Bella the Fortune Teller
By Patricia Abbott
Page 1 of 2
Although he sometimes took off an extra day at Thanksgiving, Kyle Miller had not had a real vacation in his three years with the I.R.S. He had saved quite a bit of money through this and similar economies and was finally persuaded by his parents, with whom he still lived, that it was time to take a holiday.
"Some place warm and sunny,” suggested his sister, Dianne, pointing a ladle in his direction. Since it was his mother’s bridge night, he was sitting at Dianne’s kitchen table eating vegetable barley soup.
"But where you don't have to take Imodium for weeks after," chimed in Kara, his other sister, recently returned from Mexico. She leaned against the counter, a Diet Coke in her hand.
His brother-in-law, Martin, an historian looked up from his book. Silence fell as his wife and her siblings waited for his pronouncement.
“Yes, it’s time you had a vacation,” Martin said solemnly in his most pedagogical voice. “Too much work’s a bad thing.” He resumed his reading, and the Miller siblings nodded their agreement.
With Martin’s blessing and his sisters’ admonitions in mind, Kyle set off at lunch the next day for the travel agent down the street from his office. He knew it was possible to plan the trip online, but advice was badly needed. It was a small business, shoe-horned like an afterthought between an elderly jeweler and a bagel shop. He entered the yeasty cubicle to find two women sitting elbow to elbow at the narrow counter. One was an older African-American woman whose workspace was piled high with what he took to be the paraphernalia of the trade. A large monitor nearly obscured her. She was speaking on the phone somewhat frantically while several expectant clients hovered nearby. From the looks of things, she was the more popular agent.
In contrast, the younger woman sat quietly with nary a book, map or a computer screen in sight. Her hands rested serenely on an empty desk, her peaceful demeanor attracting Kyle's attention at once. She looked up and beamed, an endearing smile, possessing the contagious qualities of a yawn. It immediately drew a grin from him. He sat down, grateful to have escaped the hustle and bustle of her co-worker's station. They exchanged names. She was Bella Silver, and fittingly, her voice had a bell-like timbre. Kyle thought he could listen to her forever.
He proceeded to tell her in quick nervous sentences how he’d worked hard for three years and needed a vacation. He told her much more than was strictly necessary but couldn't help himself. "I've been thinking of Bermuda.”
"Bermuda?" Bella repeated, frowning slightly. "It's awfully crowded in Bermuda this time of year, Mr. Miller and..."
"Kyle," he interrupted.
"The prices will be high, Kyle, and the good hotels are already booked."
Even before she voiced her concerns, Kyle regretted his role as the source of her frown. "What would you suggest then? Any place hot and sunny would be fine."
Her frown took on added definition as she stared out the window. "Kyle, I'm going to tell you something. You look like a man of some sophistication. You seem—you seem to me, at least—to be someone who will be bored by seven days on a beach and eight nights at a bar. There will be nothing more than roasting and toasting on such a vacation."
"I understood there was more than that to Bermuda," he objected mildly. "My sister said—"
"Not really," Bella said flatly. "All beach vacations are the same, Kyle. Oh sure, once upon a time you could get a taste of indigenous island life, but now that possibility has been subverted by the demands of tourism. Americans install the culture we wish to find, and it's always a harsh fit, Kyle." Although the words were severe, her dulcet tones imparted comfort.
"We are endlessly sculpting, whittling and sanding until things suit our needs,” she continued, “all the while consigning the native peoples to bed-making, bartending, shop minding and the production of crafts cheap enough to appeal to us."
Kyle swallowed hard. He was deeply ashamed of his unwitting participation in this abuse even if he had never once vacationed farther from home than the Jersey shore.
"What would you suggest?" he asked. "Where should I go?” Surely, there was some destination that wouldn't compromise his, or actually her, ethics.
"Ireland," she said with certainty. "You can't go wrong in Ireland, Kyle."
"Could I really afford that?” he asked worriedly. This vacation hadn't been designed to plunge him into debt, after all. "And wouldn't I have to drive on the wrong side of the road in Ireland? I don't like that idea much, Bella. And I've heard nearly all the cars are stick shift."
"It won't be a problem. You can take the train everywhere or even a bus. That's really a much better idea for jetlagged tourists anyway. Ireland has an excellent public transportation system."
"I don't know about buses. I get motion sickness. Personally, I'd rather drive."
This last bit he said hopefully. He could already see himself tooling along in a little foreign job—automatic, of course.
"You can take trains," Bella said. "I'll get you a rail pass."
* * *
Kyle spent ten days in Ireland. The train was a bit restrictive when it came to seeing the much-praised countryside, but he certainly didn't require a car in Dublin. Dutifully, he took in the Book of Kells, the National Gallery, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trinity College and Dublin Castle. He spent one afternoon at the Guinness Factory and an evening at the Abbey Theater. He took a train trip to Galway, peering out a grimy window through the misty rain for nearly eight hours. Mostly he hung about in Dublin's heavily populated pubs or sat on ancient iron benches in dripping, but verdant, gardens.
If there were no nubile girls frolicking along the River Liffey, so what. His head was filled with Bella Silver anyway. He could already picture Bella taking her place at his family's dining room table. Even Martin, the historian, would envy him his find. If this was a rather tame and uxorious fantasy, no one need know, and if he was lonely on his holiday, (for if truth be told, he never spoke except to service staff), he didn't notice, so busy was he taking notes on his activities. Hopefully, Bella would be interested in a full account of his trip, once it was finally over.
He arrived home Saturday to wait impatiently for Monday's return to work. His parents and sisters, eager to hear about his Celtic adventures, were hurt by his unusual reticence. Privately, they agreed (on Martin’s suggestion) that an Irish lass had jilted him.
On Monday, his coworkers teased him mercilessly about his pale face and arms, but he didn't mind a bit, and when noon came, he tore down the street to see Ms. Silver. He rushed in the door of the little shop to find the harried older woman accompanied by a college-aged student.
"Where's Ms. Silver?" he asked unceremoniously once the boy was free. Kyle had unintentionally employed his IRS voice, and the student paled at its stern tone.
"On vacation," the boy told him. "She'll be back next week."
The disappointment was crushing. "Where did she go?"
"I don't know if I should say. Are you a relative?"
"Yes," Kyle told him desperately. "I'm her brother."
Smirking, the boy had begun to respond to this obvious lie when his older colleague shouted out, "Oh for God's sake, Clinton, tell him she's in Bermuda."
Kyle turned to face her. "Bermuda? Impossible."
"Why impossible?" she asked him, looking up from the screen. "She goes there every year."
"Are we talking about Bella Silver?"
"It would be quite a feat to have two Bellas in an office employing three people,” the woman said, smiling benignly. "But yes, Bella Silver. Is there something I can help you with?"
"No, I just wanted to tell her about my trip." Kyle flushed a little, knowing he sounded like a schoolboy in the throes of an enormous pimply crush.
"Wait a minute," the woman said, jumping up from her station. "I think she may have left something for you." She rifled through a file cabinet behind the desk and came away with a business envelope. "Kyle Miller, right?"
"Right," he said, somewhat surprised. He hadn't mentioned his name.
"Then you're not actually her brother?" she said with a laugh. When he shook his head, she handed him the envelope, waiting while he opened it. He got no farther than the salutation when he noticed Clinton peering over his shoulder.
"I guess I'll be going along now," he said, refolding the letter and trying to appear nonchalant as he inched toward the door. "Thanks for the help."
Once outside, he pushed open the door to the adjoining bagel shop, and after ordering an egg bagel and hot tea, (hot tea!) sat down and read his letter.
"Dear Kyle," the letter said. "I hope you had a wonderful time in Ireland. Sorry about the rain but it's part of the experience. I imagine you're disappointed to find I'm in Bermuda after what I said about island vacations. When I get back I hope you'll give me a chance to explain." Best wishes, Bella Silver, Your Travel Agent.
The letter, composed on pale yellow stationery, was handwritten, a curiosity in the computer age. It was extremely difficult to read. Spidery, his mother would call the script. The first time through, he thought she had written 'Sorry about the ram but its part of the experiment.' Since he had seen a great many rams in Ireland, he puzzled over what that experiment might be before he sorted it out. There was an unusual scent emanating from the thin paper, too. Only months later did Dianne identify what he came to think of as Bella's scent, as Cyprus.
The contents of the letter were both less and more than he’d expected. Although she referred to a future meeting between them, the tone of the letter was business-like, impersonal. But he was not without hope.
Bella returned as promised the next week. On Monday, Kyle made two trips down the street and found her overwhelmed with customers. The third try, on Tuesday, he managed to get her attention and asked if she were free for lunch.
"I'd love it," she said, smiling up at him. His heart soared.
* * *
"I'm an intuitive," she told him later at lunch. "Do you know what that means?"
Wisp thin, she sat across the table from him. No woman he’d ever dated lunched on more than salad, but Bella's plate was piled high with an odd assortment of smoked fish, fruit, bread and cheeses. She had chosen a restaurant that seemed to specialize in this fare. Two desserts, one a Charlotte Russe, waited at her elbow.
When he could take his eyes away from her plate, he responded. "And I'm Jewish. But then I guess you know that already." Not funny, he told himself sheepishly.
She smiled patiently. "Sometimes I get certain feelings about people, an 'intuition' that something's going to occur. That's what happened with you, Kyle. I got a feeling something bad might take place on a hot beach. So I sent you off to a cold, rainy city."
"Did you have a vision of a life guard bending over me? Did you see a jellyfish stinging my foot? What do you mean an 'intuition?’"
Bella looked off into the distance for a minute and Kyle wondered if she were experiencing just such an insight right then.
"It's not a picture exactly. It's more like a trance—or a fugue state that lifts after a few seconds—and I just know what's going to happen to someone. Actually trance is the wrong word. It implies a loss of consciousness, but it's a heightened concentration, Kyle, not a diminished one. Then the information's just there. It's usually about someone I'm with at that moment, but nearly as often, it's a person I'm thinking about. And occasionally, as with your case, Kyle, you were someone I hadn't even met." She patted his hand. "But I always do meet them within a day or two."
Kyle was both listening and not listening to what Bella said. He found it hard to concentrate on more than her sweet, full mouth, her shining eyes. What she was saying was the ramblings of a girl with too much imagination. But what a lovely girl she was.
Bella the Fortune Teller
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