Some told fortunes in teacups, but not Elaine. She saw futures in champagne, in the bubbles’ dancing. The pop of the effervescence whispered secrets to her intoxicated ears.

She first noticed this ability while toasting her sister’s married happiness. Although underage, Elaine tipped a glass of bubbly to cherry-stained lips and enjoyed her body’s heady response until there, in the golden glints of her flute, she saw the groom’s infidelity, saw the face of the other women. She discreetly threw up the wedding feast in the toilet, dismissed the vision, and sat out the rest of the evening’s dances.

When her sister sobbed into her lap a year later, Elaine stroked her hair and remembered. “I don’t know why he’s so different. He never has time for me any more,” her sister hiccuped.

Without meaning to, words bubbled over, and Elaine named the other women, outed the affairs in quiet fizzes and crisp pops. When her sister demanded to know how Elaine came by her knowledge, the girl stammered her confession.

Her relationship with her sister never fully recovered.

Elaine’s next experience with intoxicated prognostication came on her twenty-first birthday. Her sorority sisters took her to the best bars where people plied her with free alcohol. She saw nothing mystical in the shots or cocktails. It wasn’t until a smiling man with melted chocolate eyes bought her a flute of bubbly that the future revealed. She looked through the glass at him, a smile wobbling across her face. “You’re going to marry me,” she proclaimed, her index finger poking his broad chest.

“You’re drunk!” her sorority sisters laughed as they staggered away, Elaine’s wobbly weight managed between them. She tipped a last toast to him before she passed out.

Mimosas on Mondays brought clarity. She knew who would succeed at tests and who should avoid handsy professors. She shared her insight, but instead of gratitude, her sorority sisters began to avoid Elaine. They stretched politeness across frightened faces before they remembered other obligations elsewhere, away from Elaine.

Unless they needed her advice. Then, they plied her with clever champagne cocktails until her voice effused the required information.

So, thereafter, Elaine often kept champagne secrets until, one day her blurry sight blinked into the melted chocolate eyes of an arresting officer. “DUI Checkpoint, Miss. Please come with me.” She glided as though waltzing with him through the tests.

Instead of arresting her, he consulted his watch. “Let me give you a ride home,” he whispered.

She nodded. “That would be best.” The words brimmed like bubbles pushing at a cork.

They married two years later, with a champagne reception and a honeymoon cruise. She bubbled with wisdom, cheeks flushed and eyes blurry, while dining at the captain’s table. She saw his past in clusters, his present nearly clear, but there was no future in the bubbles. Sobered, she stared into the captain’s glass, and then her own. None of the flutes revealed anything other than an approaching end.

Her voice wavered. “Are there lifeboats aboard?”

The captain guffawed. “But of course there are, but not to worry.” He patted the table linen with pride. “This here’s an unsinkable ship.”

Elaine’s insides turned to lead. She knew of another supposedly unsinkable vessel, one that sailed in 1912. She scried the glasses and saw beyond the bubbles to a past more glittering than this present, a time frozen beneath an iceberg, where Mother Earth’s bones lay beneath star-captured waves.

Those bones whispered through the waves, searching for companions.

Elaine stood on wobbling legs, tears effusing from her. “We’re all going to die!” she proclaimed before she passed out.

Those who heard her chuckled dismissively. “Some people can’t hold their liquor.”

“Guess my girl’s had enough for the night!” Her husband carried her to their cabin and their eternal sleep.

– Kerry E.B. Black