Installment Sixteen

They say that everyone is connected by six degrees of separation. In the expatriate world, make that two.

I have also come to believe that the universe, expat or not, is guided by unseen forces. And how is one to disprove this? While I'm at it, does God even exist? And will Godot ever arrive?

Best graffiti I ever found scrawled on a bathroom stall: "Back in a minute, Godot."

That bastard husband of mine arrogantly dismissed an experience I had a few years ago when a childhood girlfriend from Argentina introduced me to a clairvoyant she firmly believed was the real deal.

"He just looked at your face, Joelly, and knew he was on the right track," TBM had scoffed when I told him all the amazing things this perfect stranger told me about myself.

So why now, out of the clear blue, and so soon after Brian informed me he was leaving for China, did I get an urgent phone call from my girlfriend in Buenos Aires?

"I’m supposed to give you a message," Anna Katarina told me breathlessly on the phone. She had run home from Fernando’s apartment where he did his 'readings' to call me. This wasn't a conversation for a cell phone in BA traffic.

"What kind of message?"

"Fernando says to tell you he had a dream about you last night."

I was surprised he even remembered me.

"He dreamed about you and Brian. Remember how you never told him the names of your children?"

She was right. My entire family was psychic-phobic. Disbelievers all of them, they wanted to hedge their bets and preferred to not know about their futures. I had been duly instructed not to mention their names or show their pictures.

"Did he actually use Brian’s name?"

"Yes, that's why I am calling, Joelly. He did! And, he said you are in terrible pain over a decision he has recently made about his life."

Freaked out? Hell yes. How could the psychic possibly know? The man didn't even speak English to me! All of the communications from the 'other side', in a different hemisphere no less, had been in Spanish, translated for me by Anna Katarina.

"Has Brian decided to do something that has upset you Joelly? You don't sound like yourself."

My throat began to close. I could barely breathe. It wasn't just the fact that the universe seemed to be closing in around me. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn't even Brian's pending move to Beijing that upset me.

It was the stark realization that the interesting part of my life, the one where I could visit a girlfriend in South America and be taken to a famous psychic with an exotic name like Fernando, was well and truly over.

"Oh, I'm fine, my friend just fine," I said, as a life time of training kicked in to say nothing about how I really felt, even with good friends.

But the stark truth about the rest of my life had reached out and slapped my senses and I certainly didn't need a psychic to tell me about my future: I am now well and truly stuck.