“I’ll lose money. If you take in the expense of my travel, the ration cards for gasoline, hotel, food, closing down the shop, there’s no way I’ll see a profit. What with gas coupons this is the first time I’ve been here for two years. Dolores and I had a deal, though.”

“You did say a dollar.”

Mrs. Quist carefully put the squash pot into a box padded with newspaper and excelsior. “I can’t sell them in Santa Fe. There aren’t any tourists, just soldiers. Soldiers buy postcards, not pots. Probably by the time I get back to Los Angeles, half of these will be broken, so I’m paying five dollars for two or three pots.”

She wrapped the plate and dropped it gently into the bottom of another box, then wrapped the polychrome pot and set it on top of the plate. “I may not be able to sell any of these. The war changed everything. People are coming back from France and Italy, they’ve been all over the world now. They’re going to want fine arts, to collect paintings—Picassos, Monets—not Indian pots.”

“That sounds tough.”

“That’s the way of the world, Joe.”

He couldn’t see her eyes through her dark glasses. Her mouth was a lipsticked oval. He’d grown up with the annual visits of Mrs. Quist, with her annual words of wisdom. He couldn’t remember when there’d been a good year for selling pots.

“Most traders are only working on consignment now, in fact.” She packed the tall wedding pot with special care. “They wouldn’t give you any money at all, and then you’d have nothing.”

“Nothing instead of five dollars?”

Mrs. Quist packed the bowl last, and then she laid and smoothed a dollar bill on the table where each piece had stood. “There.”

The bills crinkled. One slowly spun.

“Aren’t you going to pick them up?”

“Later.”

The breeze was nothing more than warm air drifting into a cool adobe house. The spinning bill drifted to the table’s edge.

“Well, it’s your money, you do what you want with it.”