Oracle

“It will happen,” I said.

“Yes, but how are you saying it will happen?” Lenard said.

This was the problem with people; I gave them a short answer, and all they wanted was details. Details that would inevitably shift the way they saw things until a perfectly good future turned into a tragic mess.

I debated with myself.

Not with whether or not to tell him. My rear end-slowly freezing off as I sat on this bench showed my decision on that. Only on how to tell him in a way that wouldn’t destroy either of our lives. That was the question.

The stupid bench was sharp too, while the cold sun shone down on us. Both treating the knowledge of heat as a delusion. He sat next to me, in a nice shirt and suit that would have caused anyone I knew to itch. A neat-looking man who was 33 years old with a birthday coming in a month.

“When red falls on well-tread path, what you desire will be within your grasp.”

There. A perfectly cryptic way to describe a scarf falling upon the sidewalk outside his workplace.

He looked at me, unamused.

I shrugged. I could give some bogus about “the visions not being clear” but that would be a disservice to both of us.

“It’s all I can say,” is what I said instead.

“I guess I’ll keep an eye out for red,” he said, half-believing. “Thanks for the fortune, I guess? Don’t worry about the change.”

He shoved a dollar bill in my direction. I hadn’t asked for any money. I definitely looked fit for handouts with my hole-ridden sweaters. None of my attempts to lift myself from hobo to grunge ever worked.

I looked down and saw ten bucks. I couldn’t afford a new sweater with this, let alone a new coat or shoes.

It was probably better this way.

It’s worse when they are true believers. Then every word spoken carried the weight to break bones. Just showing up and proclaiming to know the future becomes an event in most people’s heads, and that was enough.

Of course, it could always be the opposite of what I wanted. Even I don’t know everything.

He was already out of sight when I looked back up. Tragic, he missed all my inane conversation attempts.

Lenard Juilliard Belle was a nice enough guy who spent all his time at his job in the bank. The only reason he listened to me at all was that he was worried about marriage, and proclaiming to know the future had left an impression on him. It was the typical crisis: not being married when most of your peers found their spouse at college, or work, or what have you. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t have bothered hearing me out.

Lenard’s future was perfectly bright. Honestly, he just had to wait until he met Eliza Atticus Greene. Specifically, when she lost her scarf, so he would pick it up for her outside the bank on his coffee break at 3:02 P.M. on one June 8th.

They would have two kids and live in a marvelous house on Faison Road with two floors, a basement, pool, and one cat they’d pick up named Mr. Snuffles. Minus the cat, it was such a picture perfect life. I almost wanted one of my own.

If I had given Mr. Belle too much, like a description of the woman, he would have idly kept a lookout for women that looked like Eliza, and ended up with Kaitlyn. A lovely woman whose erratic sleeping habits, combined with her love of buying used furniture in their much smaller house due to a smaller income, would cause him to divorce her after three years.

If I told her Eliza’s name directly, he would, of course, not believe me. But he would casually look her up on Facebook, and casually go through the list of women with her name until he found one he liked best. Shockingly, he would actually find her. Not that she would appreciate this stranger trying to meet her. Even going through a mutual acquaintance wouldn’t be enough to save him. Just a tad too much intensity to turn her off. He wouldn’t get a second date.

If I had them meet through various other ways, each one led to a different ending for their relationship. Some were good, and some were very bad. Distracted driving never ended well, and despite romantic dramatizations, enemies don’t easily turn into lovers. Most often they became ignored acquaintances.

The worst part is they would have met anyways. It was part of her daily ritual to get a coffee from the coffee shop by the bank. And they did both recognize a few fellow faces. This was one of the most minor fortune tellings I’d probably ever do.

But what could I do?

As a 22-year-old jobless freak woken up countless times in a cold sweat to Eliza’s son beating the crap out of my favorite nephew I’d only met in visions of the future, there wasn’t much. I’d tried to ignore it. At least let the favored nephew be born and all that. But inner peace and sleep completely evaded me, unlike the usual only mostly. And all of this because of Lenard’s nasty divorce, in turn caused by him having stray eyes with a random woman he met, because he thought she might be “the one.”

Sure, I could nudge him into marrying Kaitlyn, but why would I ruin their perfect future when it was kept with such an easy seal? A few words to make him trust and believe.

Hopefully, tonight I’d sleep. At least the ten would work for a warm coffee. I got up, hoping for a warmer day after tomorrow, because I knew tomorrow would reach 47 degrees Fahrenheit at most.