On Riverfront Street

I suppose I could blame it on the cold pinot grigio and the dozen raw oysters I consumed at Bernie's on Riverfront Street, but I'm not going to. As I stepped out into the amber light and lengthening shadows of a late Savannah afternoon, the heat grabbed me like a more experienced lover, inviting me to release inhibition and recline into whispered, moss-covered suggestion. I was on my way to catch "The Trolley of the Doomed Ghost Tour" when I made eye contact with the street busker for Miss Sylvia's, Fortunes Told and Tarot Cards Read. He was interesting to me, a young African-American man who was lame on his left side. My left hemisphere began to diagnose and dissect, my right hemisphere was just intrigued and drawn in by the fact that he was smiling at me. I suppose I should break this habit I have of talking to total strangers on the street, but curiosity, and pinot, will take you places a well-behaved woman would never go. Perhaps that is why they write so few stories.

Would I like my fortune told? Why not, I thought. I'm here. Let's see what this experience is really like. "But I'll have to come back. I'm taking this tour first." The tour held little appeal, apart from the fact that I got to sit down, and they handed out fans. I left in the middle and headed back toward the busker, and Miss Sylvia. At the top of the shady stone stairs, I stepped into her parlor, and yes, I crossed her palm with silver. Or rather, I crossed her machine with my MasterCard. The digital efficiency lessened the effect, as did the fact that she was a very young Hispanic woman whose patter was as well-worn as her pink Hello Kitty t-shirt.

Oh come on, I thought. A complete skeptic I may be, but I do value a good performance. The busker was more interesting. I should have stayed and talked to him, or asked Miss Sylvia how she got into the business. Was she filling in for her mother? Each statement she made was easy to back trace, like a Scott Turow novel you solve by page ten, because you know basic biology. I wasn't expecting much, and I guess that's exactly what I got. Like a lot of things in life, it doesn't really work if you don't really believe in it. I believed in the raw oysters with cocktail sauce and horseradish, and I believed in the cool of the water fountain I plunged my feet in afterward. I believed in the sunset on the river, and the black and white composition book in my hand. I believed in the heat of a Southern afternoon, the cobblestones under my feet, and the history of human exploitation burned into the bricks of the cotton exchange building. But I didn't believe I'd go back to have my fortune told again, not by anyone other than myself.