The palm reader was in the second door, the one just right of the middle of the photo. Oh, she read Tarot cards too, but that seemed so much more a matter of random numbers than my own palm that has been with me all of my life – thick and thin, you know. I was surprised that she pulled the shades so sharply and how dark it became; how could she see the details of my palm?

She held my hand close and stared for a long time before speaking:

“You are here to find out about your dog?”

“Yes, we called him Woody, but his real name was Woodstock.”

“And how would your palm be the channel? Can’t you bring me his leash or his bowl; oh, or his ashes?”

“Excuse me ma’am, I’m sorry, but I seem to have come to the wrong place. You don’t understand about Woody and I.”

“Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy of the living.”  Shakespeare

Oh bother.