ELI S. EVANS

Night with a Medium

A certain function facility organized a “Night with a Medium.” Buy your tickets now! the electric billboard posted near the side of the highway exhorted passersby.

“Fancy that!” enthused Derek Radicchio – better known by his friends and family as “the Radish” – when he caught wind of this upcoming event. You see, at precisely that time he was very much hoping to find out what was ultimately going to happen between him and Suzette Vibratto, who following what had for him had been a happy partnership of a year and six months had recently left him for Boris Leathervest, her manager at the local video rental store where she worked on Saturdays and alternate Wednesdays.

Around town, rumor had it that Suzette had been engaging in acts of coprophagy with Leathervest, and if this were true, the Radish forgave her for it in advance, just as he forgave her for leaving him in the first place. Indeed, he would have even forgiven her for becoming an esthetician, notwithstanding the fact that during the course of their cohabitation, he had asked her on no fewer than several occasions to tweeze his overgrown eyebrows and she had on each and every one of those occasions steadfastly refused, remarking: “What do I look like, an esthetician?”

In fact, she did look a bit like an esthetician, which was part of the reason the Radish had been so persistent in asking her to tweeze his eyebrows, but evidently, she didn’t see herself that way. Actually, she dreamed of becoming an actress of the sort who performed bit parts in television commercials for car insurance companies. She was especially keen to play the animals a lot of those commercials feature, in part because the animals rarely have any lines, and it so happened that Suzette was terrible at memorizing lines. But getting back to the matter at hand, what the Radish really meant when he said he forgave her for what she had done, and even for what she might yet do, was that in spite of it all he’d be willing to take her back if ever she offered him the opportunity to do so. Indeed, the Radish would have happily waited for all eternity for such an opportunity were it forthcoming, but at the same time, he was ever more aware that there was a price of be paid for this waiting, and that it would be unwise to go on paying that price were he paying it in vain. To wit, Chloe Avenida had as of late been knocking at his door, and if the Radish knew for a fact that Suzette was never coming back, he might well let Avenida in before, concluding that either he wasn’t home or, having mistaken her for a Jehovah’s Witness, pretending to not be at home, she moved on to knocking at someone else’s door. After all, though Avenida was no Suzette, with her long, blond hair – a little coarse, to be sure, but then again, some of the most beautiful horses the Radish had ever met had had very coarse manes – and a robust body of the sort that would have looked right at home in a Bavarian dirndl, she undoubtedly belonged to that category of woman with whom one could enjoy a lifetime of satisfactorily pleasurable domestic adventures. Yet, to reiterate, she was no Suzette, and if someone could look into a crystal ball and tell the Radish that someday Suzette would return, he’d send Avenida away without hesitation. That’s where the medium came in.

Without further delay, the Radish rushed down to the function facility ticket office to buy himself a ticket.

“I’d buy two,” he divulged to the woman at the ticket window, “but I’m not sure what the use of that would be, seeing as I’m only one man – or should I say, one Radish?”

“That’ll be one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents,” the woman answered.

“One hundred and thirty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents? But the sign right there says twenty-five dollars.”

“True,” said the woman, “but that doesn’t include the processing fee.”

“No matter,” said the Radish. “I’d pay a million if that’s what it cost and I happened to have it, and if that’s what it cost and I didn’t have it, I’d rob a bank or even kill a man to get it, because I really have to find out once and for all whether, metaphorically speaking, Suzette is, from my perspective, a boomerang or a rocket ship.”

“Word around town is that she’s an ass eater,” said the woman at the ticket window.

“Yeah, well no one asked you,” the Radish snapped back.

+

On the night of the “Night with a Medium,” clad in his finest finery and carrying an umbrella the handle of which had been whittled to resemble the head of a Canvasback duck, the Radish arrived daringly early at the function facility, only to find himself already at the back of an exceedingly long line. Actually, he didn’t really mind the waiting, which gave him a chance to fantasize about his future escapades with Suzette or, should his hopes of such a future be dashed by the medium, Chloe Avenida; but just imagine how dismayed he was, at last reaching the front of the line, to discover that the gentleman he’d been waiting to see, sitting with his head wrapped in a turban of multicolored fabric on the other side of a folding table atop which numerous repurposed Hanukkah candles had been ceremoniously arranged, was none other than Leathervest himself.

“Leathervest,” the Radish hissed between gritted teeth.

“Radicchio,” nodded Leathervest, declining to address him by his nickname in what could only be interpreted as a sign of disdain. “Many thanks for attending my event. So far, it’s looking quite lucrative, wouldn’t you say? With any luck, I’ll make enough money to buy a new set of rubber sheets, which would come in quite handy considering that my old ones have been, shall we say, worn thin, thanks to heavy, heavy, heeeeaaaaa-vy usage.”

“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled the Radish. “Congratulations and all that, but seeing as I’m the customer here, why don’t you cut it out with the boasting and tell me what the future holds for me and Suzette.”

Leathervest shrugged. “No clue.”  

“No clue?” The Radish threw up his hands. “I thought you were supposed to be a medium!”

“Correction,” replied Leathervest. “I used to be a medium, but I hogged out big time over the holidays and now I’m a large.”

In recent months, Eli S. Evans has published work in several now or possibly soon-to-be defunct literary magazines, as well as some with a more promising future. A small book of small stories was published in 2021 with Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera. A larger book of mostly even smaller stories has just been published by the same, so instead of being a cad, go buy it for not that much money!