Excerpt from “Glass-Stoppered Bottles,” by Steve Duffy

There was, of course, everything you’d expect. A carousel, which played Auprés de ma blonde and the theme from Genevieve; a dodgem circuit; a shooting gallery, much patronized by the blouson boys and their giggling girlfriends; a hoopla; a Tunnel of Love; and row after row of booths, ranging from pancake stalls, hot-dog vendors and a strange sort of puppet show through to what appeared to be a genuine gypsy caravan where fortunes were told by one Arlovy, l’Androgyne. Around the perimeter of the island chugged a miniature train, its open wagons loaded with squealing children and their stoical guardians. Jenny bought a crêpe aux cerises, won a pocket-sized polar bear by throwing darts at playing cards, took two turns on the carousel, one on the Tunnel of Love, and wandered the bright noisy lanes of the fair ‘till dusk, caught up in the press and rush of happy people. On the miniature ferris wheel she swung above the packed and glittering island, enjoying the reflections of the multicolored carnival lights across the dark waters of the estuary. Again she spotted the gypsy caravan, away off from the other stalls at the end of its lane, and resolved to blow a few francs more on a reading of her fortune.

A couple of the teenaged boys had by this time begun to register her presence as an unattached female, and wolf-whistled as she passed by them on her way through to the far side of the fair. Jenny ducked down a side-alley, and approached the caravan from the perimeter, skipping across the tracks of the miniature train and away from the fairground crowds. Trade, brisk elsewhere, seemed to be passing the fortune teller by. You’d think they would’ve foreseen that, she thought, and giggled to herself. The door of the caravan stood half-closed. She knocked, and a voice of indeterminate gender bade her enter.

In English, she realized, as she stepped up into the caravan; that much at least was impressive. Inside was impressive too, in its way: every inch of wall space was taken up with corn-dollies and horse brasses and shelf after shelf of glass-stoppered bottles, each containing a weird nebulous substance which was grayish-silver, iridescent, the color of liquid lead in light suspension, and seemed neither fluid nor vapor, but something in between the two states. Perhaps it was a quality of the glass, which was of a curious burnished tint; either that or the lighting, which came exclusively from an oil lamp on the table in the middle of the room, behind which sat the fortune teller.