Five Fortunes Read Online Free PDF

woman was in great grief or trouble. Was there any way to help?
    A my had finished her breakfast, which had been served to her in her room overlooking the koi pond. Having decided to forgo the healing silence of Zen koans in her solitude, she was reading Ann Landers when Jill came in.
    “It’s pouring rain in New York,” Jill said.
    “Is it?”
    “Yes. They have a page where they tell the weather all over the country.”
    Jill wasn’t used to eating breakfast alone. She had read her paper with great thoroughness, the better to distract herself from how hungry she was. Breakfast had been a little dish of oatmeal, a spoonful of maple sugar, skim milk, and a couple of slices of papaya.
    She’d dispatched it in about a minute and a half, and now she noticed that her mother had not eaten the squash blossom that decorated her plate. Jill had eaten hers.
    “Eight-thirty to nine, I have stretch class, or T’ai Chi. What do you?”
    “I always go to Stretch.”
    “I think I’ll try T’ai Chi.”
    Amy looked surprised.
    “Do you know what it is?”
    “No. But, why not? What do you do at nine?”
    “I have Step or Dance.”
    “I hate Step.”
    26
    Five Fortunes / 27
    “I know,” said Amy.
    When Jill had gone, Amy sat, remembering her lithe little girl in her tutu, dancing a sugarplum fairy in The Nutcracker . How she had loved it. When she’d started taking toe, Amy would often see after class that Jill’s little feet were bloody and the wads of lamb’s wool packed into the hard toes of her shoes were soaked red. Jill never minded. Her teachers had believed she could dance for Peter Martins.
    Amy wondered now if Jill the elephant even remembered having once been a hummingbird.
    Stretch class was very soothing, except that the poor giant woman called Carter, who hadn’t brought the right things and was trying to work out in her tennis clothes, split the center seam of her shorts open. The whole class lay on their backs with their feet in the air as New Age music twanged and tinkled, and pretty little Abby cried out instructions with merry zeal.
    “Now drop those feet out wide apart, as w-i-i-i-de as you can, and str-e-e-e-tch those inner thighs…” and the whole class heard the unmistakable rip. Carter began to laugh helplessly.
    “Hold your tuck, ladies, and stretch—hold that tuck…” cried Abby as she sprang upright like a cat and tripped to Carter’s side.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Oh, perfect,” Carter said. “This is my idea of a vacation,” and her laughter became uncontrollable. It proved contagious, and all over the room, poses collapsed as glamour girls, rich wives, doctors, lawyers, and captains of industry in their violet and navy sweat suits flopped over giggling.
    Amy, prone on the exercise carpet, said to Carter, “You know, my daughter has some sweats that would fit you.”
    Carter, valiantly stifling her snorts of laughter, rolled over and looked at Amy. She recognized the New York Blonde from last night, the mother-daughter team at the first table. The rest of the class was being exhorted to scissor its legs in the air at a rapid beat, impossibly fast, it would have seemed, except that Abby was doing it with no trouble, and calling instructions at the same time.
    28 / Beth Gutcheon
    “They’ve sent the shopping fairy to the mall for me,” said Carter.
    “I’m sure, but in the meantime. They’ll be too short, but…”
    “Well, thanks,” said Carter, accepting. She and Amy scrambled to their feet and crept out of the class.
    Outside, the morning was growing warm. As they hurried along, Carter still couldn’t completely stifle the odd giggle.
    “Please excuse me,” she said. “I seem to be hysterical. I think it might be nicotine deprivation.”
    “Makes sense to me,” said Amy. “When I quit smoking, I had the most lurid erotic fantasies for about two weeks. It was definitely an altered state.”
    “That hasn’t happened to me yet,” said Carter, and she began to