"Sorry I'm late," April said as she turned to slip past a chair.  The words were perfunctory, as they both knew.  April had not been on time to their dinners in six months.  She smiled briefly at Mark before hugging him, taking the time to notice that her hands brushed the cloth of a jacket much finer than any she owned.  She pulled away and met his eyes.  Immediately, her hand went to her hair, which had been thrown in disarray by the wind and her frantic search for the cell phone she had dropped in the car.  

"It's a long story," she told him.  She tried to smooth her hair back and sit down in the booth at the same time, causing her to bump ungracefully into place.  "It starts with getting a phone call, then dropping my phone somewhere in my car--and you know how hard it is to find anything in there.  So I wanted to call the phone to make it ring, you know?  I think even I could find it if it was ringing!  But once I went back inside to call my number, I realized I wouldn't be able to hear it unless I stayed in the car, so I just had to go back and look again.  And of course it was windy out, so, well, here I am."

She smiled at him again, without any self-consciousness.  He had heard this sort of story many times from her.  In fact, Mark might have been shocked if she had showed up for their dinner coiffed and perfumed.  He might even have felt strange if she had arrived first and sat down at their usual booth.  He liked to watch her come in her haphazard way, and he relished the time she gave him to think.  His mind was much clearer during those fifteen minutes of waiting than it was during the rest of the week.  He would never be able to verbalize what he spent the time thinking about, if he tried to recall it afterwards, but he needed that quiet time.  Maybe, he reflected, part of that ease was the result of his anticipation of her discombobulation.

"Do you ever wish I would show up like a normal girl?"  Mark's eyes widened slightly at the question, which followed his own thoughts so closely.  He had time to recover, since their waiter had come over to the table.  April flashed him a quick smile.  Even the waiter here was familiar to both of them.  "White wine, please.  And I'll have the regular.  Well," she said, turning back towards him, "do you?  I could be here at, oh, 6:55?  In a dress.  Or maybe a suit.  A black suit, I think, kind of understated and elegant?  You're always in a suit anyways, so I don't think that would be overdoing it.  I could wear my hair down, have it brushed and shiny and magically held in place like some women seem to do, with their gel or spray or whatever actually works.  I'd have makeup on, with purple tones in it, since purple is in style this season.  Or so I hear.  Then you could walk in."  April paused to sip her wine.  Her eyes were laughing, but whether at him or at her little reverie, Mark couldn't tell.  "Then you'd come over here, and I could get up instead of you.  It would be a change!  Ooh, maybe I would have even ordered your wine for you.  Then the waiter would come over, look at you, and you would order--and when you'd finished, we could start our dinner.  Wouldn't that be nice?"  

April laughed, throwing her head back slightly.  Half of her brown, curly hair was still sticking out, the other half pulled firmly into a hair tie.  Her t-shirt had a hole over one shoulder.  There was no trace of makeup on her face.  

Seeing her, Mark laughed a little too.  "You're easily the worst dressed person here," he pointed out.  

She assented happily after a quick glance around the restaurant.  

"Yes, I am.  But you never know, maybe one week someone will show up here in a shirt with three or four holes, and you won't be able to say that anymore."

"And they'd get turned out, I bet.  I'm sure the only reason they let you in here like that is that we're such loyal customers."

"Or just my charming ways!  I could be bribing the maitre d' every week, for all you know."

"You don't need to."  Mark was a little surprised at the sudden change of tone he brought to the conversation, but he continued despite that.  It had been some time since that sort of inhibition had stopped him from talking to April.  "They would let you in here no matter what you wore.  It's something about you."

April studied his expression carefully.  She let his words fall away in silence for a minute or two.  Their salads came, and they were half-way finished before she spoke again.  

"I think I'll test this theory of yours.  Next week, I'm going to show up in something so horrifying that no sensible person would let me walk in the front door.  I have this perfect shirt- I used it for painting, then for gardening, and now I think it's underneath the dog's bed, since he finished using it as a chew toy."  The edges of her mouth curled up.  "Unless," she said.  

They were both silent for a while.  The salads were finished and taken away.  Their second course came.  Snatches of conversation floated to them from other tables.  Mark found his eyes tracing one strand of her flyaway hair over and over again, seeing how it curled out and slightly backwards like the edge of a lion's mane, framing her eyes.  

April's mind was racing.  "We have nothing to lose", she thought.  "There is nothing that we will lose from speaking, no matter what happens, no matter what we say."  This was not the first time that thought occurred to her, but now she saw a new one following it with an inevitable air.  "People who have nothing to lose can lose everything.  Anyone else, anyone who thinks that they have something to ruin, they should know that that means they have something they can't ruin too.  Isn't that why so many people would rather not go to these places?  Why people never say everything?"  April shook her head at herself.  Mark noticed three tiny hairs wobble and relax the angle they pointed in.  "That's people, that's not us," April told herself.  "We can be what we want to be."

"Unless," Mark said slowly, savoring the way the words felt in his mouth as they became sound, final and absolute, "I tell you to come early next week?  In a suit, a black, elegant suit.  Wearing makeup and perfume, and with styled hair."  He watched as April's eyes became suddenly rounder.  "That is what was on your mind, wasn't it?  The words that were on your tongue?"

"More like my throat," she murmured.  

The waiter came over to them then, heedless of the words that were spoken and unspoken.  

"Would you two like desert?" he asked.  "We have something new on the menu tonight."  

"Sure," April said.  Her voice was ringing slightly in her ears, making her sound different, almost inhuman.  "We'll have one of those."

"Only one?" Mark asked her when the waiter had left.  "Is it for you, or for me?"  
She shrugged, her face belying something.  He could not quite put his finger on what.  "I can order another, if you want.  I didn't even ask what it was."  The waiter returned and set down a glass dish of ice cream in front of them.  It was an elegant presentation.  "I'm sure the menu describes it well," April thought.  "Homemade ice cream with fresh chocolate sauce, or something like that.  With fortune cookies on top?  Two of them?  This isn't even a Chinese restaurant.  What are we doing here?  I don't think I'm hungry."

"Would you like two spoons with that, or one?"  The waiter smiled at looked at them expectantly.

"We'll take two," Mark answered.  Despite his words, both of them only sat and stared at the desert.   

"It has fortune cookies on top," April finally commented.  "I don't know why.  Everyone knows they don't taste good.  It's normally such a good restaurant, too."

Mark shrugged.  "Are you going to eat yours?"

"No.  I never liked them since I got an empty one.  Talk about depressing, everyone else happily knowing that great things will happen to them, while you get an empty cookie shell.  Ever since then, I've kept thinking the ones I choose will all be empty.  I'll never get the good ones."  Oddly, she was blushing.  Something in their relationship had shifted in the last hour, and they both felt it.  She suddenly questioned her words, wondering if she had spoken too much.

Mark reached across the table and squeezed her hand.  "Pick one," he told her.  She met his eyes and swallowed.  A moment ago, she might have said that her ideas about fortune cookies were silly, that she could discard them in an instant.  Now, his demand felt challenging.  "I know this man," she reminded herself.  "I know who he is and who he was and wants to be.  He is Mark."  She stretched out her hand, noting that one of her fingers twitched, and took the cookie on the left.

"Good," he said.  He deftly took the cookie from her and slipped it in his pocket.  "That was the empty one.  Now, this one is for you."  

April took the cookie he offered her.  Something in her jumped as their fingertips brushed, even though they had touched each other hundreds of times before.  She cracked the cookie open and took out the tiny paper slip.  Mark tried to read the fortune in her eyes, but it was not until she moistened her lips and read it aloud that he knew the paper was not blank.  

"You will receive praise for a job well done," she read.  "Is it true?"

"Metaphysically?" he asked her.  "Or did you mean, will you receive it next week?"

"I don't know."

The clock on the opposite wall chimed, marking the time they left every week.  Mark watched her stand up and slowly walk out the door.  Her mood now made her seem like a separate woman from the one who had entered.  As she turned and walked on the sidewalk past the restaurant's window, he could see the scrap of white peeking out from her hand.  Pensively, he took the fortune cookie from his pocket and opened it.  He half expected that it would hold nothing, although he preferred to see that as potentiality rather than the emptiness April had described.  Instead, there was a slip of paper inside.  He pulled it out and read, "Romance is just around the corner."  Laughing out loud at the oddity, he put on his jacket and left.