Tia Erqueminia:

Diviner of Destinies

Susan Smith Nash

SmithNash@aol.com

Tia Erqueminia, "Diviner of Destinies," opened and closed her eyes in what I thought was a gesture entirely too theatrical for her own good. I looked at her with not much more than vague indifference. I had decided to kill time in her storefront office next to La Confiteria El Rosal, or, in English, the Rose Tree Pastries, one of my favorite places to drink a cappuccino and watch the world go by. Three months ago back in the U.S. I had finished a long study of the use of propaganda in World War II and the early Cold War, and I had developed a severe case of paranoia. My family suggested a long vacation, so I decided to move to Paraguay for a few months. The "few months" were up, but I had fallen in love and I wasn't in any great hurry to go back. The only problems were these long, dull stretches of time.

La Confiteria El Rosal was closed for remodeling (they said, although I didn't see any activity inside) and spending some time with Auntie Erqueminia sounded better than frying my nerves in rush-hour traffic. Plus, her flyer's promise to "tell me the story of my future," had caught my interest. Now, the "adviser over spiritual subjects" was asking me a few questions as I looked at the cards I had selected:

"Have you ever travelled to Africa?"

"Are your parents divorced?"

"Were you ever a model?"

The fact that I answered all the questions with an unbelieving "no" didn't seem to discourage her a bit. She kept on asking me, in hypnotic, mystical intonations:

"Did you recently sell a white Mercedes?"

"Is there a pregnant woman in your office?"

"Do you like things made of glass?"

In a low voice, I answered her the same thing: "No, no, and no." I was beginning to think my investment of 25 dollars for an hour of "advice" was going down the drain. To tell the truth, I was already getting bored.

My mind wandered. I imagined myself talking to Fidel Castro en his secret ranch in the Chaco over a few of his stranger little tendencies; for example, his habit of organizing groups of adolescent ballerinas who performed the "can-can." They all wore white stockings and played with Honduran cigars between their painted and still-virginal lips.

"Poor ballerinas!" I exclaimed to Fidel Castro. "They have to such Honduran cigars and dance at the same time?"

"Of course not!" responded Fidel in a brusque voice. "I'm sick of these Yankee idiocies! How many times will have to endure these atrocities! They are Cuban cigars. I would never buy imperialist products!"

"Please forgive me," I said to Mr. Castro.

I was still lost in my fascinating daydream and it was only with a mild indifference that I listened to the sound of Tia Erqueminia's voice and her fingers shuffling the cards. Her words didn't register in my mind, until suddenly a words caught my attention.

"You're thinking of getting married, eh? Did you know there's another woman?" she asked me.

"What?" My spiritual "counsellor" succeeded in getting me to pay attention. I looked at Tia Erqueminia, really for the first time, with a mixture of caution and curiosity. There wasn't anything remarkable in her appearance; she was a typical South American with blonde hair, glasses, medium height, and a face that exhibited what one might have said was sincerity, if she hadn't selected the scoffed-at profession of psychic, provider of New Age services.

"Yes." To me, her voice sounded satisfied to have hooked me. Her game bothered me a little, but she had won. I wanted details.

"It makes me sad to tell you this, but it's better that you know now rather than later, right?"

"No. I would prefer not to know."

"The other is a brunette, with long hair, medium height, and is a little chubby."

"Chubby?"

"Fat. And when you're not in Asunci¢n, your boyfriend usually visits her. They've had this relationship for years -- she's divorced and is crazy about him."

"What? You're kidding! Please -- no mÝs!" I felt a little desperate. Her "revelations" were beginning to give me a stomachache. I had never been a jealous woman, but one could always acquire unhealthy habits.

To tell the truth, it depressed me a little to think that the person who had promised me his eternal devotion was betraying me this way. When I reflected upon our history, yes, I could detect a few small indications that there might be problems in paradise. It was true -- he was something of a control freak, and he expressed dismay that I refused to wear long fingernails or keep my opinions to myself.

Did being a scholar of propaganda make me its biggest victim? My problem was that any patently manipulative and coercive discourse fascinated me. I had to see it through, regardless of the consequences.

Tia Erqueminia was speaking.

"I see things -- maaaaaaany things," she said.

"Like what," I said unenthusiastically. What bad luck I always have with my life, I thought. Evidently, it gave me great pleasure to persistently choose the bad. It was disheartening to see myself be such a masochist. I'm a hopeless case, I concluded.

"What can you tell me about my future?" I asked the "advisor."

"Your fiance loves you very much, from the time he first set eyes on you, he totally lost his head," she said.

"Really?" Her words elevated my mood a little. It was only temporary. But, if he wants me so much, why does he keep going out with another woman? I suddenly felt very surly, and in a very bad mood. It was just as well that I had 20 minutes left. Maybe Tia Erqueminia could help me. I gave her a rather aggressive look. She glanced back at me, startled.

"Your fiance is going to give you a beautiful engagement ring. An enormous diamond," she said.

"Seriously? That sounds good."

"Yes. But it is going to be false."

"How horrible!"

"Your fiance is going to ask your father to lend him $100,000."

"What? Who? A loan from whom? My father? But my father's dead.

"Minor detail. Your fiance, when you're married, won't let you leave the house."

"Please! That's too much. I can't believe it."

"The cards never lie. I know it can be hard to accept." Her voice turned insecure, as if she wanted to ask forgiveness, but she realized she had already let the gorilla out of its cage. I felt like smashing her head in with my fists, and jumping up on her desk like the Mountain Gorilla I had seen at the Oklahoma City zoo a few years ago.

"But I just can't --"

"You have to. It's what is in the future and it's the truth you've kept under a veil," she said.

"Oh."

A series of revenge fantasies entered my mind. I was in my kitchen, preparing cream of ham soup, when I grabbed the hambone destined for the soup and began to smack everyone in the room. First, I clubbed the psychic with the bone, and next the swine I had had the bad luck to fall in love with. Smack! What satisfaction! With a light shudder of disappointment, I realized that although I would have liked very much to carry out my little fantasy, it wouldn't ever be possible. Save it for a propaganda film, I thought.

"Do you have any questions?" Tia Erqueminia asked me.

"No. I'm afraid to ask questions," I responded.

"Okay. That will be 25 dollars."

"Do you accept credit cards?"

"No. I only accept cash. Either pay me or I curse you."

Curse me? Let me curse you! Oh well. You've already cursed me with your vile predictions, I thought, but I didn't say it. I only hoped the psychic wasn't psychic enough to hear my thoughts. Evil bitch. Fake diamonds? Kiss my ass.

"Well, thank you very much. Have a nice day." I gave her her 25 bucks and took off. I almost tripped over a cluster of quartz crystals she had put in the dirt near the entrance. She put it there to leave her mark -- bruises -- on the pathetically naive suckers who fell into her scamming hands. I looked at my own hands. They were trembling, and covered with sweat.

***********************

Once again, the sickening subject of "love" had reared its squalid head. Tia Erqueminia only confirmed what I already knew. It was best expressed by the old Gang of Four album I used to listen to daily: "Love is like anthrax and that's one thing I don't wanna catch. I'm like a beetle on its back. Love is like anthrax ..."

Actually, for me, love was less about disease and/or plague and more about stupid choices. But, denial is a hard thing to shake. So is the tendency to be charmed by men one could only call decent if one were in an extremely generous mood. I generally fell for all of them. The weirder the better. There was the "Executive Director of the International Pigeon and Dove Institute," for example. "We're going to build a huge theme park and museum, and call it "World of Wings," he informed me within two seconds of meeting of me.

"How are you going to get the pigeons there?" I asked. "Put out a bunch of park benches?"

"No," he replied coldly. "We are going to race pigeons."

"Oh," I said. "Raise pigeons?"

All I could think of were a million park benches covered with dung, and mobbed dumpsters, like the one behind Dunkin' Donuts next to the McDonald's where I went every morning to drink very hot coffee, munch on a breakfast burrito and read the morning paper. Over the years, the Dunkin Donuts dumpster become a well-established nesting area. I suppose that would be called a "loft."

"Yes. That's why we are locating ourselves next to Remington Park," he replied. He made little birdlike jerks with his head.

"Where they have horse-racing?" I asked incredulously.

"Absolutely. We plan to have pari-mutuel betting with the pigeons, too."

I was left speechless. Here was an entire facet of life that I had previously not had any idea existed. How fascinating. You could bet on pigeons? So how did that work, anyway? You take them out into the country, far from their homes, and then dump them off, so they have to do a "Lassie Come Home" trip, all the while feeling lost, panicky, and far from home? That sounded cruel to me. If homing pigeons crave home so much they'll kill themselves to get there, isn't it wrong to take them away from their homes?

"Are you going to have cock-fighting and pit bulls, too?" I asked.

"No. We're going to have a museum," he said. "It will be a pigeon and dove center. Doves symbolize so many things."

"Around here they mainly symbolize dove season, which starts next week, I think. If you've got any doves, you might want to put them up for a while. They hunt quail and dove around here."

He paused, made a few twittery sounds and jerked heis head around. He looked at me closely.

"You know, I think I'm falling in love with you," he said.

How strange. But it wasn't as strange as what happened later. I came home one day to find two crates of pigeons awaiting me on my front porch, with a note which read: "If you want to see me again, let the blue ones fly, but if you never want to see me again, let the red ones go."

They all looked the same to me. They looked like standard pigeons -- gray feathers with white little bellies. So, I let them all go. When he called me with a few questions about the arrival of all his pigeons at the same time, I told him, "My answer is this: I WON'T PLAY YOUR GAMES."

That didn't do much good. He kept hounding me for about two more years. I suppose he had a hard time with rejection, and an easy time with stalking. Sometimes I think I see him parked on the corner near my house in order to watch my comings and goings.

"PigeonMan" was quite annoying, but the pigeons themselves were worse. They left a trail of droppings and feathers on the porch that were almost impossible to clean up. I could sympathize with city dwellers who considered them "flying rats."

At least PigeonMan didn't have a criminal record, as far as I knew. I couldn't say as much for some of my other "amatory interests." For example, there was Buck, the car thief, who proudly regaled me with the story of his exploits in the field of wealth redistribution.

"You were stealing cars?" I asked, horrified.

"Yes. In Dallas. You didn't know? I was famous for it." He was actually proud of it.

"Hmm. You weren't all that famous," I responded. I paused before continuing. "And, why was it such a big deal to steal cars in Dallas?"

"I stole them to give them to the poor. I was the "Cowboy Robin Hood," he said.

"How ridiculous!" I looked at him askance wondering what he had that caused me to be interested in him. What could it be? Was I just hopelessly attracted to felons and weirdos? The answer seemed to be a very obvious YES. He had what it took to catch my eye: a picaresque life, absurd, illogical -- that was what drew me in. It wasn't his success that fascinated me, it was his utter failure due to his grandiosity. His life was madness, utter madness. So, I plunged headlong into some sort of potentially unhealthy intellectual romance. But, the cute little picaresque adventure didn't last long. The police arrested him and when I refused to lend him $5,000 to post bail, he got mad. After that, he wouldn't even let me see him in jail. How disappointing.

Perhaps one day he might have understood why I looked at him in the same manner I once counted the amoeba in a drop of pond water. He wasn't something from a 10th-grade biology class, though. He was an example of our millenarian anxieties, either a herald of an absurd apocalypse or a giant Kafkaesque cockroach. He was much more interesting than the probable "chop shop" hoods.

And then I moved to Paraguay. I went there to study the rhetorical strategies used in promoting democracy after a 35-year-old dictatorship. The task was overwhelming. How do you measure the impact of a free press and freedom of expression when for 35 years, there were paid informants listening in at all public gatherings, and on all telephone conversations?

The same thing happened in Uruguay, and there various individuals had estimated it took approximately 5 months for writers to a chronic and possibly incurable case of self-censorship.

In my case, I had always secretly hoped that studying propaganda would lead to the ability to generate diabolically effective propoganda for my own sordid uses.

So far, no luck. Perhaps it was because I hadn't quite decided on what my "sordid uses" might be. Perhaps I would find some in Paraguay.

***********

It was late November. The season changed from hot and muggy to hotter and muggier, and people started to talk about how even the streets were melting in Asuncion. I found that hard to believe, since they were mainly cobblestone, but it was a nice idea.

I kept thinking about Tia Erqueminia, and I couldn't get her out of my mind. I had a feeling that she was right, but when I confronted my fiance, he denied it all. "Of course there's no one else! You're the only woman I want!"

But it wasn't enough.

"My problem is that I'm not shallow nd empty enough," I said.

I was explaining my new theory about my disasters with men to a new friend who had just invited me to go with him to Iguazu, and to see the waterfalls and dams of Itaipu.

We were drinking coffee and eating pastry at "El Molino," the mill.

"I thought you were just a friend," I said. "Why are you inviting me to go to Ciudad del Este with you? What do you plan to do with your wife? Won't she complain? Or do you have a big trunk?"

"Look, don't be a fool. My wife and I are separated. It's been that way for years. She married me only because she had heard rumors that fertility doctors always called me when the sperm banks were running low, or when there were a number of withdrawals."

"All premature, I suppose," I said slyly.

He glowered at me.

"You're not shallow -- you're a vast wasteland of femininity. Didn't your mother teach you anything?" he asked.

"Absolutely not. I am a product of my era and of my friends. Well, my esteemed companion, many thanks for the coffee and the conversation. I've got to go."

I left El Molino feeling a little gruff and very frustrated. Where on earth could anyone find any respect these days? Respect. The person who wants respect has to enforce it, is what my mother always told me. But, how? That's the first question. And what do men respect anyway? Pretty legs, a nice ass, a domesticated demeanor. If that were the case, what kind of animal was I?

"Move it, pig!"

I didn't realize I was standing dead in my tracks on the corner without paying attentiont to the traffic noise and the people who surrounded me.

"Pig? Thanks! I was wondering what I was---" I shouted back. The guy who yelled at me stared at me as if I were from another planet.

"Stupid clown!" he said.

Maybe I should lose weight and not use so much makeup, I reflected. Or, maybe not. It not that I'm fat or skinny or that I'm a tacky dresser. It's that I'm a woman and for women, it's easy to make ourselves victims, if we travel alone without protection. And, it's not even necessary to go around with messy hair, badly-painted nails, and dishevelled clothes. It's not necessary to lower oneself to the level of actually getting dirty -- what's important is leaving the impression of being untouchable -- a pariah. What a shame that I had at least some shred of human dignity left. Of course that shred wasn't enough to defend me, but it was all too much for me to allow myself to immerse myself in an anthropological investigation into women, madness, and power.

It already seems to me that someone plunged me into some sort of weird field study without my permission, and now I have to take notes on the de-evolution of the homo-sapiens brain. It is not a pretty sight. And, the whole time, I'm realizing that instead of learning to adapt and survive, I spent years and years at the university learning to lose all my normal self-preserving instincts. How do you like that? Instead of using my education to break the stereotype of the defenseless woman, I'm an exaggeration of that -- maybe even a thousand times worse for my ability to delude myself that my education was worth something.

Propaganda. If only I could generate it and use it for myself.

*****************

I was looking in the refrigerator one cold December night. I was reading the work of Mussolini's speechwriters and I was feeling quite hungry and bleary-eyed. There was nothing left in the refrigerator but one can of Diet Pepsi and the hideous skeleton of my Thanksgiving turkey. Shreds of dessicated meat clung to the bones, and a layer of yellowish gelatin shimmered on the bottom of the pan. I wondered if my beagle would eat it, and if he did, if it would cause him to choke. At least it would stop his incessant baying when the neighborhood cats taunted him from the top of the wooden stockade fence. If it didn't choke him, it would give him diarrhea, I concluded, and I heaved the strangely smell-less into a Hefty trash bag with drawstring neck.

The phone rang. The turkey bones creaked as I startled. The shrivelled meat made a sound like dried leaves.

"Hey baby, why don't you come to my apartment so I can explore the outer reaches of the cosmos?"

"What? Do what? Who's speaking??"

"Don't you recognize my voice? It's your ex speaking."

"What ex? I don't have an ex -- I have a dull, boring single life and I have for years. Thanks to animals like you."

Unfortunately, my mysterious caller wasn't near enough for me to offer him a turkey (bone) sandwich. He was certainly not in any danger of choking on a bone.

"I miss you. A lot."

"Your voice sounds strange. Have you been drinking?" I asked.

"Oh, a little, I guess. Me and my buddy just got back from Valley of the Dolls."

"A topless dancing place?"

"There were a lot of really pretty women. They made me think of you. Why don't you come over? I love you a lot. Really."

"Oh, really. Suddenly you miss me after going to a trashy nude dancing place."

"It wasn't all that trashy."

"Don't call me! Do you understand? And I'm going to leave the phone off the hook."

What a life. What a lack of respect. At times, I think that for having been born a woman, in an era so confusing, it's my destiny to learn how to fake loving the role of the "liberated" woman while I look at the absolute lack of support and understanding of those around me. But, isn't it a little ridiculous to want more? If I don't understand myself, how can anyone else hope to understand me?

I began to lose myself in a daydream of how it would be if I were married.

"I'm telling you, honey, I'm sick of hearing you beg me to fix you something from the deer you slaughtered on your stupid hunting trip. You know very well that if it doesn't come packaged for the microwave, I won't be able to fix it."

In the vast landscape that my imagination produced, my kitchen was filled with books, no with recipes but books on philosophy and dictionaries. Occasionally, a page or two from those books would catch on fire for being to close to the stove. That always bugged me. I didn't want to lose my books to fire. I prefered to burn the meat.

And what about that subject -- burning the meat?

From the depths of my imagination, the voice of my supposed husband called me: "Don't tell me that you're microwaving the venison in a metal dish, dear! Please, tell me no! What has happened to you?"

"I like the little lightning bolts that come from the can," I replied. "Next, I'm throwing in the cat."

"What?" he said. Obviously the American urban myth about exploding cats and poodles in the microwave hadn't made its way into his skull. Neither had the phenomenon of the Miss Havisham's Kitchen -- something I dubbed after Charles Dicken's Great Expectations, Miss Havisham being the old crone who refused to change out of her wedding gown and clear out the wedding cake after her husband-to-be stood her up at their wedding. Fifty years later, she was still wearing the now-ragged wedding dress and rats were running in and out of the cobweb-infested cake.

In Paraguay, no one understood my aversion to the kitchen. They understood my jokes and ironic commentary even less.

"Don't feel you have to defrost your freezer on my account," I said to my fiance's mother, who was directing the empleada to clean out the freezer while we sipped coffee and munched on petit-fours. "I have some packages of green beans that have been in my freezer for seven years. The green beans now resemble creatures that have not been found on Planet Earth since the Devonian."

I could tell by her face that she thought I must be joking. I wasn't. But, I needed to punt -- and fast.

"Aahh, hah-hah -- just a joke! Just wanted you to know that you don't have to be perfect around me," I said.

"I already knew that," she said. "THAT was more than obvious."

She was laughing, and I knew she liked me, but I felt miserable and misunderstood. Our senses of irony made only the most tangential contact, and so the joy of communication was tenuous and ephemeral at best.

It was a hot, steamy Paraguayan afternoon. It had rained earlier, and the streets were wet. In the distance, I could still hear thunder rumbling and I wondered if we were in for more rain.

I was standing on the corner near the monument to the Heroes of the Chaco, the war that decimated the male population only 50 years after a different war, the War of the Triple Alliance, wiped out almost all the male population. Why commemorate slaughter? I thought cynically. Or, war itself, for that matter? It made it seem as though a state of war were preferable to peace. No one ever construct monuments to the peaceable ones, during the peaceable years.

Many war survivors have had a hard time adjusting to peace, not so much due to their wrecked homes, burned-out lives, but because the anarchy and chaos of wartime is supplanted by an unworkable rigidity, a social order that quickly sinks into social control. Dystopia is a type of utopia for the spirit that craves to be free, although the shadow of death, prisoner of war camps, bombings, and fear seem to be quite antithetical to freedom. According to the immortal Rousseau, we were all born free, but everywhere around us man is in chains. Here in Paraguay, I had the sense that for all their protestations to the contrary, the Paraguayan spirit craved war -- not for the carnage, not for the slaughter -- but for the chance to break free of the rigid social control that the Spanish encomienda system left as a crushing legacy. Che Guevara only articulated what was on everyone's mind, but unarticulated, unbroadcast.

Could I relate to the stereotypical guerrilla freedom fighter?

No. Most definitely not. I was more fascinated by the relicts of fascism that goosestepped about in the Paraguayan psyche.

********************

"Who's that?" I asked my fiance. We were watching television at his house and a vast throng waving red flags chanted and roared at the feet of what appeared to be a rather petite man standing on a raised platform. He was wearing a red gaucho-style scarf and appeared very military.

"That's the general who led the coup against General Stroessner. He's running for president," said my fiance.

"It's a scene straight out of a Nazi propaganda film," I said. "Look at the panning shots, the medium close-ups, the establishing shot -- what's his name, anyway"

"Nido de Ovejas. He studied in Germany for many years. He's very well-prepared to rule."

"Obviously," I said. I listened to Nido de Ovejas's words. The general was talking law and order.

"I promise to reinstate the death penalty!" he was saying. "I'll use it like they use it in the United States -- I'll fry the delinquents!"

He made my flesh crawl. Nido de Ovejas filled my mind with ghastly images of brains exploding and flames flashing out from the skull. I was fascinated.

"Use it like in the United States? That's a GOOD thing?" I asked, incredulously.

"Hey. Don't ask me. I think the guy could be dangerous," said my fiance.

"I'd love to meet the campaign manager -- find out how they're working the images and symbols," I said.

"That can be arranged. But are you sure?" he asked.

"Definitely."

The next day we drove out to Paraguari, about 100 miles east of Asuncion, to a country estate in an area of hot springs and rocky hills. General Nido de Ovejas's campaign manager was a dapper man who had a ranch with 20,000 head of cattle and a furniture factory. I wondered how he had time to run the campaign, and assemble 60,000 people.

"It's nice to meet a film expert from the United States," he said to me.

"I'm not really a film expert, although I've studied film. I'm a scholar of propaganda -- not advertising so much, although that interests me. I study the propaganda mainly used in war and ideological battles -- my specialty is the propaganda of World War II and the early Cold War."

"And you can tell me something about our campaign?" he asked me. We were sitting next to a rock cliff from which a natural waterfall cascaded down into a pool. A modest stone house was next to it, and the smell of carne asada wafted through the torpid afternoon air. I sat politely and sweated like a pig.

"Yes. It's brilliant. But your films have a few flaws. Study Leni Rieftenstahl. She was Hitler's filmmaker. Her films of the Olympics and of Hitler are masterpieces. And, of course, Hitler's rhetoric ---"

"Yes, yes, we know all about Hitler's speeches," he said impatiently. "We've been studying the American presidential campaigns, too. Especially the year that Dukakis was running for president."

"It's too bad Lee Atwater's dead," I said. He would have been perfect for Nido de Ovejas."

"Who's Lee Atwater?" he asked. I described Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton revolving door campaign ad. The campaign manager was silent for a moment, obviously contemplating the situation. "Yes, Lee Atwater would have been the perfect person for us."

My fiance and I drove back to Asuncion in silence. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of diesel exhaust. I suddenly felt quite sad. "I've always wanted to have the chance to practice propaganda, not just study it," I said. "Sometimes I feel my life's been wasted -- I haven't known what directions to go, and I've just stumbled around in the dark. Why couldn't I have done something?"

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll do great things together."

"Do you think General Nido de Ovejas will call me?" I asked hopefully. "I could tell him how to manipulate the masses more effectively with his campaign promises -- how to make the opposition look ridiculous."

"He might call. But he might not. He's very busy," said my fiance. We drove the rest of the way in silence. In the dark, I felt hot, wet tears slide down my cheeks. I had no idea why I was crying, but I was.

****************

"He committed suicide from watching too much Elvis," he said.

We were hanging about the lobby of the Pastos de Paz (Peaceful Pastures) funeral home, sipping espresso that the waiter had given us, and talking about the deceased. This was eighth or ninth wake I had been to in six months, and I was getting pretty desensitized to it all. At the first Paraguayan wake I attended I started to faint when I saw the body across the room. This time they rolled the open casket right by me, and I didn't even feel nauseous or dizzy. I actually felt a vague stir of curiosity when I saw they had styled the deceased's hair in a 50s-style pompadour.

"Yeah? Well, that will do it all right," I remarked. " I never could understand Elvis worship."

"Toward the end, he watched Elvis movies all day, and would leave the house. I feel responsible because I brought him those videos from the U.S."

"How tragic. How did he die?"

"He shot himself."

"Did they find peanut butter and banana sandwich in his mouth?" I asked.

"No. He put the gun in his mouth," said my fiance.

"Oh." I decided it would be best for me to be quiet.

"Yeah, I was hoping that some day he'd invest in a deal with me," said my fiance, wistfully. "We were going to start talking about that, and then this happened..."

His face looked quite grief-stricken. The source of his discomfort was pretty transparent, I thought. It's good to have friends, isn't it?

*****************

Tia Erqueminia was doing her nails when I went to her storefront reading room.

"That's a nice shade of purple," I said. "Do you have time to do a reading?"

"Sure, always for you, dear," she said. She started shuffling cards. It was amazing. She didn't even once muss her nails.

"I see you've been sad. Very sad. And you're still sad," she said.

"Uh, yes. But I want to know something I don't already know," I said.

"You've been in bad shape, but no one has any idea," she said. "You've even been thinking about ending your life."

I nodded my head in affirmation. Tears started to splash down off my cheeks and onto my trembling hands.

"The cards never lie," she said. She studied the cards before continuing. "You're going to go on a journey. A long, hard journey. But although your destination is far away, where you're going is where you need to be."

"That's not what I want to hear," I said. "I want to know something good, something positive."

"I don't want to lie to you, dear," she said. "This is just not an easy incarnation for you. You're working out a lot of karma, a lot of bad debt."

"How? What did I do?" I asked.

"You were stupid. You believed men." I looked at Tia Erqueminia very closely. I wondered why she always had such terrible things to say to me. Was she trying to drive me out of the country? Did she have some sort of ulterior motive, or vested interest? I looked at her again. No. Probably not. She just saw that I'd pay for negative readings, but I wasn't too interested in the positive ones. That was my problem, not hers.

I walked back to the apartment I had been leasing while I tried to see if there were any opportunities for me in Paraguay, any manner of earning a living. It was clouding up, and it looked like it would start raining again. I could leave most of my things behind, I thought. Clothes, knick-knacky items, kitchen utensils. I didn't want any reminders, anyway. I'd take my books and my laptop computer and printer. That would be enough.

Too bad I'd be leaving before I'd have the chance to see if Tia Erqueminia's prediction that I'd receive a huge fake diamond cubic zirconium ring would turn out to be true.

********************

"Hola, hola -- where are you?" he asked. We had a bad connection.

"I'm in Dallas. I'm waiting for my connection."

"Dallas? Why?"

"I'm going home. My time's up and I need to get back."

"But what about me? Aren't we going to get married?" he asked.

"Uhh, yes, no, I don't know -- maybe," I said.

"My mother and aunt were expecting you for the birthday party next week."

"Could you apologize for me and tell them I won't be able to make it?" I asked.

"Won't you tell me anything?"

"Go see Tia Erqueminia," I said. "She'll tell explain it all."

"Who?"

"Tia Erqueminia."

"Where is she?" he asked. I told him quickly, then became uncomfortable.

"They're calling my flight. Talk to you later --"

Tia Erqueminia would set him straight. Meanwhile, I wanted to study the propaganda and speeches of Peronist Argentina. That would keep me busy for a few years.