Angel

Paul turned his head. “No, thank you.”

Ian popped the eel into his own mouth.

Paul was trying in vain to pick up fried rice with his chopsticks. “C’mon, Ian. I’m hungry, please give me my fork back.”

“What will you give me?”

“What do you want?”

Ian quickly raised and lowered his eyebrows. It was clear from Ian’s expression that he wanted Paul to pay his fork ransom that night in bed.

“Yes, fine. Whatever you want. Just give me the fork, sadist!”

Ian did not reach over and get the fork. Instead, he picked up one of the shrimp from Paul’s plate with his own chopsticks and fed it to him. Their eyes lingered on each other’s as Ian slid the chopsticks slowly from Paul’s lips.

“Paul?”

Paul turned. It was Mike Davis. He and his wife, Janice, were standing by the table. How long had they been there?

“Hi,” Paul said, sitting up straight. He put his hand over his mouth as if by doing so he could hide the evidence of the moment before.

“I thought that was you,” Mike said. He shuffled from one foot to another. It was an unusual stance for someone who was usually so commanding. They had obviously been there long enough.

“Hi, Ian,” said Janice. Mike stole a glance at Ian out of the corner of his eye but did not acknowledge him directly.

For a moment, the four diners looked at one another with stupid wide grins, waiting for someone to speak.

“So,” Janice said, “do you guys eat here a lot?”

“No,” Paul said. “Not really.” Another awkward silence.

Mike nodded his head. “Well, we’d better go get our food.”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Nice to see you.”

The mood now broken, Paul got up and picked up a set of cutlery from a nearby table. When Mike and Janice returned to their booth, Paul watched them out of the corner of his eye. They leaned into each other as though they were speaking in hushed tones. From time to time, they would glance over to Paul and Ian’s booth and then quickly look back to their plates.

“Don’t look so guilty,” Ian said. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“Do I look guilty?”

“Like you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar.”

Paul put his right hand on his cheek, trying to feel the emotion on his skin.

“You have a terrible poker face,” Ian said, drawing a circle around Paul’s face in the

air with his chopsticks. “Everything you think is right there.”

The waitress, a young Chinese woman without much English, approached the table. She was holding the bill on a small plastic tray with two fortune cookies on top. Without asking, she set it down in front of Paul. She took their empty plates and went back to the kitchen.

Ian unwrapped one of the fortune cookies and cracked it open. “‘Everything has beauty’,” he read, “‘but not everyone sees it.’” He shrugged and set the slip of paper down next to the used chopsticks. “What does yours say?”

Paul cracked open his cookie. He read the fortune to himself and chuckled at its appropriateness.

“Well?” Ian asked. “What’s it say?”

“‘Never regret anything that made you smile.’”