Keep your eyes open, an adventure of a lifetime soon awaits you.
A chaliced aroma of the "gateway drug", the chicken crackled in the air against the sweeter melody of the dumplings and the rhythm of the taboo, yet delicious spicy rabbit filled the air. The harsh neon lights that filtered the room were like an unground rock concert: unchecked, sizzling and distorted. Most of the ceiling was adorned with a magnificent bronze dragon, magnificent not as in it was grande or orate but rather in the sense that the dragon could come alive at any moment and it would have been as if it was always alive.
Chairs, tables, menus, around them was the blazing red covering that surrounded the room in fervor and excitement, perhaps happy to entrance the customers like a vintage American diner from the '40s. But it couldn't have been, the Americans were the ones before the last to inhibit the restaurant. I remember that was during my painting phase and every day after practicing listening to vinyl getting ready to paint I would go down and have a simple hamburger, chips, and fries. The Americans were gone now after them was the German Grill and now it was the Taste of China. But that didn't matter. That wasn't what I was here for.
"Are you done yet, sir?" Two round and awaiting eyes popped out from the bouts of visible light from between the shadows. A little girl, with a hair of mahogany, sprouted up in front of me, with outreached hands that grasped at the heavy, thick plates that it looked so sweet and comical. I hadn't touched the food yet, I was waiting. I don't yet know for what as I had come to known the fortunes didn't always arrive immediately, they snuck up like a hunter does to a deer, getting closer and closer, cocking the gun, aiming the bullet, all the while the deer peacefully eats grass and in the next second its dead. They came to me just as menacingly yet the "death" turned into a pleasant rebirth.
The lights in the restaurant began to slowly dim, leaving just me in the spotlight as a patient nudge to tell me to get the hell out of there. I nodded at the girl who took up my food and hurriedly placed it back in the kitchen. Keep your eyes open, an adventure of a lifetime soon awaits you. The fortune was vague today but it was always this way. Tonight was four weeks in a row that I had ordered food from here, yet I didn't touch my plate, only the fortune cookie. That was all I wanted.
The wind carried me home, today it was a gentle breeze crossed with the shine of the shop's lights across the street, turned on for the single customer who quietly hid out in these little shops before being forced to confront the world outside. A light rain sleeted down coats and collars amongst the bare street as people wandered back home. The boulevard looked like a painting here, yet it looked unfinished instead of glorious. The stoic faces littering the sidewalk, the road was grey and bleak, and the stores were all bland and alike as if someone had drawn out an outline for a street yet forgot to follow up and make the people happy, the road bright and pleasant, and the shops unique and alluring. Alas, everything was a dim reminder of what it once was, all of it simply meandering along for the next day to come.
It all started with the first fortune at the new restaurant, you will meet a lifelong friend today. Hours later while biking home I had heard the whines of a stray dog looking for a home. I took it back and rejuvenated its scraggly fur with a new wash and soon the lonely dog became my sole companion wherever I went. Coincidence, perhaps, but there were too many coincidences that it turned into a pattern. Maggie was the soulmate at midnight, the promotion to Executive Pilot was the reward long deserved, and the flooding of the apartment was the disaster in paradise. It was systematic in that each event occurred only a few hours after I had opened them from the restaurant as if waiting each day to tell me my destiny. And it became my ritual to wait for it.
I stumbled down to the subway station, eager to chase the next order in my fate. I was alone with just my coffee colored shoes spilling onto the platform, or at least I hoped I was. The city was drearier in this time of night, almost deathly in a way. This state of raw abandonment was also scary in its own way and I shuffled my feet to the edge of the line, farther than I should be, staring down the dark void of the tunnel. My arms clutched the pillar to my right, tracing the cold worn out designs of fake gold and the fragments of hope.
In the heavy silence, I began to gently close my eyes, struggling to stay awake. The world became a blur and everything I saw acted like a series of pictures with my eyes clicking open and shut like a camera, with the clicks getting longer and the pictures shorter until I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Every five minutes I would wake up with no recollection of my falling asleep except for the indication of the movement of the pile of snails in the far right corner of the worn-out station. The subway and I were alike, both subject to captivating boredom with our best days behind us and just a single task to await each morning. One of us was scratched out, dulled with the whims of humanity shadowing sullen windows and oily appearances as to not mind or even care for trivial matters anymore; the other was a subway.
Before I allowed myself to fully submit into slumber my eyes caught a distant green light shimmering under one of the tracks. As I knelt closer to get a look I realized that they weren't lights they were animals. I took a quick glance to the left, for any trains to come and darted down and across the rails, past the warnings of danger, and into the small tunnel: an adventure of a lifetime.
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