His favourite canned soup had been out of stock in the various shops they had tried around town.
It was perplexing and they figured it had to be one of two things. Either Mulligatawny soup was so popular that supply couldn’t keep up with demand, or the complete opposite, so few people were buying it that sellers didn’t want to give it shelf space. Whatever the reason, it had been unavailable for several months. They were at the shops again and he was passing the time reading the notices on the board, while she shopped. It was mounted on a wall in the main entrance hall of the shopping centre. The thing was there as a convenience for any member of the public to post adverts or personal messages. In the main they consisted of business cards, with a sprinkling of personal notices offering things for sale, together with the occasional lost pet.
It was this last category that caught his eye. Anyone that had a missing animal would give a description of it and a telephone number. In those cases where the person preparing the notice had thought ahead, a series of paper tabs, each one giving a contact number. These tabs could be torn off and kept, just in case. The one he was staring at wasn’t about lost animals or lost anything. In fact, it was hard to see what it was about. The message, if that’s what it was, was a set of strange hieroglyphics and symbols that conveyed nothing to him. It was the tabs that had him wondering. He estimated that there had originally been around twenty, with most torn off. Instead of telephone numbers, they were words. The three that remained were ‘Luck’, ‘Fortune’ and ‘Joy’.
Whatever it was, he found it amusing. He couldn’t help wondering what the other tabs had said. After all, luck, fortune and joy would have to be hard to ignore. He decided he’d take one for fun and was tossing up between luck and fortune. Being pretty much content with the life he had, he could give Joy a miss. Fortune was tempting, but luck was somehow more intriguing. He removed the tab and pocketed it as he strolled to the entrance of the supermarket. He stood waiting for several minutes before spotting her at one of the checkouts. When she finally came out she surprised him by stopping half way. She put her bag on the floor and rummaged through its contents. Then with a great all-knowing grin, she held up a can and waved it in the air.
At that moment, much to his wife’s surprise, he dashed back out into the foyer and tore off ‘Fortune’.