The hot air seems to suck the life out of everything it touches. Even sitting in the shade, beneath the picnic umbrella covering this patio table, my salad seems to shrivel and brown a little more with each caress of the wind.
Eating lunch outside had seemed like a good idea, having forgotten about the heat while walking air-conditioned halls. Now I am in a race, to finish the salad before it shrivels but not in so rude a manner as to offend the trio of older ladies at the table nearby, their glances already seemed to be judging me because of the jacket I was wearing when I sat down in the heat.
Eating quickly is confounded all the more by the packet of papers I am holding in my left hand, trying to read them while my right hand holds the fork that is spearing stray bits of lettuce to be eaten.
The trio of ladies stop sneaking glances at me for a moment, their attention stolen away by the crowd of high school students walking past behind me. A few small mixed groups of asian students, a couple young ladies with their heads and faces covered whom I assume to be from an arabic culture, and a couple of adults herding them along with their t-shirts listing
them as being staff at an international high school of some sort.
The noisy chatter of children fades away as they go around the corner of a building nearby, and in their absence the sound of a choral hymn being sung in another nearby building can be heard, the sound of a lecture being given followed by applause, both momentarily drowned out by the bell-tower tolling the mid-afternoon hour.
As the echoes of the bell fades I can make out for the first time distinct bits of the conversation the ladies are having at the table near me. At first I think it is ecclesiastical, an argument upon the finer points of faith or religion. Then the one with her back to me puts something on the table before them, their voices gasp, and a book is fluttered through to find out what exactly it means to have the High Priestess placed inverted in the tarot reading they are carrying out.
“It means there is something you are looking for, something you want, a vision you seek” one lady says after consulting her book.
“But it is upside down,” says another of the trio.
“She is looking to the left, to the past, it is something she wanted or saw,” interjects the third.
They are still arguing the nuance of that one card, the High Priestess, second trump of the Major Arcana, as I get up to leave. Their books disagreeing on the finer nuances of interpretation. I draw their attention for just a moment, the metal leg of the chair I am rising from scrapes noisily across the paving stones of the patio. They pause in their talk, and when they resume they have cast their voice at the level of a whisper instead, as if suddenly they are afraid of being overheard, of whatever future or past they are divining being listened to by strangers while they sit at a table in the open outdoor patio.