Sssshhhhhhhhhh

Recently I acquired an unusual client, who wants to sell a house she has owned for two months, because the energy of the house does not suit her.  I had a very long and serious talk with her about the fact that she is going to lose money by doing this, and asked if she had considered a space-clearing ceremony, or possibly remodeling the kitchen.  She insisted that she had thought this through, and she had to sell.  She moved to the West Coast from Massachusetts, for reasons undisclosed, and about which I am loath to ask. 

She must have a vein of steel in her that she hides very well during normal discourse; she appears so fragile that I wonder how she survives her days, never mind making a cross-country move.  She is painfully thin; her face is all cheekbones and dark, haunted eyes, shadowed by a curling wealth of silver-threaded black hair that shimmers like raw silk.  She reminds me of some woodland creature out of its natural element, not quite tame; or perhaps a changeling, faery-cursed.  She speaks so softly that I can barely hear her, and although I am not at all a loud or boisterous person, I find myself murmuring and cooing back to her, fearful of startling her -- I can so easily picture her running away, never to be seen again.  I prefer to correspond with her by e-mail, rather than trying to talk to her on the phone; I type more quietly than usual, wondering if the immoderate clattering of my keys will somehow cause her to flinch and blanch when she opens my transmission.

After she told me why she felt she had to move, she looked me right in the eye and said, with a passion of which I would not have thought her capable: "Do you think I'm crazy?  Do you?"

I considered this for a moment.  She may, in fact, be crazy -- but not necessarily about this particular issue.  Therefore I did not answer her directly.  "Before you buy your next house," I said, "you must be quite certain that it has a mirror somewhere -- a mirror that is going to stay . . . usually the bathroom mirror.  Look in the mirror.  If the house wants you there, you will look like the best version of yourself.  It always works."

She nodded, twisting her frail hands together nervously.  "Good.  Good," she said.