You ain’t no friend of mine

Our latest writing exercise was to write 400-ish words based on a standard fortune cookie fortune. Mine was “Beware of an offer that seems to good to be true.”

He sighed. “Well, this isn’t helpful.”

“What?” she asked, sipping distractedly at the dregs of her Diet Coke.

He held up the thin strip of paper between his forefinger and thumb. “Beware of an offer that seems too good to be true.”

A pause. “What?” she asked. Here we go again…

Between them lie a Great Wall of half-eaten Chinese. They’d settled for the buffet, hoping it would provide enough choice for both of them to end the indecision.

And, hopefully, the bickering.

“Are all fortunes this banal?”

He was looking at her over the tops of his glasses again. He did this whenever he wanted to make a point. It irritated her every time.

She put down her glass and shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, they’re pretty general, yah. I think you’re asking too much of a dessert.”

He flung the paper down in disgust.  It settled, awkwardly, into the bottom of a bowl of half-eaten noodles.

He frowned. “I don’t know why I do this to myself. These always put me in a bad mood.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I know,” she said. And not just you.

Now she was looking beyond him to the couple being seated. Such lovely smiles. What was that Joe Jackson line? Happy loving couples make it look so easy…

He looked down at the paper again. The the soy sauce was working its way into the paper now. So much for the lucky numbers. “I mean, it’s just not that original. What am I supposed to take from this?”

“It’s a goddamn dessert,” she said. “Let it go.” You know what I mean, happy loving couples, in matching white polo-necked sweaters, reading Ideal Homes magazine, yeah…

“I could write better ones than that.”

Another pause. You haven’t written anything in a month, let alone anything better.

“Um, have you heard of this thing called the Internet? There’s, like, thousands of these things floating out there. Some of them are actually pretty funny.” You ain’t no friends of mine…

“But they’re not in cookies.” You ain’t no friends of mine…

“No. They’re not. ”

Suddenly a server was looming over them. “More Diet Coke, ma’am?”

“No thanks,” she smiled. We’re done here.

We’re done.