Coffee Grounds For Divorce

Unlike some cynical readers of this blog, I DO have great faith in horoscopes (Chinese and, um, non-Chinese), just as I find Divine Intervention a useful tool when I misplace my house keys (a quiet prayer up to St Anthony and hey presto!). I also believe in Santa Claus, transubstantiation, virgo intacto parthenogenesis of male children, routine miracles at Lourdes, ocular bleeding of statues, pigges bones*, papal bulls, touching wood, avoiding black cats, Babylonian haruspicy, and of course the venerable Tooth Fairy, who is playing me a fair treat of late with this fucking dental cap (about half a tooth actually) which keeps falling out.

Three times tonight during a Lebanese meal at the famed (and nearly empty) Abu Ali Restaurant the bugger came loose. There must be something happening. The remnant tooth is cold sensitive without the cap firmly pressed into it. I really need to put several hundred dollars under the Parkview pillow of my Tooth Fairy Dentist when I get back (if ever) to Singapore, to sort this out this entire buccal mess once and for all (or until the guarantee expires).

So, at dinner tonight, as I am fossicking in my mouth yet again to resite the errant ceramic, one of the local ladies offers to read my future from the dregs in my coffee cup!

Of course I trust her that the patterns in my life will play out according to (or caused by?) whatever patterns the dribbling coffee dregs will make in my cup. It only stands to reason. Perfectly normal thing to believe in...

- Thurth, I say. Bru moth thuum warrrn. (Sure. But you must tell me all!)

So when the tooth-cap is pushed relatively firm into its cavity, I turn the finished (not empty) cup of thick mid-sweet Turkish brew upside down in its saucer and several kilograms of cosmic dark matter, err, mushy coffee sludge slides down the inside of the cup, creating (I presume) forms and appearances of great moment and significance for her to divine. I pass the cup, still upside in the saucer, across. She waits for a minute or two, then turns it over.

- You are in love, Sir Ekpat, she says right up.

- I am? Who with? I look around. Laughs, smiles.

- You are not in love?, asks one of the other ladies, one I was careful NOT to look at - a bit too eagerly, I think.

- Not that I am aware, no, I am not in love, I laugh.

- Well, you have a big heart, a wide heart full of love, says the coffee reader, nodding as if that was what she meant in the first place.

- Of course I love all of *you*, I say. (Thinking, big heart? Maybe she has seen some evidence of long-standing hypertension induced cardiomyopathy?)

She tilts the cup around and looks at it from another angle. She peers into it with concentration, she seems almost embarrassed by it what she finds there. What is it? I have a pornography obsession? I will die a Mulder death?

- There are two women.

I sigh...

- Well, I *was* in Bangkok earlier this week, and it's only natural, a man has his urges, irresistable really, and when it doesn’t seem to upset anyone, and the price is reasonable...

- You are in love with two women, she says.

Coos and laughter from around our section of the table…

- Well, no, I am not in love at all, I insist.

- There are two women though.

The other lady leans across and looks into the cup. - Yes, she is right. There are two ladies.

Why do I get the feeling I am being set up here?

- Well maybe it is my mother and sister. They are the two women in my life…

- Yes, maybe that is what it means, she shrugs, unconvinced.

She passes the cup to her friend, whispers to her and smiles back at me.

- She knows what will happen in your future, how you will live long time, when you will die, from this, says the second lady, smiling also.

- Yep, sure, I say. I believe you. The tooth falls out again as I try to chew a tough slice of babaganoush rolled in very thin bread (fed in with three fingers).

- Nnuth knellm unn urrr nf nnnn oooh zaarrr. (Just tell me where and I won't go there.)

E@L


* Ne was there such another pardonere.
For in his mail he had a pillowbere,
Which, as he saide, was our Lady's veil:
He said, he had a gobbet of the sail
That Sainte Peter had, when that he went
Upon the sea, till Jesus Christ him hent.
He had a cross of latoun full of stones,
And in a glass he hadde pigge's bones.
But with these relics, whenne that he fond
A poore parson dwelling upon lond,
Upon a day he got him more money
Than that the parson got in moneths tway;
And thus with feigned flattering and japes,
He made the parson and the people his apes.
But truely to tellen at the last,
He was in church a noble ecclesiast.

Pasted from http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/cbtls12.txt