#because he's being 'taken away from you forever' (dramatic tako)

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 14: Tako

He shrieked when he saw me. I get it. I’ve been shrieked at before. A unexpected pulpy man lying on the couch, totally understandable. The shriek was loud and dramatic and he feigned like he was going to run, almost like he was acting, like he was on camera.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I guess Vicky didn’t call you.”

“No Vicky didn’t call me. Vicky never calls me.”

“I’m Lou.”

“Oh well Hi Lou. A friend of Vicky’s, I presume? Not just some derelict she found on the street? It wouldn’t be the first time, you know.”

“We just met, so I don’t know why. She said she liked how I danced.”

He scanned me up and down. “This happened to you dancing?”

“No, afterwards. Backroom scuffle. I’m a bodyguard. It’s not usually so hazardous. Mostly you just stand around looking big, bluffing. Sometimes people call that bluff.”

“You might want to go to the hospital.”

“That’s what I hear.”

Hadrian shrugged and went about his business, treating me like a piece of furniture or a sleeping dog, something that should be left alone unless it bothers you first. That was fine by me. My body ached, my mind ached, but the pain had worn off just enough from the pills that there was now room for that sweet, sweet shame. Sham for having lost my Matzu, shame for having failed, shame for losing the tuna and the limo, but mostly the tuna, the dread of having to call Stella and file a missing body report. Stella would have to reach out to Alfonso and maybe if I was lucky Matzu was alive and would take me back. Otherwise it was back to the temp agency, waiting for someone to ignore my references and just hire me out of desperation. I supposed there was a case to be made that we had been ambushed and overpowered by a gang so large that no bodyguard in the world could have prevailed. I mean, no one knew how many drinks I’d had, or the depths of the dance trance that consumed me just moments previous to being held up at gunpoint.

Then I got to reflecting. Always something I try to avoid in the moment. It’s what got me into so much trouble in my former careers. But lying out with nothing but a puke bucket by my side doesn’t leave a lot else to do. For me reflecting came in the form of wondering whether Takuto’s death and Matzu’s disappearance were connected. And whether there was a fight for New York sushi territory happening behind the scenes. Whether this was the beginning or the end or somewhere in the middle. And whether somebody caught in the middle could be held responsible, could be given another chance.

Maybe I could call it quits right then and there, I thought. No, I certainly couldn’t. Even though I had only known Matzu for one night, his disappearance would always be an unanswered question, a terrifying void in my life. I could never move on unless I figured out what had happened to him.

Hadrian popped his head in from the other room. “I’m ordering lunch, you want anything?”

“Just get me whatever you’re having.”

“You’re buying.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Cheaper than a hospital bed, pal.”

Twenty minutes later we were eating shawarma from the Lebanese place across the street. Fantastic stuff, greasy and spicy, just what my bludgeoned and hungover body needed. At my age, you don’t really think you’ll ever experience a new style of meat-sweats in your lifetime, so when they come, you savor them. Hadrian had an accent I couldn’t place but didn’t want to ask about. Possibly Rhode Island. He wore very tight clothes that looked coordinated, like he studied fashion magazines or had a thing for mannequin displays. He was a confessor, I could tell right away. Like he hadn’t talked to anyone in a few days and seeing as I was just laying on the couch I should do just fine as a fresh set of ears. Fine by me —  it helped me feel useful. Useful, exactly! Hadrian said he knew exactly what I was talking about. Cleaning is the best way to feel useful. He said he always felt he had all this potential built up and if he didn’t use it somehow, even if it wasn’t ideal, you might never get around to using it and you’ll die wondering if you completely missed your calling. He didn’t want to clean houses and apartments for a living, he wanted to be a chef. Not a restaurant chef but a TV chef, like Emeril Lagasse, his hero. To him, Emeril was a hero, a legend. He found his calling, the most important thing in life, and on top of that, he found managed to figure out a way to broadcast it every day to the entire world. There was nothing better, he said, than showing the world over and over again how great your life is, how your biggest concern is maybe not adding enough garlic to your damn tomatoes. It’s almost a better feeling than your life actually being great.

Alas, he said, the television and culinary worlds required some schooling and he didn’t have the money to go back. He had a degree in media and broadcasting, but no clue about the kitchen world.  Cleaning was the easiest job he could get that paid the best and still left him feeling energized at the end of the day. All in all, that wasn’t a bad setup. He’d leave apartments tidy and smelling fancy, go out for an early happy hour when the bars were almost empty and he’d sit at the bar and listen to the regulars and the bartender talk, and watch intently s the bartender pretend to have a task in front of her at any given time, sometimes real tasks and other times just moving things from one place to another and back again trying to appear busy but always engaged with the regulars who never had anything new to say because they spent all their free time in the bar seeking fresh ears and if none were available then old ears would do just fine. Hadrian liked to watch for the bartender’s micro-reactions, little smirks, eye-rolls, anything subconscious that showed her true feelings. Bartenders are dishonest people, he said. It’s a job and part of the job of bartender is to listen to what your customers have to say, make them feel welcome, cheer them up and keep their minds from wandering, or help their minds safely wander out of their daily rut, whatever they’re in the mood for, and always keeping a keen sense of balance and vibe, similar to the balance and vibe you create when cleaning apartments, a balance that makes people feel like someone is taking care of things around them so they won’t have to worry. But underneath the bartender’s facade are the tiny little minuscule reactions they can’t hide, or are too tired to hide, and that’s what Hadrian looks for, those bartenders who keep that balance in the bar but on the inside they’re wavering. I was done with my pita by that point, was mopping up my cracked, misshapen lips while Hadrian had barely taken a bite, was just holding his shawarma while he talked, the bread filling with sauce and grease from the lamb and starting to drip and crack apart, which is a pet-peeve of mine, two people not eating at the same pace.

He could tell I was losing interest and/or consciousness on account of his story or possibly the aforementioned meat-sweats and of course the swelling so he changed the subject and started talking about Vicky and watched me perk right up. Must have been obvious I guess. Like the television host he dreamed of becoming, he felt my energy and launched into some gossip. About Gwen the little genius who is most certainly destined to be a singer or voice actor. About her life as a model for sculptors in Gowanus. About how she lost her husband the year before, he thinks from a motorcycle related crash but wasn’t sure. They were about the same age, had been together since forever. “She didn’t tell me at first,” he said, “I thought they just got divorced. There were remnants of him all over the apartment that she didn’t take down. I started asking whether she wanted me to take down the pictures and whatnot but she said no, that she wanted to keep them up for Gwen. She seemed fine, keeping everything together. She kept bartending, kept going to school, kept herself and Gwen in a routine that would get them through the tough times. Creatures of habit, right?  Why do people hate on routine so much, you know?”

Then he said, “So what do you do again? Wrestler?”

“Bodyguard.”

“Of course, right. Who do you guard?”

“I work for a chef. Maybe he can get you a TV show.”

“What’s his name?”

“Thing is…he might be dead. I’m not sure.”

“Well, where does he work? If there’s a vacancy maybe they need an apprentice.”

“It’s a sushi place on the east side. I’ll find the name for you.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to eat sushi anymore.”

“Why?”

“It’s poisonous I think. The fish have turned poisonous from over-fishing. Like, in rebellion, maybe? Does nature rebel like that? I think plagues are sort of like that. Or maybe it was that the fish was always poisonous and we didn’t realize it. We just thought it was too fancy not to eat it, and we all ignored that it was poisoning us all along. I think that was it. Or something like that. I heard it somewhere.”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh, I think I remember. There was an article, I can’t remember where. It said rogue sushi chefs were poisoning their own fish to try to make it less popular. As like a backlash against popularizing sushi. A cultural thing. Stopping foreigners from eating their sushi.”

“Foreigners? Like, Americans?”

“Yeah.”

“In New York?”

“Yeah.”

I considered the number of times I felt sick after eating at FishySmell, and wondered if it had anything to do with the rumor. A wave of blood filled with nervous little blood cells rushed to my skull all screaming at once a word I couldn’t understand.

“How Brooklyn, right? Try to keep it out of the mainstream as long as possible. Ha, get it. Mainstream. Like, the opposite of underground. No wait…underwater! HA!”

Hadrian asked if I was okay, must have sensed something was wrong, but I couldn’t get the words out, my legs and hands were cramping, my meat-sweats were transitioning to anxiety sweats. The shawarma was turning on me. It felt like all my energy was being sucked out of my body.

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I think I need to go actually.”

He laughed. “Go where? You can barely open your eyes.”

Tears filled my eyes. I felt my chin wiggle, trying to hold back the flood. “I lost him. Two in a week! I’m a bodyguard and I lost my body, twice. Do you have any idea what that means for a guy like me? For him? A young guy, an up-and-coming chef, probably dead. And on top of it I lost a very expensive tuna loin which was meant to be distributed to the chefs of New York. Now there’s going to be a tuna shortage and its all my fault!”

“Tuna loin, eh?”

I tried to talk through my sniffles. “It was entrusted to us by the head of nationwide sushi-syndicate who might also be criminals, I don’t know. It was worth a lot of money.”

“High quality tuna loin? Like, as in, something a chef would be very happy to receive?”

“Yea, sitting in a hot car all night.”

“Was it wrapped up?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Come on, let’s go get it.”

“Really?”

"I don’t have anything going on.”

“I don’t think you don’t want to get involved. This is a dangerous situation. Look what they did to my face!”

“How do I know you didn’t look a lot like that before you got beat up?”

I cried some more.

“Well regardless of how ugly you were, you can’t go outside with a face looking like a crushed up turtle. All lumpy and gooey and stuff.”

“Don’t say turtle, please.”

“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you because I don’t have a lot of patience and I just like to say things I believe are true even if they’re not: If your friend is dead, he’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do. So what’s the rush? I’d be more concerned about that rotting tuna in the back seat of your car. If we can get that to some chefs, maybe get on their good side, a little introduction, we could get your job back. And an apprenticeship for me…”

“You think he’s dead?” I asked.

The phone rang. It was Vicky. She said she was running late and had to go straight to work instead of stopping home first. “She says she’s sorry. But to just hang tight, she’ll be home before we know it.”

We decided we would go see if the tuna was still there, if the car was still there, swing by my apartment to get a few things, and come straight back. He made us coffee and we waited until Gwen came home. He helped her get her homework started and then told her to be a good girl while the two adults went for a little ride.  

Before we stepped out the door, I stopped and said, “We can’t leave her alone. Her mom won’t be back for hours.”

“It’s fine, she knows the neighbors.”

“Are you sure?”

“I do it all the time.”

“I’d really feel more comfortable if she came with us. I mean, what if something happens to her.”

“She’s in a kid proof apartment, in a building filled with adults. It’s more dangerous bringing her with us. I mean, need I remind you of the hideousness of your face and how that all happened?” “Listen, I’m not going to be fighting anyone or saving anyone or sticking up to anyone in the next few hours. I just need some first-aid, a fresh change of clothes, and some bearings. If anyone comes for me, I’ll surrender. They won’t hurt a hipster and a little girl sitting in whatever car you own. Can’t be anything special. They’re sushi people. They’re classier than that. We take a little drive into the city, check out some tuna, head to my apartment, pack a bag, and come right back here. Sound good?”