The restaurant was almost empty. As they sat down the door from the kitchen swung open and a Chinese of about twenty in a tight white coat shuffled toward them with an artificially inscrutable grin plastered to his face. He bowed low and presented them with menus. He spoke with exaggerated gravity. 'Onolable guests most welcome in humble establishment of Joe Lee.'
'Oh, cut it out, Joe,' Andrea giggled.
'Oh, yes m'am, yes m'am,' Joe said, and picked up a knife from their table. He pointed it at his crotch. 'Onolable madam want whole thing, balls and all, or just tenderloin? You my best customa! Eat almost every night at Little Chink. I be happy to cut it out for you. You want it flied, boiled, bloiled, or baked?'
'Fuck you… I'll take it raw!'
'Oh… so solly… that against state law.'
'Well then we'll just have to look at the menu.'
'Very vine. Velly vine.'
'And by the way, your Chinese accent shits.'
Joe dropped the knife back onto the table and shook his head. 'Can I help it if I was born in Brooklyn and raised by Ukranians?' He sat down for a few minutes and shot the shit with them while they ordered. Half an hour later Sean and Andrea were musing about the status of life and the universe over tea and fortune cookies.
'These damned things are always so stupid,' Andrea said as she cracked open a cookie and removed the tiny slip of paper from it. 'They always hit you with some ridiculous platitude in pigdin English. You know, somebody could really have fun… '
She opened up the slim strip of paper and read it. An expression of vague interest crossed her face and she turned it over and read something on the other side. She turned it back and read the first side and frowned. She turned it again. 'Weird.' She handed it to Sean.
'Let's see. It says, 'Statement on other side of this paper indubitably false.'' He turned it over. ''Statement on other side of this paper indubitably false.'' He thought for a second. 'Well, they're both false, right? I mean, nothing's indubitably false. Or is it?'
'If they're both fake then they're both true too.'
'So they're both true and false. Only at different times. They sort of take turns. Or are they both false and true at the same time?'
'What's false and true at the same time? Think about it. Can it be true and false at the same time that I'm a woman, or that two and two are four?'
'Sounds sort of fishy.' Sean thought some more. 'Well… they're neither true nor false. That's the answer. They don't say anything.'
'They look like they say something to me. What do you mean? They don't mean anything? They're not language? Hell, they're sentences, aren't they? Statements? I mean, they even say they're statements.'
'Yeah, but their saying so doesn't make it so.'
'Right. In which case they're saying that they are statements and they're lying there. Which makes them both false. And therefore both true. Get it?'
'No.'
'Neither do I. I'm confused to shit.'
'Let's see what's in mine.' Sean cracked open his cookie and fished the strip of paper out. 'It says, The Nothing Nothings. Isn't That Something? Momma! Somebody's gone bazooney in the fortune cookie factory!'
Andrea stopped him. 'Hey, I remember that from someplace. The Nothing Nothings.' She turned and called to the kitchen. 'Hey Joe, get your buns out here for a second! What're you doing, playing with our heads?'
Joe sauntered out. 'What's up?'
'These fortune cookies. As if you didn't know.'
'They say you're going to marry an Irish guy with a beard or that you must be a singer or something, right? People always call me out when things like this…'
'No. Take a look.' Andrea smiled blandly at him as though she knew he wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. Then she remembered about the saying she'd heard before. 'The Nothing Nothings,' she said reflectively. 'That sounds familiar.'
Joe's eyebrows went up as he read the fortunes. 'Yeah. The Nothing Nothings. Martin Heidegger.' He mused and stroked his chin. 'Pretty fucking high-powered fortune cookie. This is really bizarre. I've never seen a fortune like this before.' If he was acting he was doing a fantastic job of it. 'And I know the guy who makes these cookies. He gets the fortunes printed on big sheets from Hong Kong. They've been the same doggerel crap for years. Nobody over there's ever heard of Heidegger.'
Sean eyed Joe suspiciously. 'How the hell do you know that's Heidegger?'
Joe grinned. 'I only look like a dumb cook. I'm writing my dissertation for a PhD. in philosophy at NYU'
Sean's jaw dropped.
Joe turned to Andrea. 'This other one… it's a version of the liar Paradox. In fact it's the version Bertrand Russell gives in his autobiography. The original was cooked up by Epimenides the Cretan who said all Cretans were liars. You get the same thing if you just say, 'I'm lying.' You are if you aren't playing around with antinomies like this for more than two thousand years.'
'Antino who's' Sean asked.
'Antinomies. Irreconcilable contradictions. Recently they've come up in connection with set theory. Recently like around the turn of the century.' Sean seemed interested and Joe went on. 'The idea of a set is basic to mathematics. It seems like a perfectly clear idea. It's just the idea of a group or a collection-like a flock of birds or a bunch of bananas. The trouble is that some sets are members of themselves. Like the word 'noun' is a noun, the idea of an idea is an idea, the set of all sets that have more than ten members has more than ten sets as members. It's like a bunch of bananas being another banana. But some sets are like this-members of themselves-and some aren't. So you gather up all the ones that aren't-and that's going to be a lot, because the set of all men isn't a man, and so on-and call that a set, which according to the first rules of set theory you were allowed to do. So then you ask whether this set is a member of itself. Turns out that it is if it isn't and it isn't if it is.'
'Whew!' Sean gasped, wiping his hand across his brow. 'I don't know if I… '
'Yeah; when Bertie Russell wrote a letter to a guy who had just invented mathematical logic and told him that by the rules he was playing with he'd run into this problem and that meant his most basic idea was nonsense it shocked the guy more than it shocks you. But what I'm wondering is how the hell this and that other one got into a fortune cookie. I'm going to get the box and see what other goodies it has.'
'Come on, Joe,' Andrea coaxed as he went for the kitchen, 'You had your fun, but let's not get carried away.'
He turned back to her. 'I'm telling you, I didn't do it. What did I do? I steamed the cookies open, right?' He disappeared and emerged in a second with a huge box of cookies. 'I picked those two cookies at random out of this box myself. Maybe the guy started getting his fortunes from some hippie freak-how do I know?' He sat the box down on the table and started breaking cookies open.
'Bird in hand worth two in bush.'
'Husband: he who always get next to last word.'
'Penny saved, penny earned.'
And so on through three dozen cookies.
'Isn't that a bitch? The same old crap.' He could see Sean and Andrea were still suspicious. 'Look, do you think I'd waste all these damned cookies on a silly goof like that?' He laughed. 'Hell, I don't care if you believe me or not. But I guess it's better that the rest are the same old shit. If people started getting cookies that confused them they'd start going to some other restaurant. Who the hell wants to drink their tea and wonder about The Nothing Nothings. Isn't That Something? Honest to god… I'd never sell another spare rib.'
Andrea glanced at the clock on the wall. Time for me to get back.'
As they strolled quickly back to the bar through the crowded Village Streets, dodging pan-handlers and stepping over an occasional nodding junkie or wiped-out wino, Andrea badgered Sean about the cookies. 'Listen,' she insisted, 'that's just too bizarre to be true. I mean, weird things have been happening lately. They've been really nice, but sort of spooky at the same time. Like me greeting you in the nude for our first date singing Rock of Ages. I still don't have any idea what made me do that. And then… ' She was tempted to mention the episode with the storm but decided Sean would probably laugh it off. 'Well anyhow, I just have this funny feeling about those
