Monday
Judy waited in the lobby, excited to share the good news with Karen. She had been waiting a while. She figured that Karen had a greater chance of getting to work on time with Peter driving her– he seemed to be a very punctual person. And yet here she still was, at 9:15, waiting. Maybe the crutches were slowing her down, she thought.
When Karen finally entered the building, Judy ran to her, giving her a hug and taking Karen’s purse so she wouldn’t have to juggle it with her crutches.
“Guess what?” Judy asked excitedly. “I met with Rosenberg this morning, and told him you broke your ankle. He said that he didn’t think you could really work in the daycare in that condition, so he is letting you come back to marketing early!”
“Oh. Thank you, Judy.” Karen’s voice sounded more relieved than it had been in days.
Judy carefully kept the subject away from fortune cookies and curses and Chinese food as they went up the elevator to the fifth floor, and walked the corridors. As they rounded the corner to their desks, they both froze. Sitting on Karen’s desk was a fortune cookie.
Judy gasped. “Where did that come from? It wasn’t here when I went downstairs to get you!”
Resigned, Karen placed her crutches against the wall, sat down, and picked up the cookie. “It’s okay. It’s not like I really thought I could get away with not getting a fortune cookie yesterday. I knew it would show up somewhere.”
“So it just appeared?” Judy asked. “And without any Chinese food to go with it? How unfair is that?”
“It’s okay. I think I may have gotten over my addiction.” She let out a mirthless laugh and turned the cookie around and around in her hands. “You know, I’m okay with not getting a fortune cookie that says I will get fame or riches. In fact, you know those cookies that don’t really have a fortune, they just have advice— I would be just fine with one of those.”
“Why don’t you just not open it,” Judy suggested.
“It won’t change anything. And it’s probably better to know what’s coming.” She took a deep breath, then pulled off the plastic wrapper. She cracked the cookie, pulled out the paper, and then read aloud, “All things must come to an end.”
A feeling of dread washed over her as she realized that she didn’t know if the fortune meant the end of her curse, or the end of her.
The End
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