‘23 is a very lucky number, you know,’ Greta tells me, her eyes round and sparkling. The wheels screech against the subway tracks and muffle the sound of her voice. In my family, my grandmother, brother and I all have birthdays that fall on the 23rd of the month. Greta is delighted when I tell her this.
I am also a dragon in the Chinese zodiac. My mother tells me she had a friend, a Chinese nurse who worked at her hospital, who told her, ‘How lucky you are! Your baby will be born in the year of the Dragon! Dragons are full of life and charisma! Your baby will be very successful!’
When I entered my 36th year, the Year of the Dragon, I prayed that all these old predictions would finally come true. It’s time to pay up, I thought, scowling up at the sky. I’ve waited long enough.
But that year was the worst one to date. And I suppose it would be very Asian of me, very Confucius-say to tell you now that it was perhaps lucky in a way that hasn’t revealed itself yet. Like the fable of the old farmer and his horse who ran away only to return with more horses and his crippled son whose mangled body saved him from being sent to fight in the war – things are not always as they seem.
And you’ll pardon me while I stroke my Fu Manchu and peer into my crystal ball, strategically placed to enhance the feng shui of my pagoda…
‘Oh look,’ Greta says, ‘can you see it?’ I peer in the direction she is pointing but I see nothing. I shake my head, swaying with the rhythm of the train.
‘It’s 23!’ she says, still pointing. ‘On his shoe!’
Still, ‘I can’t see,’ I tell her.
Greta takes hold of my hand and pulls me towards her. ‘Right over there, on his sneaker.’
The number 23, in small black print, is stamped on the pristine white sneakers on a young man, three seats down from us. Almost hidden under his baggy, jeaned legs.
‘You see’, Greta beams at me, ‘there are so many things like this, when you begin to learn to look for them.’ Her hand is still on my wrist. ‘Oh, it’s my stop!’ She pauses to give me a long embrace. ‘I see you in the morning for meditation. Kisses on your heart!’
I smile and watch her float away and the rocking train delivers us forth, ‘23’ staring me in the face as we bend, like reeds of papyrus.
