The Misfortune Teller

“We’ve had a complaint,” said my supervisor Jerry as he cleaned his nails with a letter opener. “A woman celebrating her eighty-fifth birthday at Full Moon Noodle House got a fortune cookie that read, ‘Enjoy life while you still can.’ The next day, she died from a massive stroke.”

           I forced myself to maintain a neutral expression. “I hardly see how we can be held responsible for that,” I said. “People just want someone to blame when tragedy strikes.”

           Jerry put down the letter opener and brushed his fingernail detritus to the floor. “Still, upper management, by which I mean my father, isn’t happy, so I need you to pay even more attention than usual to the fortunes before they get sent to the printer. Weed out anything that could be taken the wrong way.”

           “You can count on me, Chief,” I said. Jerry picked up his phone, signaling that our conversation was over. As far as I could tell, Jerry’s job as Chief Good Tidings Officer consisted mainly of watching the Mariners and the Seahawks on his phone. Since his personal version of his job description rarely included reading fortunes, I felt confident I was safe. I did feel bad about  the old lady, but hey, at eighty-five your number could be up any day.

           I had taken the job as a fortune cookie writer a year and a half earlier, straight out of the University of Washington, where I had earned my MFA in creative writing. I quickly discovered that the job market for poets was very lean. As I scanned the “Writer” listings on Indeed.com, I ran across the following: “Fortune Cookie Wordsmith. Must be pithy. $53K.” It wasn’t exactly the career transforming people’s lives by sharing deep insights into the human condition through verse that I had envisioned for myself, but on a $53,000 salary I could afford a studio in Ballard.

           “Your job is to write messages that apply to any person or any situation, in ten words or less,” Jerry told me on my first day. The scent of vanilla wafting up from the bakery below barely dented the aroma of garlic and cigars that dominated Jerry’s office. I had been surprised when my new boss turned out to be a fifty-something Sicilian-American with a two-day growth of beard. I had expected someone, well, Chinese. But during my so-called orientation, Jerry told me fortune cookies are an American invention and that the original Golden Dragon fortune cookie factory was founded by his great-grandfather in the North Beach area of San Francisco, the Italian neighborhood conveniently located next to Chinatown.

            Jerry had also said we needed to generate hundreds of predictions a month because people get irritated when they get a repeat, so from my cubicle overlooking an alley full of trash cans, I cranked out dozens of fortunes a day. Messages like, “A light heart will carry you through bad times,” and “Your hard work will soon pay off.” The work was mind-numbing, so I distracted myself by writing little odes to the contents of the trash cans. “Farewell, noble banana peel . . .”

           After three months, Jerry promoted me to Senior Wordsmith. “You have a real knack for this,” he said. I wasn’t sure that was a compliment. In addition to writing my own predictions, I would now also review those written by my co-workers—Carl, who was moonlighting at Golden Dragon while he studied for his CPA exam, and Karen, who had four kids under ten and thought of her workday as “me time.” This freed up Jerry to add the Seattle Kraken to his lineup.

           But reviewing hundreds of vapid sayings a month was even more soul crushing than just writing my own. Carl’s fortunes always involved money—“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can rent it for a while.” Karen’s were all about children—“Parenthood is a marathon, not a sprint.” On my two month anniversary as Senior Wordsmith, I wondered if I could order a seppuku knife from Amazon. Still, the promotion had come with a nice raise, which I used to sign up for premium cable service and to buy a pure bred Bengal cat I named Azrael. But nothing dulled my exquisite ennui.

            Part of the problem was that I was writing into a void. How would I even know if someone had met the fascinating stranger I predicted? No one posts Yelp reviews of their fortune cookies, after all. I wondered what would happen if I spiced things up by slipping slightly dark messages into the mix. Like, “You will die alone” and “Nobody cares.” It was playoff season, so there was no risk of Jerry catching on to what I was doing. That’s when the old lady died the day after her birthday party. I was both thrilled and horrified. I might not be Poet Laureate material, but maybe I was affecting lives after all. I craved proof of concept.

           A few weeks later, I brought two dozen breakfast pastries to the guys on the first floor who inserted the fortunes into the warm little cookie circles before folding them into their familiar butterfly shape. While they argued over the last apple fritter, I placed a slip of paper face down on a cookie that was part of an order destined for Bamboo House in Pioneer Square. It said, “Your world will soon be shaken.” Four days later, a 5.3 magnitude earthquake shook Seattle, its epicenter below the subterranean tunnels on which Pioneer Square rests. The quake occurred in the middle of the night so, luckily, no one was hurt, but I felt like God.

           I ramped up my production of nastygrams, although I stayed away from predicting natural disasters. I wasn’t a monster, after all. I just wanted to know that my work had purpose. Soon, patrons of Chinese restaurants around the city experienced a run of very bad luck. Somehow, the cookies always knew how to find the right person.

            After one particularly sensational headline involving a marital dispute and jasmine tea, Jerry once more called me into his office. “I don’t know what the hell is going on,” he said. “Our clients say their customers are getting weird ass fortunes and then acting on them. That woman in today’s news? Last night, she ate at Happy Chopsticks, one of our biggest accounts. After getting the fortune ‘Someone close to you is cheating,’ she confronted her husband over the mango ice cream with preserved kumquats. When he confessed to an affair with the nanny, she threw a cup of scalding tea in his face, landing him in the hospital with third degree burns.”

            I breathed rapidly as I experienced a frisson of omnipotence. “Well that sucks,” I said, “but I don’t see what that’s got to do with us. It’s a coincidence. And besides, the guy actually was a philanderer. He got what he deserved.”

           “It’s more than just the one restaurant,” said Jerry, dousing his cigar stub in his Starbucks cup. “At least half our clients are reporting customers getting creepy fortunes that make them do weird shit. A guy at Shanghai Saloon got the single word, “Run.” He charged out into traffic and got hit by a car driven by a process server who was there to give him a grand jury subpoena. The worst was at The Red Lantern. You know, that place on the fortieth floor of the Puget View hotel? A guy having dinner suddenly stood up, walked out on the balcony and threw himself over the edge. When the police arrived to investigate, they found a half eaten cookie and ‘We know what you did. Take the next step,’ on a slip of paper on his table. Turns out he embezzled half a mil from a fund to send kids with cancer to summer camp.”

            I was particularly fond of that fortune. “He obviously had a guilty conscience,” I told Jerry.

           “Maybe so, but his children are threatening to sue. And there’s talk of calling it a hate crime, since only Chinese restaurants are affected. My father says I have to review each fortune personally from now on.” He stole a glance at his phone and frowned. Then he looked up at me and asked, “What’s wrong? You look like you ate a bad batch of sweet and sour pork.”

            I smiled wanly and went back to my desk. Eventually, probably at some point between the Super Bowl and spring training, Jerry would track the fortunes back to me. Also, I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of the Chinese restaurant industry in Seattle. I scaled things back, but quickly became bored again. I bought a subscription to the Sock-of-the-Month club and a cat condo for Azrael, but they were no match for the power of life and death.

           One day in mid-February, I ordered a lavish Chinese New Year spread from Jade Garden for a “team-building” lunch. We gathered in the conference room to eat and played a game in which we tried to guess who had written the message in each person’s fortune cookie. Most were easy—Carl and Karen were so predictable—but no one guessed the author of Jerry’s fortune, “Something will stick in your craw.”

           “Yeah, damn Mariners,” he said blithely after reading it, shoveling a forkful of honey garlic shrimp into his mouth. Suddenly, he was making noises like an out of tune accordion. He pointed at his throat as he staggered to his feet, sending his chair clattering to the floor. His face turned blue. The paramedics arrived and declared him DOA.

           I was promoted to Chief Good Tidings Officer. My mild guilt about Jerry disappeared when I got my first paycheck. That bastard had been making almost twice as much as me. I bought a Tesla.

            Shortly after that, The Red Lantern and the dead guy’s family sued Golden Dragon Cookies. Upper management and their lawyers agreed to a high seven-figure settlement. Our insurance company refused to pay out. Golden Dragon went under, and I found myself without a job and facing a $600 monthly car payment. I returned to the online classifieds. The job market for poets had not improved since I had last looked, but one ad on Monster.com did catch my eye.

           “Greeting card company seeks skilled crafter of heartwarming wishes. Rhyming skills a plus. $80K to start.” I had seen some really nice apartments for rent on Queen Anne Hill.