The Root of all Freedoms

Today I participating in the 1k Words/a picture is worth a thousand words BlogFest hosted by Ralfast.

My Picture

My story

On a desperate whim, Evie saved $64,000, the equivalent of a full year’s salary in eighteen months by moving back home with her parents, teaching summer school, night school and offering private tutorial atop her regular teaching job.

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She was still not sure where she had first heard about the gypsy that would, for the mere sacrifice of a year’s salary, tell you the course of your true happiness, but there she was with her hard-earned money in a shoe box standing in a Zen garden, around the corner from the China Town at Spadina.
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Though, the truth of the matter is she had pretty much been heading here since her break up with Mr. Merrill Lynch two years ago. He kept telling her in a voice reminiscent of that movie Wall Street, that she "wouldn’t amount to much if she did not play hard ball.” His saying so, always made her defensive and she would end up mocking his firm’s cult-like conduct.

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Poor guy. It hadn’t been his fault and she knew two months in that they hadn’t a future. She had gone for drinks with him, a few of his colleagues and their dates, all of them in their Brooks Brothers suits, efficient haircuts and Blackberries looking like grown-up Children of the Corn. Each gave her pitied looks, when she told them she taught English at an all-girl's private high school before one of them simply declared that he did not see the point of that since, ‘nobody reads anymore.’
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Scarily enough, they all agreed.

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They broke up a few weeks later and the thing is that she missed him for a long time though not for the reasons one aught to. He was very efficient and goal-oriented in all aspects of life - even in bed. She missed his eager, downright determined approach to seeing her cum every time. Hell, she even missed his happy little self-congratulatory cheer at the end.
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Though why he should be the catalyst to her gripping a small, self-earned fortune to her chest in some stranger's yard when her life until him had been just as tragic she would never know. Maybe she should leave and try to remember first how she had heard of the gypsy. It was too late. She’d been spotted by someone who was looking at her as if he was expecting her.

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The gypsy was not at all, as she had expected. She'd thought maybe an old woman with a European accent, kind of like the ones you see on television but instead he was a soulful twenty-something.
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He resembled one of those guys that sold hemp and cannabis paraphernalia on Queen Street West except for his eyes. They seemed a thousand years old. That and he had a voice that did not at all fit with his appearance. It was steady, humble and sure.

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After scolding her for walking around with that amount of cash, he had her put one thousand dollars of the money in an ugly clay urn. “That,” he told her, “Will be my fee. The rest, you and I will decide on together once you have told me why you came.”
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Can you imagine it? She there with her year's salary, hoping for guidance only to have him ask her ‘why she has come.’ Surly he was the worst gypsy in the history of the world and still she had spent the entire Saturday afternoon with him making homemade pasta and sauce with tomatoes from his garden in the backyard.

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She couldn’t remember having said anything of herself or her life but she must have for sometime after they had eaten and watched several episodes from the Faulty Towers marathon on BBC Canada he made a pot of tea and said, “You have said enough and now we must decide where you go from here.”
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He poured her a cup of the sweet red tea, which he had her drink while he put, in front of her a compass, three business cards and a pendant bearing the likeness of St Anne. Then he said, “Those are for you. The cards are for a real estate agent, a money manager and travel agent. You are to go Argentina for ten days next winter. The compass, you will need on the third day you’re in Argentina. On that day you are to rise with the sun and head north for three hours starting at seven o’clock the rest will reveal itself to you. Oh and the pendant is of the patron saint of childbirth. It is to help you through your first pregnancy.”

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Evie had a million questions following this but the gypsy would say no more than, “Trust yourself and those I’ve sent you to. Now leave one of your cards in place of one of mine on the table by the door and give it to one you feel deserving of my guidance."

My love, my care,

Simone