What I meant to say was dlipping, answers Wan Lo, dlipping, you must excuse me both.
B has to struggle to keep down the last cup of the cure.
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:
