When The Fates Have Got Your Number

The temple of Apollo in Delphi was a glorious, golden-stone, sun-drenched ruin high in the mountains, which you could see perfectly well from the parking area. Fortunately, you could also access the coffee stand from the parking area, as the locals were pretty astute when it came to avoiding regulations.

I used my fairly meagre retainer to grab a cup, which I figured was a better use than spending it on the entrance fee.

Technically, my client might think otherwise.

Technically, I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of the things my client was thinking, so the cup of coffee easily won out.

I had a job. It was kind of a scammer’s job, but occasionally it paid.

I’m a witch. None of that white-witch, blood-witch stuff, it’s more of a ‘whatever it takes to pay the rent’ kind of a deal. If I think it’s going to help, I wear a long flowy dress and a little sword thingy on a necklace. Sometimes I carry a few candles and sage in my purse. Luckily my reputation precedes me.

Once, I cast a spell. It made the local news (here, where I’m also ‘that eccentric foreigner’, which probably helped). It wasn’t actually hocus pocus, but rather a sincere wish to understand what had happened, a purely coincidental arrangement of smoke and mirrors, and a blast of intuition so extreme and sudden that I found myself pointing at a bystander and shouting “she did it!”

The woman in question tried to run away. It was all very dramatic. She’d been defacing monuments undetected for years. When you live in a land of millennia old temples, people take that sort of thing seriously.

It hasn’t really happened again (the intuition, not the defacing monuments. That probably happens all the time, although that one lady went to jail).

These days its just me traipsing around looking for clues and figuring things out like a regular detective. I get paid about the same either way, but my clients are far more gullible than a detective’s usually are, which makes things a bit easier.

I took my cup and wandered over to the nearest park bench, where a cat came to join me. It sat half on my shoe, squinted at me, then sprawled out with it’s eyes closed. Which shows that a stray cat has better sense than I do.

I arranged myself only slightly more upright and pulled out my binoculars. I’d been charged with finding a scrap of paper at a tourist site. My chances, I figured, were extremely low. What was worse, the scrap of paper held the phone number of a woman called Sophie, who my client assured me was the most beautiful woman in the world, and who he’d almost successfully picked up yesterday, then had second thoughts about, and now was having another change of heart and wanted to call her after all. Which is fine, you know, if it was all on his own time. But I couldn’t help thinking that if he was that hot for her he would have figured that out yesterday and getting someone else to do the running around afterwards is all a bit creepy.

I mean, what if I actually found Sophie’s number? I’d be responsible for her having to let him down gently, or else for him needing to explain to her where her phone number had been before he actually called her.

Wherever that may be.

So my plan was this: I was going to sit here with my binoculars, taking in the sites from a distance. And if, chance against chance, I actually found what he was looking for - well and good. And if not, I’d phone him and say my witchy craft was on the blink, keep the retainer, and leave him to try to pick up some other woman.

It was a good plan. I just hoped he never saw what it looked like in action as I soaked up the sun on a park bench outside a tourist site he thought he’d paid my entrance fee for.

I could have stayed there all day. I’m pretty sure that cat was going to. But actually after an hour or so I was startled by a little golf cart rumbling up to empty the bins. Although that’s not really an auspicious moment to take my intuition from, I gave it a good hard look. And then I sat up straight and looked again.

The golf-cart was being driven by an Amazon.

I mean, she was gorgeous. Hair all swept up off her neck. A uniform shirt in khaki that showed off her strong arms. Collar bones peaking through at the collar. And she was looking at me with that slightly bemused look that the locals always gave tourists.

Or smiling. Maybe she was just smiling. It felt like the sun was shining just for me, and I would do anything to get a bit more of that attention.

“Hey, excuse me, do you speak English?” I asked her.

“Nai,” she told me. Nodded her head. “How can I help?”

Her voice was rich and warm.

“A friend of mine lost something here yesterday. A scrap of paper”, which, as conversational gambits go, it wasn’t really ideal.

“It must have been a very important scrap of paper?”

“He thinks it was his fate” I told her solemnly.

I could see her deciding whether or not to debate that one, but then with a shrug she gestured me to join her on her golf-cart.

Let me tell you … I sat on her golf-cart. You better believe I did. And there wasn’t much room on that tiny bench seat. She was taller than me. And somehow more put together. I wracked my brains trying for some casual conversation. No luck.

Except, probably a couple of minutes too late to sound sensible: “Hey, where are we going?”

She smiled at me, all sunny competence.

“You wanted to look through rubbish didn’t you?”

Oh right. Yeah, of course.

After a few more awkward moments she asked me,

“He’s a good friend, this friend of yours?”

It is very important in the witch-crafty detective business, not to make any assumptions about why people ask certain questions.

Answer in long form, I counselled myself. Perhaps draw her out a little. My throat seemed a little dry.

“Um, No?”

“But he has you looking for his lost thing?” She pressed.

“Oh well, no. He’s actually paying me to do that.”

She gave me her full attention at that, so I felt I needed to elaborate.

“I mean, I am a witch. Well, not a witch, actually, a detective, but he thinks I might be a witch and might magically find what he threw away yesterday. Because he thinks it might be his fate”

“But he didn’t think that yesterday when he threw it away?”

I gave her a rueful sort of smile.

“Maybe he was fated to wait a day?” I suggested.

“Maybe his fate deserved a chance for second thoughts?” She replied.

The drive took us into the grounds-keeper’s shed. Inside, I felt I was glimpsing a very prosaic behind-the-scenes of the otherwise majestic national icon. A kitchenette, a work table, some gardening tools. The calendar above the sink was set to the wrong month, with a beautiful picture of a roof-top bar on the ocean.

Turns out the rubbish was dumped into a big skip and my new friend was showing me exactly how I should climb in.

The fates were pushing me. I had my good shoes on too.

Never-the-less, I dutifully climbed into the skip. I rummaged half-heartedly, while the Amazonian grounds-keeper watched me with one eye-brow raised.

“Are you really looking for a scrap of paper?” She asked me.

I guess I wasn’t looking very hard. I didn’t bother answering, kind of half smiled.

“Because if you are really looking, perhaps the oracle would have the answer you are seeking?”

I laughed. “There’s no such thing as an Oracle, well not in this century anyway.”

“It is true. She only spoke in riddles anyway. She may have made this man believe he had his fate on a piece of paper, when really she was trying for something else altogether.”

“For him to waste his money, I suppose. Did she charge for her services?” I asked

The Amazon had a lovely laugh. “She did! But then she was not a fake”.

You know that record screeching sound?

“You think I’m a fake?” I asked

“You told me you are ‘fake’!”

In my head a search party went out for the end of a sentence that started with “yeah, but …”. They didn’t find it. Missing in action.

So I am a fake. I’d have had no chance at an Amazonian grounds-keeper anyway. And I was dirty now. I may as well look for the wretched phone number.

I put a little more effort in, and was knee deep in ice cream wrappers when another grounds-keeper arrived. An older man, grouchy and worn, he gave me the once over then made his observations in his own language, to his colleague. I didn’t bother following along. I could understand the tone well enough. It started with ‘What the …?’ And ended somewhere around ‘Crazy lady’ with a brief bypass into ‘I hope she isn’t making a mess of the rubbish’.

I think I mentioned I’m fairly intuitive?

Well, the two of them discussed this for a few minutes, until the grouchy man threw his hands in the air, and the Amazon gave him a very loud ‘look’.

She cleared her throat, then said to me

“I’m heading off to finish my rounds. I hope you find what you are looking for”.

I couldn’t think of anything to say in return, but watched her retreating back like it was the last sane thing I would ever see.

How do I get myself into these messes?

Grouchy man grumbled at me, then pointed at the clock. “You have half an hour before the rubbish truck comes” he told me.

I’d like to say I spent that half an hour methodically and efficiently sifting and sorting through rubbish. Mostly I sulked. I did move things about a bit, and every time there was the slightest noise from outside, I looked up, hoping for something to brighten my day.

Nothing did. I didn’t find any useful looking scraps of paper either.

If I was a slightly worse person, I probably would have written a fresh one for him. Pick some likely looking ‘Sophie’ from a dating site, and help two strangers out, all for this one low fee! But truth is, I was too miserable to be bothered. So when a truck rumbled up outside and grouchy told me to get out of the skip, I actually felt pretty relieved.

My shoes were filthy. I had sticky stains where ice cream wrappers and coffee cup lids had spilled on me. I had no phone number, and the one potential saving grace to the whole day was a brief encounter with someone who realised I was a fake and had stormed off.

Perhaps it was time I rethought this witchy-detective thing. It wasn’t really working out.

I washed my hands, and called my client and give him the news. At least I could express fairly genuine regret.

I made the call in the grounds-keeper’s shed. I didn’t bother hiding what I was doing, and apart from a few sly looks, the grouch just turned his back and got on with what-ever it was he wasn’t doing. So I didn’t realise when that hot Amazon turned up again. I didn’t realise she was standing in the door eaves dropping on me trying to let the client down gently. I only noticed her at all, because grouchy snapped a stern “Sophie!” In her direction.

Wait, What? Sophie?

I looked at her. Well I had been told she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and clearly anyone wanting to find her could do so at her place of work. Had I spent an hour in a rubbish bin looking for her number when I could have just asked her?

Actually, why didn’t I just ask her?

She was looking straight at me, like maybe she knew what I had been looking for all along.

I hung up on my client. My dress was not very clean. My shoes had seen better days. I’d failed to earn my fee.

“Sophie?” I asked. I gave a tentative smile. “Do you think I could get your phone number?”

Sophie took on a look of mock seriousness.

“That depends” she told me. “What would you do with it, once you had it?”

My smile got wider. I knew the answer to this one.

“I don’t even need the number. I just want to ask you on a date. To a roof-top bar overlooking the ocean”.

“No clients?” She asked.

I shook my head. No way. This was my fate now and I wouldn’t be throwing it away for all the world.

Sophie beamed at me and smiled and nodded, and told me to wait for her to finish work.

Luckily I knew a good spot to get a coffee, and enjoy a spectacular view.

Sophie joined me on the park bench not long after, the sunset laid out in hues of orange and gold in front of us, and that one cat still lying where I’d left it hours ago. It squinted up at us as Sophie took my hand, almost as though it understood the day we’d had, before it stretched and walked away, leaving behind the scrap of paper it had been lying on all day, and the phone number incautiously scrawled on it.

A job well done, I’d say.