Chang hadn’t intended to make himself known. He’d planned on scaring the guy, serving a warning shot. But the man had stood his ground and slowly surveyed the terrain, far from flustered. Chang pictured himself as he would be seen from below, only one blinking shirt among many. The man glanced up at the balcony and acknowledged his detection with a leering smile, a gesture of bold-faced defiance that made Chang bolt up escalators and out into the parking lot, panting for breath.
At the cart now, Astrid politely took a few bites of her pretzel, eyes open.
“So how come you haven’t been to the bookstore yet?”
“How do you know I haven’t?” He instantly regretted saying this.
She paused for a moment, registering a blankness that could be hurt.
“Which book,” she finally asked, “did Denise read from yesterday?”
“Ah. Something about a talking tugboat, I forget exactly. Listen…I have some bad news. Today’s my last day.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Chang said firmly. “I’ve been called up. To Barcelona. My entire division’s going.”
“That is absurd.”
“It is absolutely absurd, and it is absolutely the truth. I leave at oh-six-hundred.”
“Oh. I guess I really have graduated from the Pretzel Collection course.”
“Connection.”
“Connection, of course. Damn it, I’m sad, Chang.”
“Me, too. You have no idea,” he said, also regretting his phrasing on this.
“Well. Let me pay you then.”
She handed over the folded rhombus that he knew was a ten-dollar bill.
“Please keep the tip. I have really enjoyed your company.”
“Likewise.”
“How long a flight do you have?”
“Long.”
“Well. I’d give you a hug,” she said, extending a hand, “but I guess we don’t know each other well enough for that.”
“We don’t.”
They shook hands.
He watched her seek out the railing, those eyes still examining grand, unseen works of art on the walls of an invisible cathedral. Then she rounded a corner and was gone.
Only today, on this last day of gainful employment, he finally got a dirty look. This was at Cutlery Connection. The old man who sold him the eight-inch Grand Mariner knife read his terrible T-shirt and looked at him through worn, watery eyes, saying, quietly, “Don’t ever come back here.”
Chang smiled. “I won’t. Thank you.”
Before the second escalator, he doubled back toward a small post office annex. In an old copy of the Yellow Pages, he’d found an ad for a children’s hospital in Newark, some place with sad clip art suggesting they could use $2,200. It took nearly twenty seconds for the escalator to descend to the next level. He worked out the math. Three and a half minutes minus forty seconds.
Chang reached the terrace that overlooked the food court. Story time would just be starting. He stood for a moment, watching the crowds, the flow of nonentities. Zipping up his windbreaker, he hoped it would be over quickly.
Sighing, Chang stepped through the giant macaroni.
Make No Mistake
If you were with a friend at a party, and you saw your friend flirting with somebody who you knew was bad news, you might say something to your friend, something to warn him or her. On the other hand, you might just let it go. That is what you might call a fulcrum type of moment. If you will. I am saying, I call this kind of moment a fulcrum moment.
A fulcrum is a stick braced on a rock used to pry something—it multiplies leverage. In other words, a fulcrum moment is one where you can do a small thing, and have a possibly large effect—and if you don’t do the thing, you’ll probably regret it. Do you know what I mean? I am assuming you do because I think most of us recognize those moments.
Unfortunately, I think most of us recognize those fulcrum moments after the fact. After you let the person you should have talked to walk away, after you skipped the apology, after you decided not to stand up for yourself and just ate the insult. I mean those kind of could-have/should-have fuck ups are the story of my life, maybe yours has been better. I hope so. But this is a story about how I got one of those fulcrum moments right. It’s kind of a long story, but I promise you, every detail is necessary. So just wait. Or else skip it, I don’t know.
It was 2007 or ’08. Ish. I had been very depressed. I was living in San Francisco and drinking too much and a bit poor and fucked up. Back then you could live in the city even if you were poor. I was a normal young man, mid-twenties, maybe a little dog-eared. I was a real square. I didn’t have any interests except that I liked to read. As a matter of fact, you might say I read obsessively. But not to any productive end. It was a painkiller. I had a little bit of money, not much. It was raining out. I was seeing a therapist. One day when I walked into the office there was a young woman in there.
She was about my age. She looked like a Cold War–era Russian-type dressed in clothes from secondhand stores. She was skinny and nervous. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was involved with pills or even “huffing.” The waiting room was extremely small and our knees were almost touching once I sat down. There was another therapist in the same suite. I assumed she was going to see him.
She shot a few skulking glances at me. I was reading Mother and Baby which was the only magazine to be found. The last week there had only been a ragged Sports Illustrated. I wondered what had happened to it and where this Mother and Baby had come from. She was just sitting there. I glanced down into her purse and noticed that there was a plastic sandwich bag inside with several partially-smoked cigarettes.
As we sat there, the little waiting room got clammy with human awkwardness. I tried to focus my attention on the article I was reading, which was about the differences in menopause between women who had or had not given birth, but it was hard to concentrate. Especially since she wasn’t reading anything, she was just sitting there. Ten minutes passed in that waiting room. I realized that my therapist, Steve Belmick, wasn’t going to come out to get me even though it was now almost a quarter past the hour. I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and knocked. There was no response. I opened one of the doors of his office, and then the other. Their offices have two doors back to back with each other for sound-proofing purposes.
My therapist Steve Belmick was face down on the floor of his office. His arms were by his side and he was breathing slowly and heavily. I had seen him doing this before. He was meditating. I could see part of one of his eyes and it was open. His head was red. I didn’t know if it was wise to go in but I had opened the doors already so that was that.
As I was closing the outer door behind me, I heard the girl in the waiting room say, quietly but distinctly, “Fucking cock.”
The last consonant was slightly cut off by the sound of the door shutting, but I was completely sure of what she had said. I walked into Belmick’s office in confusion and alarm, going over the moment repeatedly. Could it be possible? It was shocking. There was no getting around what she had said and that it was directed towards me. Her tone of contempt confirmed it. Had I done something to offend her? Did I know this person? Belmick didn’t react although I thought he probably heard it also. He didn’t move his head. His face was pressed against the floor.
“Hi, Noah,” he said, his voice compressed from the pressure on his face. “Sorry, I lost track of the time.”
“Hi, Steve,” I said. “Hey did you hear that? Did you hear what that girl out in the waiting room just said to me?”
“No.”
“She just said, ‘Fucking cock!’ For no reason!”
Steve turned his head toward me. His face was indented with the weave of the carpet.
“Wow. Let’s talk about it.”
The appointment was pretty typical. We talked about the girl. H
e asked me how my week was. He tied the current information to larger patterns we had discussed before. He concluded with some possible behavioral ideas. I don’t know. Therapy is therapy. I don’t do it anymore, to tell you the truth. But back then I got something out of it. After the appointment I walked out of the office. She was still out there. She was chewing an enormous piece of gum in such a way that a small part of the gum would stick out of her mouth every third rotation or so. I could see that the gum was comprised of at least five pieces. I wondered for a second if I was making a mistake and that she was eating a piece of paper. An offensive letter? She looked up at me, chewing. Why was she still there? Hadn’t her therapist come out to get her?
“Did you say something to me before I walked into that office?”
“Yes,” she answered.
I stood there. I wasn’t sure what to say next.
“Well, what was it?” I asked.
“I said, ‘You fucking rock.’” The gum came out of her mouth and then tumbled back into it.
“Bullshit! You said, ‘Fucking cock!’ I heard you!’”
“I’m sorry, you must have the wrong person.”
“The wrong person? How could I have the wrong person?”
“Look, what’s your name?”
“Noah.”
“This has all been a misunderstanding, Noah. I’m Mandy.”
“Well, hello, I guess. I’m not sure why you ambushed me, but have a nice day.” I started to walk out but then she spoke again.
“Oh well. We’re off to a bad start, aren’t we? What are you doing right now?”
“I’m going home. I just wanted to ask you what that was all about.”
“What what was all about?”
“When you said, ‘fucking cock.’”
She sighed and shook her head. “Is this how you pick up on girls? If it is, I’ll tell you something…I think it’s working.”
I started to walk out the door of the waiting room again.
“Do you know where the corner of Church and Market is?” she called after me.
“Huh?”
“Well, I’ll be there at eight o’clock tonight, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Be there.”
“I can’t make it.”
“Be there,” she repeated, this time with insinuation.
“Goodbye,” I said, closing the door behind me.
I had no intention of showing up at the place that nutty girl had mentioned. I changed my mind by the time I got home, though. I just didn’t have anything else going on. That night at around seven I walked toward Church and Market. I had a last moment of doubt—it wasn’t too late to just turn around. But it didn’t take. She was there on the corner with a cigarette and a green sun dress. She looked nice but skittish. She reminded me of a tortoise-shell cat that my uncle had when I was a kid that used to pounce on people from the top of cabinets.
“You know this is the Marpathala Yoga restaurant we’re going to, don’t you?” She asked me when I walked up to her.
“We’re going to a restaurant?”
“A Marpathala Yoga restaurant.”
“What’s that?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Marpathala Yoga is the type of yoga where they heat up the room while you’re working out.”
“Why do they do that?”
“Because it’s amazing. You do the postures in a 130-degree studio. Every ten minutes a blast of steam comes in through the ceiling. It’s absolutely fantastic. People sometimes vomit or pass out, but afterward every muscle in your body has been renewed. It’s like running yourself through a washing machine or a garbage compactor or something. The last time I did it I solved a whole bunch of problems, and I mean hard ones.”
I slowed down. “Wait a second, they heat up the restaurant? This sounds like a bad idea.”
“No, it’s great, Noah! It’s a great way for us to get things cooking.”
“No, this really sounds dangerous.”
“It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and for us.”
“What do you mean ‘us’? We don’t even know each other!”
“Oh, don’t be naïve.”
We got to the restaurant, The Flaming Door. There was a lobby area with a desk and some attendants who handed us each a towel and a small cotton garment which they referred to as a “khafta.”
“Have either of you eaten here before?” one of them asked.
“Oh, I have, but he hasn’t,” Mandy said. She said it as though she was telling him that I had never been to a doctor or read a book or something.
The attendant turned to me. He was very skinny and had sunken eyes.
“Okay, the first thing is to put on your khafta. You can leave your clothing in one of the lockers in the shower room. Once you get in the dining area, it’s going to be hot. Now, it’s okay if you need to drink water or lie down for a few minutes but we ask you not to leave the room for the duration of the meal.”
Mandy and I went to separate shower/locker rooms and then met in the main dining area. The garment they had given us was toga shaped, but then it tapered off into a semi–loin cloth. It was humiliating but at least it was dimly lit in the restaurant. People sat at low tables talking. The heat was overwhelming, immediately. The waiters didn’t seem to be affected; they weren’t sweating and were moving around briskly, but the diners at the tables were red-faced and exhausted looking. They sat sighing in front of black plates with heaps of rice and vegetables on them. Once we sat down at our table Mandy produced a flask from inside her garment. She passed it to me under the table.
“Drink some of this; it will take the edge off.”
As she said it a blast of steam shot into the room from a vent in the ceiling. People at the table next to us groaned and nodded to each other. A couple in the corner was eating soup. Sweat was dripping off of their faces into their bowls. I took a hit from the flask. I was expecting water but to my surprise it was gin. I passed it back to her.
“This is crazy, Mandy; let’s get out of here before it’s too late.”
“Well, we can if you want but I’ll tell you this right now: you aren’t going to solve your problems by lusting after comfort,” she chided.
“I feel like I’m going to die!”
“Your challenge is that you don’t know how to let go.”
“No, it’s just too hot! I let go of things all the time!”
“You only let go of the things that are easy to let go of. The little attachments that weren’t that important anyway.”
“You don’t even know me! Who are you to say what I let go of?”
“Oh, I know your type. I do. From the minute I set eyes on you in that stinking little lobby at the therapist office.”
I felt dizzy. “What type is that?”
“Oh, you know, the slick, womanizer type. Always looking for the next conquest. A fucking cock.”
“See! You did say ‘fucking cock’! I knew it!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I was just repeating what you said I said.”
“Well, anyway, what do you mean ‘womanizer’? What do you think I was doing in that therapist’s office, looking for chicks? I’m antisocial; I haven’t had a date in months.”
“Oh, don’t play that game with me! I can see exactly who you are, especially in this environment.”
“Why especially in this environment? I can barely see across the table.”
“Because it’s spiritual in here!”
A waiter walked by with a pinched expression on his face. I had already finished my water and tried to flag him down for a refill.
“Excuse me!”
The waiter winced when he heard my voice and kept going.
“You have to call the waiters ‘Baba’ her
e!” Mandy said.
“Why should I call him Baba? I just want a glass of water.”
“It’s honorific. Waiters represent the divine in this restaurant, they’re meant to be treated like gods. That’s why they walk around with those little garden sprinklers.”
As she said it I saw that the waiter who had blown me off was at the next table misting our neighbors with a little water sprayer he was carrying. The people smiled and thanked him.
“I don’t understand. What does that water sprinkler have to do with him representing the divine?”
“He’s raining.”
I was really getting hot now. My “khafta” was soaked through with sweat and I was looking around at other tables to see if there was any leftover water I could grab.
“Baba, we pray for water?” Mandy whined the next time the waiter walked by. He gave us a disdainful look before filling our glasses.
“You’ll have the broccoli and you’ll have the vegetable Apavakana,” he informed us.
After about ten minutes the food came. There was more sneering condescension from “Baba” and blasts of steam. The dishes were bland and undercooked but it really didn’t matter; it was clear that the experience was meant to be more a test of endurance than a culinary event. The temperature of the room was punishing. After a short time I couldn’t eat any more. For the first time, our waiter showed interest in us and hurried over to our table as soon as I pushed my plate away.
“Okay, I’m going to have to ask you to try and do a little better with that,” he said.
“I really don’t think I can eat anymore, I feel a little bit sick.”
“Three more bites.”
My eyes were stinging. I ate a little bit more while the waiter stood over me with his hands behind his back.
“I know it’s not easy the first time but we all have to make a special effort,” he said as he took my plate.
Sophisticated Devices/Make No Mistake Page 3