“Egg Foo Young Chicken!” The Chinese girl at the counter handed Richard a tray of food and placed a fortune cookie next to his drink. “You have a good day, now!”
So hungry, Richard ate all of his food in five minutes. He took the plastic from the cookie and bit into it, taking out the little piece of paper that had his fortune written on it. Finishing his coke, he read the message and almost spit out all of his drink.
“Richard, your wife is having an affair.”
How could this cookie know his name? How could this cookie know he was married? How could this cookie know that for weeks, his wife had been acting very strange? Could his suspicion that his wife was with another man be true? He ran back to the cash register, but there was a different girl there now.
“Where is the other girl?” he asked.
“You want to order?” the girl asked him.
“Where is the other girl?” Richard shouted, waving the fortune at her. The girl looked a little bit scared now.
“I cannot help you,” she said, “so sorry, but I am the only girl here.”
Richard started to walk behind the counter, and then changed his mind as he saw a group of angry looking young men holding hot cooking utensils and staring at him. Okay then, he thought. He would settle this problem with his wife by himself. He ran out of the restaurant. He sat in his car and used his cell phone to call his wife.
“Allison! Where are you?” he almost screamed.
“Oh, Richard, honey. I’m at home. I was just planting some flowers.”
“Hah! I’ll be home soon because we must talk about something!” Richard hung up.
Richard drove as fast as possible to get to his home. Parking in his driveway, he saw fresh flowers planted next to the house. His wife was at least telling the truth about that. His vision was seeing everything in red because he was so angry. He would make her tell the truth. He walked into the house, holding the cookie fortune in his hand.
His angry feelings began to be replaced by sad feelings, thinking about his mistakes. There must be something he could do now to make her stay. He could get her better birthday gifts. He could take her on a vacation to Australia. He could take her out to eat dinner and dance. He could do these things she always said she wanted to do but he said they did not have time for because of his work. He realized that was not true about his work. Looking in the mirror, he saw an attractive man with sad eyes. But then he looked at the fortune, and his sadness became anger again
“ALLISON!” he called for her. She came out of the kitchen.
“Richard! You are home.” She looked so beautiful. He knew any man would be lucky to marry her, but she chose him. This he believed until today. Lately, she had been acting strange. She quickly hid her computer screen from him and she erased the calls and messages from the phone. She had a lot of pretty new clothes. He had seen her whispering into her phone, but not really thought a lot about it until today.
“Allison, we must talk. Right now.”
“Of course, honey. I have an iced tea waiting for you in the living room.” Allison walked out of the room, so he followed her still seeing everything in red. Couldn’t she see he was angry? How could she act as if everything were normal when he was so angry? He became even more upset, feeling like Allison was ignoring his feelings. It wasn’t like her to do that. Usually she knew how he felt about things before he himself did. However, if she was seeing someone else, maybe she didn’t care any more about him, her own husband.
All he could see in front of him was Allison walking into the darkness of the living room. She was wearing a white sundress. It didn’t look like the kind of clothes anyone would wear to plant flowers in. Maybe someone else, some other man planted those flowers, he thought. It was much darker than usual in the room.
Suddenly, the lights burst on. People jumped out of the corners and from behind the chairs and couch and table.
“SURPRISE!” They screamed, “Happy Birthday Richard!”
The little piece of paper with the writing about the affair dropped from his hand to the floor. His eyes cleared. He looked at his beautiful wife who was laughing and clapping her hands and lighting candles on a cake on the table. Yes, she was having an affair. A party affair, and it was all for him.
He smiled and walked to her, giving her the biggest hug he could.
“I love you, Allison. Thank you.”
It was late before everyone left and Richard and Allison finally were able to get some sleep. He lay in bed smiling at the ceiling. His dreams were filled with balloons, the girl from the Chinese restaurant, birthday cakes, and flying dogs.
Waking up, Richard saw that it was still dark. The clock showed that it was 4:45am. He was cold and uncovered. Shivering, he turned to see if Allison had taken the covers from him while she slept. She wasn’t there. He patted her side of the bed but it was cold. His heart started to beat fast, and he slid out of bed.
Richard walked down the hall toward the living room, where she sometimes went to read a book when she could not sleep. The light was on beside her favorite chair, but she was not sitting there.
“Allison?” he called out, walking toward her chair. There was no answer. He went into the study to see if she was using her computer. The computer was on, but she was not there. On the screen was displayed the thing she had last searched for with Google. It said, “Flights to Australia.” Richard’s heart began to beat even harder.
“Allison? ALLISON!” he yelled. No answer. He ran all around the house, calling her name, but she was not there. He looked at their bank account to see if she had really bought an airplane ticket to Australia and felt sick when he saw that there was no money left in that bank account. As he picked up the phone to begin calling the airlines, he noticed a little piece of paper laying on the floor by the garbage can. He picked it up.
It said, “Allison, your husband is having an affair.”
