Fortunate.

"You will always get what you want though your charm personality."

This I know. Because the fortune-cookie fortune taped to my monitor tells me so.

---

Today is a letter-perfect October day, bright and sharp as a jack-o'-lantern knife. The wind is getting into everything like a new kitten, pulling and tearing at candleflame leaves and cardboard boxes and yesterday's headlines, until nothing is where it belonged but nothing is out of place.

We'd talked about meeting last night, but didn't; we'd both been dead tired, and the roads were slick and lethal with rain. Today, then, instead, for lunch, before I have to go to work.

Afterward, a little coffeeshop I'd been wanting to take her to, one that's half a curio store, antique toys and old magazines and real records.

Iced tea for her and a mocha for me, and without preamble, she empties her small purse on the table and starts organizing it. Little notes to herself in her spidery writing, that she pauses and puzzles over. Handfuls of movie tickets -- it seems to me, glancing over them, that half of them or more were for movies we'd seen together. She starts putting things back in her purse. One little slip of paper catches my eye -- a Chinese fortune of her own:

You will be successful in love.

I reach out, touch one finger to the words, and slide the paper across the table to her. She picks it up, reads it -- a small and private smile plays at her lips, her eyes focus on nothing in particular.

She doesn't say anything. She puts the paper back in her purse.

I don't say anything. I think of all the things I could say, in that one long moment, and just smile a private smile of my own.

---

It's a letter-perfect October day, bright and sharp as a jack-o'-lantern knife, and the wind is getting into everything like a new kitten, pulling and tearing at candleflame leaves and cardboard boxes and yesterday's headlines, until nothing is where it belonged. But not one single thing is out of place.