The Book Nook

37

 I had made up my mind. I was no longer going to play by any rules. The way Alexandria exempted herself from any rules made me no longer privy to being forced into any rule-following of my own. I wasn't going to play along anymore.

When Scarlett began asking questions, as I'm sure people of that profession often attempt to do, I stood up.

Scarlett looked up at me like I was about to have a nervous breakdown. Instead I was an air of calm. I stepped over their crossed legs and Scarlett's nonsense deck of cards. I had already heard enough and it hadn't taken long. I refrained from answering any of her questions and so I got up the courage to take a stand.

I stepped off the mattress onto the floor and looked at Alexandria.

"Well, are you coming with or no?"

Alexandria had an eyebrow arched at me, seemingly amused. Scarlett came off as much more surprised, like she had been expecting Alexandria would have brought along a willing participant, not the opposite.

"With all due respect," I spoke to her, "I'm sure that you really do believe that this - I don't know - gift of yours or whatever, is actually true. I doubt that someone would take up this hobby or pursuit without actually having some sort of, I don't know, experience or something. I'm sure you think you can do the cards or communicate with great aunt Elsie who passed away years ago, or whatever it is you do here. But here's the thing; I guess I just don't buy it."

At that moment I did not care if Alexandria's friend thought of me as rude and disrespectful. I'd read enough books, I knew how the game worked. They make it all look genuine, they play up the mysticism, and I am fully aware of the fact that these Readers, or whatever people like Scarlett refer to themselves as, are nothing more than people skilled at being able to see what a person is like, read how they react, and manipulate them into thinking they've been told something profound. They might appear spot on, but what they are doing is just reading the person. It wasn't hard.

I was already sure Alexandria did it all the time anyway.

Perhaps, at that moment, I was being a harsh critic, though I felt it was justified. Was Alexandria throwing me into another game? This time, it would come to her surprise, that I was no longer willing to obediently follow along.

I left the room, leaving Alexandria to apologize for me. Or not, it didn't matter either way. She came through the beaded doorway after me as I was pulling my shoes back on and she didn't say a thing, only followed suit.

Outside the apartment building I breathed in the fresh air to get that dull odor of the apartment out of my nose.

"What in the heck was that?" I sputtered out. Deep breaths. The more I took, the better I felt. The weirdness of the fortune teller's room seemed to fade away. My crossness subsided.

Alexandria only looked at me as though she had thoroughly amused by what had just played out, and I wouldn't be lying if I said it caused a slight build up of irritation. I could never know for sure whether I had just been put on or not.

I knew Scarlett had very much been serious about trying to work her occultism on me, but I could not determine whether Alexandria's goal here was to see me take it seriously, or to take it as I increasingly took everything else with her - trying to see behind the veil.

"Come on, we have another place to go to," she said, walking past me and not giving me another moment to keep up the questioning. I was going to have to wait and see where this was all leading. Maybe there would be a payoff, maybe there wouldn't. Alexandria was the writer's advice of 'show, don't tell' personified.