messages from beyond

This morning while I was walking down Boylston heading into work, a woman stopped me on the sidewalk and started telling me that she "doesn't usually do this" but my aura drew her to me. It's possible she was a homeless person--she was somewhat raggedy--but more likely it was just her boho aesthetic. I've always liked the idea of gypsies, that is, people who are more clued in to the nature of existence, or the psychic realm, or something spiritual, anyway, than other people, so I was intrigued. She said she had "messages" for me and wanted to do a reading. She went on to say that I'm an old soul (funny, that's what the tarot-card reader in Salem said, too) and that I could get love easily but I couldn't keep it (I had to correct her about that). Then something about how she wished she could do readings for many people she sees but she's not "allowed"...but today was her 46th birthday and because it was a special occasion she could. I think she actually said that she hadn't done a reading since her 36th birthday. She showed me two rocks, one white and one black, that she said were given to her by her grandmother, which I believe were somehow meant to be representative of male and female natures. Then there was something about angels - it sounded like they were the ones who had the messages (or one angel did, at least). Things got a bit muddled because half of my brain was listening to her go on--the right side, I guess--while the left side was wondering what the hell I was doing talking to this woman on the street for so long, especially when alarm bells were going off all over at the fact that she had so far thrown just about every psychic cliche into our brief conversation, plus had been wrong at least once.

The two halves of my brain got it together enough then to ask what she charged, which she hadn't mentioned yet--and with that, the saleswoman switch was flipped, as she started listing the prices for the various types of readings, including a discount if I agreed to do it right then (more alarms). It's a shame, really--if she had offered to do it for free, I would have been open to it. Call it vanity mixed with naivete, but I really, really wanted it to be true that some random stranger who was more than what she seemed had singled me out to deliver messages from beyond, my own "Joan of Arcadia"-style visitation. But if she had done that, then I guess she would have been a real, honest-to-goodness gypsy, which, it seems, are in short supply.