Pandora's Box

2. A Promise Made

I have plenty of time to dwell on Leda's question. There was always a possibility that I had simply been a type of amusement oddity for her, that she had never really believed in anything I'd seen or said during our sessions. Her questions hadn't exactly been deep, so the answers had been correspondingly mundane, but I thought I'd still managed to sprinkle in enough specific truths and impossible details to convince her.

Finding the right balance between truth and mystery was one of the biggest hurdles I faced in my work. Sometimes when I flipped the cards, I would have such vivid visions it felt like I was actually reliving a memory, feeling, sensing, existing in the same time and place as those I was seeing. I learned early on that spilling all of those details to a client isn't wise. More often than not, they turn skeptic and want to know who I'd talked to in order to get those details. It's a natural defense, skepticism, and it tends to rear up hard and fast when our ugly truths are laid bare in front of us in perfect detail. It can also be incredibly uncomfortable for me to relate exact details of certain visions, too. Unintentional voyeurism is not my business. That's why I prefer to deal with questions of the future, where the visions are murkier because the events are still uncertain. Until something has come to pass, there are too many variables that could change the course of an event. So unlike visions of the past that appear with sharp clarity, visions of the future are more ambiguous, surreal, and up for interpretation. Unfortunately, I don't always have control over whether I see the past or the future.

With Leda, I hadn't turned up any crazy visions. The vivid ones are most often associated with intense emotions, and nothing I went over with Leda seemed to be all that intense. Sure, she had plenty of romances, but none of them inspired more than fleeting infatuation from her. In the case of her pool boy, I caught a brief glimpse of the day I think she decided to pursue him. The scene was short, just a flash of a young man, athletic build, golden boy smile, strutting across the pool deck with a strainer. Dropping a detail like the identity of her most recent attraction was one I thought harmless enough, but also juicy enough to convince her my visions were legitimate.

That detail, and the countless other little details I'd given her during our previous sessions, were real and Leda knew it. So why ask if I was the real deal when she was already certain?

My skin is tingling again, a million needles dancing across my arms and building in my chest, circling my heart. It's my intuition, letting me know I'm close to something. But what?

The tingling is more than I can handle. It makes me anxious, and I simultaneously want to curl up in the fetal position and run around screaming until I'm too tired to feel anymore. Neither is an option, but the insistent buzzing of my phone provides a small distraction from the anxiousness. I dive for my bag beneath the table and pull it out. There's a single text from Indie.

Whistlers at 8, ya?

I check the time. It's already past seven and I'll have to rush if I'm going to make it to Whistlers on time. I double check the time, just to be sure. It certainly doesn't feel like hours have passed since Leda left - that means I've been lost in my thoughts for hours. Hours that felt like seconds. Maybe minutes. I swear, sometimes time feels like it warps around me, racing through hours or crawling through seconds without me noticing, until I'm about to be late for a show I swore twice over not to miss.

This is why I don't make promises or guarantees. Maybe it's my line of work, or maybe it's just an innate personality flaw, but I can't stand being held to something so ambiguously permanent. There are too many variables in life to make promises, too much opportunity to break them. I see it with my clients all the time. Besides, promises are so unnecessary. If you ask me to do something and I say I'll do it, just be happy when I do. Don't make me swear to it so that you can throw a fit if I fall on my face trying, or forget, or don't do it quite right.