PACIFIC STREET, 2015
We met Ms. Li on the corner of Pacific and Grant, where she can be found on most days sitting on her plastic bucket-shaped stools, faded pink, waiting to read fortunes for passersby.
Her little pink corner caught our eye—the stools, the faded red cap, the set of purple outdoor pajamas. Ms. Li paired her purple outfit with a striped mock turtleneck underneath and stylish gold sunglasses.
“How’s business?” we asked.
“When there’s people there’s people,” she said matter-of-factly. “When there’s no people, there’s no people.”
“Do you want your fortune read, or not?” she asked. We asked for a trade—a paid fortune reading for a portrait. She sort of agreed.
“How much?” I asked.
“How much do you want to pay?” she rebutted.
I handed her two fives and she switched her sunglasses out for reading glasses and started singing a song.
She asked me to choose two cards from her deck, cutouts from Marlboro cartons with fortunes inside, written in Chinese characters. They were worn and smooth from many years of swishing around and handling.
In response, she said that I was born on a good birthday; currently things are hard, but overall things look pretty good. “Twenty-eight and twenty-nine will not be good years,” she said. “You need to pray—a lot.” She assured me that thirty will be a better year.
She also took a call during the session on her hot pink flip phone that lasted for five minutes.
Once her call was finished, she asked me if I drove a car. “Why, yes,” I said—I had just gotten a car earlier in the week. “Well, you need to put two safety banners. One in the car and one in the purse.” She pulled out a thin yellow paper that had been folded into a triangle—good-luck banners, she said. “How much?” I asked. This time she named the price, “three dollars each.” I bought two of them for good luck.
