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?
