"Mohr, L C - Fortune's Cookie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mohr L C)

FORTUNE'S COOKIE
By L.C. Mohr

Life is a roller coaster ride and anyone who thinks he's steering is kidding himself. All he's doing is hanging on and hoping he doesn't embarrass himself too badly when it's time to get off.

Francis Bacon said that good fortune is like the Milky Way. Not the candy bar. The big white light we see in the sky that's actually made up of a lot of little stars. "And so may a man be made up of scarce discerned virtues that seem, from afar, to be nothing more than good fortune shining on his life."

Or was it Shakespeare who said that? Whoever.

My friend Jeffrey says that men are the architects of their own fortune. Sometimes we have deep discussions like that -- if we can get a seat on the train together. And although I agree with Jeff while we're sitting in a speeding train like some giant bullet being shot into the heart of civilization, when the train stops and people start to scramble and stumble all over each other -- well, it's all I can do to find my way to my office. In control? Not on your life.

People say I'm a fortunate man. I have loved and -- against all odds -- won. "Against all odds" because I was one of those eager young men that women describe as almost handsome and nearly attractive. I'm just now approaching not bad for my age.

So when the most exciting, vibrant, mesmerizing albeit married-woman-with-two-children I'd ever seen actually talked to me, kidded with me, answered my intra-office notes ... well, you see where I'm going here. Fortune fell on my head like a ripe coconut.

Cookie let me fall in love with her. No one so beautiful had ever even looked at me. When she turned those black olive-colored eyes at me ... I never had a chance. She was the prettiest woman I'd ever seen, with patent leather shiny hair and a waist that fit nicely in my hands.

We fumbled around in my office (after work of course) just enough to break a commandment but not enough to enjoy ourselves at it. And then -- lo and behold -- her husband died.

Just like that. One of those "taken suddenly" kinds of notices appeared in the local paper. And she was all mine. Had her husband lasted another month or so we might not have been so fortunate. People might have started to notice things and Cookie might have been whispered to be the unfaithful wife.

As it happened, no one knew. We'd never even told our best friends, hard as that was for me. I told Jeff almost everything. But Jeff worked in the same building with Cookie's husband. Late husband, now. So, as fortune would have it, Cookie was able to retire as the devoted and devastated widow.

And there I was. All ready to step in and console her. And with every right to do so. We were, after all, dear friends from work. A sigh of relief. Great good fortune. I became the next Mr. Cookie.

Naturally we agreed she should stop working. She really wasn't making much money as the assistant bookkeeper anyway, and her children needed her at home.

Along with Cookie I acquired two daughters. I've always thought that the most irritating thing about having children is that from then on you have them. They never go away.

Cookie's twins, Wilhemina and Jillian, were ten years old when I married their mother. A particularly demanding age, I've been told by the people who seem to know about those kinds of things.

But even during bachelorhood I'd noticed that children are difficult at any age. When they're little you have to force food into one end and wipe it off the other. As soon as they start talking they stop listening. And the simplest parts of growing up are always momentous to them. Children live in a constant state of crisis. And they thrive on it.

I, on the other hand, need my peace and quiet. So it was not without a bit of apprehension that I moved directly into Cookie's life, Cookie's house, Cookie's bed.

One morning at breakfast, I innocently suggested: "Why don't we think about buying a new house? It'd give us all a fresh start." I was imagining my own den, my own bathroom, possibly my own entrance.

The peals of laughter could have shattered glass. Billie, who walked with a limp -- not because she had to, but because she liked to -- squirted orange juice out her nose. Jillie sneered at me. She was practicing her disdainful looks this month, her mother had already told me: "It doesn't necessarily mean you've done something stupid." But I often had the feeling that the girls thought everything I did was pretty stupid.

"I don't think so, dear," Cookie said after the laughter had subsided. "We're very comfortable here."

"We've always lived here," Jillie smirked.

Dragging her right leg, Billie put her dishes into the sink. "Mommy's husbands always move in with us." She started upstairs, dragging her left leg now. Jillie sneered at me, sighed loudly and followed her.

** ** **

About 4 o'clock that afternoon, Melissa, my admin ass, buzzed me: "Mr. Bentley? There's a Mr. Pfifer from American Insurance here to see you."

"Who?" Before I could find my appointment calendar my office door opened.