The Broken Clock is Right Thrice: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #4

Chapter 2 - The Hermit's Tombstone

"The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all."

~ Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid)

From inside the vehicle, Zandra counts the "out of business" signs hanging on the downtown storefronts as the SUV accelerates down the street. Stevens Point feels much larger than its 30,000 residents. From the university to the downtown, to the hospital to the breweries, to the largest public school district in the state of Wisconsin, it's 50 pounds of city packed into 25 pounds of pavement. As such, every out-of-business sign represents at least 20 unemployed, and 50 more in secondary effects.

This is what happens when the truth comes out in a city built on lies. They're the same scenes repeated across Wisconsin.

Zandra would normally suppress the satisfied smirk on her face, but not this time. She doesn't care who sees her tap dance on the misery of Stevens Point, especially as the SUV rolls by the charcoal lump that rests where Sneak Peek used to be.

"You gave a bad reading?" the man in Sunglasses says.

"No," Zandra says. "A good reading. A very good reading."

And the dominos fell.

"Maybe they should've confessed their sins to a priest instead. It's free," the man in sunglasses says.

"You get what you pay for," Zandra says.

The SUV stops at a gas station. Zandra waits inside the vehicle while the man in sunglasses buys an armful of cigarette cartons. A sign on the window of the gas station reads, "LOWEST TOBACCO PRICES ALLOWED BY LAW!"

"A man after my own heart," Zandra says after greeting the cartons with a hug. "Wouldn't you know, you even got my favorite brand. What a complete coincidence."

"You leave a trail of cigarette butts everywhere you go," the man says.

Maybe I should switch to vaping after all.

"Next up is breakfast," Zandra says. "Don't skip on the drinks, either. I'm thirsty as hell and constipated by design. There's nowhere to shit when you're sleeping in cars. Get it all to go, too. I have a secure location in mind."

"You do?"

"A cemetery. I know the one."

"You want to eat breakfast at a graveyard?"

"The people there know how to keep their mouths shut. It's perfect for you to play secret agent," Zandra says in a dry croak. "Besides, this one is across the road from a public park with new, freshly unpunished toilets. My psychic powers predict you're going to buy me two coffees and a magazine."

Thirty minutes later, Zandra devours the drive-through breakfast on a park bench in a cemetery, regretting not giving the fast food a chance before. It's not that she never noticed the quick-service gruel before, and more that she never bothered to get a driver's license. Or a mobile phone. Or the internet.

Good psychics have no need for that stuff. It's always better to go in raw. The celebrity psychics all use Google before their readings, and those crutches eventually turn into tells. It's just as easy for the client to double-check your work as it is for you to find it. Everyone records everything now.

Not that that can't work. Most readings "reveal" things that clients already know about themselves. The fuel is narcissism, which is always in need of a foot rub. The mysticism and drama are there to distract from how obvious the psychic's game is, because the truly clairvoyant wouldn't waste time on the most mundane details of someone's life, unless mundane people wanted to pay for it.