Laura Bennett - Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

“Come see this, kids,” he says as he tries to get the five boys to gather around. After the first chorus of “How’d you do that?” and “Do that again!” they typically lose interest and move back to their video games, TV shows, and guitars.

“Peter,” I say to him in an indignant tone.

“What?” he replies, all innocent.

“What? What? Card tricks? What the hell are you thinking? Do you know what this means?” I almost shout. “Who does card tricks, Peter? Think! Old men! That’s who does card tricks. This officially makes you an old man!”

While I can take some solace in the fact that he learns these tricks on the Internet, a venue not normally associated with the oxygen tank crowd, the truth is that performing card tricks is second only to writing letters of complaint and carrying an AARP card as a true indicator that you have officially arrived at old age. It is not that I mind if Peter is old. I actually like being married to an older man; it makes me feel young by comparison, and it means that no matter how old I get I’ll always be a babe to him. It is true that at least his letters of complaint are usually about the inefficiency of an interface or a flaw in the calculation system of a financial website, but card tricks still cross the line.

It seems like a lifetime ago. I was living in Houston, and one of my girlfriends came to visit. Kathryn and I had worked together folding panties at Victoria’s Secret, but then her husband was transferred and they had moved to Kansas City.

“Let’s go get our fortunes told,” she said, telling me about this guy in Houston she had heard of who was reported to be the real thing. I demurred for myself—I don’t need a roadmap to navigate my life—but agreed to drive Kathryn to an address an hour across town, not such an unusual distance in the urban sprawl of Texas. We arrived at a typical-looking apartment complex with no discernible universe-shaking auras, located the proper apartment, and were shown into what could have passed for any retiree condo south of the Mason-Dixon Line. No red velvet curtains with thick gold fringe, no crystal balls, not even a single neon sign flashing promises of the future being unlocked. Nope, just beige décor and an equally beige-looking guy in his late thirties. After awkward hellos, he showed me to a beige couch while he and Kathryn retreated to a breakfast nook table graced with nothing more supernatural than a deck of tarot cards, the one and only indication that spirits were about to descend on suburbia.

Sensing a presence nearby, I found nestled next to me against a beige pillow a tiny, ancient, beige Chihuahua. She moved a little, arthritically, and waggled what looked like long, stringy moles hanging from her grayed jowls. The psychic lovingly introduced us, and I felt that though this guy was probably a fraud, he must at least be a good person to care for such an unfortunate little creature.

Kathryn’s reading began with a gathering and a shuffling of the deck. I didn’t really pay much attention to the peek into Kathryn’s future, as Hanging-Mole Dog transfixed me. I didn’t mind sharing the sofa with it, but I was definitely trying to avoid physical contact. I was interrupted from my task when the psychic cleared his throat. I looked up and saw him staring at me.

“I see you in the future in upstate New York or Connecticut with a man who has blue eyes, white hair, and a mustache,” he offered me from the cosmos. “Living in a raised ranch house.” He stopped talking. Apparently that was all the great otherworld had for me.

“Wow, okay, thanks,” I said. He then turned his attention back to Kathryn. I grew up in the South and had lived there all my life. At that moment, I certainly had no plans, immediate or otherwise, to move to the Northeast. I hadn’t even heard of a “raised” ranch house before; it’s not something they condone in architecture school, and it didn’t sound like a future home to be excited about. In fact, I had heard “raised ranch” as “razed” ranch, as in “no longer standing,” or “bulldozed,” or even worse, “demolished by an ugly-house-hating tornado.”

My father has blue eyes, white hair, and a mustache, so I assumed there was some kind of weird Electra mixed signal being sent. I was married to a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and no mustache, and he wouldn’t have been thrilled about the outside chance that any of this revelation might be true. I filed it under “Never mind” and eventually put the whole episode behind me.

Four years later, I was living in the Northeast. A new acquaintance invited me to her house for a dinner party. These were my freewheeling newly single days—wine, roses, dinner parties, dates with lots of eligible bachelors, quiet nights at home with pizza and Cleo. Sure, I said, I’d love to. I’m always up for meeting a new roomful of people. I’m like a human party favor—throw me into a group of unknowns and I’ll have met everyone by the end of the evening. I put on my discount Donna Karan, strapped on some sexy heels, and made my way to an address down in SoHo. Outside the building I noticed a man just standing there, looking up at the parapets, looking down at the sidewalk, then pacing back and forth.

“Excuse me,” I said, eyeing him for a bit and deciding he looked the type, “are you here for the party?” He nodded. “Would you like to ride up with me?” He smiled and said yes. We chatted in the elevator; we chatted in the foyer; we chatted during drinks before dinner; we chatted until we were seated. He was easy to converse with. He was also an architect, but we didn’t discuss architecture, which was a huge relief because “What’s your favorite building in New York?” between architects is as tired as “What’s your sign?” for the rest of the trolling population. When dinner was called and we all gathered around the table, I saw his tiny place card off down the table, next to what looked to be another single woman; the company around me soon carried me away into other possibilities. I was popular in the room that night, and I lost sight of my pre-dinner friend until it was time to leave. As the other guests were saying their goodbyes to our hostess I sought him out to share a cab uptown.

The next day I was in my office when a Peter Shelton called. The name didn’t ring any bells.

“Hi, this is Peter,” he said. “We met last night. I’m doing a modified bed check.”

“A bed check?”

“Yes, I’m calling to see if you took Mr. Deep Pockets up on his offer to go to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame gala in Fort Worth.”

“Oh, please,” I huffed, as though I had never had any intention of going on this jaunt. I was a bit surprised that Peter had overheard that particular tidbit. The truth was, in my newly single dating days I was up for anything; but I had a set of architectural drawings to get out of the office, and Mr. Pockets’s private jet was leaving soon. I glanced at the clock. No dice. I was about to cut my losses and engage Mr. Shelton in some date-driven witty banter when the phone went dead. My office was being wired for a new computer system, and a guy with a tool belt poked his head in my door and said, “Oops.” I looked at the phone in my hand and mused over Peter’s choice of the term “bed check.” When I had first moved to New York and left my first husband back in Texas he would brokenheartedly call at all hours, an activity my close friends and I began referring to as “bed checks.” I placed the phone back in the cradle and looked at the clock to see if maybe I could still swing liftoff.

Three days later, my friend Julie offered to take Cleo to a movie. Free babysitting for a single mother is not an opportunity to miss. I phoned the hostess from the dinner party to get Peter’s number, and without regard for the Rules I bravely dialed it.