The palm reader in Keosauqua said that my lines were a fucking mess. Said that my can of Coca-Cola was actually a cup full of wolves. She could see them clogging my veins, forming packs.

After, at the gas station, I put my name on a shamrock for the window. He taped it on the door, facing out through the glass, and turned towards me.

“POOF!” the cashier said. “You're making cancer disappear.”

He was required to say it. I knew that going in. But it helped, thinking that somewhere, hopefully nearby, a child's hideous disease had vanished without pain, or cause.

I needed to get away. From the palm reader, from my life. I was the only person that I knew who could shoot the breeze and miss. So I signed the rights for two months in that time-share across the valley. The one with the bars over the windows and the rusted fleur-de-lis across the screen door.

It was spring when I showed up. Smoke was oozing out of the chimney like drunk laughter. I never could find a fireplace. 

I slept through much of the day, and every night there, I read passages aloud from The Da Vinci Code. The copy was mutt-eared and tattered. All that remained of the front cover was Mona Lisa’s blearing red eyes. I liked imagining all of us mortgagors together, taking turns throughout the year ripping through the text, alone. If ever I’ve been thrilled, it was there, racing through the history of the world right along with Robert Langdon. Two months vanished like that, lost in a world of espionage and deception.

When it was time to forfeit the house back and yield into the world beyond the valley, I turned off the water and left a note in the book. I arranged The Da Vinci Code on the bookshelf so the next person in the lineup could easily find it when they needed it most.

Imagine my surprise when I returned into town and found that someone had been lighting the firefighters memorial on fire. It didn’t burn that much. It was right in front of the fire station.

“We get the joke,” the fire chief said during the press conference. “But it’s not funny.”

I got up from the couch and slicked back my hair. How it had grown out there beneath the stars. I could tuck the loose ends behind my ears. I found a suit I kept around for funerals. I used pieces of duct tape as a lint roller, and chased out the moths with a cigarette.

When I was ready, I climbed into my car and headed for the station.