The two women burst into the fortune teller’s shop, both giggling hysterically as they entered in clouds of clogging perfume. Their entry, a tumble of sharp angles, flashing jewelry, and sparkling sequins accompanied by the sharp, staccato knocks of high heels, shattered the tranquility of the decaying room like firecrackers going off in a mausoleum.
They tossed their designer purses on a battered table and sat down on the lone wooden bench, which creaked as its frame struggled to support an added burden, something it had not done in a while. After pausing to let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, the first woman looked around. The graying cubicle seemed to be a waiting room; looking around the empty place, the woman noted that the fortune teller must have been overly optimistic to believe there would ever be a line waiting for his services. There was not a window to be seen, and the monotony of the undecorated walls was interrupted only by two doors. The first door, its handle now giving off wafts of perfume, connected the waiting room to the outside world. The second door, which the woman assumed led to the fortune teller’s chambers, was smaller and made of scarred wood.
“So you really believe this guy has all these powers…” she began skeptically.
“His predictions were spot on when I came in. He said some rich guy would fall hopelessly in love with me.” The second woman twirled her diamond ring conspicuously. She never failed to brag to anyone polite enough to listen that the diamond was almost 3.5 carats, cost more than an average man’s yearly salary, and came from Nunavut.
“Seems like the generic junk that would come out of a fraud’s mouth. The guy is probably a just creepy old man who doesn’t have the skills to get a real job,” the first woman retorted.
“We don’t have jobs either.”
“Our job is to get married to rich men.”

With this, the conversation died down as both women sat quietly, groping for a topic that would end the silence.

A moment later, the second woman pulled off her ring with a flourish. “Did you know that this ring is almost 3.5 carats?” she started. The woman hurried on without waiting for an answer. “It cost my fiancé more than most men earn in a year. The diamond is so expensive because it’s one of the purest in the world. You see, it came from a mine in Nunavut, whose diamonds are second only to those from Botswana, a little country in Africa that–”.

The woman’s rambling was cut off by the loud squeak of a turning handle. With a groan, the second door swung open and the fortune teller emerged from the chamber out of the darkness behind him. At first glance he seemed to be wearing another layer of very loosely fitting skin, which hung over his bony frame like a set of sagging robes. “Come,” he commanded. He had a quavering voice that seemed to betray an excitement that did not agree with the rest of his body.

After they gathered their purses, the two women were led into the fortune teller’s dwelling. There, he performed his usual rites on first woman, screwed up his eyes in concentration, and promptly concluded that a rich man would fall hopelessly in love with her. He then proceeded to collect his pay and shove the two women out the chamber, out the room, and out the door.

After waiting a minute or two to adjust her eyes to the sunlight, the first woman continued her façade of skepticism, dismissing the fortune teller’s words as utter junk and trashing the man’s unappetizing appearance. On the inside, however, she hoped the prediction was true, and a part of her was convinced that the man truly did have supernatural powers. On the other hand, the second woman reassured her friend of the fortune teller’s credibility. All the while, she secretly hoped that the man was a fraud and that her friend would marry a starving artist who could only afford pitifully small diamonds.

As it happened to be, a few months later the first woman met a wealthy investor who was still single, although he was over forty years old. The man found her slightly obnoxious, but since the woman was young and pretty, he fell hopelessly in love with her. The woman, on the other hand, detested the man due to his lack of personality and energy. Of course, that mattered very little and when the investor presented the woman with a four carat diamond from Botswana, she happily agreed to get married.

At this point the woman was reminded of the fortune teller’s words. On a whim, she dragged her new fiancé to the man’s dreary shop. While the woman waited outside, the investor, eager to please his future wife, waited in the empty room until the fortune teller announced that he was ready. After the fortune teller led the man into the chamber, he performed his usual rites and screwed his eyes up in concentration. However, this time the man’s eyes remained closed for one…two…five…ten minutes.

“What’s going on? What’s taking so long?” The investor threw his hands up in exasperation.

The bewildered fortune teller admitted that he saw nothing, and that the investor’s fortune was simply impossible to read. He apologized profusely and blubbered that this had never happened before, that he didn’t know what was going on, that he was so very sorry, that he didn’t deserve any pay, and that it was probably high time to close this little shop that never made much of a profit anyway. With that, the fortune teller, highly disturbed, shoved the investor out the chamber, out the room, and out the door.

“So what does our future look like?” the woman inquired back outside.

“The guy couldn’t say. He’s a fraud. Of course, I avoided his trap. The stupid geezer wasn’t able to swindle any money off of me, I made sure of that. I don’t know how you were foolish enough to be tricked. If we’re going to be together, you should really stop running around believing in silly things like fortune telling.”

But the woman had stopped listening. She was already off, crossing the street, hurrying to go and show her diamond ring off to that friend she always despised, the friend who had bragged so much about her own ring.

And the man, who suddenly realized that the woman had already left, stumbled forward into the street. He didn’t see his fiancé, already on the other side of the road. He didn’t see the coffee shop to the left. He didn’t see the runner in the red jumpsuit or the mother pushing her baby in a stroller or the old man hobbling out the restaurant with his walker. He didn’t see the truck roaring at full speed on a direct collision course ready to smash anything in its path. In fact, he didn’t see anything at all. He was still blinded by the light, and when the truck crashed into him, he would be blinded forever and his fate, so mysterious just a minute ago, was now as clear as the purest diamond.