Fortune Cookies

There are lots of things I don't know about that hang over my head like empty fortune cookies sitting over the remains of my Americanized lo mein noodles. You're on the other side of the table picking away at the last of your rice, lifting them up to your lips one by one, like the way that you're not supposed to. I decide that I don't know how many notches there are in your spine when you sit huddled at the far side of the bed, basking in the grayish glow of the cloudy morning light, smoking your cigarettes. So I count them one night as you're brushing your teeth, running my fingers down the lumps of your back.

One, two, three...

I don't dare to touch you in the mornings, when you're perched like that, half falling off of our little disarrayed island. You stare at the cracked television screen as you puff away like a chimney. You look angry, with the dark circles stenciling bruises under the tiny lashes, clumped together with cheap mascara.

Four, five...

I touched you once, though that time it was trying to count your ribs, and you turned and gave me a look, the same look my parents give me when they see me strolling home in my holey jeans. I figured that it was a woman thing until I remembered that Abigail loved it in the mornings, right before I made toast in our molding kitchen.

Six...

There are a lot of things I don't know about, I think as I ask the waiter for another cookie. He smiles at me with his slits of eyes and goes to fetch another.

Seven.

My second one reads: 'there are a lot of things you don't know about.'