This fall really got away from me. Don’t fret, I’m still hard at work on Ursa Minors, Secrets of the Void, and a few other side projects that I can’t quite tear myself away from, including the backstory of the empathic councilwoman who kept Adrian and Iris on their toes in Mark of the Void.
Don’t worry if you haven’t read the second Syndicate book yet, there are no spoilers in this snipped of Callie’s story.
Neon museum Las Vegas photocred: Lynn Katzenmeyer. Oh yeah, I took this pic, bask in my photographic mediocrity.
I wove my way through the crowd of tourists rubbernecking at my fellow buskers. A family with a stroller stopped right in front of me to watch a group of street artists fold corn husks into elaborate roses. I ducked around them and nearly ran into a group of college students watching a break dancer starting their intoxication early or still drunk from last night. For a Monday morning in late March, the Fremont Street Experience was hopping. I found my circle and set up for the day.
I hadn’t planned on making my living busking in Downtown Las Vegas, but I quickly found it paid more than the grad school fellowship program for which my ethnographic research led me to Vegas in the first place. Initially, I came looking to study Las Vegas street culture. A year later, I was a part of it.
“Good morning Calliope,” my favorite security officer, David Martinez waved as he passed on his three wheeled scooter that
I’d dubbed the chariot.
I waved at his receding figure and continued my setup. Any street performer has their own unique schools of thought to draw in crowds. Some rely on their talent, others loud music, sex, jokes, but I rely on gimmicks. I had a rotation of gimmicks. When I worked overnight, I dressed in all manner of get up and took photos with revellers for tips. My standard was Vegas showgirl, but my most lucrative was slutty nun. During daylight hours, when the street was quieter and the crowds thinner, I got to be more creative. Today I had hoped to use my innate talents and try my hand at empathic reading.
Dressed in an elaborate fortune teller robe complete with a purple turban with giant jeweled feather brooch atop my head. My makeup was intense, even for Vegas. My light green eyes were framed with heavy dark liner that was more reminiscent of raccoons than human female, but it helped sell the look. I sat on my trusty paint bucket and sat on the cute clawed ottoman on the opposite side of the circle. As long as my visitors weren’t giants, our knees wouldn’t touch.
Finally, I set my sign out. I’d spent a good portion of the previous night carefully painting it in a Ye Old English font. “Calliope the Magnificent palm reading.” And I waited.
Once the street performer has their crowd, the trick is to get them to pay. Back when I was just a grad student, the performers I interviewed had a few methods to get the cash out of the wallets of bystanders and into their tip jars. The traditionalists relied on their talent. They trusted they were good enough at their craft tourists would willingly part with the cash. The pity-ables carried their handwritten cardboard signs with their story. They relied on either pity or generosity, depending on who you ask. My style of street performance leans to what I’d called in my ethnographic research as “active sales.”
I closed my eyes and opened my third eye, sending my tendrils of empathetic understanding out into the street until I found my target. I sought the curious, the lonely, and the ambivalent for this act. Opening my physical eyes, I saw her clearly. I stood up and pointed at her, making intense eye contact.
She stood in a group of drunk women, one had a sash reading birthday girl. But my target was sober. Her brown eyes widened when she realized I was pointing at her. The drunk girls pushed her toward my circle.
“You have a question for Madame Calliope,” I told her in my best Eastern European accent. For a girl from Iowa, I’d yet to be called on my affected accents. My third eye tendrils sensed the girl’s unease, “Not to worry,” I soothed, “Madame Calliope is here to help. Come, sit.”
She didn’t want to sit. Her apprehension tasted sour on my tongue, but I knew better than to worry. The drunk girls moved her closer to my circle and sat her down.
“I need your palm, child,” I croned. The girl cautiously moved her hand out to me and I cradled it in my own hands. Her emotions flooded into me. Touch always intensified my third eye, I closed my eyes as visions of her flooded my sight. Visions of the girl in her most emotionally intense moments. Love, loss, fear, I eased my way through the cacophony of this girl’s emotional turmoil until I found bits I could use, “You did not want to come to Vegas,” it was a statement, I opened my eyes and leaned in close so the drunk girls could not hear, “You are not friends with your friends, no? Just one? But you don’t want to be her friend.”
The girl’s eyes widened, but she said nothing, “Let Madame Calliope look closer now,” I traced a finger over her palms, searching deeper. Moments flickered into my consciousness, I used my tendrils on the moments, the feelings of others for the girl in my hands, “You came here to be with your love. An unrequited one. I’m sorry to say dear, it will never be requited. You need to look further out. The young woman, in the coffee shop, the one with the tattoos that scare you. She is the one for you.”
Panic flooded the girl, and she pulled her hand from mine, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Damn it, I was usually better at reading these situations, “You can hide from your true self for only as long as you wish. But Madame Calliope promises you, open your heart, let fear in, and you will find happiness.”
The girl slowly stood up and backed away from my circle. I turned my attention to the group of drunk girls sending my tendrils out until I found the one I was looking for, “Your boyfriend has a surprise waiting for you when you get home.”
In a matter of seconds, the girl with a besotted boy at home was on my ottoman hand in mine. Ten minutes later I’d gone through the entire group, was sixty dollars richer and a crowd had formed.
Hours later the DJ’s turned the volume up, which was my cue to pack up. That’s when I felt them. I say them, but really it was him. One man with two emotional resonances inside of him. I paused my pack up to find him in the crowd. He was around my age, maybe older than my 21 years. His deep brown eyes met my gaze and he crossed the crowded street to me.
His gaze briefly left mine to glance down at my sign, “Palm reading?” his deep voice was skeptical.
I nodded, “But I don’t need to be psychic to know what you’re looking for.” I said, using what little was left of my brain to keep the accent in place. I was overwhelmed by them.
“And what am I looking for, Calliope?” the corner of his mouth quirked up.
“Me.”
