These days I’m a fortune teller on the fairgrounds. Nametags off, crystal ball on

Rayne. Now, that’s a good name: artsy but smart, spiritual but not religious. Dramatic winter storm, hot cocoa round the fireplace, champagne, attain, unchain.

I come up the final block toward the fairgrounds and head for the staff trailer. “Fairgrounds” sounds like a country bling thing. Flair, share, care. Don’t be fooled. It’s an amusement park, but such a dinky rundown one that if they didn’t make it sound like a limited time offer out of rural England, no one would come. It’s all in the name, as usual.

Too bad my name ain’t Rayne.

Can’t blame Mom and Pop, because I don’t look like one. Raynes are slender and exotic and look good in forest green. I’m a square, dirty-blonde box hedge with swampy eyes, and if I was called Rayne I’d be the miserable Holland flood-by-degrees type. Pain. No gain. Here she comes again, gotta run catch a train.

So fine, not Rayne, but Clora? What even is Clora? Migraine coming on, I see an aura? Aunt Betsy’s horrid jersey of scratchy grey angora?

Gotta hand it to them, though, Clora tells it like it is. Right off the bat it says, the world doesn’t go my way.

I collect nametags. Not in a klepto way; my own ones. Waitressing-in-high-school, cashier-Thursday-nights nametags, and each one I fixed up with a name I’d have wanted. Andromeda. Caidy. Hawaii. (Gosh, what a phase that was. I got that nametag my second year of eighth grade.)

These days I’m a fortune teller on the fairgrounds. Nametags off, crystal ball on. I’m in charge of my own costume, and I overdo it because I don’t look the part. I never wear real colors. Off-white, off-black, nearly-blue-but-with-a-hint-of-grey-and-from-some-angles-you-think-it’s-lilac. Real colors are too straitlaced for a fortune teller, confining. Blue, peace. Green, nature. Brown, mud and jealousy and chocolate.

Mr. Bates, fairground boss, doesn’t care so long as there’s a shawl and a lot of clunky jewelry and that infernal crystal ball. Mr. Bates. Tax rates. Frustrates. Red bald pate, ugly heat rash behind his ears, only ever wears real colors.

I hate this job.