I nodded. I understood. After my wife left, I still set two bowls of rice on the table every night for a year. Grief is a habit before it’s a feeling.
She sat alone every Friday at Table Seven, the one nearest the koi pond. Not gambling. Not drinking. Just watching. Her hair was the color of ink spilled on rice paper, pinned up with a single jade hairpin shaped like a lotus. Her cheongsam was the deep green of a jungle at dusk, embroidered with silver thread that caught the light like distant lightning. She never smiled. She never frowned. She simply was .
“Of course it is,” the old woman said, handing me back the hairpin. “And so is love. So is grief. So is a cleaner who brings plum blossoms to a widow. Impossible things are the only things worth believing in.” jade venus
The fortune-teller was a toothless woman with eyes like a crow’s—bright, black, and hungry. She sat beneath the stone façade of the old church, where the Virgin Mary’s face had been worn smooth by four hundred years of rain. When I showed her the hairpin, she laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound, like wind through bones.
“Wei Dong found this in the tomb,” the old woman said. “He knew what it meant. He wore it for luck. But when he died, he gave it to his wife and told her to wear it every Friday at Table Seven. Not to scare his enemies. To wait.” I nodded
As the crowd dispersed, I was mopping near the pillar closest to her table. I shouldn’t have spoken. But my mouth opened before my fear could stop it.
“I could,” she agreed. “But then I would have to ask myself who I am without him. And I’m not ready for that answer.” Grief is a habit before it’s a feeling
“The cards are just paper,” she continued. “The real game is always what people bring to the table. Fear. Greed. Loneliness.” She paused. “You bring loneliness. It clings to you like the smell of bleach.”