another step back farther.
“Awwww,” she says again, doing that fast, staccato breathing as she appears to calm. Her hands move to her stomach and she lets out another moan, this one less urgent, more like she’s resigned to die from a stab wound.
“Shall I get help?” I say.
“It’s time,” she says.
She pulls the veil off and I see a woman who must be only a few years older than me. Across her forehead are dots of perspiration.
“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” she says softly, her Hungarian accent more pronounced. “My phone? It’s behind the large red candle.”
I nod, move to the little shelf, and hand it to her.
“Can I do anything?” I ask, my voice weak and thin. I am hoping the answer is a clearnoso I can get out of here, but the deeply ingrained need to be polite keeps me fixed firm in the spot.
“We need to go now,” she says; then her eyes drop to her phone as she taps on the screen with great haste. I go to speak but she holds a finger up to me as she raises the phone to her ear, and I zip my mouth shut. A machine gun of Hungarian follows. Then she hangs up and removes her earrings and all of her necklaces and bracelets, rubbing at the skin on her wrists in relief. She looks at me, hard.
“Move. We have to go,” she says.
“Um, okay, sure, I just need to call a taxi,” I say quickly. I feel my heart start to thump. No, I do not want to wait on a street in a city I don’t know as the dark begins to settle.Alone.
“The baby will not wait for you to call a taxi,” she says.
“Please? I just... I don’t really want to wait out there.” I can hear my voice is high and strangled as I say it.
She tries to pull herself up from the table, and I swear the bump has dropped lower than it was. The harem pants are making it look even more precarious. She stands there staring at me, catching her breath from the exertion of standing, flush-faced and impatient.
“Then you need to lock up,” she says between breaths.
“Um, okay. I can do that.” I nod. “Is there a key, or...”
“Just blow out the candles and pull that plug, turn off the fan, and shut the door as you leave; it will lock behind you,” she says, waving in several vague directions before she takes a deep breath, picks up an overnight bag in one hand and a money tin in the other, and heads to the door. I rush forward to hold it open for her, which involves a tricky, stretchy dance around her, and then she’s out on the footpath.
As I reach into my handbag and pull out a handful of Hungarian forint, I can’t help asking, “The guy? You know, the one? Were there any identifying features? How will I know? It’s just that I’ve been single for like ten years and I’ve never been able to fully picture who he will be. I know what he won’t be, for example, Scorpio, but—”
Her next contraction silences me. I meekly wave her off as she waddles toward a waiting car.
“Good luck,” I say. “Leave everything with me. Don’t even think about it. Everything is totally under control.”
When her car speeds off, I sigh, gazing up the long avenue toward a massive construction site in one direction, and in the other the opera house. The sun is starting to go down, and I wonder what to do with my last night in this city. I feel giddy with excitement.Perhaps I’ll go for a cocktail at the hotel Párisi Udvar after all. Charlie had made the reservation for tonight, and it still stands. Perhaps if this meeting is truly imminent, I need to get myself out there and ready for it.
I go back inside and find the little card of the taxi company I’d been given by the hotel.
I dial the number and am told it will be a half hour before I can be picked up.
I look around and see the veil on the table alongside the fortune-teller’s clip earrings and gold necklaces, and I glance up at the gilded mirror on the back wall. I wonder, for a moment, what it would feel like to wear them. I pick them all up and walk over to the mirror, fixing on the earrings, then the veil, and then draping over the seven chains. I look in the mirror and I feel a tingle make its way down my spine, imagining for a moment that I might have the powers she has. How does a clairvoyant know that they have the gift? I wonder.
What would it be like to see my future in front of me?
I close my eyes and try to make this imminent new love come alive in my imagination.
I can almost see the dark edges of his form as I conjure him in my mind—tall, passionate, working with his hands, with lots of people around him. I feel a jolt of excitement as I begin to picture his face... and then, I hear the creak of the door.
I spin around in a panic.
And in he walks.
