“I used to be psychic, but I drank my way out of it.” — Mark E. Smith

For nearly a quarter-century, there’s been a psychic living on or next door to the corner of Cornwallis and Lawndale Drive, a modest sign in the window advertising her supernatural services. Her name is Dorine and it’s been exactly four years since I impulsively dropped in for a crystal reading and then wrote all about it in “Wandering Billy.” I decided a return visit was in order.

I consider myself a skeptic but with an inclination to believe that it’s possible for someone to possess psychic powers. An interest was sparked when Mrs. Jean Newman, an English teacher at Page High School in the 1970s (she’d previously taught at Grimsley and later at Smith), decided to forgo her planned Shakespeare lesson, and instead regaled us with stories about transcribing clairvoyant sessions conducted by Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), known as “The Sleeping Prophet.” In subsequent research, I could find no record of her involvement, but it may be telling that Cayce’s lifelong transcriber and unmarried collaborator’s last name was Davis, Mrs. Newman’s maiden name.

My own personal interactions with psychics are limited but not totally lacking. In Los Angeles in the early-1980s, I worked on a two-week long TV pilot for a daily Entertainment Tonight-style program centered around unexplained phenomenon. One of my assignments was to ferry “psychic” Sylvia Browne — that flatulent phony Montel Williams foisted on his audience of shut-ins in the 1990s — to and from the studio. Afternoon television’s Aunt Hagatha, her future forecasting and accuracy when it came to pinpointing missing persons was about as precise as that of a toddler straddling a toilet. I was the only person that would have anything to do with that arrogant gasbag, while everyone else on set avoided her like the plague she became. Whether they were previously acquainted with Sylvia Browne or that was just a visceral reaction, either way, it was perfectly understandable.

During those two weeks, I relished this rarefied opportunity to delve daily into every one of the Whitman’s Sampler of astrologers, tarot card slappers, clairvoyants, palm readers, fortune-tellers and prognosticators serving as the production’s on-site consultants. Shades of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network, the program even had a soothsayer predicting next week’s headlines. Truthfully, most of those freelancers I conversed with on that project came across as very credible, genuinely gifted in their particular mastery of the mystic arts.

I’ve had more than a few profound occurrences in my lifetime that can only be explained by some form of sixth sense at play. So I entered into my Friday afternoon session with Dorine, our psychic on the corner, with an open — but cautious — mindset. Asked what medium (so to speak) she excelled in, Dorine insisted that she doesn’t communicate with the spirit world; hers, she says, is an intuitive gift.

Being a somewhat spiritual and self-aware individual, just about everything she told me about myself was spot on, corresponding precisely with her reading four years ago. I am, after all, the same person, so a radically different assessment would have been troubling.

Could she have recognized that I had written about her years ago? She only had my cell number and the name “William.” That was also the case last time. Practically the first thing she asked was, “Have you ever thought about being a writer?” But then she went on —  just five minutes after meeting me — to detail traits about myself that I’m convinced no-one could possibly detect or infer from anything I’ve ever written. Maybe I do walk around with my heart on my sleeve at times, but I went sleeveless that day.

As much as I was leaning into the experience, I was determined to remain impartial, stubbornly so. When Dorine asked what my question was to her, I straight-up expressed a desire to understand whether or not she actually possessed psychic abilities. “I feel like I’m under a microscope,” she said at one point. “You are — I apologize!” was my response, attempting to quell any resulting negativity that I might be inadvertently harboring. What she expressed to me, and I agree wholeheartedly, is that, if a person is not receptive, she can’t possibly do what she does. The reluctant subject throws a block in the pathway, so to speak. Therein lies the conundrum underlying any psychic reading.

In our first meeting four years earlier, Dorine informed me I would be entering into a relationship in the next year, likely with a physician, that would involve extensive traveling. No such luck. This time it was predicted that traveling to New York is in my near future — not outside the realm of possibility. She indicated money was not a problem for me and, I suppose when you don’t have any, it isn’t much of a bother. Suggesting that I had been a healer in a previous lifetime, she wondered if that had manifested itself in this existence? Possibly so, but if she had intuited instead that I was once a corny 1930s’ nightclub lounge act, that would have resonated more clearly.

It was more hit than miss, however. “So what are you doing with art?” Dorine asked. I was preparing a canvas that day to do a painting, only the second time I’ve done so in the last 20 years. I do feel she accurately described the painting I completed a few months ago, which is difficult, given that it’s an abstract. That genuinely impressed me. And when it came to identifying who I am at the core of my being, she was amazingly dead on.

What should one expect from a psychic reading? The Oracle of Delphi or a modern day Edgar Cayce connecting to God’s messengers on the other side? Is keen insightfulness, which this lady clearly possesses loads of, proof of clairvoyance? What impressed me most was that, when told she was wrong, she didn’t equivocate or try to say, “Maybe that’s true of someone close to you.” She simply said, “Well, that’s what I’m picking up.”

If you’ve never sat for a psychic reading and you’re psy-curious, or, even if you have, Dorine seems like the real deal? She definitely doesn’t come across as a con artist or huckster. And I’d know because I had a glancing dance with one of those shady characters decades ago, not to mention witnessing Sylvia Browne’s naked fakery on display. Dorine’s advice to me was exactly what I needed to hear, what I had been telling myself, in fact. Of course, take this with a grain of for-entertainment-purposes-only salt.

Now that I think about it, more than two decades ago, right about the time Dorine began her paranormal practice on the corner of Cornwallis and Lawndale, that parcel of land had been rumored to be the site of a Walgreens or some other big box store that would complement Lawndale Shopping Center, deeply upsetting the residents of that genteel Kirkwood acreage perimeter. Given how quickly the dominoes fell under Friendly Center’s encroachment into its surrounding neighborhoods, could there be an otherworldly explanation for the vanishing of that retail expansion project?

Or maybe, just maybe, I’ve been watching too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries.