The idea for this submission came from Lori Nelson-Clonts, one of the wonderful women in my writing critique group. I love the concept of her yet-unpublished novel – “The Good Luck Fortune Cookie” and wanted to share it with all of you. I chopped her story line down to 150-words.
Sitting at the crossroad of this way and that in her life, Akiri pondered her significance in the family business.
Her brother made Okonomiyaki from a two-hundred-year-old recipe.
Her sister played the Binzasara, music men drove miles to enjoy while eating her brother’s creations and staring at Makiko’s hands.
Mother ran the kitchen. Father counted yen.
For other members of the family, customer interaction was essential.
Meanwhile, Akiri was cloistered in an upstairs room, listening to private conversations piped through microphones hidden beneath tables in the restaurant. Beside her desk, a box held a thousand slips of paper on which she wrote “special” fortunes gleaned from conversations between diners.
Akiri turned declarations of love, admissions of fear, anything, and everything into “fortune.” Nothing was sacred. She often felt like a spy.
Still, before each customer parted Akiri managed to slip hope inside homemade fortune cookies – served free at the end of every meal.
(150 words)
Up From the Ashes 