The psychic is everywhere. The grocery store. The corner store. The library. In a submarine. The resting home. The restaurant. Outside the village pharmacy as an extra in a movie. The psychic knows that more is less. Less is more. More or less. She says I see a never-ending parade of husbands for you. The Second comes first, in his red-blue checkered plaid. The First has run off. As usual. The Almost is still figuring out which shoes to wear. The rest falter in place. Teetering along like penguins in an Antarctic Sarasota. She says with so many husbands, it’s hard to keep them straight. At the retirement village the psychic says everyone will die. But not as soon as they think. She wears a headscarf of paisleyed friction from the Old Country, holds a jeweled lap box from over the [under] seas. She says the raccoons are coming. Timid not brazen. Wrapped in teenage gauze insecurity. Gingerly tapping cans for food. Until they learn better. For their survival. And now, the psychic has lost her teeth. But that was predictable. She is 102. She will eat portioned meals—a tri-o-plate of softened meat, puréed rutabaga, and brandyless-saved apples whipped into a gossamer. But before she goes, you tell her you know things, too. That the scaffolding coming down around your house will fall. But first it will appear to hover. That tomorrow you will see someone eating a radish. That night will be lightened with dark. That tomorrow is today. If you just look ahead. She says she already knows.
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Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in BlazeVOX, The Cortland Review, Five on the Fifth, Free State Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Occupations (Galileo Press).