Saving the Adams Family

I had my fortune told by Doreena the other day on the Santa Monica Pier. She was offering a special on palm readings, $3 a palm or two palms for $5. I went for the two-palm special.

I place fortunetelling in the same category as human levitation and past-life regression, but anything metaphysical still intrigues me.

“X-Files” is my favorite television show, and I try real hard to believe in both the walking dead and in killer aliens from outer space.

A friend who owned a dog kennel told me once he had encountered a werewolf on a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The beast surely would have killed him, but my friend, whose name was Harry, has a way with animals . . . even, as it turned out, half-human animals.

He hollered “Sit!” and, wouldn’t you know it, the werewolf sat. Harry gave him a dog biscuit, which he always carries, and brought the werewolf home, where he trained him to beg, fetch, roll over and kill.

The kill part pertained only to those who would do Harry harm, which was not likely when the werewolf was around. No one would even approach Harry, much less attack him.

W.W., which is what Harry called him, disappeared one day and never returned.

Anyhow, Doreena, glancing from palm to palm, told me I would be rich and famous by November. I was hoping she’d say taller and thinner too, but you can’t have it all. I’ll settle for rich and famous.

*

I visited Doreena because I’d heard she was being kicked off the pier. First, I telephoned her attorney, Rosario Perry, who said she didn’t want to talk to the media. Or to the medium, I guess, since it was just me.

I dropped by the place anyhow and was able to ask a few questions without telling her who I was. I suppose it’s a form of ambush journalism, but I figured if she really had mystical powers, she’d have known who I was.

Well, actually, I did call her later and tell her I had been there, thereby solving the ethical question post factum. I slept easily that night.

There have been four Doreenas in the past 40 years. Two of them still exist. I spoke with the Dorothy-Doreena, a tiny, red-haired lady who read my palms behind a flowered screen, next to a crystal ball and a sign that said “Support your local police.”

The other living Doreena is Ruby. Before that there was Mary, the mother, and Aunt Isabelle, who started it all. Their last name is Adams. I call them Doreena in the collective sense, but you can think of them as the Adams Family.

Doreena is in trouble with the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corp., which wants to remove her from the premises because she’s never there.

She says well maybe she was a little late getting to her place a couple of times, but that’s in the past. Now she’s there regularly.

Perry says the corporation just doesn’t want fortunetellers around because they’re not highbrow enough. Plans for a remodeled pier include a roller coaster and a nightclub, among other sophisticated forms of entertainment, but no Doreena.

Compromise on the issue just wasn’t in the cards, so they’re going to court.

*

John Gilchrist, who runs the restoration corporation, says Doreena is his friend but, because of her erratic schedule, she’s not properly serving the pier clientele. When people wanna know the future, they wanna know it NOW!

Perry says his client spent $20,000 moving into a trailer in a quiet corner of the pier and is not about to move again. It’s painted blue and white and is adorned with stars and a crescent moon. Harry says W.W. would have loved it.

Gilchrist insists she can’t stay there because that’s where the nightclub will be. He offered her a place in an amusement section, but she turned it down as demeaning. “The sisters feel they’re a profession and not an amusement,” he said. “They’re not easy to deal with.”

So he wants to drop-kick them into the bay, crystal ball and all.

For her part, Doreena wishes everyone would just be nice. “We’ll all go back to the way we were,” she said. “I’ll put lights around the place and it will be real pretty.”

No one, except possibly Doreena, knows how the whole thing will turn out when it goes to court, and she isn’t saying.

I’d like to see her stay right where she’s been for 40 years, bringing good news to those of us who require constant reassurance, even if we don’t believe what she says.

On the whole, I’d rather hear good news I didn’t believe than be told I’m going to be bitten by a rabid skunk and die foaming at the mouth. I’d probably believe every word of that.