Come to think of it, I should have asked her a question or two

Last night I met a French psychic. Not to be confused with the Northern California garden variety, who tend toward natural fabrics, billowing jumpers, sage scented shampoo, this one had deal with the devil shiny hair, weighed about as much as my bichon, wore Jimmy Choos, and if she has a crystal ball, I'm betting it's a Swarovski. Myself, I was wearing brown with black (again) and the ergonomic utility of my boots was unambiguously reflected in their aesthetic. I was lugging a brown paper REI bag that contained two packages of tube socks and one recent guide to the Pacific Crest Trail, and this sort of get-up is a good example of what usually happens when I meet any of my husband’s cosmopolitan friends, but so be it. Nobody has died yet. In any case, I was overwhelmingly relieved to hear that my new friend shared none of the similar pretensions I’ve grown used to, having been born in Northern California in the mid 1970s and having lived in a county that hasn’t easily parted ways with that particular era. We discussed a nearby mountain, rumored to be a place of high spiritual energy. But it’s cold this time of year- did she find hiking a problem? Doesn’t hike. Do they have to reserve the campground in advance? Doesn’t camp. I couldn’t tell you why, but I like these things in a psychic. Which isn’t to say that I have an opinion on the matter of mind reading or prediction, and then something interesting happened. The other three people at the table were discussing Sarkozy the newlywed, and his rumored affair with a cabinet member, a forty-four year old woman and the mother of a small infant, paternity undisclosed. My French is not passable for navigating the cheese isle in the supermarket, and as far as champagne goes, I buy what is cheap and cold, but I managed to follow the conversation, albeit four steps behind (which I recommend doing some time because it makes for an interesting narrative), when my new friend turned to me and said something to the effect of, “...she (mistress to the French president) is forty-four. You are a woman, you know. A woman over forty does get pregnant accidentally,” except she said it with a voice that would liqufy concrete.

And shortly thereafter we were all distracted by my ability to drop daal, roti, rice, from three dishes, nearly simultaneously. I blame telekinesis.