Apollo’s Chinese Takeout
Happy 4th of July, America! Today I’m sharing a story I wrote over a decade ago and recently tidied up. At the very least, it’s a nice anthropological survey of my mind at the end of university. But it is also a celebration of the multicultural dynamism of my home country.
Awash with honor as much as nutrition, my hands crawl through cheap lo mein for shrimp and other high-minded sea critters. Two booths down a baby stares at me over his sullied bib. I give him my best smile—all teeth, lips flattened into grease—and curse him devilishly under my breath. I throw my plate on the floor when the Poem tells me I ordered vegetable, not shrimp lo mein.
Maniac, the Poem spills out of our booth. His belly flops over the lacquered tabletop, I am unable to delimit the space he occupies. He is a mass without margin. He has six chins. The Poem does not care, the Poem is smug and belligerent. He has not changed his shirt for three days (I am perhaps overly embarrassed by it). Listen how he pounds his fist and bellows for more duck sauce. For an appetizer, the Poem consumes four egg rolls, and all the wontons sopped in broth. The Poem is insatiable. I gaze forlornly on my shattered plate. The Poem has forgotten his wallet. I pay the proprietor, an old Cantonese woman, seven dollars for more Cokes.
The baby is giving me dirty looks. I read compassionately from my zodiac placemat in an effort to avert my eyes. Rat, Dog, Dragon, Horse. I was born in the year of the Ram. The Poem was born in the year of the Camel. We fail to ascertain the implications of this. I will not confront the baby as I am afraid of confrontation. I have shared my bed with the Poem for nine weeks because I am too afraid to tell him to move out. Now his belongings litter the apartment like the shed hair of an enormous cat. An entire wall is dedicated to the movie posters he collects. The landlord has threatened eviction because of the stench. My only recourse is sabotage. Tomorrow, God willing, I will burn his piles of laundry and throw his blow-ups of Marlon Brando into the ocean.
The bell above the door rings without stop as the delivery boy hustles in and out. Sweat weeps from his chin, several hectoliters of pork fried rice swing from his shoulders. The delivery boy studies music theory at a private university. One could buy a beach house in the Caribbean with his college debt, a house with a gas range and halogen bulbs, a freezer fully stocked with margarita mix and fresh avocados. The Poem tells me the delivery boy is the hero of our time. I notice the delivery boy has acne. This is his tragic flaw.
I cannot tell if it is a switchblade the baby twirls beneath his highchair or a chopstick. It is indiscernible in the shadows. If necessary, I will poison his dumplings, as I have done once before, but to another.
Wrought with ailments both spiritual and physical, I explain to the proprietor that there has been a mistake in my order, which quickly devolves into a miserable pantomime that draws the room’s attention. “The shrimp is prince of the sea kingdom,” I begin, “second in sagacity only to the great squid who scours the deeps of ignorance. In the wild the shrimp is often observed on an afternoon stroll or at rest beneath the branches of an oak, his cane affixed between his legs, of which there are many, and the flame of his meerschaum reflected in his quizzical eyes, sharp as coal. A twitch of his bedraggled whiskers betrays profound ruminations.” I now wiggle my upper lip, comically. “His quill scratches long past midnight, driving mice from the walls for want of sleep. His labors are divine. He often dreams that he’s become his father, Edward Casaubon, and is eaten by a whale.” I am left breathless, the entire room breaks into applause, but the proprietor only shakes her head, points at my broken plate, and walks away.
The bell’s ring is erratic.
I convince the baby’s mother that I am European, quite possibly French. I bat my eyelashes psychotically, to draw her attention to my emerald irises (my best feature). I see that the ring she wore earlier has been dropped into her purse. I compliment her on the curvature of her knees. I convince her that the Poem is only a distant cousin I was obliged to have dinner with, a relative by law, that I do not even know him, not really, and that he is a despicable, disgusting monster who should be shot, which is true. She giggles (a good thing?). I invite her to dinner next Wednesday. We’ll get Italian, I say, it’ll be great. Ok, she says, her voice aquiver with passion. This really gets the baby’s goat.
The bell rings Goeyvaerts’s Sonata for Two Pianos.
In a bid to steal away the shrimp forever—now locked in his chambers—I vault the counter into the kitchen. Alas, in the fridge I find nothing but a nameless terror.
The “Poem” is already on his eighth bowl of wontons. Packets of duck sauce buoy about his broth like mallards. He tries to speak with me about the eradication of form in a 21st-century poetics but resigned to my defeat I am too busy looking for water chestnuts in my floor lo mein to listen to his post-postmodernist drivel.
By means of hand signals the baby and I eventually reach an accord. We sit together and tell jokes over a plate of General Tso’s, I tear open his packets of spicy mustard and smile my second-best smile (teeth, no lips). We issue pleasantries and pass through the usual rigmarole. The baby tells me he wants to be a politician when he grows up. I tell him I would awfully like to be paid, or otherwise become a dog or a sparrow. The baby’s favorite color is blue, mine chartreuse. The baby’s favorite musician is Bruce Springsteen. I do not listen to music. This causes a momentary relapse in tensions, wherein someone (the terror?) whispers the word “fight” hopefully. The switchblade (I think) clicks open beneath the table. The Text flicks his eyes between the baby and me, as sauce dribbles down his trembling chins. However, I defuse the situation by faking a seizure, one of my many tricks. The baby and I heave a collective sigh of relief that blows the door down. We set a date for tomorrow. We’ll have Italian, we say. I am delighted beyond all belief by this sudden turn of events. I order a bottle of Bordeaux, 1906, for the Text’s indigestion. I ignore his sarcasm about terroir.
The chef blows kisses as he works at the wok, but to whom? Perhaps, I romanticize, to the shadow of a lost lover concealed within the kitchen steam, whose death alone in a Hong Kong flat proved life was as ephemeral as the dash of petals down rivers. I blush, when I realize that it is to me.
The bill is $2,743.36. I ask the proprietor if she accepts credit. She says yes. I find this to be highly agreeable as I have stolen the baby’s mother’s credit card. I refuse to reveal how.
The Text flirts gently with the old Cantonese woman behind the counter, arguing for narrative discourse at his (my) place. He does not speak so much as sputter between licks of his plate. They will join us (the baby’s mother and I) for Italian next Wednesday.
As I put on my coat, I ask the baby if I can borrow $17 for a cab I will not take.
From the corner of my eye, I see the terror kill the delivery boy.
The Text eats my fortune.
I break all the plates.
Before we go (the Text, the old Cantonese woman, the nameless terror and I) we hold hands (the baby, the Text, the baby’s mother, the old Cantonese woman, the chef, the delivery boy, the nameless terror and I) to sing a rosary for America.