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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Friday Night Demons (Part I)
Friday Night When I got to the restaurant, the sushi bar was packed. A single seat remained at Fu�s station, but I opted to wait for the Aisho�s station and went to sit in the bar and have a Kirin. I was about a quarter of the way through my beer when Fu ran out into the bar and said that he had a seat and asked if I would like to have it. I agreed, just because he had taken the time and trouble to come and collect me. Just after I sat though, a seat opened up in the Aisho�s section, so Fu ran out from behind the sushi bar and began to bus the dishes. Two busboys ran out to help him. I moved three seats over into the Aisho�s station. Both he and Fu looked as though it had been a long night already. �You look tired,� I said to the Aisho. He said, �It�s been busy�and we don�t have any beer back here� (referring to their usual practice of keeping a twelve pack in the reach-in cooler behind the bar). I ordered beer from my waitress�a Miller Lite for Fu and an Asahi for the Aisho. The Aisho gave me some squid salad and a sushi menu. Fu came over to thank me for my beer and I didn�t notice as I was looking down at the sushi menu. �Her name is Sublingua,� I head the Aisho say. I looked up. �Sublingua,� he repeated to Fu. He turned to me. �He forgot your name,� he said. (I am understanding of this, as I remember how long it takes me to learn unfamiliar Japanese and Chinese names.) Rather than make a nuisance of myself by playing the usual �Oh, you decide for me� game, I just wrote my order (uni, sake, hamachi) on the menu. He said something like, �I�m glad you don�t want maki.� I drank my beer, ate my squid salad. �I�m sorry, Sublingua,� the Aisho said, �after this, I have to take a break.� On the television sets above the bar, the news was: Reagan is still dead. I watched part of the funeral, drank my beer, ate my squid salad. Stevie came out to say hello and I offered him a beer, which he politely declined, and asked him if he could come on Sunday for me to cast him. He was evasive, so I dropped it. A few people left and were replaced by a few others�a couple this time, composed of a man with long blonde hair and a woman who looked remarkably like P.A.M. They sat and Stevie came out to say hello to them. People shoveled in sushi and watched Regan still being dead on the television sets above the sushi bar. �Is he still dead?� I said to no one in particular. The couple laughed, and that was all I needed to launch into the Monty Python �I�m not dead yet!� bit, which made them laugh more. The Aisho fed me nigiri sushi. A Pizza Hut commercial came on the television sets above the bar and Fu commented to the Aisho that the pizza looked good. The Aisho agreed, saying, �Oishii.� Neither had probably had dinner. Fu told me and the couple that he had gotten some good deal on pizza at Sumisu. The woman said, �Where?� �Sumisu,� Fu repeated. The Aisho translated: �Smith�s.� Fu informed us that he had been to Fu-ta the night before for chicken wings. �Where?� the woman asked. �Fu-ta,� Fu repeated. The Aisho translated: �Hooters.� The couple told me about the new Hooters� airline and I made a joke about the seating on the planes being �First class, no class, and coach.� They laughed. The television sets informed me that Reagan was still dead. The bar cleared out except for me, the couple, a man who sat by himself and tried to make eye contact with me a couple of times. I ignored him after the first time in favor of talking to the couple about how glad I was that Reagan was finally dead. I ate my nigiri sushi and drank my beer and talked to the tired Aisho a bit and watched Reagan being dead on television. One of the men who works in the kitchen passed by the window where sushi orders are passed into the kitchen. The man caught my eye. I smiled. He smiled and waved. I waved back. �That�s Hon,� the Aisho told me. �He always asks about you. He always asks me when you�re coming in.� Hon gave the Aisho a thumbs up. Hon said something that I couldn�t hear but which prompted the Aisho to say, �No, you come out. Come out and talk to her.� At this suggestion, the man shook his head, a perfect Harpo Marx head shake, the picture of shy reticence. I laughed. (Later he did come out and shake my hand and plop himself down on the chair next to me. He said something to me very quickly in very heavily accented English. I didn�t catch it. He jumped up and ran off. I commented to the Aisho, �I guess I�m not all that cute close up.� He laughed.) Sushi orders kept coming in, even after the restaurant had closed. I finished my sushi and beer. The couple ordered a beer for Fu and I ordered another beer for myself and one for Aisho. The couple finished their dinner, thanked Fu, and stood up to leave. The woman said to me, �I�ve really enjoyed talking to you. You�re really funny.� (I thought, too much sitcom television as a child, lady.) I said, �It was nice talking to you too,� and wished them a goodnight. The wait staff had begun pulling chairs and tables into the tatami rooms as, in a move characteristic in restaurants, the carpets were scheduled to be cleaned after what should have been expected to be a busy night. (I remember this kind of thing happening all the time when I worked in restaurants: At the end of a busy night a tired staff having to move chairs or cover every surface in the restaurant so that the exterminators could come in.) They began to move the chairs away from the sushi bar, so I paid my bill and told the Aisho I�d wait on the patio so that I could have a cigarette. Instead of going out onto the patio, I went out to my car. As I was sitting with the door open, smoking a cigarette, talking to Max on the phone, Fu ran out of the restaurant carrying a glass of beer. �I thought you were on patio!� he called. I got off the phone quickly and got out of the car. I called back, �What�s that?� He said, �Aisho said you on patio!� I said, �Oh, no�� He plopped himself down on the curb next to my car, took out a pack of cigarettes. I sat down next to him, declined his offer of a cigarette, commented on the busy night. He told me about his plans to quit the restaurant�something that Aisho had already told me about�and said that he would probably be leaving sooner than he had thought. I asked why and he explained some the politics of the situation. He then began to tell me about his cats, Cha-cha, Miki, and Mimi. Only Cha-cha is left, Miki having been hit by a car when Fu lived in San Franciso, and Mimi having died a few years ago. He told me about once, when driving across country, Mimi�s having escaped from her carrier. He was inconsolable, had gone looking for her. She had stayed away a long time, but then had come back to where she lost Fu and had waited for him�I didn�t understand his explanation of how long she had waited, but understood that she had waited by the side of the road until he came back there to look for her. I asked if he spoke to his cats in Japanese, and he told me about how he sometimes did, saying that they understood gohan. �Rice?� I said. �Or meal, right?� He nodded, then told me that it had really only been Mimi and Cha-cha that understood it this way, but that when he had said �Gohan� to Miki, that Miki would go �poo-poo.� I laughed, and like the natural comedian he is, he repeated, ��Miki, gohan,� he go poo-poo.� The Aisho came out of the back of the restaurant, calling to us, asking what we were doing out there. �I have your beer,� he told Fu. We walked back to the backdoor and they went into the restaurant to put their glasses away. Hon, Lance and another man were sitting on the tailgate of someone�s truck drinking beer. Hon called out, �Hey, pretty lady.� I replied, �I ain�t no lady,� and walked over to join them. �Busy night?� I asked. Aisho and Fu came out and they discussed their plans for the evening with the three men. Aisho said we were going to get something to eat and play pool and Fu said that he still had chicken wings from Fu-ta. Aisho looked dubious. Fu informed us that we were coming to his house. (�I only have five beer,� Fu said. �Buy more,� one of the men suggested. He told us that Fu had won a few G�s at the casino the night before�though Fu later told me with a perfectly straight face that he hadn�t been to the casino in two weeks.) �Do you want to go to Fu�s house?� the Aisho asked me. �Why not?� I replied, knowing that it wasn�t really an option as far as Fu was concerned. (Besides, I was curious to see Fu�s place, wanted to find out more about him so that I could get to work on his piece, which had stalled because of my lack of Fu knowledge.) �Okay, we�ll go,� Aisho said to Fu, who was already on his way to his truck. Aisho suggested and I agreed to leave my car at the restaurant. We got into his truck and followed Fu to his place.
More lies:
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