the ride, part III2003.04.25
One too many food references is woven into conversation, and an impromptu vote is forced. June spots a Chinese restaurant with parking right in front, and requests that we debark before she attempts to park. “I can’t park when other people are in the car,” she says. I admire her candor. Meanwhile, somehow we are no longer strangers.
An hour later, as we await the bill, a leaden digestive silence has settled upon us. I feel like it’s my turn to contribute something now; some small treasure from my past that my comrades will be able to relate to, and which will serve to illustrate, in the telling, just how clever I am. I find myself unable to dredge up any treasures however - a creative dry spell has rendered me completely barren of anecdote. But the ongoing silence is stifling, and while they demonstratively probe teeth with tongues for food morsels, I’m driven into a conversational coffin, scratching uselessly at the lid.
In a panic I blurt out the first thing that occurs to me, triggered no doubt by some cascade of neural misfirings. “What’s the deal with cornucopias?” To her credit, June considers the question seriously, though she offers no response. Meanwhile, toymaker has found distraction in a hangnail and doesn’t even look up from the task at hand.
I continue intrepidly. “When I was a child I had to peer over the crystal cornucopia to see my parents at the dinner table. This decorative monstrosity was at the center of a collection of several less remarkable pieces of table art: a salt shaker, a pepper mill, a brown crooked candle that my grandmother had made. I still don’t really know what a cornucopia is. Certainly nothing as docile as a mere fruit basket. Not with its lolling hingeless mouth. Every night the cornucopia’s fishy maw gaped at me like I was a cloud of plankton. But what manner of beast was this really? Two little glass ball feet, and a scorpion tail that curled up over its back - it was a celebration of decorative horror. It gave me nightmares! That doesn’t seem so odd, does it? I mean I had no experience with cornucopias, no point of reference. And something about that thing was just not right.”
The waitress arrives, and brings with the bill a tray just large enough for our fortune cookies. June hastily takes charge of cookie distribution. I mentally check the cornucopia story off in my head. Lesson: learned.
The fortune cookies prove compelling enough to wrench toymaker away from her private cuticle odyssey. “Ah,” she says, “best part of eating Chinese.” She sounds desperate to me.
June, having successfully snatched the check while distracting the others with the best part of eating Chinese, now hunches over the sheet protectively like a prisoner with a fresh plate of gruel.
I look at my cookie, and see it mocking me. “What’s yours say?” toymaker asks college. Telling the fortune of a writer in a rut requires no power, let alone the kind of universal forces commanded by the wily fortune cookie. June would have done better to have handed me a small gray stone instead. College reads his fortune. “Even misfortune can lead to opportunity,” he says dully. He’s not impressed, but toymaker gives a polite nod of acknowledgment.
I break the crisp grin of my cookie in half and eat the portion in my right hand - as is my tradition - before straightening out the thin pink slip of paper within the remaining portion. Toymaker recites her fortune from memory, “The spring of compassion can sustain multitudes.”
I look down at my fortune. “Are you ready?” it says. I turn it over in my hand, but the other side has only a small collection of Chinese pictograms in red ink. “Are you ready?” What kind of fortune is that? Is it even legal? I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I realize that I’m actually feeling a little bit cheated. What about my spring of compassion? How about a little opportunity for the blocked writer? But no. Just, “Are you ready?”
Pap.
A shiny red circle has appeared on my fortune. It’s definitely blood, I can tell that right away. It’s fallen right on top of the question mark, rendering my fortune “Are you read.” Before I consider the implications of that question my left hand goes instinctively to my nose. No one else has noticed the drama taking place on my side of the table, which is just as well. My nose is dry, and sniffing reveals clear passages. The question remains then… and I look up to the ceiling, feeling a little self-conscious about it. But of course no one else has seen, so I’m safe.
Related Esoterica
» "hair" (2004.12.21)
» "reality" (2004.01.22)
» "figuring it out" (2004.01.11)
