I was wasting away in Scottsdale, drinking through the last embers of what little money I had left. Sundays were for debauchery, the kind you could almost pass off as brunch if you threw an omelet next to your beer. OSHA Brewery was the church, and I was a devout attendee. The congregation? A flock of women—mostly divorcees, a few married ones looking for validation, all leaning hard into bottomless mimosas and their own versions of self-discovery.
I was the only guy most of the time. Their token. The adopted brother. The pet project.
It was good conversation, mostly. Sometimes someone would slip—too much tequila, not enough common sense—and suddenly, the dynamic would shift. Late-night phone calls. “Oops, I’m drunk” texts. Once in a while, things happened. But mostly, it was an arm’s-length kind of friendship, just close enough to be interesting, just far enough to avoid real consequences.
Then one Sunday, Jennifer showed up jittery, eyes too bright, smile too wide—wired like she’d been double-fisting espressos and enlightenment.
“You guys HAVE to see this psychic I went to,” she gushed, practically bouncing on her toes. “He’s amazing. Seriously, he knew EVERYTHING.”
She went on like that, spinning her tale, too hyped for her own good, too annoying for ours. We nodded, made the appropriate “huh” sounds, and tried to move on. But then Michelle took the bait.
Michelle, always the one to chase something if it had a mystical glow around it, started peppering Jennifer with questions. She wanted the psychic’s name, his number, where to find him, the whole deal.
Two weeks later, same bar, same table, same ritual.
Michelle walked in, looking like she had something to say. Someone asked about the psychic.
She sighed. “Eh. It was a little disappointing.”
Of course it was. Jennifer had oversold it, just like she oversold everything else.
We pressed for details anyway.
Michelle swirled her drink, shrugged. “He kept talking about how I was going to have the greatest sex of my life. That I was going to meet all these lovers. Have wild adventures. Just… me, me, me. It was weird.”
We all laughed. It was ridiculous, even for psychic bullshit.
“So I stopped him,” she continued, taking a sip. “I told him, ‘I have kids. I have a husband. That’s not my life. Maybe try plural instead of singular.’”
That’s when things got weird.
She said Tony—Tony with an “I,” because of course—changed. His whole demeanor shifted. The energy got heavier. He laid out his tarot cards with more intent.
Then he told her something different.
“He said my husband was tied to the house,” she said, her voice tightening. “That he was connected to it.”
She had cut him off, annoyed. “Obviously, he’s connected to it—we’re selling it. He lost his job. Of course he’s bummed about it.”
Tony just shrugged. “I’m just telling you what the cards say.”
Michelle brushed it off, wrote it off, left. She thought it was nonsense.
A few days later, she packed up the kids and drove to Washington to visit family, leaving her husband behind to fix up the house for the sale. The plan was simple. She’d enjoy her little getaway, he’d get things ready.
And then, on the drive back, she couldn’t reach him.
No calls. No texts. Just endless ringing.
She pulled up to the house late at night. The windows were dark. The driveway felt too still. She clicked the garage door opener, and the light flickered on.
There he was. Hanging from the rafters. Swinging.
When she told us, she barely cried. Not for him.
But when she talked about Tony—about how he had told her, about how he knew—that’s when she lost it. She shook. She sobbed.
And I sat there, half-drunk, staring at her, amazed.
Not because of the death. Not because of the tragedy.
Because she wasn’t crying over her dead husband.
She was crying because Tony had been right.
That’s when I decided I needed to see this Tony with an “I.”
I made an appointment.
Before I went, I drove to my little Catholic meditation room, the one with the faint smell of incense and old wood, and I sat there for thirty minutes in silence. Purged my thoughts. Cleared my mind. By the time I left, I was floating.
I drove down Camelback, parked outside a spiritual bookstore, and stayed in the car for another ten minutes, meditating.
Inside, Tony sat at a folding table, shuffling his deck. His eyes were half-open, egg whites visible, lost in some kind of trance. I waited until the exact time of my appointment before sitting down. First reading of the day—when he had the most energy, the most clarity.
He looked at me, still shuffling, and said, “Give me one word.”
No hesitation.
“Legal.”
He shuffled some more, tilting his head like he was listening to someone I couldn’t see. His lips moved slightly, nodding like he was in a conversation I wasn’t part of.
Then he laid the cards out in a pattern, stopping occasionally to murmur. “Mmm. Ah. Oh yeah.” He’d lay down a few more. “Oh, I see it. Mmm.”
Finally, he exhaled and tapped a card.
“You had past karma to pay for. That’s why you’re here in this life. To settle the debt.”
Debt. That one hit.
“You were meant to rise quickly. To make money. To live like a king. Because the real lesson was in losing it all.”
That made me sit up a little.
Make it. Lose it. Learn humility.
I thought about all the times I’d slept in my truck. The months I rented a room in a shitty casita. How I lost everything. How public my divorce was. The absolute spectacle of my failure.
Tony nodded like he saw it all. Like he had already heard the story from someone on the other side.
Then he tapped another card.
“The person coming after you legally doesn’t want money,” he said. “They just don’t want to see you happy.”
That sat heavy in the air. I stared at the card, like I could see it myself.
He tapped it again. “You were the best thing in her life.”
I almost laughed at that one.
“And that December, all legal issues will be dropped.”
And eventually, they were.
He pulled another card, studied it, then tilted his head again, listening. It was eerie, the way he would pause, like he was taking a call from the dead, like someone was feeding him my whole damn life. Then he smirked.
“Boy, you are a wild one.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’ve had a full and crazy life.”
I could only nod.
“But they want you to know—you’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with you. And you are free from the past life karma. You are free.”
I asked if I was still carrying the karma.
He smiled. “No. You’re free.”
He never said “divorce.” Never mentioned contracts or courts. I just said one word—and he unraveled my whole life in front of me.
I walked out of that bookstore with my hands in my pockets, the weight of something invisible finally lifting off my shoulders.
Maybe it was bullshit. Maybe he was just a good guesser.
Or maybe, just maybe, I had been carrying something for far too long that was never mine to begin with.
Either way, I felt lighter. And that was enough.
