The pub owner wanted more customers, so he let a fortune teller set up her table behind a beaded curtain in the corner. He and I mocked her as “the ventriloquist,” but everyone else—the other barmaids, the barstool regulars, the dart players, and the tourists—rhapsodized about her uncannily accurate observations and predictions about their lives. I was perplexed: Where was she getting her information? Finally I marched over and confronted her. “You’re telling people stuff you couldn’t possibly know. I don’t understand!” She reddened, looking discomfited. I waited for her ludicrous cover story. She said, “Neither do I.”
Pamela Bloomfield’s writing has appeared in various professional journals and literary magazines. She once spent a summer working as a barmaid in South Devon, England