"Honestly," a friend snorts later, "do you really believe that stuff?" Do I believe it? Let me just say that, given the landscape of my relationships with the opposite sex, it certainly makes a heck of a lot of sense that the real estate that supports romance would belong to someone else.

But Reiko isn't daunted. No matter, she says, there are other areas that might be ramped up. My bedroom, for example. It is sparsely furnished, with nearly bare walls and a gritty sisal rug, its dark-wood bed dressed in the plain white clothes it acquired two apartments ago, when I slept in the living room—my daughter had the sole bedroom—and I was trying to make the bed as couch-like, public, and unfussy as possible.Though we were married then, my daughter's father traveled so much I can barely remember him ever sleeping on it. Come to think of it, the mattress and bed pre-date him, and have not played host to too much drama. Do I get to keep it? (I like my mattress; it's relatively thin, in contrast to the pneumatic, fat mattresses that are standard these days and for which I'd have to buy new sheets.) Reiko says she'll think about it. She finds the room a bit sterile, though. "It's also very exposed, isn't it?" she says.

It is set on a corner overlooking Second Avenue and 11th Street, with windows facing west, over St. Mark's in the Bowery Church, and north, from where the churning, south-moving river of traffic that is Second Avenue seems to pour its entire contents into the room. Today, like every cloudless day, it is also ablaze with afternoon sun. That's good, right?

Reiko hesitates. "From an energetic perspective, this room could be good for romance," she says. "It is certainly charged energetically." She'd like to see it as more of a cocoon, however, with soft things underfoot (rather than the punitive prickle of sisal) and blackout shades on those windows. "What's this?" she asks, peering under the bed at the boot boxes, old picture frames, and radiator cover that I've (cleverly) stored there. "That's no good," she says, shaking her head. "That's stuck energy."

"I knew a guy once who had all his back taxes stored under his bed," she continues solemnly. "He had a lot of difficulty moving forward with his life."

Right, I say, nothing under the bed.

Further, Reiko would like to see things in pairs in here: pictures, for example, and a table on each side of the bed, with lamps to top them. A vertical beam that is pointing straight at us causes her to raise a delicate eyebrow.

"That's a poison arrow," she says, alarmingly. "Not so great for health. Cover it." Cover it? A massive steel beam wrapped in 75-year-old plaster? Relax, she tells me. A plant will do, or hanging fabric. Got it: Buy a huge plant, I note. Reiko, a politic young woman whose sense of tact is as sophisticated as her sense of style, sits down suddenly.

"Listen," she says gently, "feng shui can set up a space to attract whatever it is you want to attract, but you need to tell the space what it is you want. Until that's clear for you, you can't tell the space what to do."

Right, I say again. Tell the space what I want. What do I want?

"Call me with your questions," she says as she leaves, "I want to know what happens."