horoscope
"Libra," he identified me without looking up, as I walked into the store. There was a pause as I contemplated the man seated before me, hunched over a paper and bundled in a cloak. His hat and beard met in a small rim of shadow. I walked back and forth along the edge of the outer display, looking at medieval gowns. There was no one else in the store.

After a moment, he continued:

Hydrogen and oxygen, water, the building block of life... repellant of fire. These elements, conflicting... progress and moving forward.

In a voice broken and trance-like, he was reading from the paper in his lap. I circled a rack of gentleman's shirts. I listened and could not leave as his voice grew smaller and emptier...

...and beware of travel this week.

He stopped. I stopped. A moment passed before he looked up.

"Oh," he said, "I'm sorry. If I'm reading I hardly notice when someone comes into the store."

"That's OK, I'm a Libra," I replied, not really saying what I meant.

"Really." Less a question than a statement, "When were you born?"

"October sixteenth."

"Funny," he said, "so was I."