text: Trevor could not have said what made him stop at the psychic shop that bitter Sunday afternoon; it was a highly uncharacteristic thing for him to do. He had neither believed in nor truly even considered the phenomenon of self-proclaimed clairvoyance much before that moment. But, impelled by forces he did not understand and could not resist, he walked through the stained, wooden doorway and peered into the dim candlelight which provided the only source of illumination in the small front room. “Hello?” he called into the dimness. “Coming,” an accented, female voice called back -- Jamaican, likely, certainly Carribean. As he awaited the arrival of the voice’s owner he took the opportunity to orient himself and scrutinize his surroundings. The shop contained no electrical lighting. In fact, it contained no electronic devices of any kind. It was like an anachronistic world all to itself. Soft, dark walls seemed to drink his pain, leaving him only peace. The shop’s owner materialized from the depths, bearing a wide, ancient lantern which she set down on the counter before turning to face him. Small, fine lines ran down the corners of her eyes and gave her a grandmotherly appearance. Her skin was very dark, and this magnified the illuminating effect of the lantern, leaving the shadowed portions of her face indistinguishable from their background such that all that was clearly visible to Trevor were her eyes and a small circle of flesh surrounding them. “Sit,” she intoned with a resonant voice, pointing to a chair just now coming into visibility as the lantern cast its light. “Thank you,” Trevor replied simply. “What brings you here?” “I... I don’t know, really. I don’t normally come to places like this...” the woman cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Nobody comes here by chance.” This was said with a decisive air of finality. “Then, why *am* I here?” She smiled and it applied a wonderful distortion to her features. “You are here because I can give you exactly what you most desire.” Trevor sat in silence for a moment, fully appreciating these words. “I don’t even know what that is.” “Most men don’t. But, I do.” She reached out her hand. “I can tell you what it is, and I can give it to you, but you must share yourself with me. All your history, your thoughts, your memories, I must see them to fully understand you. I will take nothing that you do not give me, but know that if you hide too much I will not be able to do my work.” Could this woman be telling the truth? An intuition born of some unknowable force within him told Trevor that she was. He *believed* it -- without question. Truthfully, the psychic’s proposition was very attractive to him, and not merely because of what she offered to give. Sharing himself, truly being *understood* by another human being... This was something he never believed he could achieve again. Within us all there is a primordial desire to be *known*, to break the solipsistic confines of our own mind and perceptions. We communicate our thoughts and affections and desires with paltry words, but can never know if we are understood fully and completely. And so, knowing this, Trevor took the woman’s hand. It was soft and firm, aged and weathered but still comforting. For a moment, there was mere silence. Then, he felt it begin. *Nighttime games on the streets of Kingston.* *Stern, unsmiling faces admonishing little Ionie not to play after dark.* *Dinner, breakfast, lunch at the small table by the window.* *A flood of faces, people, lost loves, old friends, enemies, a life lived and lived well, and now drawing to its natural close.* Then, with a shock, he was back in the little room and looking into Ionie’s face. For a moment, he did not understand why he should be seeing his own face as if an outsider, but the moment passed. Ionie appeared very grim. A tear fell down her cheek and hit the counter. “My poor boy,” she whispered and squeezed his hand tightly. “Poor, poor boy. You have suffered so much.” The enormity of the gesture was too much for him and his eyes glazed over with tears as well. She did not merely empathize with him, did not merely express a shallow sentiment of pity -- she *knew*. “Well?” he asked, after a dark moment of solemn contemplation. She steadied herself, drying her eyes. “The memories...” she began. “I can make them stop. I can take them all away.” She needn’t explain further. Trevor understood what she meant, and she saw in him that understanding. He looked up at her after a minute or so of staring down at his own hands. “She would be gone, then? I’d forget it all?” “Yes, I’m afraid it all must go, all the memories from beginning to end. That is the only way to heal the wound. If I leave anything, I will leave the pain too.” Trevor sighed and sat back. He closed his eyes and called up his earliest memories of Ruby, considering the woman’s offer... \*\*\* Trevor had always liked going to the Starbucks on the corner near his house. He was impervious to his friends’ accusations of conforming to the middle-class Caucasian stereotype and went there often. He spent long hours there, enjoying the solitude afforded by a pair of headphones and selective deafness. People had always posed a challenge to him. The life of the hermit held little appeal, but most other people merely and frankly exhausted him. It required great effort to force a smile and feign interest in the weather or his friend’s most recent romantic conquest. Often, after work, he would find a corner of the shop, buy a coffee and work on the screenplay he had been intending to finish for several years. From time to time, someone would recognize him and when he wasn’t able to effectively dodge their efforts to engage him in conversation he would be forced to break out of his comfortable, self-imposed isolation, plaster on a false smile and make idle small-talk. This routine continued, relatively unchanged, for some time until one day he looked down at his cup to see that alongside his name there had been written a series of digits. A phone number. He looked up from his table and caught the eye of the girl who had written it. She smiled and quickly looked away. Trevor did not know how to feel about this development. Was it a trick, he wondered. Surely she must have been put up to it; it was a cruel joke. All of his previous romantic entanglements had been hard won conquests which took months and months of painstaking effort. Usually, he invested this effort for no return. Yet, here it was, right before his eyes: the phone number. It appeared genuine enough. The area code was right. Later that night, after a long time staring at the cup, he decided to call the number. The odds were very good that it would turn out to be a Taco Bell or some such nonsense. But, he found the call answered on the second ring by a friendly, female voice. “Hello?” she said. “You-you left me this number,” Trevor replied, dumbly. “I did,” she laughed. “Do you want to get lunch some time, or dinner maybe?” “Sure,” Trevor was still in shock that the number was real. They made plans for dinner the next day at a little restaurant downtown. He strode across his cramped apartment, nearly tripping on the myriad discarded things on the floor. *I’ve gotta clean this up,* he thought to himself and set about the task with a renewed vigor. The next day, he arrived at the restaurant at the appointed time, probably overdressed. He fidgeted with his collar, cursing himself for thinking it necessary. *She’s going to think I’m crazy. I am crazy. Christ, I’m crazy...* Round and round the thoughts went, bouncing along the internal corridors of his mind as he found and took his seat. *20 minutes early. Why did I leave so early? She’s going to know that I’ve been freaking out about this all day. Am I sweating? I think I’m sweating.* Aside from the waitress coming and bringing bread to his table, Trevor was left alone with his internal monologue until his date arrived. “Hi,” he said, standing suddenly and spilling water all over the bread. “Oh...” She merely smiled and put her napkin down to soak it up. “Ruby,” she said, extending her hand. “Trevor.” “I know. I take your order every Tuesday.” Trevor sat down after helping Ruby to dry the table. She followed suit. “Right,” he said. “So, Trevor, what do you do?” “I’m a janitor at an insurance company,” he said. “This is usually the part of the date where the girl leaves,” he added, half-joking. “I’m still here.” As she said this a twinkle of strange humor played in her eye, a slight, corruscating, tantalizing thing. “Okay, who put you up to this?” Trevor was growing exasperated. “Was it Rob? I bet it was Rob, oh he loves to screw with me...” Ruby cut him off, placing her hand on top of his. “Nobody put me up to this, Trevor. I like you. I’ve wanted to do this for some time now.” He shook his head. “Nobody likes me, Ruby, and the more you get to know me, the more you’ll see why.” She laughed and he found the sound entirely disarming. In an instant, the whole edifice surrounding his jaded heart dissolved leaving only frank wonder and stupefaction. “Do you know *Crime and Punishment*, Trevor?” “Yes, I read it once, years ago.” “Do you remember the drunk Raskalnikov meets in the bar, Marmeladov?” “Yes, I think I do,” he said thoughtfully. “Marmeladov tells Raskolnikov that he believes he will be forgiven by God after he dies, forgiven for all his sins. He says, ‘And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, “Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men” And He will say, “This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.”’” Ruby was that kind of woman, the kind that could call to mind the words of Dostoyevsky to illustrate her point, yet never thought herself intelligent or wise. And, indeed, those who think themselves wise hardly ever are. Trevor took in Ruby’s appearance for the first time, fully perceiving her. Before, he hadn’t dared allow himself to know what would soon be ripped away. But, her explanation had convinced him to place in her at least that much faith, faith he did not give out lightly. So, he glanced up and studied her. Her hair was black as night, veiling a slender, curved face within which sat two cerulean eyes of deepest watchfulness. The whole world, it seemed, could be found within their blue domes, as the Earth is shrouded in its blue sky. A pair of crimson lips shone from the bottom of her face, living up to her name. Ruby was not especially tall, but neither was she diminutive, and the poise with which she executed every movement gave her the appearance of a giant, sweeping and brilliant. Trevor blinked rapidly, avoiding her eyes, perhaps afraid of blinding himself should his gaze linger there too long and allow, through its windows, her effulgent soul to connect with his. The evening passed wonderfully, and all thought of deception or malice quickly evaporated, leaving Trevor free to speak and listen in ways he never was able to in his quotidian life. Carl Jung once said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Certainly, this was how he felt, at the very minimum transformed. More dates followed, and, proving false Trevor’s disbelief in the reality of the whole affair, they went remarkably well. He found a peace and happiness for which he had to reach into the deep recesses of childhood memories to find its equal. The two were inseparable and hardly spent more than a day apart. Eventually, the two were engaged and for a time it seemed as if he really would live happily ever after. But, life is cruel and hardly ever fair. Shortly after Ruby accepted Trevor’s proposal, made at the very same restaurant at which they had had their first date, she fell ill. It was her nature to brush such inconveniences off, to attempt to power through them with sheer force of will, something of which she was hardly lacking. But, after collapsing one day after work, she was rushed to the hospital where the diagnosis was made: cancer, inoperable. The words seared themselves into Trevor’s heart, made newly vulnerable by Ruby’s hand. No barrier stood between it and the vicissitudes of life, and those words, when he read them, annihilated his tender spirit. Long days passed within the hospital’s sterile walls as he suffered under the harsh fluorescents. He saw the love of his life transformed into a kind of cyborg, more machine than woman as her body began to shut down a piece at a time. Finally, the time came when the end was clearly in sight. Trevor had informed her family and they became well acquainted with the waiting room’s walls as well as even more intimately with each other. Grief has a way of bringing people together. Ruby’s parents and brother had come to think of him as one of their own, the fact that he and Ruby had not yet married really only registering to them as a technicality. They spoke one last time before the end, and both knew that it would be the last time. Trevor walked once more through the door to her small room and looked down into the depths of the bed sheets to see what remained of his beloved. “Why the long face?” she asked, smiling and then wincing with the effort. A tear slid down Trevor’s face in response. “No, no,” she said, and reached out for him. He drew close and she wiped away the tear. “I’m still here,” she whispered. It was too much. Trevor wept frank tears and she held him until there were none left. “Listen to me,” she said, and held his face in her hands. “I told you from the beginning that I chose you because you didn’t think that you were worthy of this. But, Trevor, you are. You are the most worthy man I know, and when I’m gone it’s going to be so easy to forget that, but you have to remember it. There are dark days ahead, I won’t lie, but pain is love too. It would be so easy for you to go back to the man you were, to see this as just another reason why you don’t deserve to be happy. Remember me, Trevor. Remember that no matter what happens there was someone who told you, who *showed you* that it isn’t true. And nothing can take that away. Even when it seems too painful, remember me.” And they were the last words ever spoken between them. Later that day, her heart stopped and nothing could restart it. She was gone. Her parting words echoed to Trevor across time, back across the years, floating into his mind and taking up residence there. *Remember me...* \*\*\* All of this fell across the inside of his eyes as Trevor considered Ionie’s offer, considered the full weight and measure of it. New tears leaked out of the sides of his eyes to join those which had already dried on his cheeks and he reached a shaking hand up to wipe them away. A shuddering sigh racked him as his eyes flew open and his jaw clenched. “Take them,” he said, dragging the words from deep within. “Take them all.” Ruby’s eyes appeared before him, and for the first time seemed sad. “Are you sure?” Ionie asked. “There is no going back.” Trevor closed his eyes again and Ruby’s last moments played themselves out as they had every time he had closed his eyes for the last month, as they had every time he had numbed himself to sleep or allowed his thoughts to wander for even an instant. *Remember me* “Yes. Take them,” he said, reaching his hands out for Ionie’s. She took them and fixed Trevor with her stare. “Love is a terrible burden,” she told him sagely. “You are wise to wish to see it erased.” And then it began, and the force of it knocked Trevor back into his chair. He saw Ruby once again, her smiling face and beautiful eyes and knew that it would be for the last time. That realization sent his stomach roiling and nearly overwhelmed him. “No, wait!” he shouted, but it was too late. There was no turning back. He saw their time together play in reverse, as if his life had been placed within a projector in his mind’s eye and was now being rewound for him. *Remember me...* *Her skeletal body in the hospital bed.* *Her face as he knelt before her and held aloft the ring he had worked so hard for.* *Dates in the park, at fairs and carnivals and the movies.* *Their first kiss.* *Their first date, and the stone wall around his heart crumbling.* *Glimpses of her making his coffee at the Starbucks.* And it was done. All gone, forever consigned to the black inferno. Trevor sat unconscious in his chair, unaware that anything had transpired, as he would forever remain. Ionie lifted him with a strength a woman of her age should not possess and carried him outside, placing him gently against the old building’s wooden wall. She looked down at him and felt a deep pang of remorse. It was never easy to say whether she had done the right thing, but that was not for her to judge. A higher judge must at some point subject her to that analysis, and she awaited His decision with utter serenity. She hobbled back into the shop, closing the door and extinguishing the lantern before continuing back into the dimness from whence she had come... \*\*\* Trevor woke some time later with a terrible headache. He looked up and saw a flashing neon sign: “Adam and Eve’s.” He looked down and saw a bottle in his hand and concluded that he must have just woken from one of his benders. With no memory of the preceding hours, this seemed very likely. He stood, steadying himself for a moment before turning to hail a cab. As he did so, and walked over to it, a flash of distant memory stopped him dead. With it came a vague sense that he was leaving something behind. He patted his pockets several times, but found all his possessions in order, yet, still, he could not shake the feeling.