The scene: a lively open street bazzar, lit up under the night sky. There are tattoo parlors with mutilated freaks inside and head shops. Immigrants hawk gimcracks and chachkies. Up a flight of stairs there is a place. The purple neon sign in the window says "Fortune Telling." Inside is a cluttered mess of ancient relics. There sits a fortune teller. Her hair is blond and she has a teenage son with brown hair. They sit sipping scalding hot coffee with apple strudel. The mood is relaxed and then she gets a jolt.
"What is it, mommy? Are you okay?" Her son rushes to her side.
"Get the incense. Put it by the door."
"What is it? What is your feeling?"
"Do it!" she bellowed.
"And move the statue by the door. Sprinkle this water on the window, I prayed on it when I was peaking."
The boy just reacted like a machine. He turned his brain off and let his hands do the thinking for him and the work.
"Hopeful it passes, but I feel danger in the air. The air is alive with something. There is a dangerous man here. This cannot be what I think it is, but I pray that I am wrong."
Her son's hands were on her shoulders comforting her.
A man dressed in black moves through the crowded street, weaving a zig-zag path like a snake. He cuts in and out of traffic, walking in between the crowds. Something about him stands out. His coat is black as well as his hat. He carries a black suit case. He stops and looks at the purple neon sign reading "Fortunes Told."
"Baby, get another statue, burn some more incense. Get the gun. I feel his presence stronger. The stranger is here."
The man in black saunters up the stairs. He is halfway up the stairs when the door opens and then the metal gate slams shut.
"Are you closing up for the day?"
"Just a moment."
The soothsayer appears in the doorway still gated. "Yes?"
"Hi. We're in the same business! I made some free posters for the college kids..."
The women was frozen in place. She could barely move as she shook her head no in stilted movements. Her muscles where freezing up on her and she was trapped.
"Okay, no problem" replied the man with a smile and a reassuring wave of his hand. WIth that he started back down the stairs and it was over. When he reached the last step, the fortune teller's muscles began to relax and unseize. Her breathing rate increased and she returned to normal. The palsy faded, yet she couldn't shake the feeling of danger in the air.
"Mommy, have some tea, sit down and relax."
"It was just as I suspected."
"What was it, Mommy? What does he want?"
"He had posters...and something else. The man is protected by dark powers. Leave the gate locked."
The stranger stayed in the dark bazzar. He entered an old theater from a forgotten era. Inside was a theater group in the clothes of another day. There was a snaggle-toothed simpleton and his pretty wife; a young mother; an angry freak with stringy blond hair, thin lips, beady eyes, and a top hat; and an old man giving a "ghost tour" to some visitors. The theater had been inhabited by famous luminaries out of the past and was said to be haunted by poltergeists. As the old man made the ghost tour, his gaggle of live-in performers and freaks made pleasant conversation with the stranger. It seems he was a carnie, too. The old man hid from the strange carnie until he had left the old theater with the gold painted molding and ghost stories. The vagabonds looked at each other in bewilderment. When the door closed they asked the old man. "Why did you run away from the carnie like that? He seems like a cool dude. He's just like us."
"He's not just like us. You know my secret. I've been alive for over two hundred years. In that time, I've travelled all over the world. I spent an entire lifetime as a ship builder in Ireland. I also lived on a ship for another fifty years. I've seen some things. There are really poltergeists in this theater, but nothing like that thing."
"What are you talking about? He seemed alright. He was very friendly to us."
"That man is a walking weapon. I've seen his kind before and I know what they can do. Go to your rooms and like the doors. Rodney and Bill, you guys come with me. This is a job for the men."
Smoke billowed out into the dark bazzar. A fog rolled over the street, a cloud of gas. It was tear gas. People ran indoors. A bicyclist peddled furiously through the haze coughing on the noxious fumes. The man just kept walking through the mist like nothing was happening. His blue eyes welled up with tears and ran all down the front of his face in trickley cascades. He threw on a pair of sunglasses and left the dark bazzar, now poisoned with a mustard colored smog.
The story is true, brothers and sisters. The stranger is me, Polo the Clown, your humble host and narrator. On St. Marks Place in Greenwich Village there is a real psychic, up a flight of stairs and with a purple neon sign.