“Nothing, he’s just a stirrer,” Murray said.
“Did he mean me? This one? Is that me?”
“Now why would you think that?” Murray said, very still and staring at her.
“I-” She gulped. There was no reason, except jet lag and dreams she could not quite remember and just the strangeness of everything. Except…
“Girls leave,” she blurted out. The weird niece, Dina.
Murray’s eyes widened.
“Do you cook?” said Malcolm’s voice suddenly, making her jump. He had reappeared at the back of the shop, holding a tray. She composed herself and answered him gently.
“A little. Easy things Soup, noodles.”
“What about this?” Malcolm said, shuffling forward and showing her the tray. On it were three skewers threaded with pieces of chicken curved like little seashells, perfect white cubes of mushroom flesh, slices of garlic-sheer and glistening-and discs of baby sweet corn like the wheels of a toy car. The skewers were finished off at each end with tiny onions.
“Five ingredients,” said Malcolm, “because four is unlucky.”
“You made kebabs?” she said.
“They were supposed to be yakitori,” said Malcolm, looking down at them. “Off the Internet.”
“Well, you must come upstairs after work and help me eat them,” Keiko said, looking at Murray. “Both of you.”
“These were meant for you,” said Malcolm. “But I could make some more, I suppose.”
“Just a wee snack, eh?” said Murray. “From the king of portion control.”
Mrs. Poole had appeared in the doorway to the back shop and looked intently at Keiko before she spoke. “There’s no need for you to be laying on catering up in the flat,” she said. Then with a visible effort she continued, “You should come to our house.”
“Thank you,” said Keiko. She had no phrases in her repertoire to help with such a reluctant invitation. She waited to see if Mrs. Poole would say any more, and it seemed to her that both sons were watching their mother too. The woman said nothing. How, thought Keiko, do you leave in silence if you can’t bow? I must ask or look it up. Then with a flush of relief, she thought of something to say.
“The Internet!” She turned to Malcolm. “You have it here in the shop?” He nodded. “Ah! I think I’m picking up your connection in the flat then.”
All three of the Pooles looked up at the ceiling.
“What?” said Mrs. Poole. “What are you picking up? What have you seen?”
“Nothing,” said Keiko. “Goodness, no. Just a prompt. And I wouldn’t- I don’t know the password anyway. I’ll get my own service, naturally.”
“No need for that,” Malcolm said. “Waste of money. I can set you up no problem with a password. It’ll be nice. Sharing.”
“But-” said his mother.
“It’s two different computers, Mum,” said Malcolm. “We’ll all be safe as long as we wear our foil hats when we’re emailing.”
Keiko snorted with laughter and turned to Murray, but his face was without expression, and his mother’s might as well have been carved from stone.
“Well, thank you, Malcolm-for the yakitori,” she said, taking the tray.
She glanced at her watch as she left them. Almost time to go to the university, where she would be at home, among friends. Where she would know what people meant when they spoke. Where people would be like her. Her heart lifted and even returning to her flat up all those stone stairs couldn’t lower it again.
eight
Dr. Bryant read with his chin sunk on his chest, his lips pushed forwards and pressed together, making his ginger moustache bristle. From time to time he crunched his mouth up even more, working his glasses up his nose and scraping the moustache hairs against the undersides of his nostrils with a rasping sound.
“That all seems in perfect order,” he said at last, signing the last page. “Your customary efficiency in full swing.”
Keiko stared at him. He had never met her before. Japanese efficiency, did he mean? He stared back. Was she only imagining a bloom of colour on his cheeks?
“Tell me a little about your proposal,” he said.
Keiko nodded and cleared her throat. “The construction of knowledge in social groups,” she said.
“A very well-researched area,” said Dr. Bryant.
“In general,” Keiko said. “But I’ve chosen a focus that’s relatively-”
Dr. Bryant’s eyes had strayed to his computer screen and he was reading something there.
“Food as modern folklore,” said Keiko.
Dr. Bryant touched his mouse and his screen scrolled upwards. “Yes… yes…” he said. He clicked his mouse again.
“I’m thinking about q-methodology perhaps for the profiling, or a Likert line, created stimuli for the feedback into the networks.”
“Good, good.” Click, click.
“And there will be useful insights from anthropology and sociology. From the literature, I mean.” She took a deep breath. She could always claim language problems. “And embroidery and some snowboarding.”
“Yes, I see,” said Dr. Bryant. “Well I’m very glad to hear someone giving proper consideration to a robust theoretical grounding right from the start.”
“Yes, I see,” echoed Keiko and, thanking him in such a soft voice that his attention was not hooked away from his screen by the smallest fraction, she let herself out.
Charismatic teachers are really for undergraduates, she told herself. Or high school English teachers who lend their personal copies of Faulkner; even grade school teachers who take seven-year-olds to their first ballet.
Her studies, her time here-the early blossoming of her career as she would no doubt call it in years to come-would be made up of her own careful probing scholarship, bounced off the other young minds, fresh bright minds, just beginning, like her own.
What she should be doing was meeting her office mates. She checked the floor plan on the wall of the entrance atrium and set off into the dark halls and stairways. Already she could see the three of them sitting in armchairs, or maybe the two of them sitting in armchairs, listening, while Keiko stood on the rug by the fireplace and read a draft of a paper to them, and how they would put down their sherry glasses and stare at her as she finished, how one would whistle and one would clap and they would toast her and tell her to send it straight to the journal. And she would say she couldn’t have done it without their help, and someone would knock at the door and it would be Dr. Bryant, asking her if she wanted to see him and she would say, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ and he would close the door again.
She was in the right corridor now and she shook her head, dispersing the daydreams and told herself to pay attention. She walked slowly, trying to fix the moment, so that later, in the years to come, when she ran along this corridor every day, she would still remember the first time.
And there it was. She paused outside to read the names on the door: Grete Marr, A.L. Ebberwood, Keiko Nishisato. She raised her hand to knock but then instead, tracing her fingers over her own name, she turned the handle and walked in.
It was a smallish room although high-ceilinged. Rather awkward actually, with once-white walls and once-blue carpet, worn dark and shiny over years. There were three desks. The one under the dusty window and the one on the long bare wall were occupied, two students hunched over laptops, both wearing ear buds and typing furiously. Neither of them looked up at her. The third desk, the smallest, was in the darkest corner by the door, half-covered in bales of yellowing paper and clusters of smoked-glass coffee mugs with cold, cloudy dregs in the bottom. On the bookshelf above, a spider plant had died, and dried-up nodules of it had fallen on the bales of paper and the coffee mugs, like little brown squid.