The Palm Reader's Dead Dog

The lightning strike had been the most exciting thing to happen at McCormick & Associates in three years. Not that Marcus actually saw it—he'd been in his office, reviewing quarterly projections that no one would read, when the power went out. But everyone claimed to have seen the flash, a brilliant white fracture across the sky like God finally losing patience with corporate America.

Now Marcus sat on a bench in the park, his fedora pulled low. He'd bought the hat on impulse after the promotion he didn't get, after Eleanor told him she was leaving, after he realized at forty-three that he'd become the kind of man who wore fedoras. His palm sweated against the iPhone screen, five unread messages from his boss glowing like embers in the afternoon light.

"You have a short lifeline," the woman had told him at that carnival in Jersey, reading his palm with fingers stained silver from jewelry-making. She'd smelled like patchouli and cigarettes. Marcus had laughed, bought her a corn dog, spent the night in her trailer. That was six years ago. He still wondered if she'd meant it.

His phone buzzed. ELEANOR: "Are we doing this or not?"

The dog lying beside him on the bench—an ancient golden retriever with milky eyes—lifted its head and whined. Marcus had never owned a dog. His mother had been allergic, his wives indifferent. Now, watching this stranger's dog breathe in shallow, deliberate rhythms, he understood the appeal. The dog didn't care about projections or promotions or fedoras. The dog simply was, here on this bench, existing without apology.

The iPhone screen darkened. In its reflection, Marcus saw himself: tired eyes, ridiculous hat, the lightning-forked scar on his chin from that bike accident in college. He'd told everyone it was from a bar fight. Another lie.

"You have a short lifeline," he whispered to himself, and for the first time, he wondered what that actually meant. Not death—but the brevity of becoming. The terrifying possibility that this, right now, hat and dog and divorce and all, might be as real as he ever got.

The dog sighed, rested its muzzle on his knee. Marcus's palm stopped sweating. He deleted the messages from his boss, called Eleanor, and said the thing he'd been meaning to say since before the lightning struck, since before he bought the hat, since he stopped recognizing the man in mirrors.