Fortune Cookies (Part 1)

Like most things in my life, I hadn’t thought

it through at all. Instead, I’d acted on

a whim: invite the neighbours round for tea.

And where’s the whim in that? I hear you ask,

but wait! Dismiss this whim as nothing more

than normal conduct, if you must, but first

please hear this key, essential detail of

the invitation: when I say the neighbours

I don’t mean Dave and Jill who live next door

(those aren’t their real names, by the way, but just

a loose approximation of that thing

we call ‘poetic licence’); neighbours here

refers to every person in our street:

indifferent youths who wouldn’t want to come;

the too-nice parents dragging them along;

some sprightly, geriatric folk;

and one young same-sex couple from The North.

   I won’t regale you with the details of

their various arrivals, save to say

that those who weren’t embarrassed were bemused.

It’s fair enough, I guess: if you’d expected

to be the only guests invited over

for tea and half the neighbourhood turned up

within five minutes, you’d be nonplussed too.

   The tea itself was quite a lavish spread.

Or, rather, would have been a lavish spread

if neighbours here referred to Dave and Jill

and no-one else; but as it was, two plates

of sandwiches, a chocolate cake, a tray

of flapjacks, half-a-dozen scones with jam

and cream, and one small pot of tea did not

go far when shared between twenty-three

surprised and hungry neighbours who were crammed

inside my kitchen. Quite surprising, really,

that they were too polite to leave, apart

from poor old “Mrs Cat” from Number 8,

for whom I had to call an ambulance.

   I feared that her departure might provoke

a sudden exodus, and that was why

I locked them in my kitchen. “Please stay calm!”

I shouted from the living-room. The noise

Subsided long enough for me to tell

them that (surprise, surprise!) I’d baked them all

a Fortune Cookie. (This was why I’d asked

them round for Sunday tea: to spread the joy,

throughout our neighbourhood, of eating cookies

and reading fortunes simultaneously.)

   Explaining that I might be armed, so no

quick moves, I turned the lock inside the door

and slowly pulled it open. Everyone,

without exception, seemed somewhat suspenseful;

the expectation of a fortune cookie

had clearly piqued the interest of my guests,

exactly as I’d hoped. Hooray for me.

   After a small commotion, during which

we all made friends, I handed out the cookies.

   I’m not entirely sure what happened next,

but when my consciousness returned, the scene

was reminiscent of the time when I

had pushed my mother down the stairs,

by which I mean that there was quite a bit

of screaming, stuff was on the walls, and on

my hands and clothes, and I could barely think

for all the noise those bloody sirens made.

…to be continued…

(21^st/22^nd July 2013, Barnyards-dels-Asprins)