Disclaimer: wishing money was made on this little enterprise, but sadly it is not.
Thanks to Deb, Bluz, Jaime, Luisa and Melody for making this come true…you ladies hold amazing editorial powers.
Nothing but Time on My Hands
By Alfonsina
"Babe."
"No really Ranger, it works," I said to the statue sitting next to me in the SUV.
"Babe."
"Come on, I need someone to practice on and as long as we are both just sitting here, can't I practice on you? Please?" I was all but begging.
"Steph, whatcha gonna practice on Ranger?" asked the disembodied voice coming over the radio.
"Wouldn't you just want to know, Woody? This is Woody isn't it?" I asked. Once again I had smarted off too quickly.
"Nope, it's your favorite," said the same disembodied voice.
"I know it isn't Tank. He's one of my favorites, and he has too many manners to assume I'd do something wrong. I seem to remember that my other favorite is Lester, but he's not working tonight," I replied.
"You're right, it isn't Tank and it isn't Lester," said the same freaking annoying voice.
A different voice answered, "The smart ass is Brett."
Lovely, now I have to add voice recognition to my list of under developed skills.
"Lester?" Ranger asked, eyebrow raised.
"Of course not," I said with a smile, "my favorite is Binky."
"Babe."
"So can I practice on you or not?" I asked, the frustration level in my voice growing.
Before Ranger could give me an answer, another voice chimed in, "Steph, you can tell us what you've got in mind. We may not be able to watch, but we'll all be able to hear. It'll just between us."
Great, us. I had forgotten how many of 'us' were out on surveillance tonight. There were four vehicles, two man teams in each, were in effect. Lovely. Rangeman's small grapevine rivaled that of the Burg, they were all going to learn about my potential new part time job sooner or later anyway.
I was going to become a palm reader.
Really.
We, Grandma and I, had decided I was going to try to become a palm reader like her friend Caroline Grant. It was easy work, if you got it paid pretty well and I wouldn't be ripping my jeans to do a reading either.
Grandma'd been to the psychic fair at the senior center and figured if those yahoos could do it, so could we. Not that we are yahoos, but just that we could rise to the challenge. Maybe.
Right now since skips were few and far between, even Ranger was running low on extra work he could send my way. I decided I could do this to augment my income. It was either this or look for something part time at the button factory and I would do almost anything to avoid that horrible fate.
Besides, this whole palm reading thing had nothing to do with me being psychic, according to the books it was all scientific. Grandma also figured she could bring me into the senior center to pre-screen her potential suitors and maybe even drum up some business for myself. I think she just wanted to know how much life might be left in her potential suitors.
I had heard that 'toe reading' was going to replace palm reading in the 21st century, but there were no 'Toe Reading For Dummies' books at the bookstore, yet. It was icky to ask people to take off their shoes and socks just to get to read them. It all sounded pretty kinky and a little too intimate for me, thank you very much.
There were a lot of books at the bookstore on palmistry. I found 'How to Read Palms in Twenty Short Minutes' but the book was 521 pages long and it looked like it was going to take more than 20 minutes to read the book. 'Palms the Patterns of Our Lives' was a lot shorter and had a lot of pictures, so since this was as much Grandma's brain child as mine, we went in to pay for it.
"Guys, my new venture is gonna be palm reading," I said proudly.
"Cool," said one voice.
"Free to friends and family, right?" asked someone else.
"Can I be next?" asked another.
"Babe, you are here to work," Ranger said.
Jeesh.
"Yeah, but it's so boooooooring tonight. Besides, there's a full moon, it's not like I'm going to need to use the flashlight to check the book like I would if I was gonna read your Tarot cards," I said. "I can turn off my mic so the guys can't hear what I'm saying to you."
"The point of having the mic is so we can all hear each other," he said with exasperation in his voice.
"Well, you can leave yours on and I'll just whisper," I said playing my only compromise card.
"All mics stay on until tonight's op is over," he said as much to everybody else as to me.
"Come on, let me just take a look at your right hand. You can tell me how I'm doing. Plllleeeeeease?" I was whining but I didn't really care.
"Fine," Ranger said as he gave me his hand. "I assume you want the palm up?"
"Nope, right now, I want to look at your thumb and feel how it moves."
"Why?" asked one of the many voices of the chorus.
"According to the book, the way the thumb moves, up or down has to do with someone's ego," I said feeling very proud of myself.
"So how big's his ego, Steph?" asked a different voice.
"Well," I said, moving his thumb up and down in my hand, "it's kind of stiff. It doesn't move a whole lot."
"Stiff?" came the chuckling voice that I was recognizing as Brett's.
"Yeah," I said. "Let me look that up."
I put Ranger's hand down as I picked up the book and rifled through the pages.
"Here it is. A thumb that doesn't move down much is the sign of a strong ego. Someone who's very confident in his or her abilities to do something well. But it is also someone who is not tolerant of failure," I read from the book.
"You got that right, sister," said the voice over the radio.
"Binky," Ranger said in a harsh tone.
"What? It's true Ranger. You are confident in what you do and you don't like to fail or see anyone who works for you fail," I said.
"Come on, tell us about his love life," Caesar said.
Hey wouldn't I like to know about that, too? Good point Caesar.
I opened the book to the page and was getting ready to turn Ranger's hand over so I could see what it had to say when Binky said, "Skip has just been sighted on the east side of the building."
"Can we finish this later, Ranger?"
"Babe," was Ranger's standard reply. Then he said, "People, it's time to get up close and personal with this guy and see if he can read my fist."