The Fortune Cafe (A Tangerine Street Romance)

by Wright, Julie

  She reached her car and leaned against it, trying to sort out her head. She felt swampy, just a glob of sticky, unpleasant feelings, mainly toward Blake. This would have been a rough enough day if it was his first time acting like this, but it wasn’t. Over the last couple of months this surly version of him showed up way more than the high-energy funny guy she’d fallen in love with the year before.

  She’d seen this happen with some of her friends: wedding stress put everyone on edge, then the big day happened, it was beautiful, and everything settled back to normal. But she didn’t remember any of her friends’ fiancés staying in a permanent bad mood the way Blake was. Several times she’d gotten so tired of it she’d had to fight the urge to get up and walk out of whatever space they were sharing— his space or her space. The restaurant table with their parents, apparently. Shame she’d lost that fight.

  She took a few deep breaths and focused on the objective for the rest of the afternoon: ignore Deborah’s barbs, be patient with Blake’s mood, and keep her dad from blowing up.

  She rested her head on her arms on top of the car, glad she couldn’t be seen from their table inside. She stayed that way for a minute or two, surprised that it helped to be still and quiet. The soft scuff of shoes on concrete sounded, and she looked up at her mom approaching, the worry her mom had been trying to hide all day written all over her face.

  “You doing okay, sweetheart?” she asked, once again resting her hand on Lucy’s back.

  “I am,” Lucy said. “I promise.”

  “This is not how you act when you’re doing okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Lucy sighed and turned to face her mother. “I’m sorry they’re being kind of rotten. Deborah’s still not over the location, and Calvin is... Calvin.”

  “And Blake?” Her mom said it carefully, the way someone might offer a breath mint to someone who needs it while trying not offend them.

  “Blake,” Lucy repeated, sagging against the car. “Blake is overwhelmed.”

  Her mom stepped closer and rubbed Lucy’s upper arms like she had when Lucy had needed comforting after some kid trauma. “Is it the wedding planning? Or the wedding?”

  Lucy shut her eyes as the words bounced around her head. Is it the wedding? Is it the wedding? Is it the wedding? Her mom had given voice to a fear that had been dogging Lucy for almost a month. What if this didn’t get better after the wedding? And even scarier, why was it stressing him out so much? She was handling all of the details, so why was he getting more wound up the closer it got? She couldn’t run away from the question with her mother asking it to her face.

  “He’s not like this, Mom. You saw how he was last summer.” They’d been dating almost six months when Blake had told her he thought it was time for them to meet each other’s families. They’d spent the Fourth of July with her parents in LA, oohing and aahing as the fireworks exploded over their neighborhood park and laughing around nightly meals of grilled carne asada from their favorite carniceria.

  “Honey, I don’t want you to think we don’t like Blake. We do. I’m not comfortable with what we’re seeing today, but we trust you. If this is what you want, I have no doubt you’re making the right decision. I guess I’m just asking if you’re sure.”

  Lucy straightened and smoothed her hair behind her shoulders, the fine blonde strands the same corn silk color as her mom’s, sliding coolly over her fingers. “I’m sure. But I’m going to be really glad when this wedding is done and we don’t have to stress about it anymore. I want my normal life back.”

  Her mom opened her mouth, closed it, and squeezed her arms again. “Nothing about your life has ever been normal, Lucky Lucy. And it doesn’t have to be. Ready to go in and eat?”

  Lucy eyed the restaurant door. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” And she hoped she had just told the truth.

  Emma was just arriving with their food when they reached the table. Emma set each dish in front of its owner, and everyone tucked into their lunches.

  “This is excellent, sweetheart. Good choice,” her dad said.

  “I like mine,” Calvin agreed, and the stress around her dad’s eyes eased.

  Maybe an afternoon of golf together would be doable after all. Deborah said nothing, which Lucy took as a victory, and she savored her next bite. It was as good as anything she’d had in the city.

  “Mine tastes weird,” Blake said, and Lucy’s peaceful bubble popped. She rubbed her necklace, wondering what kind of luck it would take to turn Blake’s mood around. It was rarely a conscious habit anymore, rubbing the necklace. She did it when something lucky happened, which it often did for her. And she rubbed it when she needed something lucky to happen, which it often would. And sometimes she rubbed it when she needed to steady her nerves, like now.

  “Let me try it. Pork can be tricky.” She speared a piece and took a bite. It was perfect, not fatty or dry. “What is it you don’t like? It tastes pretty awesome to me.”

  His face darkened, and she tightened her grip on her necklace, the smooth stone warm from her fingers. The gold setting around the jade bit into her palm.

  Suddenly Blake’s fork fell to his plate with a clatter so loud that Lucy jumped, and her necklace snapped.

  “You have opinions about everything,” he said. “You want an opinion on the food at our reception, fine. But can we leave my lunch out of it today?” The plea was so tired she couldn’t be angry despite her dad’s reddening face.

  She looked from him down to the stone in her hand, the one she’d worn next to her heart ever since her granddad had brought it to her after a business trip to China when she was twelve. She never took it off— had even chosen jade silk bridesmaids gowns to match it since she’d be wearing it with her wedding dress.

  Tears pricked her eyes. She wasn’t much of a crier, but she hadn’t owned this necklace for sixteen years out of habit. It was like having her grandfather always near her, and staring down at the two disconnected pieces of the chain made him feel very far away.

  She picked it up to study it more closely, mostly to avoid eye contact with anyone that might make her burst into tears. It backfired because now she could see that she had bent the setting too when she gripped it so hard. She sniffed. She couldn’t help it.

  Blake sighed and kept his eyes on his plate as he cut his pork into unnecessarily small pieces. “Does this have to be a situation? I’d love a drama-free lunch.”

  A dead quiet blanketed the table and he looked up, his eyes darkening as he saw the broken necklace in Lucy’s hand and the tears trying to escape her. “Oh no. Can I see it?”

  He held out his hand for the necklace, but she pulled her hand back. “No.”

  His eyebrow shot up at her terse answer. “I know you love that thing, but it’s not an omen. I promise.”

  Her dad’s hands curled into fists on the table, and he began to push himself up. “You don’t underst—”

  Lucy shot to her feet first, knowing her dad had hit his limit with Blake for the day. “It’s okay, Dad. We passed a jewelry shop up the street earlier. I think those places usually do repairs. I’ll drop this off, and when we get back Mom and Deborah and I can meet with the Mariposa catering manager.”

  Her dad eased himself back in his chair looking like he wanted to crush the table in the death grip he had on its edge, but he said nothing else.

  “Go ahead and drop that thing off,” Calvin said. “We’ll finish up lunch.”

  “Lucy’s not finished, Dad,” Blake said.

  His dad frowned. “She isn’t eating anything anyway. She can grab something later if she’s hungry. Let her go handle her necklace, and I’ll settle the check.”

  Normally her dad would have waved him off and insisted on paying— he loved to treat people— but he only stared at Blake’s dad in stony silence, and her mom made a subtle shooing motion.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Lucy said, scooping up her handbag and escaping outside. On the sidewalk she straightened her Lily Pulitzer sheath,
chosen to impress Deborah who had an eye for designer pieces. An odd hollowness had ballooned in Lucy’s chest when the necklace broke, heightening every sound around her. It was fear, and it made no sense. Standing in the sunshine, she paused to take a couple more deep breaths. It’s a necklace, and it can be fixed. It’s not an omen. Blake’s words didn’t comfort her.

  Anyway, maybe it was an omen. So what? She walked up Tangerine Street toward Spyglass Jewelry, feeling better for taking the steps. She was in control of this now, and she would make things happen. If it was an omen, she’d had a thousand good ones to this single bad one. Didn’t everyone say she was the luckiest girl they knew? Something would happen to offset the broken jade piece, but it was smart to get it fixed quickly no matter what. She picked up her pace and pushed the door to Spyglass open with a sense of relief.

  A woman her age looked up from behind the counter with a smile. “Hi. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” The weather was great even if she hadn’t had three minutes of uncomplicated time to enjoy it. “Do you do jewelry repairs?”

  “If it’s fixable, I can do it,” the woman said. “What can I help you with?”

  “I just broke my necklace. It’s got a ton of sentimental value, and I want to get it fixed as soon as possible.”

  The woman held her hand out. “Let me take a look.”

  Lucy tried not to fidget as she looked it over, turning it slowly to study it from every angle.

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked.

  “Lucy.”

  “Hi, Lucy. I’m Stella. This is a beautiful piece.”

  “Thank you. Can you fix it?”

  “I have a similar chain I could replace it with, so that’s no problem. The setting will be a little trickier. I can do it, but if you want it done right, I need to take my time with it.”

  “I’d rather stay with this chain. I’ve had this since I was twelve. My grandfather gave it to me and nicknamed me Lucky Lucy. Ever since he did that, it’s kind of come true. Using a different chain, even if was identical, wouldn’t feel the same. Am I being insanely high maintenance?”

  Stella smiled. “No. I can fix the chain too.”

  “Thank you so much. I go back to San Francisco tomorrow afternoon. Do you think you’ll have it done by then?”

  Stella was already shaking her head. “I have other orders I need to handle first.”

  “I’ll pay extra,” Lucy said, desperation licking at her and forcing the words out in a wheedling tone that made her cringe. This was high maintenance.

  Stella’s eyes softened, but she only handed back the necklace. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s important to you, but I can’t push other clients’ work aside to get to it. I can recommend a jeweler in San Francisco.”

  Lucy took a step back from the necklace Stella held out to her. “I’m sorry. I’m really embarrassed at making it sound like I think my stuff is more important. This probably sounds like the dumbest thing ever, but I was down the street having lunch with my fiancé and our parents when this broke. It already wasn’t going great and when this happened, it freaked me out a little.”

  “No need to apologize,” Stella said, her smile back. “I totally get it.”

  Lucy had a feeling Stella really did understand why Lucy needed the necklace whole again, not an imitation of it. She took a deep breath. As much as she hated the idea of leaving the necklace four hours south of home, she wanted Stella and only Stella to do the repair.

  “I’m a grown-up. I can wait.”

  “Go ahead and fill out this repair slip, and I’ll give you an estimate on time and cost.” Lucy filled it out while Stella scrolled through her computer. “I have a couple of complicated commissions to do first, but then I’ll move this to the top of my list. Should only be a few weeks.”

  A few weeks? Lucy leaned her hand on the counter for support. Weeks? She wished she could snap her fingers and have it repair itself. She smiled at the thought. Some of her friends would have sworn that the jade piece was magic, but Lucy wouldn’t go that far. There was no denying her long run of spectacular luck since Grandpa Max gave it to her, but to call it outright magic was too superstitious even for her, and that was saying something.

  She left with Stella’s assurances to restore it to as good as new and pushed back through the door of The Fortune Café, proud she only paused for a second to consider walking right past it, but she couldn’t abandon her parents to Deborah and Calvin. Emma had delivered a small plate of fortune cookies. Good. She needed a pick-me-up.

  “You okay?” her mom asked in a low voice when she rejoined them. Deborah rolled her eyes, which did not seem like the classiest thing in the world to do for someone who prided herself on sophistication. Lucy pretended she hadn’t seen it and mustered a smile for her mom.

  “Sure. It’s just a necklace, right?”

  “It’s not,” her dad said, squeezing her hand. “I know you love that necklace. And I know you feel like it’s your good luck charm, but I’ll make sure you have enough other good luck charms until you get it back. Start with this. I can tell it’s the best one.” He plucked a fortune cookie up and handed it to her.

  “Watch this, Dad,” Blake said, his first true smile of the day appearing. “We’ll all get those lame ‘advice’ fortunes, and Lucy’s will say something that actually comes true. It’s wild, but it happens every time.”

  Even Deborah looked interested in that and scooped up a cookie.

  “I’ll start,” Calvin said. “‘The wise man hears more than he speaks.’ That’s not a fortune.”

  Deborah went next. “‘Kindness is the greatest commodity.’” Another eye roll. “Maybe fortune means something different in Chinese.”

  Lucy couldn’t help thinking that her future in laws had gotten the perfect piece of advice for themselves if they ever bothered to listen.

  Her mom cleared her throat and read, “‘There is no greater treasure than the love of a child.’ Well, that’s the absolute truth. I’m a rich woman,” she said, leaning over to drop a kiss on Lucy’s cheek.

  “Mine says ‘Look no further than your own home to find your greatest gifts.’ Sounds to me like whoever wrote these fortunes knows us well,” her dad said.

  Lucy snuck a glance at Deborah. Calvin wouldn’t have caught the dig, but Deborah’s eyes had narrowed as she tried to figure out if Lucy’s dad had insulted her.

  Yikes. Evasive maneuvers. She prayed her fiancé would cooperate. “What about yours, Blake?”

  He scanned the slip from his cookie, his eyes widening in surprise. “Check it out. Mine says I’ll get a promotion soon. This is usually the kind of fortune Lucy gets, and then hers come true. What does yours say, babe?”

  Lucy pulled the slip from her cookie. “‘True love is for the brave, not the lucky.’” More anxiety washed over her. It was the kind of fortune her friends had gotten by the fistful over the years, but not Lucy. Hers were always specific. She’d been told once that a large sum of money was coming to her, and the next week she’d gotten ten thousand dollars from a winning ticket she’d pitched in to buy to appease one of her staffers. Twice she’d gotten fortunes promising her promotions that came almost immediately. She’d even gotten a fortune predicting she would find love by nightfall, and three hours later she’d met Blake at the Duchess.

  Blake laughed. “I guess I got your cookie. It’s good to know you’re human like the rest of us.”

  To get a generic fortune like anyone else’s was more than a little disturbing, but Blake disliked her superstitions, and she wasn’t interested in upsetting his first good mood in days. “Words to live by, I guess,” she said, her smile still in place. She tucked the fortune into her wallet.

  “You keep them?” Deborah asked.

  “Yeah. She plays the lottery numbers on the back. She wins a couple hundred dollars at least half the time. It’s crazy,” Blake said.

  “We better go,” Lucy said, pushing back from the table, embarrassed that Blake
had told Deborah she bought lotto tickets. It was just something Lucy did for fun with her staffers, but Deborah’s expression made it clear that Seftons and those marrying Seftons did not play the numbers. Even more than wanting to make their appointment at their hotel, Lucy wanted to be done with this lunch. So, so done.

  Back at the hotel lobby, the men separated to go change into their golf clothes, and Lucy took a deep breath before slipping each of her arms into those of the women beside her and plunging into a long afternoon as Deborah and the catering manager went the rounds.

  She could not wait until this wedding was over and life got back to normal.

  Lucy had never been so glad to be at work than when she walked in Tuesday morning. The long weekend at Seashell Beach had defied the laws of physics. While the time with her parents had sped by so fast she was sure it was violating some of Einstein’s principles, the same time with Blake’s parents had dragged so slowly that she wondered if it were possible to age a lifetime in a single afternoon. But she was back at the Duchess, and this was her groove.

  She’d bought a lottery ticket from the newsstand nearest her BART stop, and she scratched it off before officially starting her day. A couple hundred dollars to buy her staff lunch as a thank you for covering for her would go a long way toward restoring order to the universe.

  The scratcher turned up zeros. She stared for a full minute before crumpling it and dropping it in her trash can. She drowned the lick of fear in her stomach with a long swallow of coffee and waded into her voice mail. The day would turn around. It always did.

  Not this time.

  It only got worse by lunch time. The Ladies of Nob Hill semiannual brunch was a disaster when the chairwoman wanted documentation that the poached salmon had been sustainably fished. The chef had no answer to that, and the one hundred person brunch was served without the premiere dish to the grumbling of the ladies present. But somehow it was the Duchess’s fault even though documentation had not once been raised by the chairwoman during the menu selection weeks before. But these were ladies with a great deal of influence in San Francisco society, so Lucy sent several of her staffers on a desperate run to the flower market to gather bouquets for the women.