Palm Reader's Last Client

The spinach leaf clung stubbornly to Julian's incisor as he leaned across the mahogany desk, explaining why my position was being eliminated. I watched his mouth move, forming words like 'synergy' and 'right-sizing,' mesmerized by that green fragment—a tiny emerald of indignity in a mouth full of expensive dental work. Thirty-five years old, and I was being 'transitioned out' by a man who couldn't navigate a salad bar.

Later that night, palm sweating around my third gin and tonic, I found myself at a beachside bar where a woman named Maria claimed she could read fortunes. She'd come here from Venezuela, she said, escaping a husband who'd made her feel like furniture in his own house. Her palms were calloused from washing other people's dishes, but her fingers were gentle when she took my hand.

'You're swimming,' she said, tracing the lines on my palm. 'Not toward anything. Just swimming in place.' She laughed softly. 'Like me. We think we're moving forward, but really we're just waiting for the tide to change.'

Something about her honesty—about the way she looked at me like we were co-conspirators in some grand joke—made me tell her everything. About the job, about Tom's affair with his junior analyst that everyone pretended not to notice, about the mortgage on a condo I didn't even like anymore.

She listened, then pressed her palm against mine. 'My mother used to say: when you're drowning, stop swimming. Let the water carry you.' She signaled the bartender for another round. 'Or find someone who'll hold you up.'

We spent three days together before I had to fly back. No dramatic declarations, just two people temporarily buoyed by each other's presence. I'm still unemployed. Tom's still sleeping with his analyst. But sometimes, late at night, I trace the lines on my own palm and wonder about the mathematics of grace—how we find exactly what we need when we're not even looking for it, how the universe keeps its promises in ways we never expect. Maria's leaving for Miami next month. I've already booked the ticket.