Some people are so sensitive.
Adriana is probably the most empathic person that I know. She can look at you with those crystal blue eyes of hers and know exactly what’s going through your head. If you’re a heterosexual male, it’s usually not all that difficult.
You’ll notice that I used the word “empathic”, as opposed to “psychic” or “sensitive”. Adriana’s ability to read minds is not some mystical mutant power caused by her mother standing too close to a microwave while she was in utero. Adriana doesn’t have any superpowers. What she does have is talent. Over the course of primate evolution, we silly monkeys have developed quite a few tricks for figuring out what our fellow Homo Sapiens are thinking. It’s the reason that you can usually tell the difference between someone saying: “Nice shirt”, or “Nice … shirt“. There are at least a thousand non-verbal cues that we pick up on without even realizing it. Autistics often have a disability for perceiving these social cues, and tend to draw up inside of themselves, fearing human interaction. Other people are hyper-sensitive to these idiosyncratic tendencies, and they can either use that talent to give aid and counseling to others, or to rip them off. Adriana is one of the latter.
Her level of talent is breathtaking. She could charge tickets to her so-called “psychic advisory” sessions, and people would watch just to see the mastery at which she relieves people of their hard-earned cash. No Oscar-winner ever performed as effortlessly as she does. Her costume is typical of what you’d expect from a young neo-hippie working in an advisory capacity. A lot of brightly-colored taffeta and muslin, new age charms and talismans hanging from her neck and wrists, and her curly golden blond hair pulled back in the loosest of ponytails. Her every step trails the scent of patchouli and rosewater, and she speaks with a soft gentle voice of a mystic daughter of the Earth. Talking to her always makes me nervous. I feel as though she can see right into my headspace. For drastically different reasons, I also hate visiting her when she’s with a client. For someone who freely speaks about such enlightened concepts as “karma” and “balance”, she does a lot of things that are not quite on the same side of the street as “ethical”. All “psychics” do this, but sometimes I feel that Adriana takes a sick pleasure out of it. I’ve actually watched her extract an ordinary hen’s egg from its shell (something that we learn in 3rd grade art class), and then re-fill the shell with chicken blood and gizzards for the melodramatic voodoo ritual in which she will reveal that her client is under a terrible curse and must surrender $200 in protective anti-curse charms and spells.
Walking in to the sound of sitar and shakuhachi (an international blend), I take a casual look around her office. I feel a slight unease in my gut while looking over the shelves of incense, gris-gris, and new age book titles. I guess if I thought for one moment that Adriana believed in any of this, I wouldn’t mind. A person’s religion is their own business. But this is pure larceny, and I’ve spoken to her about it. Unfortunately, whenever I do, she usually takes that opportunity to rattle off the list of crimes that I’ve personally committed in my crusade against the undead. If she’s really feeling mean, she’ll throw in those few times I smoked pot in college.
After a few minutes, I watch an obviously wealthy society dame in gold and diamonds emerge from Adriana’s counseling room. For a moment, I try to tell myself that this makes it all okay. If I’d seen somebody’s sick grandma come tottering out of the room, I might have thrown up in that brass vase shaped like a spittoon. Seeing Mary Sue Mercedes-Benz swagger from behind the curtain let me live with the illusion that maybe ALL of her clients came from that privileged demographic.
I was, in fact, here on business. As I said, Adriana has no kind of psychic powers or abilities at all. But what she CAN do, is read people. She can tell a person’s life story simply by the way they hold their car keys, and for a vampire hunter, that ability is priceless. I don’t have any sort of high-tech gizmo that beeps frantically every time a vampire is near. I down own any specially treated Ray-Bans that would enable me to see which of my fellow humans have long since shuffled off their mortal coil. What I do have, is Adriana, and she can sniff out a bloodsucker like it’s wearing a neon sign.
Without pausing to greet me, Adriana walks directly across the room, and right into my personal space. She presses an open palm firmly on my chest and covers her eyes with her other hand, as if scanning for psychic vibrartions.
“You are … troubled, … a person in need.” she tells me ominously. “You have come here to fulfill this desire, this doom … you need …”.
I could immediately think of a few burning needs that I’ve always wanted her to fulfill, but I didn’t want to itemize those dubious desires right in front of her.
She pushes my chest, hard, with her open palm, forcing me to stumble backward into the large potted philodendron. She then grabs her oversize hemp purse and starts for the door.
“You need to buy me a venti green tea latte … and you’re driving”.
