Dislespectfur, Dim Sum whispers, while Wan Lo does his patient waiting standing tableside, what professional effort to appease.
One million pardons, he then says to B or another does and He can’t tell, not because He’s racist but laughing — what we’re talking about’s the Srime…
O, the slime! and nods His head along with His laughter to make known His gratitude, as if to say no hard feelings, get used to it, from a mensch like me you might expect such disrespect, and with each of His nods the also funny taste of the proffered potion rises within Him, up from His stomach, His throat, rather the taste of its taste, the idea of it only, its texture homemade, a hot, thickskinned homeopathological grime — that’s about the best you can hope for when you can’t tongue to tell, which is the worst of it: that lately I don’t partake to enjoy, only to fill, and with me full is never. You honor us with your presence, they say, then bring Him out a heaping bowl of this morning’s leftover lo mein. He makes to stab at the writhing noodles with, after their last pair of chopsticks splinters in His hand, a dull fork they manage to find Him: it’d been locked in the lowermost drawer in the desk in the manager’s office forever, umfarshemt. He’s slurping, sucking, making every noise known to consumption save chewing; without a tongue to offer the meal to the teeth, He swallows most everything whole. With the last served shred of a miscellaneous meatstuff, its gnarled and gritty suspect heavily dusted with a powder of glistening white, fine pure MSG, which the chef out of boredom’s been fermenting for a moon in a trashcan in the alley out back — with such a tough and darkened cut, anisodactyl, the foot of a bird, He counts the taloned toes, perhaps of one of the pigeons that arrive fresh daily from traps nestled amongst the trees of local parks — with such prey presently hanging tined at B’s pouting lips, Dim Sum, the one sitting opposite Him (He’s trying to remember who might be who, or Woo), stares Him in the eye, holds His gaze, then begins to talk in a voice that burbles celestially high, sounding to Him just like frying; he can’t help himself: his bowtie finally loosened, he hands it to Him as a napkin as if proclaiming their peace, then begins:
I was in business, he says as B wings away at the birdgrease on His lips…had gone into business with my Blothel-in-Raw: this was our first restaurant, before I moved the family Downtown — a pack of heads nod in encouragement, interest, or in rhythm to the surge of the pipa music, the pentatonic plinking coming over the speakers, hidden to soothe their sound inside the restaurant’s worthless collection of facsimile vases…Blothel-in-Raw brought up on charges of sodomy, and with an inspector from the Depaltment of Hearth; here his cousin Woo, nu, that’s who just has to cut in: this lady had come to inspect, great body no brains, didn’t expect to be inspected herself, it was rape, simple enough, then attempting to bribe with counterfeit money the arresting officer of the Raw — though with our old landlord’s recommendation of the right lawyer his son, Dim Sum goes on, he managed to do right by the judge, at least that’s what I was told, and the waiters spit twice, at the same time and on their own floor, their saliva angry or just darkened with soy. Wan Lo rises from his seat slowly, smoothes down his tux shirt, pauses to reposit a stud, adjust the lotus in his lapel, then walks stately waiter to the front of the room and behind the cashier’s desk, at which he gathers the slack of his pants, squats, balancing on the balls of his feet to rummage around shortorder, and maybe just for ritual, for exotic effect, then returns to table with a box carried under his arm: done in bone with a bamboo handle, and inlaid with moons waxing and waning in chalcedony set amid skies of brass kept lovingly polished, its horn mingg striped in onyx, it’s gorgeous, waiters who haven’t worked here long enough are cowed, even back home they’d never seen anything like it. It’s not for them, though; they’re supposed to be working: it’s intended as distraction for their womenfolk, who’ve just emerged giggles and elbows in ribs from the kitchen; here to steal a slit of eye at their arrival, the contents of this box are hoped to keep them from undue flirtation. Unseemly, illegal. Wait, Dim Sum says, pay attention…that’s not the half of it: nu, so my Blothel-in-Raw, a failed furrier, you know, Woo feels it justified to explain as if to a mystified Him, the mensch who he makes the coats and hats and supplied for us our meat…Dim Sum’s irritated by the interruptions but it’s too late and his restaurant’s too doomed to pull rank when the door says push and don’t let it hit you on the way out, the schmuck he went and burned down the place for the insurance — makes you think, doesn’t it, says Woo’s brother who he’s named Woo, too, though what right does he have to say anything being only a junior busgoy (Wan Lo, an elder, he grumbles), makes you think of what he might do now that the schmuck’s out, free and converted; the waiters listening in as the hostess, the cashier girl and two more from the cleaning service how they might be their sisters or even twins to each other, you think, have already begun with their play. In a world of olden pleasures revived, theirs has among the most ancient of origins — yichus, of a type. Think of it like mystical rummy: but instead of cards, this pursuit makes use of tiles, onehundred thirtysix of them, gematric with meaning, symbolized with dragons, flowers, seasons, and winds stilled in suits, in dots, craks, and bams, if you’re following, numbered up to nine. What else for this refresher? As in life, here, too, what you discard is as valuable as anything you keep. Mahjong.
Dim Sum shrugs as he says over the hilarity from the front, this is my life…and Wan Lo adds, won’t you please forgive him?
My Blothel-in-Raw, they sentenced him to eight to ten — he served only five for good behavior. He’s on the outside now, rehabilitated he says, living again with my sister, their how you say…kinder — by now (late, almost time to close forever) even the old chef, alright already, so less a chef than a cook, with a tattooed Buddhabody under a cloudy toque and a head whose face is weighed down and almost permanently soured by this seriously octopusal Fu-Man-Shu, also he knows his way around a knife to make a little extra money down Pell Street and environs, better not to ask: he’s come out from the back to listen, peering behind him another busgoy, this a trainee mensch who’ll within a week get promoted to the position of Mashgiach though without a raise in pay, the future manager of kashrut for this restaurant after its brief closing, its rushed reform then the mandate of inspection — and the requisite bribes, a bissel of grease, dumplings’ schmaltz — his name to be made the Honorable Rabbi Shimi-Li Dong, at least according to the certificate to be notarized by the not yet ordained other senior busgoy (but first, promoting himself to busboychick), the future Reb Boaz ben Wa, framed to hang lopsided on a wall of the kitchen, threatening to fall into the boil of any black pot: kashrut reform, and attendant refinancing, to be organized by this most obliging of Blothels-in-Raw, just out of prison, just returned into the soup, the stir, Dim Sum up until the very night of their successful grand reopening (Thursday) to be suspect, and can you blame him, expecting the alarms and their flames to be scheduled for the late eve of that next Shabbos or so, to get the firedepartment and police off their guard. This morning, he says, he sent me a telegram, says he’s coming down for a visit, that he wants to reconcile, is bringing the family, says he’s an allnew mensch, remade, that I’d be proud, prisonreformed with him converted and even circumcised, can you believe, and that he’s inherited a little money, too, like guess who’s got this great idea, and all he needs is a partner.
He’s hurt me before, but I love him, I have to, he’s family…
I pray, and here he raises his head to B to stare Him in the mouth, that your arrival will be for me as a blessing.