Conventional Fortune

Alex Garibaldi stood in line. She tapped her foot, twisted a fistful of her cargo pants, and squeezed knuckles that didn’t need to crack.

She was late.

C’mon.

“Billet?”

.

“Théâtre quatre.”

Come. On.

“Billet?”

.

“Théâtre neuf, à l'étage.”

Front of the line. Exhale.

“Billet?”

.

“Billet?”

. .

Where did I…

Pained stutter:

“Un mo- un moment.”

. . .

“Ticket?”

. . . .

“Fourth theater.”

She accepted the stub and advanced through the gap in the red rope blockade. She ran her finger along the ribbed edge of the ticket; it’d been a clean tear. She watched her passing reflection swell in one of the golden balls adorning the rope wall- her hair was longer and blonder than it’d been in years, swept to one side like a platinum curtain of starlight. She pulled at one sleeve of her white and purple-striped rugby shirt, then fingered the pink skin of her cheeks, convinced she could feel the freckles scattered like strawberry seeds. She took care to disregard the sinking bags beneath her eyes from the sleep she struggled most nights to find.

Theater four…

She clocked a yellow sweater. A short brown bob. Breaking left.

Théâtre quatre, she repeated in her head. She tailed the patron through the lobby and into the first hallway.

The door swung violently; she entered the theater without contacting the cold metal.

Previews?

She looked to the screen.

OPPENHEIMER

7 21 23

A break. It had been a while.

Seat J7.

.

“Pardon,” she whispered, edging past a couple in seats two and three. “Pardon.”

She transferred the 16oz Heineken from her back pocket into the left cupholder of the seventh seat. The can looked green even in the dark. She snapped the top and drew two mouthfuls as her gums acclimated to the carbonated sting; she’d just started flossing again, and she felt everything a little more now.

The Disney logo simmered at the bottom of the frame. For no good reason it made her feel at home.

Immediately they were at sea, happy dolphins loping across the water until a ship manifested. Horns blared and strings were struck. Until-

“Cette histoire se passe au fond de l’océan.”

“FUCK,” a Man with a syrupy Southern accent cursed from the middle of row D.

“Et ho! Hisse! La grande-voile, matelot!”

You and me both friend. Neither ever imagined the movie could be dubbed. She watched the figure rise and edge its way down the crowded row.

She faced two options:

1. Watch The Little Mermaid in a language she knew 14 words of not counting numbers.

2. Make like the Southerner in row D.

“Méfie-toi, mons gars, d’une sirène, qui t’tattend.”

She took a pensive plug from the beer, this one bigger than the first two stacked on top of each other. She swished what remained in the can, figuring she could finish it before exiting the theater without a stomach ache.

Next thing she knew it was: “Pardon, pardon,” again in between slugs from the beer as she stepped around the sneakers and kneecaps colonizing the row. By the time she reached the aisle she’d shaped the beer-less can like a broken hourglass. The door to exit the theater was still swinging as she slipped out into the seedy red lobby. Along the wall beside a recycling bin a Man shook his head.

She took a euro step forward then finger rolled the can toward the bin.

“You too?” the Man guessed over the metal *CLANK*.

“You took the word right out of my mouth.”

He lowered his eyes with pride packaged as shame. He was a peer, an American 20-something dressed like a real hipster- white t-shirt tucked into pin-stripe pants practically belted around his rib cage, and a big brown varsity jacket one size too big. He looked like a folded umbrella standing with his hands in his pockets. He wore a pair of black Half Cabs torn from what appeared to be regular-footed kickflips and switch-stance heelflips. His facial features were well-marked, the same lines and shadows sweeping across either side of a nose that looked broken and hardly mended. He dragged a hand over the top of his head, shaved without a guard; she could almost feel the pricks on her own palm. He was already balding but a good jawline diverted that harsh reality, the bone square, and right, and true-

“Should we get our money back?” he asked, piercing her character study. She blinked several times to acclimate again to spoken conversation.

“I’m sure I don’t speak the right French to manage that,” she measured. The Man looked no more confident. “But we can try.”

Some good luck meant the customer service worker had studied abroad two semesters at Berkeley. Within minutes they’d both been assured refunds on the cards they paid with, sending them pacing out of the theater with everything they came with. The pair moved side-by-side, refreshing their phones for the notifications they hadn’t received during their brief theatrical window. During this procession Alex turned toward the escalators she’d entered the bright catacombs of the underground mall by. Without looking up from his phone the Man turned with her.

“You don’t seem the type for live action Disney remakes,” she remarked.

“I’ll welcome that as a compliment.”

“I didn’t mean it as one.” She smiled. It was the truth.

“I have a younger sister. She liked that movie- I find it comforting.”

“Comforting,” she echoed for her own comprehension. She looked his profile up and down again. “Home sick?”

“I mean always. A little bit- but more… I don’t know. Heart sick.”

“Oh,” she said in the tone of an apology. The frozen up escalator was dressed in a web of yellow tape. The pair opted for the stairs and scaled the steps in a strange unison. When they reached the first landing the Man clarified with a huff:

“From a break up.”

They paused.

On a Europe trip? I’d die explaining that, Alex thought.

“A bad one,” he specified. They resumed their climb. “Our first time traveling together too. Pretty embarrassing, right?”

Alex tried to swallow which sent her on a coughing fit. Once she stopped, he continued: “Part of me wanted to stick it out- you know, better PR. But out here it really felt inevitable. I’d hate to go home to daily life and forget that.”

“I don’t exactly follow,” Alex confessed as they reached the top of the steps. The Man dug into his pocket to free a pack of Marlboro Reds consumed by a health warning suggesting smoking any one of these would make you impotent.

“Can I have one of those?” she asked. He folded the lid back and obliged her; she slipped the filter between her lips as the Man stuffed the empty pack into this back pocket-

“You don’t have to give me your last-” she started, as he procured another cellophane-coated pack of Reds from the same front pocket he’d found the first one. “Mr. cigarette, huh?” she mumbled, the white stock nodding in her mouth.

“The convenience store had a minimum for credit cards,” he explained as he drew from the new pack. “When the guy told me I sorta panicked and bought two.”

“Convenient,” she decided.

He opened a Golden Nugget matchbook back and peeled one free, pinching the tip on the striker between the front and back covers. He plucked the match loose with a *pop* and ferried the resulting torch to the ends of her cigarette, then his. A few puffs dyed the tips orange as they blew smoke streams into the black starless night.

“I don’t encounter many smokers anymore,” he offered, tapping first ash onto the sidewalk. “Cigarette smokers I mean- last time I was at the casino I made two laps around the slot machines before I found a light. And that’s honest truth.”

“It’s a vaper’s world,” she determined, producing a white and green pill-shaped device from her pocket and ripping it like a cement milkshake. Before the smoke deserted her mouth she’d offered it to the Man, who tried and failed twice to hit it harder before passing the thing back to Alex.

“Mint something?”

“I guess. Whatever it is you can smoke it indoors.” She hit it again before sliding it back inside her pocket. “Took it off some guy hitting on me at my hostel bar last night.”

“Little something for your time?” the Man winked.

“Time is best spent compensated. And I want my compensation.”

The Man feigned checking his pockets, taking his little joke far enough to pull his passport from an inside pocket on his varsity jacket.

“I wouldn’t steal anything off you because you’re not inconveniencing me. Not yet anyway,” she winked. “Right now, we’re just walking in the same direction, and you’re sharing vague details about a bad breakup.”

“I am,” he shrugged.

Alex felt she’d been too familiar with the Man, but he didn’t appear upset. Without coordinating they walked toward the lights and traffic of the Second District. It was an ordinary fall evening- leaves pooled around the naked trees lining the walkway as couples and intimates huddled in warm conversation.

“Is she still here in Paris?”

The Man consulted his home screen. “I don’t think so. We were sorta here for a wedding- friend of hers, not one of mine. That’s in Zurich tonight- our RSVP’s blown to hell but she’s the type to still show.”

“Brave.” She slowed and lengthened her stride, moving in wide, looping steps like she was dodging floor traps in the concrete.

“So I guess that’s my sad story,” the Man concluded as they reached a crosswalk where he jammed the button with an elbow. It felt good to smoke standing in place; all that movement had filled her head with helium. The crosswalk *tick*-ed a high, even beat as they waited; during the lapse in conversation Alex slipped into in its rhythm.

“What forced you-” *tick “- out to the-” *tick* “-movies all-” *tick* “-alone tonight?”

*tick*

“What?” she asked.

“I said what-” suddenly his question registered, and she answered:

“Wasn’t forced. Though I didn’t plan on seeing that movie tonight.”

The Man looked confused. “I’m confused,” he said aloud for no one’s benefit. “Well, what did you wager on seeing?”

“You know who David Lynch is?” she asked.

He squinted his eyes like he couldn’t read his cue card. “I don’t.”

“He’s the guy who did Twin Peaks.”

“Sure.”

“Well, he made a movie-” she started through a mouthful of smoke, waiting for a full breath before continuing. “-an old move called Lost Highway. They re-released it out here for some reason.”

“So, what went wrong?”

“My ticket- which I prudently bought online one week in advance- is for this time tomorrow.”

The light changed, so they crossed the street. It had rained- you wouldn’t know it from the way it soaked the sidewalk, but here the intersection and the wet light reflections glistened like the streets had been paved with God’s own asphalt.

“And to answer the first question you asked, I prefer to see a movie like that alone,” she concluded.

“Why’s that?” he asked, flicking ash, and suspending the still-burning cigarette in front of his lips.

“I’m too self-conscious whenever I pick a movie and go watch it with someone else. I mean unless it’s right down the middle.”

He didn’t seem to get it. She explained:

“It’s just not usually enjoyable for me. Like anything with laughs- I can never laugh first. I physically can’t. And the second the person I’m with doesn’t laugh at something I want to laugh at, I can’t get out of my head about it. And if the movie gets weird, or the nudity doesn’t look conventional…”

“If the nudity doesn’t look conventional?” the Man asked with a wry twist.

She replied with a look to indicate this was a real principle. “Have you seen Boogie Nights?”

“Sure I have.”

“Well, that’s what I would describe as conventional nudity. It’s a movie about pornos, you don’t see anyone naked who doesn’t look better that way than they do with their clothes on- even the penis at the end is big, and because it’s big, it’s climactic. And when shut the movie and you’re glad,” she said with through a nervous chuckle. The Man blushed. “Admit it,” she demanded. “Or you’ll leave me so alone I’ll never talk candidly to strangers again.”

“I ad-mit it,” he declared.

“So, it’s all conventional.”

“I mean that aside that movie’s at least a little screwed up-”

“It’s all kinds of screwed up in all the other ways but I’m just talking about one example of conventional nudity,” she interjected. “But then have you seen The Master?” before he could answer she remembered useful context: “Made by the same guy.”

“I couldn’t have guessed that,” the Man confessed. “I watched about half of it on Netflix.” From the look on his face, she figured he’d made it about 20 minutes.

“I’m guessing you didn’t get to the unconventional nudity then.”

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t describe it to you without context. And I won’t describe the context because it’s uninteresting.”

The pair stopped, and the Man tapped out the end of his cigarette, raining a confetti and embers and ash onto the sidewalk. Alex took two successive drags and did the same. They didn’t see a wastebasket, so he took both butts and stuffed them in his pocket. The Man looked over Alex’s shoulder at something as his eyes contracted.

“You shoot pool?”

-

The tables were jammed in the basement of a tavern bathed in blue and red light like a DUI stop. The concrete room had poor dimensions- the table the pair played on, that one on the far end, required the short cue stick to shoot from the foot and the long rail along the back wall. The pair played for beers and the Man won the first three games; he was good and she was full. He offered to spot her balls but she wasn’t looking for balance in the contests- all she wanted was one sweet, improbable win.

Three stripes left. Two solids. Alex’s one-ball advantage, and her shot. She hit the vape and eyed the table through the cotton candy smoke cloud spilling from her mouth. The balls were strewn like an unidentified constellation, curling one after the other across the full length of the cloth. Alex gave the long stick a good chalking; she set the blue cube down and without thought thumbed her nose, staining her skin like a dye pack had exploded inside her nostril. As she lined up her shot the Man took notice and stifled laughter.

“Whatever you’re laughing at, shut up,” she commanded. The Man obliged her with his silence.

She pointed her cue at the left corner pocket; she did this before every shot, even if the call had proved about as reliable as the live betting odds on an election night. Accuracy aside, her contact was generally true.

She wanted the seven-ball. She hovered the stick over the cue ball to confirm her angle, then leaned forward and flirted with the shot- easing the tip impossibly close to the cue ball gleaming white as salt, drawing back, easing forward again. She took a breath, held it, then struck the ball clean, the *crack* still ringing as the seven-ball catapulted off the middle diamond of the right cushion and dropped into the left corner pocket.

“AH-WOOOOOH,” she cried, slowly circling the table, hunting her next shot as the cue ball recoiled from the sharp contact.

“Aren’t you the Color of Money?” he quipped.

She kept her eyes on the cloth but slipped him a short smile for his efforts.

She transacted the long stick for his short. He motioned for the vape and that changed hands too. She scooped up the chalk and gave the tip a few good twists. Her nostril was still tangled up in blue but that was less relevant than the shots at hand. Soon she’d leaned back over the table. Just the two and the eight-balls remained.

“Two-ball.

Eight-ball,” she recounted.

The two was positioned nice and easy, a screaming signpost for the left side pocket. She pointed the stick to make her intentions known. The cue ball had settled right on the head spot, leaving her an unobstructed look.

“Two-ball,” she whispered.

“Eight-ball.

Two.

Eight.

28.”

She struck the cue ball, smacking the two right on the number and burying it in the left side pocket. She launched into the footwork now, sauntering around the table with the scurviest twist on her face she could manage. She tossed the Man the short cue and he handed her the long. Only as she started to seize the stick he held his grip, drawing her toward the table where their knees collided.

“I’m gonna need this one to beat your ass,” she informed him.

“Reconsider?” he replied.

“I’m only down here to do one thing.”

He released the stick, and she stepped back holding his eye until she turned on a heel. She beheld it in upturned palms like a ceremonial blade, then swung the stick overhead in her most overt Vincent Lauria homage yet- except on the first revolution the butt thumped the ceiling which sent a charge down her elbow, the stick *clack*-ing across the polished concrete floor until it rolled and settled against the leg of the next table over.

“Shake it off,” the Man advised.

She scooped the stick off the ground, apologized to all relevant Frenchmen, and returned to the table. The eight-ball sat perched beside the right corner pocket; it would’ve been a layup if it weren’t for the 10 blocking any direct shot. She returned the long stick for the short and migrated to the foot of the table. Her best look was another cushion shot; she had an angle, though she was more erratic shooting right to left.

“Right corner pocket,” she declared.

She lined up the shot then jabbed with the stick, each time stopping millimeters short of the cue ball. She jabbed, and jabbed, and jabbed, took her usual breath, then struck. The contact felt thin but she believed it’d still get there. The Man rose from his seat.

That could work.

Never one for touch, the ball erupted off the left bunker and blitzed the eight. The result remained in the balance, but judging the line she knew she hadn’t scratched.

You gave yourself a chance.

The ball lusted after the eight. A win required square contact; she worshipped the impending collision like a benevolent car crash.

But the cue ball came in a little high.

Goddamnit.

The eight ball absorbed the shot and found the cushion at the head of the table, immediately glancing off the side rail and streaking back across on a threatening slant.

Oh no.

She’d struck the ball with too much force; there was no chance it’d stop short of the side left pocket. All she could hope for now was that it’d find the cushion.

Oh god no.

Well… it could still rim out of the pocket.

But there would be no clemency for this misfire- the eight ball walked a straight line and plunged to the depths of the side left pocket. Alex turned to face the Man, who cupped his hands in a silent cheer. She glared until he stopped. Then waited, but the Man wouldn’t move. “What do you want, a superlative?” she seized her beer bottle from the high circle table they shared. “Rack ‘em,” she barked.

She climbed the spiral staircase two steps at a time and broke straight for the bar.

“Two more?” the bartender intoned at the familiar entrance.

“Last two,” Alex swore.

“By now I imagined to meet your friend-” the bartender stopped mid-sentiment. The woman turned her head, then motioned with her thumb that something was amiss with Alex’s nose. Alex swallowed the signal and repeated the motion. Afterward she studied her thumb to find a smear of bright blue chalk; she found her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, horrified to find what appeared to be an Adderall-snorting heathen staring back with eyes like a jackal. She grabbed a cocktail napkin and wiped her nose raw.

The bartender smiled, dipped below the counter and returned with two bottles of dark beer to compliment the hardwood counter they idled on.

“It’s chalk,” Alex explained, re-examining her pained reflection. The woman didn’t seem to care so Alex scooped up the bottles and fled. But as she broke for the staircase, a figure plowed into her shoulder. The beer sloshed inside the bottles and streamed down her hands like heavy raindrops on a windshield. She turned and watched as the Man burst through the front door of the bar staring down at something. She thought to follow him but knew it wasn’t her place. She carried the beers downstairs wondering if it was the last she’d ever see of him. He’d left his jacket, but people leave things behind all the time.

-

The beer was halfway down the label. Alex dragged the bottle it in a circle, studying the low drawl. Suddenly the Man started spiraling down the staircase, looking like he’d been electrocuted. Alex gave him the opportunity to speak first, but he just took a seat and stared at the wall.

“You okay friend?” she asked.

She heard a buzz she couldn’t feel. She saw the soft white outline through the Man’s pocket; keeping his eyes trained on the wall, he reached inside, set the phone on the table, and let it buzz there. The name of the caller was Ex-Girlfriend. She looked up at him.

“It was an inside joke once. Kind of a cute one,” he relayed with a sedated shrug. Alex doubted that was true but let it go. “Now it’s just good nomenclature.”

The phone continued to buzz and writhe like a dragonfly with its wings plucked off.

“You aren’t gonna answer?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” He lifted the phone and fitted it inside his pocket, then rested his hand back on the table. “Haven’t yet at least.”

“How many times has she called?”

“Maybe six times.” One by one he lifted his fingers off the table. “Seven.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“I thought about that,” he claimed. “I think she’s just sad at a wedding.”

She offered him the vape. He accepted it and sent two jets of smoke waterfalling from his nostrils. Alex watched the phone shine through his pocket again.

“You think I should answer it?” he asked, breaking eye contact with the wall.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess haven’t really told you anything to go off,” he conceded. “You know I’m superstitious as hell.”

“That’s something.”

“What I think I need is a sign,” he decided.

“A sign?”

“Yeah, a sign- something I don’t know… mystical.”

“Something… astrological?” Alex countered with a crooked smile.

Between them they checked Horoscope.com, the Washington Post, Vogue, Vice, the Chicago Sun Times, and the Times of India- the most useful information was something about monitoring your finances, which reminded Alex she needed to venmo rent money to her landlord. Otherwise, the exercise proved to be one big nothing.

“What do we do now?” the Man asked.

“You’re just looking for a sign?” she asked.

“I’ll listen to anything,” he confirmed.

Like an arrow from heaven, one more idea punctured Alex’s brain.

“I know what to do,” she claimed.

-

Quick as a hiccup Alex settled her tab with cash. The pair fled the bar and doubled back down the shining streets to the Rue Saint-Mar metro station. Twice now, in the evenings like this, Alex had passed a fortune teller on the sidewalk outside a station on the third line; it was just the kind of vague, impersonal, guidance the Man seemed to want. Two single fare tickets, five more missed calls, and a half-dozen stops later the pair resurfaced somewhere in the 11th District. The Man lit up a cigarette and the pair proceeded without deliberation.

“I didn’t see her at the station back there but I think we got off a stop early,” Alex conceded, as the pair side-stepped their way up the busy sidewalk. “She’ll be at the next one.”

The Man expressed no indications of doubt. After a brisk half-mile walk the pair approached an intersection. “Is that the Jim Morrison cemetery?” the man asked.

“See it in the daylight,” she advised the Man.

A few doorsteps later they reached the Père Lachaise station.

This is it, Alex recalled.

They walked circles around the entrance; descended down the tiled tunnel searching each hallway, checking every bench, rounding the last corner until they were sure- the fortune teller would not be found.

“Fuck,” Alex groaned by way of an apology. “Every other time I was here I saw her.”

“That’s all right,” the Man claimed, as they resurfaced from the depths of the station. “It was a good try- I’d be nowhere closer without you here.”

The pair walked a few blocks, turned down a lonely street, and settled on the stoop of the first building they found. They spoke no words, listening to the voices and footsteps of the pedestrian traffic accenting the soft *whoosh*-ing from passing cars.

After some time, a dark sedan pulled up curbside. The driver exited the vehicle, stepped around the pair, and discarded a brown paper bag on the doorstep behind them. He then trudged back down, slipped behind the wheel, and screeched away as incidentally as he came. Before he did Alex scanned the bright red marquee rumbling on the hood- a marquee that read:

Panda Express.

She looked over her shoulder at the bag, then to the Man who could only be thinking the same thing. Alex slowly rose, mounted the few steps between them and the porch, and folded the paper bag open. Three fortune cookies greeted her as the humble plastic-wrapped messengers they needed. She reached for the left one but ultimately decided on the one in the center, then re-folded the bag like it’d been. She took her seat beside Alex, and for a time the pair stared quietly into the street. They heard the door to the complex swing open, and listened as the big disappeared behind the loud wooden *thud*. It was then Alex dropped the cookie into the Man’s palm. He opened the mouth of the packaging and separated the brittle cookie. With the aid of a translating app, the pair read the message:

You’ll only reach crossroads if you aren’t sure where you’re going.

Lucky numbers: 4, 9, 7-

“You’ll only reach cross roads…” the Man eventually shrugged, disrupting Alex’s re-reading. “That mean something to you?”

The phone buzzed on the concrete step beside the Man’s shoe, like it did everywhere. Alex looked across the street, searching the jack-o’-lantern apartment buildings glowing inside the purple night. Suddenly she reached over and swiped the screen to accept the call.

The pair looked at each other-

00:00, 00:01, 00:02

-as the necessary moment passed.

“Thanks,” the Man eventually said. Alex reached inside his jacket and wrapped her arms around his bony frame. In a moment his arms were wrapped around hers, his thumb softly stroking her shoulder. She drew back, kissed his cheek, and stood up to leave the stoop.

“I feel bad,” the Man confessed, stopping her in her tracks. The phone dangled in his hand. “We did all this, and you never even told me if you’re all right.”

She smiled. “Not everything’s a transaction.”

He exhaled. “Well tell it to the next person.”

I will, she nodded. They each centered in the other’s gaze a few moments longer before the Man raised the cellphone to his ear.

“Hello?” was all she heard before she slipped from earshot down the lonely sidewalk.

She walked a block before doing anything. Her feet moved without her will, as all around her the street lamps flickered and whispered in her ear like saccharine silver moons. Alex dipped into her pocket to summon the Man’s pack of Marlboro Reds, and with it the Golden Nugget matchbook. She bit the end of a fresh smoke, and tore a match from the small white book.

She scraped the tip against the striker, then watched an orange flame blossom in her hand.