The Fortune Quilt by Lani Diane Rich

hand-painted sign hanging out front, The Café . I pull to the side of the road, run my hands through my still-damp hair, and step out of my car. The air is warm for November and smells faintly floral. I don’t smell desert. There are trees. And not an adobe house in sight. There’s something about being surrounded by colonial-style buildings all cramped together on a windy street that makes me feel a bit like Dorothy on her first day in Oz.
    There are two men sitting outside The Café . They are on wrought-iron chairs at a tiny circular table with a mosaic surface. They look like they have nowhere in particular to go, which seems odd to me for a Tuesday morning, but then again, this is Bilby. It’s another world. They smile at me as I pass them and I smile back.
    When in Rome…
    I push into the café. The walls are a strange cross between lime-green and sage, and they are covered with paintings, most of them small, about the size of your standard sheet of copy paper. Next to each is a 3x5 card with the artist’s name and the price of the work. A café/gallery. Interesting.
    I am about to go to the counter and ask for the biggest, baddest coffee they’ve got, and then something on the back wall catches my eye. I walk over to it. It’s an oil painting on a small square of canvas, a portrait of a woman with swirling dark hair framing her face. Her hands are covering her face, and all you can see are her eyes. She could be laughing, she could be crying, it’s not clear. As a matter of fact, from moment to moment, I change my mind as to how she’s feeling. One thing I am sure of, once I see all the little swishes of color that make up the painting, is that this was painted by Will. I glance at the 3x5 card next to it.
     
    Untitled
    Will Kelley
    $40
     
    Damn. I’m good.
    “Can I get you something?”
    I turn to see a girl with pink hair and an overstated affection for black eyeliner standing next to me, her pen hovering expectantly over her order pad.
    “Yes,” I say, my eyes automatically floating back to the painting. “I’d like a venti Viennese latte, double the espresso, to go please.”
    “Decaf?” she asks.
    I turn to her. “No. Definitely not.”
    “Mmm hmm.” She scribbles. “Skim milk or soy?”
    Ummm. “Whole?”
    Her eyebrows raise just a smidge, but she scribbles, then grins at me. “Okay. That’ll be just a minute.”
    She walks away and I turn my attention back to Will’s painting. For some reason, I can’t tear my eyes away. I am determined to figure out what the subject of the painting is feeling. I look at her hands; they are smallish, delicate. Her left pinky is sticking out a bit, which seems like a whimsical thing, so she must be laughing. But then, in her eyes, there’s a slight glistening at the bottom, as though she’s about to cry. But then, people do cry with laughter.
    I really can’t tell.
    Minutes must have gone by, because the girl is back with my latte.
    “That’ll be $3.95,” she says.
    I dig into my purse and hand her my credit card, nodding toward the painting. “And this, please.”
    She smiles brightly, seemingly thrilled that some art is moving.
    “Yeah,” she says. “The artist is wonderful, isn’t he?”
    I nod. He gave me a place to sleep and shower. Buying one little painting is really the least I can do.
     
    ***
     
    When I get to my car, it is ringing. I put the painting (wrapped carefully in blue tissue paper and green ribbon by Black-Eyeliner girl, otherwise known as Allegra, who is taking a year off before college to help her father keep the café running, Bilby people don’t keep much to themselves, I’m discovering) into the passenger seat and grab my cell phone out of the ashtray. I look at the caller ID panel on the front of the phone.
    It’s Christopher.
    I put the phone down on the passenger seat.
    It rings one more time, then silences. Right now, he is probably leaving me a message on my voice mail, a realization which makes my entire