My blind date ended abruptly. She had asked me what entrée I was likely to order, and seeing the amount of food that other tables were being served, I joked that maybe we should split whatever dish she preferred.

She said, "I'm out," and she never looked back as she left the restaurant. As I sat in stunned silence, the waiter returned with our drinks. I handed him forty dollars as I slammed the Long Island ice tea that she had ordered, and then I also walked out. There was too much traffic around the restaurant for me to figure out which car was hers, even if I cared.

The restaurant is in the outskirts of a mall, and as I started to drive my way out of all of the parking lots, the alcohol hit me hard. I'm not much of a drinker, and I should have known better. At least I knew better than to keep driving. I pulled into a space in a mostly empty lot, and I put the car in park as I sat back and pondered my life's choices. I would almost think that I was nearly depressed.

As I sat and waited for sobriety to return, a neon sign hammered on my eyes. Over and over it flashed between "Got Questions?" and "We've Got Answers!" Over and over it flashed. Over and over, it called. Suddenly, my feet were carrying me through an overgrown field and into the parking lot of a run-down strip of buildings. The sign flashed, and I went inside.

The place reeked of New Age gimmickry and shady charlatans. A pleasant young woman about my age was behind a counter with displays of books and crystal spheres.

"Good evening sir," she greeted. "Please take your time, but we close in five minutes, and I have to close out the register by quarter after." Her politeness was impeccable.

"I need answers," I stated rudely, in an almost demanding tone.

She glanced toward the back of the shop, but with a pleasant smile, she said, "I would have to charge extra to start a tarot reading this late."

"Fine," I grumbled.

Her polite façade almost broke. She had intended to send me on my way. "A hundred bucks," she stated, boldly asking five times the posted price.

I don't usually carry much cash, and I had given most of it to the waiter at the restaurant. I pulled out my wallet and dug into the hidden slot, and I dropped a crisply folded one hundred dollar bill on the counter.

Without touching the bill, she dryly stated, "Why don't you have a seat in the first room. Madame Leajendor will be with you shortly."

Without waiting for me to move, she stepped past me to the front door, where she turned the 'Open' sign to 'Closed', and then turned the lock. Stepping past me again, she turned off the main lights and then disappeared through a curtain marked 'Employees Only'. I stepped into the first small room and sat in front of the small table.

For some reason, I jumped when the Madame appeared. She was an old woman of indeterminate age. Given that I was thirty, she might have been fifty or a hundred, although from the looks of her, she may have been older than that. In spite of my momentary fright, I took a breath to state my demands, or at least my question.

"Not a word," she croaked in a dry, raspy voice. With remarkably agile hands, she produced a tarot deck and quickly shuffled them three times. She paused to glare at me and then stated, "Concentrate on the question." She shuffled the cards three more times. "Yes, yes, concentrate," she commanded, and then she shuffled three final times.

She quickly turned up the top card. I am no expert on the tarot, but I believe the card was the Four of Cups. It showed a person sitting on the ground, dejectedly looking at three spilled cups, while a hand in the clouds held out a golden chalice.

"Women!" the old crone spat out, and she quickly dropped three more cards on the table.

"The Page of Cups, she is too young for you," she accused, pointing to the middle card. She studied the cards beside it, and she added, "She is also two-faced and scheming. She thinks she wants love, more water to fill her cup. You were born in January, I believe, and you have too much fire and earth in you. Your earth will turn everything with her to mud, assuming your fire doesn't evaporate her first. Why would you even consider this maiden?"

Against my will, I heard myself say, "She is not so young as she was when she took my virginity. I was one of at least twenty guys in my high school class who thought they were getting hers. She goes to my mom's church, and at the holiday service, she tried to convince me she is ready to settle down."

"Women!" the old crone accused, and then she quickly dropped the next three cards. Her head pulled back as if she were stunned by what they showed. The middle card was the King of Wands.

"Who is this manly woman?" she demanded. "Short hair, fiery disposition, a woman of action, yet she was thwarted by your nature. I deemed you earth and fire, but for this, you would need earth and water. Were your parents born in September and March?"

"Short hair, fire to the core, she was a teaching assistant when I was at college," I answered to her first question. "She burned hot to dominate in a male-dominated college, and while she taught me a lot, she spit me out when she moved on to her next challenge. We were together for several years after I graduated, though I often wonder why she kept me that long."

"Women!" the old crone growled approvingly. The next three cards hit the table. At their center was the Queen of Pentacles.

"There, a stranger, recently met," the crone deciphered. "The cards beside her are different, not showing how your nature opposed hers, but showing that yours would never complement hers. Now, I would think you were air and fire, not at all aligned with her earthly pursuit of coins. Strange... I wonder..."

I would state again that I am no expert on Tarot, but she had dropped ten cards, and although they weren't in the traditional spread, ten was the traditional number required. The reading should have been complete.

Her eyes bored into my soul, and she dropped the next card on the table. An odd energy seemed to crackle around the crone, and I was frightened to think that the card might be The Lovers. I was nearly relieved to see that it was The World. It struck me that the symbols in the four corners were the same symbols as the four lesser suits, and therefore the four ancient elements.

The crone gasped, and then she quietly begged, "Follow me," followed by the command, "Please." I stood as quickly as she did, and I followed as she stepped out of the room and through the curtain toward the back of the shop.

We walked through a store room, with boxes of bits and books and things. Near the back was a small dressing room tucked under a flight of stairs. The crone walked to the dressing room and paused for a moment. Maybe she really did have some kind of magic, and she must have conjured some spell. She bent forward to remove a wig, stood up to remove her luxurious silk wrap, and then suddenly the young woman from the shop was standing in front of me.

"Please, I have to check to be sure," she apologized, and then she kissed me.

I was too shocked to protest, but not too shocked to return her kiss. Unlike any other woman that I had kissed in the past, we seemed to fit together perfectly. When she ended the kiss, it took me a moment or two to remember to open my eyes. She was looking up at me with a pleased smile.

"There are schools of thought that preach that we should try to find a balance in our lives, but that we should not be discouraged when that balance eludes us," she stated. "My sisters tease that I might never find a man who is neither air nor fire nor earth nor water, yet is all of them, a match to my own balanced soul."

She took my hand and pulled me along up the stairs. As we neared the top, she called out, "Sisters! I have a guest, and we do not wish to be disturbed." I didn't hear any reply.

At the top of the stairs was a small apartment. She pulled me along past a tiny kitchen, a tinier bathroom, and into the smallest bedroom ever. I would imagine that monks in a monastery had bigger spaces. Her space had a narrow bed, a narrower wardrobe cabinet, and a small table. As she pulled a curtain across the doorway, her eyes begged me to ignore our surroundings, and then she kissed me again.

With that kiss, the earth shook, and we tumbled to the bed. With that kiss, the wind blew, and our clothes were whipped away. With that kiss, the waters of lust swirled, and our bodies were joined. With that kiss, the fires that we kept hidden from the world flared, and we were blinded to anything outside of the joining of 'us'.

Later, we found ourselves washed up on the firmament of each other's bodies, breathing deeply of each other's being, and basking in the heat of what we had made.

"Stay," she murmured, not as a question, not as a command, but as an answer to the question I didn't know I had intended to ask.