Fortune Cookie

Sunday evening, suburban New York, we ate at the corner Chinese restaurant, its fish tank hypnotic, the smiling welcome from the Chinese woman caressing menus to her chest, who led us to the booth which stuck to my legs as I slid across to my designated spot. Dad promised me a fortune cookie on the way out, which I took from the bowl by the door. We ate spareribs, licked our fingers and laughed, trying to pick kennels of rice and long noodles with splintered chopsticks. We praised the food, but wondered why we often left hungry for both food and fortune, after extracting mine from the smashed cookie, reading then putting the crumbled paper in my pocket, to be found weeks later, hoping somehow the words would have changed and the little paper whispered truths about my own future, rather than just giving dad the numbers for his weekly lottery.