21 Fortune
While we were making love the moon rose, and afterwards an elongated finger of moonlight fell across the bed, onto our naked selves. I knew I didn’t have long before she got up and went downstairs.
“You wouldn’t consider a second opinion?” I said. “Tarot or tea leaves or something?”
“Stay away from the tarot, Gus,” she said. “Those cards are Fortune’s spies. Every time you pick up a card, Fortune stirs and starts looking in your direction.”
“That’s bad?”
“Sooner or later. If Fortune smiles then you start to climb the wheel. But when you get to the top it just means you’re about to roll right back to the bottom.”
“To take another turn?”
“And fall again. Who needs it? No, the trick is to make Fortune forget all about you.”
2 Edges
3 The City of Necessity
4 Mother Thinks We are Lost
5 The Waves
6 The City of Dreams
7 Advice
8 Ratiocination
9 Turned Aside by Soft Words
10 Masterpiece
11 Janey Introduced
12 Disappearing
13 What a Librarian Doesn’t Do
14 Lost With All Hands
15 Janey’s House
16 I Go to Pieces in the Universe
17 The New Astrology
18 Places to Lie Down
19 Crazy People
20 Janey’s Decision
21 Fortune
22 Hiding
23 The Empty House
24 Kim Peck’s Sail Plan
25 A Message
26 A Contract Revised