My mother always told me not to trust them.

“Look at them,” she’d say, “the way they monopolize these underground stores and still choose to sit on the sidewalk. Did you ever stop to wonder why it is that they always find themselves sitting around rickety metal tables, chewing gum and looking at their phones?” she’d usually spit at this point in the tirade, straight at the gutter, “it’s because they’re greasy crooks who pretend to know everything. But they don’t know nothing, no,” she’d shake her head and stop in the middle of her track to deliver the next line while staring straight into my eyes, “no, Lola, they don’t know nothing, only I and you and the rest of the women in our family know the truth. Only we can predict the future.” And then she’d keep walking and ask about the weather or what I wanted to eat, as if nothing had been said in the in between.

27 years on this earth and not once have my mother’s predictions come true. Not once have I been able to foretell what happened to my friends or whether they’d get the man, the ring, the job. So it is that I find myself, on the eve of my 28th birthday, standing outside a little underground store with the word “medium” flashing in neon lights and the symbol of an eye, within a triangle, within a hand, right next to it. It’s why the $20 my grandma gave me as a birthday gift (she’s the kind to gift the day before, “because I already know you’ll need whatever I get you on the day of your birthday,” she says) is currently crumpled and sweaty in my jacket pocket, ready to be handed over to some woman, who most likely speaks with a Brooklyn accent, so she can tell me that everything will be okay.

I look over my shoulder once, then twice, before I finally gather the courage to walk down the stairs (she’s not sitting outside on a rickety table, for once). The bell dings as I open the door, and if that wasn’t enough, the curtain of red shiny beads makes a clunking, clickety, clack sound as I part it. I find myself inside a small waiting room that smells like cheap perfume and cigarettes, the smell sticks to the back of my throat and I think of last night, sitting in Artemis’s living room as he talked at me, not with me, about the benefits of rolled cigarettes over store bought ones. I should’ve known he’d turn out to be a total quack, his name is Artemis after all. But the fuck was good and he let me stay over, and frankly, that’s all I can ask for these days.