"You don't understand," I told the old Chicano woman. "I'm not a fortune-teller. I just sell these things."

She replaced the plastic crystal ball on the counter next to my cash register, then stood for a moment, stolidly gazing around my cluttered little gift shop. I snuck a glance at the clock: 4:50, ten minutes until closing time. Outside, in the blue late-November twilight, a few shoppers were still wandering in the gas-lit courtyard of our small shopping center. The yellow-white gas lights glinted softly from the undersides of the giant, bare-limbed cottonwood trees.

After a long pause, she sighed and said, "No. No, por supuesto no." Then her face took the sudden expression of irrepressible mischief so characteristic of much-wrinkled old women. She leaned down and pantomimed peering into the crystal ball, "I should be the fortuneteller, no? You ... you are too young and pretty!"

I returned the grin, savoring the compliment which I didn't doubt she meant sincerely enough but the plain fact is that I'm forty years old and the nicest thing that even my late husband ever found to say about my appearance was that my face shows character and that my figure is healthy.

The old woman tapped the ball with one heavy, domed fingernail as she continued confidentially, "Comprendo, I know, there are laws against. But ..." She paused and leaned closer. "If I buy this, you will show me how to use it? No?" Reaching into her transparent plastic tote bag, she extracted a shabby brown purse with the handle dangling limply from one side. The catch yielded to a moment's fumbling. She brought out a torn window envelope bearing the return address of the Social Security Administration and from it extracted two twenty dollar bills, "I buy. I will pay you. It is enough?"

I spoke hastily: "M'am, I really don't ... I could sell you some books on fortune-telling ... ?"

She winked knowingly. "Si, si, I buy your books but, you know, I read the English no muy bien. You will read them to me? You will explain, no?" She pulled a third twenty from the envelope.

I blinked my eyes to chase the cobwebs away, feeling very much at a loss ... something that happens about once a week in my business.

The sign over my door reads Miscellaneous Unincorporated. I make it a point to stock things you can't find anywhere else in Brazos City, Texas (pop. 89,467). Things like gourmet kitchen utensils and metric measuring spoons imported from Denmark; incense, hookahs and automatic yogurt makers; assorted handicrafts; big, expensive china lions and wicker elephants ... as well as crystal balls, Tarot cards, Ouija boards and publications ranging from books on Siddha Yoga to the (almost) complete back issues of The Alternative Energy Newsletter.

So, off and on, I've had a lot of practice convincing would-be customers that No, I don't sell what they want, and No, I can't order it either, and I'm sorry, but I really don't know.

Sometimes it's teenagers wanting a source for organic homegrown grass to smoke in their hookahs or an experimental ecologist demanding to know why his fuel-alcohol still won't yield better than 80 proof. More often, its a local dowager wanting to order monogrammed crystal from New York for delivery in time for Friday night's reception. This was different. The unique nature of her request aside ... this old woman just didn't fit even the unusual patterns.

She was tall and sturdy - more Amerindian than Spanish, I thought. In spite of the nippy fall weather, she wore a lightweight cotton dress, blue and white striped - obviously homemade with only a worn purple-red sweater around her shoulders for warmth. Her shoes were "sensible" walking-heels, black leather with laces, worn but well cared-for.

She should have looked thoroughly out of place among my polished stock of expensive miscellany. Instead, the old woman had an odd, bright-eyed sort of self-possession which made me feel that she could go from my shop to a Navaho reservation to Nieman-Marcus and feel no more difference than if she had just walked into - and out of - the shade cast by a mesquite tree ...

"... No?" she repeated, watching me closely. "Hokay," she chirped, "I thank you." She returned the three twenty-dollar bills to the Social Security envelope, the envelope to the purse and the purse to the bag. "I find another fortuneteller, then. Adios."

Now the only professional fortuneteller I knew of in Brazos City had taken one of my best customers for $250.00 and charges were pending. I went to the window and drew the curtains (red and yellow batik - on consignment), turned the carved wooden OPEN sign to read CLOSED and locked the door. Then I motioned the old woman over to my coffee corner (two bentwood rockers flanking an imitation maple-wood table with a percolator of hot water, the makings for instant coffee, Sanka and an assortment of herb teas). "Maybe," I sighed, "you had better tell me just what the problem is ..."

The old woman's name - she told me after we had finished fussing with sugar lumps and Cremora - was Mrs. Arriola. Her hesitant and broken English, my almost non-existent Spanish and her slight deafness combined to create a communication gap which was bridged by repetitions and gestured explanations. Despite the difficulties, she told her story quite straightforwardly.

Many years ago, Mrs. Arriola explained, she had had the Gift.

"Me, I not used those things!" she gestured scornfully at my racks of occult paraphernalia. "Those, that stuff, I think it is, you know, gimmicks. Show people a spooky sight, wear a funny dress and take their money ... I knew women like that ... But I never did it. I told people things if they asked but I never took money ... All that happen, I would have dream or I would hear voice. Devil-voice, angel-voice, aye, quien sabe? But they tell me true things! 'Don't drive to Dallas with Lupe tomorrow,' they would say. 'A bridge is going to fall and his car, it will go in the river.' So I tell Lupe, I not go! I tell Lupe what voices say but he laugh and go anyway ... And it happens!

"Or they say, 'Maria will write you a letter tomorrow. She has move to San Antonio.' Maņana, the letter come and Maria, she is in San Antonio. The voice told truth and they speak good and loud. I hear them fine, muy bien," she spread her hands in a shrug.

I sat fascinated, sipping my coffee. Of course, I'd heard such stories from my customers before, but I'd never believed them. I'd figured that most people who claimed psychic abilities - boasting of their powers - were just dramatizing themselves. But I'd never before heard anyone talk the way Mrs. Arriola did. She was calm and unconcerned, just stating the facts - not bragging and not at all impressed with herself.

"Then," the old woman went on with a monkey-faced grimace, "bad times come. Very bad times. And the priest, he say it is my fault ... for listening to the voices. He say only el Diablo tells future and it is sin to listen even if the dreams tell true. He say that this only to lead us into sin - what sin he not say - I not know. He say I should pray against them - if I pray hard and be good, then the voices, they go away." She stopped while she took another sip of her coffee.

"So, I prayed. And when the voices come, I no listen. And, finally, the voices, they stop. And, finally, the trouble it passes, too," she finished.

Knee-jerk response - "Ah, what exactly was the trouble?" I asked cautiously, my mind was jumping to all sorts of Freudian ideas. "Did the voices start saying bad things?"

Mrs. Arriola shook her head impatiently. "No, no, they were just the same as ever. This comes, that comes, big things, little things. But then my daughter, she is killed in a car wreck. The family, they have a big fight." She closed the subject firmly and declined to pursue it. "So," she resumed, "I pray to the Virgin and troubles and voices, they both go away. For many years now, I get a letter, I have to open it and read just like anybody. I don't know what it say before it come."

"You think the priest was right then?" I asked, wondering where all of this was leading.

Mrs. Arriola shrugged with spread hands, "So it may be, quien sabe? But you, you sell these things for fortune telling, no? You would not sell for el Diablo, no? So, I will tell you what I think." She leaned forward confidentially. "I think that priest, he was a good man - a religious man, yes? But I think he is also, maybe, just a little bit 'supersticioso'?" Setting her cup down with a decisive click, she straightened up and regarded me with a twinkle - one woman of the world to another.

I was ready to offer her anything in the store, at cost. "But why do you want the crystal ball now?" I asked. "Are you thinking about, er, going into the business after all?"

"No, absolutamente no!" she said. For the first time, I saw a hint of serious trouble in her eyes. "For years now, for many years, no voices. Is fine, I read my own letters. But now, this fall, they start to come back. But the trouble is ..." she shook her head in frustration, "now I am old. My ears, they are not so good. And these new ghosts, they talk too soft - they talk soft so I can not hear them so good. Just a word here, a word there. So," she emphasized the word and pointed to the rack displaying crystal balls, Ouija boards and Rhine cards. "That is what your machines are for, no? Is it not so? Are they not to help? People, they stare into that ball, it makes the voices louder, no? It is like a, how do you say, hearing aid?"

"Er, well, something like that," I admitted. "Look," I offered, "would you like to just borrow the ball for a while and try it out?"

She shook her head sadly. "Gracias pero no, I am too old to learn it for myself. And you really cannot teach me?"

"I'm sorry, no," I confessed. "I've never tried it myself."

When she rose, it was like she'd aged ten years. She picked up her tote bag as if it were very heavy. "It is good then, I go and find a real fortune-teller. Maybe the ghosts talk to her then, and she can hear them good and tell me all they are saying."

- $250.00, charges pending - "Look," I temporized, "let me ask around. Maybe I can find out who would be best to go to. Could you wait? Check back with me in a couple of days?"

"Oh," she considered, "maybe one or two days. I no should wait longer."

"Why not?" I asked as I too stood up. "What are your voices talking about that's so urgent?"

The old woman gave me a look of careful appraisal which I apparently passed. After a moment, she said flatly: "The ghosts, they say there is to be a murder. For days and days now, all they talk about is the murder."