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wonder what your palm will reveal about you.
I did as she asked, saying,  You know all about me already. How about instead of reading palms, we
bring the whole thing up to date by having people sit on the scanner with their pants down? You hear
of people doing it on office photocopiers. I bet there aren t many fortune-telling services that use
people s bottoms. You could start a new trend.
 Isis preserve us. Do you have to ridicule everything? Anyway, what you propose may be all very well
for you and Dale, with your little gay men s bottoms, but for lots of people my scanner wouldn t be big
enough to obtain the full image. Then there s the matter of privacy. We would have to set up a cubicle.
Besides, who would want to show their friends a booklet with an image of their bottom in it? The idea
is totally impractical. Where s your common sense? Do you realize you are mocking something that,
according to historical records, was being practised in China in three thousand BC, and, she said,
picking up a leaflet that came with the software,  even the psychiatrist Jung wrote: Hands, whose shape and
functioning are intimately connected with the psyche, might provide revealing and therefore interpretable expressions of
psychical peculiarity of human character. She nodded emphatically as she read this, sending the bees on her
beige trilby into wild excitement. If any of them were to come off their wires they would ricochet
around the room like bullets.
Dale said.  Come on, Ben, give it a chance. Let s try to be positive. If you could manage to get Rick
Schwagger s palm print, you could put something in the book about it& a few paragraphs comparing
what his palm reading says with how he is in real life. We could include the image of his palm as an
illustration. With a bit of imagination it would make a nice little section of several pages. He s keen on
the paranormal, so he would probably go along with the idea. We are supposed to be putting in original
material about him, remember?
 And how are we going to obtain his palm print? Wrap plasticine around the handles of his maracas,
and peel it off with the imprint when he puts them down?
 Or, Dale proposed,  how about wet plaster? You could tell him all the big stars are leaving their
hand prints in plaster for posterity.
Not to be left out, Alicia said,  How about leaving a bottle of cooking oil in the kitchen with some
of the contents smeared on the outside. You could ask him to pass it to you. You d have to be careful
to preserve his hand print intact. I m sure Dale would be able to find a way of scanning it in.
 Oh yes, I said,  Rick and I often pass bottles of cooking oil to each other in the kitchen.
 Seriously, Dale said,  why not ask him for his palm print? Tell him it would help you write his book
 after all, he believes you are using psychic powers for it. Suggest to him that The Rocking Boulders
fan club might be interested in putting it up on their website. The club might also have some ideas
about original material for the book.
The upshot of this suggestion was that The Handyman arranged to bring Quick and Teef to visit
the Psychic Fayre at the local church hall, a Gothic building originally built as a school. Above the
entrance, inscribed in stone, were the joyless words Bring thy children unto me that I may teach them the ways
of the Lord. In defiance of this Victorian adage, inside the hall were more than forty stalls offering tarot
reading, crystal healing, numerology predictions, more tarot reading, astrology, books on
parapsychology, tarot reading again  about one out of four stalls sold tarot cards or books about them,
or offered on-the-spot card readings.
Alicia had finished setting up and was sitting beneath a banner with the outline of a human hand in
glittering sequins. Six major lines of the palm were labelled in gold: life; heart; head; Apollo; Saturn; and
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© Alan Keslian
Mercury. The computer, scanner and printer were at one end of the stall, surrounded by screens
decorated with palm prints in pastel colours. I stared thoughtfully at the banner with its intersecting
palm lines and, when Alicia looked up to greet me, said,  Oh, it s just like a sketch of the tube train lines
around King s Cross and Euston.
A loud female voice came from behind me.  What are you trying to do? Put people off? I could
feel the breath that carried the words on my neck, and turned to find Muriel, or Myrtle to use Alicia s
pet name for her girlfriend, standing behind me, wearing a tweed suit. She was holding a large
marmalade cat that began to purr loudly.
 You ve met Myrtle before, haven t you? Alicia said.
 The name s Muriel actually. I smiled at Myrtle/Muriel, who continued,  Myrtle is a little pet name
Alicia has for me.
To suggest that Boadicea or Dragon might be more appropriate would have been far too rude, if
not likely to provoke assault. Alicia said,  Myrtle, or Muriel as I suppose I should call her since we are at
a public event, is going to give psychic readings through the medium of Phoebe, her cat.
 Oh, I said,  that explains it. Seeing the moggy I thought the fayre had been double booked with a
cat show.
 Very funny, Muriel/Myrtle said dismissively. She and the cat fixed me with eyes that commanded
obedience.  As a reward for that remark you can be my first victim. Come along. Since, according to
Alicia, you are  gifted , I will be particularly interested in your impression of the performance Phoebe
and I have devised.
 You shouldn t call telling someone s fortune  a performance , Muriel, Alicia reproved.
 I was speaking figuratively.
Quick and Teef had yet to arrive, so I followed Myrtle and Phoebe behind one of Alicia s screens.
We sat down at a table covered with a black fibrous cloth, surrounded by silhouette images of cats, the
eyes painted green.
 Not cat s fur, is it? I asked, stroking the tablecloth tentatively.
 Don t get excited, it s artificial. Now I want you to take Phoebe from me, she said, handing me the
docile moggy.  Stroke her head gently, and when she looks into your eyes, look back into hers.
I took Phoebe as bidden and gazed into the rich amber of her eyes. She was so plump that holding
her made my arm ache. She resumed purring, and after a few minutes Myrtle reached across and took
her back. The two of them gazed lovingly at each other.
 Oh yes, you ve made a very strong impression, she said, toying with a holographic pendant at her
bosom, the colours changing as she fiddled with it.  Phoebe is telling me that you are the sensitive type.
You must take care not to be easily offended by what people say. Though they may be abrasive at times,
they usually don t mean to insult you. Remember, when someone says something amiss it will usually be
through ignorance or lack of understanding rather than malice. You re artistic. Don t be put off by early
disappointments, you must keep trying. And you have someone who is very close to you  a
relationship with another man who is very important in your life. Phoebe senses you are one of those
special gay men who is truly suited to a long-term loving relationship. But you must be careful. Being
male, you are of course hampered by your essentially self-centred nature, lack of interpersonal skills [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]