The Palm Reader's Bull Market

The carnival lights flickered against the desert night as Julian wiped sweat from his palm—his tell, the one that had cost him everything three years ago in the pits of Chicago. The **bull** market had turned, and so had he.

"You're running from something," the woman across from him said, not asking. Her eyes, the color of storm clouds over Lake Michigan, pinned him to the folding chair. Julian's makeshift table wobbled between them, stabilised by a folded copy of *The Wall Street Journal* beneath one leg.

"Everyone who visits a palm reader at a traveling carnival is running from something," he deflected, though his **water** glass trembled in his hand. "That's why you're here. That's why they're all here."

Her dog—a weathered terrier mix with one ear that refused to stand—lay at her feet, watching Julian with unnerving intelligence. Animals had always sensed what Julian tried to hide: the hollowed-out man beneath the silk shirts and what remained of his confidence.

"I meant you," she said, and placed her hand on the velvet cloth. "Read mine. Then I'll read yours."

Julian traced the lines on her **palm** with practiced fingers, though the words that formed were rote. Lifeline. Heartline. Fate line. All maps to destinations nobody ever reached. What he didn't say: he'd stopped believing in the architecture of fortune the day he lost his daughter's college fund, his marriage, and his dignity in that spectacular final trade.

"Your turn," she said, and her fingers closed around his wrist with surprising strength. She didn't look at the lines. She looked at him.

"You think you're a has-been," she said quietly. "But you're in training. For what, I don't know. But whatever you're running toward is closer than whatever you're running from."

The dog whined, as if in agreement, and Julian felt something crack open in his chest—not a wound, but a window.

The carnival lights continued their silent vigil as somewhere beyond the tent walls, desert wind whispered across sand. Julian closed his hand around hers and for the first time in three years, didn't check to see if he was sweating.