He is no clairvoyant, prophet, soothsayer. Not a staunch believer in any creed or philosophy. Not really a believer, or staunch about anything. He rides the subway every day to an office in Brooklyn. Or at least he did, for thirty years. Now he just rides the subway. To Brooklyn, to Queens, to Chinatown, where he likes to walk around, peeking into restaurants at people cracking fortune cookies open.

You will witness a special ceremony.

They do not notice the old man. Few people do. He likes that. He notices them, their faces as they read their fortunes. Light up. Or frown. He observes whether they fold the notes carefully and tuck them into the insides of coat pockets, wallets, books, notebooks, stuff them in overstuffed bags from which they may, or not, emerge in a few months when spring and spring cleaning come. Or whether they fiddle with the long and thin strip of paper, crumple, tear, or discard it by the eaten, or not, cookie.

He prefers those who eat the cookie to those who do not.

The opposite of stressed is desserts. Need relief? Order more.

He also prefers those who smile to those who do not.

The joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days.

Or, as he wrote in another note:

Smile often. You will look and feel younger.

He likes the groups of young friends a lot, who laugh at everything, are always hungry, know the menu by heart, clean up their plates and fish deep into their pockets for coins so the bill adds up. And tips. They always manage to tip, those groups young and poor enough to still remember waiting on tables themselves and clearing strangers’ plates.

They read their fortunes aloud, the young. They pass them around, seeming to believe, really, that they

will live a long, happy life,

step on the soil of many countries,

inherit some money or a small piece of land,

marry the love of your life,

find what your heart seeks,

spend old age in comfort and material wealth.

He remembers friends and evenings like that of his own.

It takes more than a good memory to have good memories.

He likes that one, though he cannot remember, ironically, when or where he wrote it. There have been, simply, too many. Tens of thousands of fortunes over the years that he wrote as they came to him on buses, in bathtubs, the middle of meals or fights or lovemaking. They stood in front of him in line at the bank, the bakery, by him at funerals, above him on altars, concert stages, movie screens. He found some in classifieds and novels, some stirred into his tea. The best found him when he was alone, silent, in the evening.

You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability.

In over thirty years, he does not think he has.

4.5 million fortune cookies are produced every day, by the company that only gave him that job because he spoke decent English. 4.5 million people will read something the old man wrote over the course of a life spent noticing. People. Rain. Rainbows.

That is his only credential, besides English of course. And people believe this man they don’t even know or see in the street.

Like they believed the promises on notes slipped in cookies they passed along during Chinese rebellions or in Japanese internment camps. Like they believe, not horoscopes but the voice of mother at night: It will be all right. Shh. Go back to sleep. Belief is not knowledge, but choice.

You will live a long and happy life,

If you decide to. That, the fortune cookie writer does believe, staunchly. If

your heart is pure, your mind clear, your soul devout,

if

there is magic in your smile, firmness in your handshake,

if, ‘when they eat their fortune cookie, [they] open the fortune, read it, maybe laugh, and leave the restaurant happy,’

then the old man nods to himself, smiles to no one around, and turns his slow feet back toward the subway station.