Hibachi

The number of people on earth greatly out number the places to visit. It is not strange to think that we have been in multiple places with the same people and not recognize them.

The tour group of prospective students proceeded along the University’s side walk.

“This building on our left is Clet Hall.” The junior tour guide announced. “This is where all of the chemistry majors play scientist.”

In the middle of the group was Derek. Next to Derek was his mother who’s nose was buried in a catalog for the college.

“It’s nice to walk around in a t-shirt in October. The tree’s are so beautiful up here.” Derek said to his mother.

“Did you see this Derek? They have a hibachi grill down in the cafeteria. You love Chinese food.”

“Are you serious?”

In the front of the group were Maggie and her mother. Maggie’s mother could stop asking pertinent questions to the tour guide, such as the library hours, campus police routes, and healthiest snack machines on campus. The tour guide stared slack jawed and continued on with the tour.

“Get familiar with Clet Hall honey. Your Nobel Prize research will be conducted there.”

“Mother, please.” Maggie could feel the other parent’s cold stare. Her mothers goading about her always made Maggie feel uncomfortable. “All I can do is my best, mother.”

“…And your best will no doubt lead to a Nobel Prize. Right? Right?”

“Yes, mother.” Maggie sighed.

“Excuse me,” A mother of another tour guide child tapped Maggie’s mother on the shoulder, “Maybe you should get through the tour before you write her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. We are trying to listen to Theodore.”

Maggie’s mother slowly turned around. She examined the bold mother and her son.

“Physical Education Major? The Community College is across town.” The other mother gasped and Maggie’s mother enjoyed her victory.

“Who is Theodore?” She asked Maggie, who pointed up to the tour guide.

“Does anybody have any other questions?” Theodore asked, refusing to make eye contact with Maggie’s mother. “Yes, boy in the blue stripped shirt.”

“Yes, the catalog mentions that there is a hibachi grill on campus. What days are it open?” Derek asked.

“Unfortunately, due to a fire hazard from last semester and the deportation of Chef Ne Foo, the hibachi grill will be closed until the spring semester. Alright, let’s check out the boys and girls dorms, which are not co-ed.”

“Hibachi!” Maggie said to herself. Since she was a young girl the thought of Hibachi gave her a warm and comforting feeling. With great caution, so as not to be noticed, she turned to see the boy who asked about the Hibachi grill in the blue-stripped shirt.

“Cute.” Maggie thought.

Out of Stock

 

Two years had passed since the tour group and Derek’s discovery of the greatest college cafeteria. He was now a sophomore at North Cumberland Gap University and was learning to spread his wings as a young man.

A city bus came to a stop on the corner of Youngsboro and Medina. The door squeaked open and through the massive amounts of exhaust a homeless woman exited followed by Derek and his friend Matthew.

“I’m not sure of the bands name,” Derek explained to Matthew, “but I heard the song on Lisping Cliff’s radio show last night and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“What’s the song’s name?” Mathew asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How’s it go?”

“ ‘Cool thing sitting by your kitty, cool thing now I know you’re looking pretty.’”

“Hmm. Public Enemy?”

“No. It definitely was not Public Enemy.”

Derek and Matthew walked through the front doors of The Reclose Record Shop; the most comprehensive record collection in the city. Derek found this place to be particularly calming. The smell was just past decay. The lights were turned down to a romantic dim. Every time Derek walked in he fell in love with something. This visit however was for hunting not passive discovery.

Lisping Cliff was busy cashing out two girls at the register. He worked at The Reclose Record Shop during the day and moonlighted as a radio DJ who’s show gathered a cult following. Cliff’s speech impediment was so bad that on his radio show he never spoke. He only played music. Within the first month he played all of the top forty hits multiple times and then dug into the radio stations archives to play underground music. This is how he attracted music lovers such as Derek.

“Your total comes to $39.69.” Cliff emphasized the sixty-nine, as was his creepy charm. Cliff and his habits turn off most people. The most common one was when he took a deep breath before speaking and you could hear his saliva race around his metallic lip ring and through his gapped front teeth. These girls found him particularly charming.

“Does your mother know you speak to girls like that Clifford?” The blond girl said, knowing Clifford made Cliff angry.

“I have twenty three…eighty nine, Cliff. Can you put the rest of it on my tab? I can pay you on Saturday.” The brunette girl in ripped stockings asked. Derek didn’t know why but he was attracted to this girl.

“Saturday. No later.” Cliff took out a pencil to do a quick math equation. “Your tab is up to sixty-seven dollars and ninety-seven cents, Miss Maggie.”

The city bus pulled up at the same stop outside of the record shop.

“Great. Thanks, Cliff. That’s our bus.” Maggie and her friend grabbed their records and made like bandits out of the shop and onto the bus. Derek and Matthew walked up to Cliff.

“You are going to get arrested if you keep talking to girls like that, Cliff.” Derek said.

“What are you talking about? People love me.” Cliff responded. He saw that Derek’s hands were empty. “No discovery today?”

“I’m looking for something specific, although I don’t know the name of the song or the name of the band.”

Cliff sucked in deep through his front teeth. He was ready for the challenge.

“Go on.”

“On your radio show last night you played a song that went.” Derek began to tap the counter for rhythm. “ ‘Cool thing sitting by your window, no I know that your going real slow.’ “

Cliff gave Matthew a look that said, ‘Give me something difficult.’ Matthew instantly felt uncomfortable.

“That’s Sonic Youth, dude. People are calling it rainforest rock, because they’re from Seattle and it rains eleven months out of the year. They only have one single out, called ‘Kool Thing.’”

“Are they listed under ‘S’ or ‘Y’?” Derek asked, waiting to go search the archives.

“Neither.”

Derek’s heart sank. “Cliff, no. No. What ever you are going to say next, please, for the love of all things independent music related, do not have it be, ‘We’re sold out.’ Ok?”

“Ok.” Cliff paused and looked and Derek and Matthew. Matthew broke eye contact. “The last copy in our shop was bought by that girl.”

Cliff pointed out towards the bus stop. Derek looked just in time to see the bus with Maggie and her friend drive off.

Real World Experience

Four years passed since Sonic Youth released ‘Cool Thing’. Over that time Derek and Maggie both graduated from North Cumberland Gap University. Derek achieved a degree in English, and Maggie, despite her mother’s wishes and threats, achieved a Bachelor of Science in Art. She was at least working in her field as an Art Studio intern, and Derek got a job on a construction crew operated by Matthew’s father.

The sun was just coming up in the city as Maggie hustled out of the coffee shop with a tray of donuts. Famed abstract artist Ike Michele was holding a week long exhibition of his paintings depicting coffee stains at Color Blind Art Studio, and he demanded fresh peanut donuts every morning. It was the intern’s job to take care of the little things.

Half a block away from Color Blind Art Studio the construction crew, Cocked and Sons, were hard at work remodeling a brownstone.

“Burst pipe! Everyone to the basement!” Contractor Cocked shouted through a bullhorn to his crew. The workers, well trained in moments of disaster such as this, set up an assembly line of bucket passing. Empty ones in and sewage filled ones out. It was Derek’s job to run the sewage filled buckets to the curb and dump in the street. The new comer took care of the dirty things.

“Faster, Derek. I didn’t wake up this morning hell bent on standing knee deep in shit.” Steve, a bloated Santa Claus type veteran of construction shouted from the basement.

“Yes, Steve.” Derek could not help but feel like a puppy in a kennel of beaten dogs. Instead of cowering he clenched his teeth and grabbed another bucket from the basement and ran across the lawn. His focus was on keeping sewage in the bucket and not on the young lady walking up the street with a tray of donuts.

When he reached the end of the lawn he pivoted his foot, twisted the bucket to his right, and heaved it into the air on his left hand side sending it all over Maggie and Ike Michele’s donuts. For a split second the two made eye contact before the sewage rained down on Maggie. The tray collapsed under the weight of the semi liquid debris and sent the peanut donuts to the pavement in disgusting fashion.

“AAAH.” Maggie cried hysterically. “Oh. My. God!”

“Oh, my god.” Derek yelled. “I’m so sorry.” He was more frantic then Maggie at his blunder, although he knew what was in the bucket.

Maggie acted like an infant who soiled itself. She knew something was terrible wrong, but she didn’t know how to fix the problem.

“What…is this?”

“Shit. I am so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Is this really shit?” Maggie was fierce.

“Technically it’s sewage.”

Maggie began to tear up over pure disgust. She looked down to see the irrevocably damaged donuts and then let out a hysteric cry.

“No, don’t cry.” He tried to comfort her, but she was covered in sewage so he put his hands over his own mouth. He was in the thick of it now.

“I’m only an intern.” She sobbed.

“Oh, ok. Interns have good odds of getting long term employment.” Derek saw an opportunity brighten up Maggie’s view.

“Ike Michele needs his donuts. Look at them.”

“Is she your boss?”

“He’s a painter!” The word painter was drawn out on the heels of a cry. Derek looked down the street and remembered seeing Color Blind Art Studio.

“You intern at Color Blind.”

“I did. I’m definitely getting fired now.”

Derek turned back around to see Maggie on the ground in an attempt to save the donuts.

“Don’t do that. I can fix this for you. The truck bed has an entire tray of donuts next to the coffee thermoses and napkins. They’re for the crew, but seeing as how I ruined your donuts you can take them.

Maggie felt a glimmer of hope, albeit a small one. She lifted her head, dropped the donut and smiled at Derek. He smiled back. Both got the odd feeling that they had met before, but before they could explore where Steve shouted,

“Derek. Shit bucket. Now.”

“I’m on my way.” Derek called back. “Everyone’s in the basement, so they wont see you. But I’ve got to go.” He picked up the sewage bucket and ran towards the basement.

“Thank you.” Maggie called out.

“You’re welcome.” Derek called back.

“Oh, you little smart ass.” Steve said, as he thought Derek was replying to him. “Wait until we pick who has to buy lunch this week.”

Ike Michele did not fire Maggie. He actually hand selected her for her fierce drive to be his personal assistant after she told him about the story to save his donuts. She returned to the brownstone the next day with two trays of donuts. One was for Ike Michele and the other was a thank you for Derek, but Cocked and Sons Construction had lost their contract. A new crew was working.

Rave

The next seven years were a blur for Maggie. She traveled the world and saw places she had only dreamed about with great success. She was by Ike Michele’s side in New York when he won The American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal. He gave her a special recognition in his acceptance speech for the Saint Afrique Award. Then, one night in a Rome hotel room, drunk off of the champagne and victory of the Prix de Roma, Ike Michele made unwanted advances towards Maggie until she threw a glass of water in his face and stormed out of the hotel. “I should have given him shit covered donuts.” She said to herself as she flew back to America.

Having a public fight with famed abstract artist Ike Michele made it next to impossible for Maggie to find another job in the art world, so in the mean time she moved in with her college roommate Heather.

“It’s going to be in an abandon warehouse in Greenwich Village with close to a thousand people and disco music. What doesn’t sound fun about that.” Heather walked from the bathroom, clad in a towel, to the bedroom.

“We’re thirty years. The only people who go to raves this late in life are trying to sell ecstacy.” Maggie was relaxing on the loveseat in the living room reading her favorite author, H.P. Lovecraft.

“There’s going to be ecstacy there?” Heather was interested.

“That’s not the point I am trying to make. Seriously, why do you want to go? We won’t be able to talk because the music’ll be too loud, so we’ll get supremely wasted, leave to eat tacos from a food truck at four a.m., and then wake up tomorrow in the exact same spot with nothing except a load of remorse.” Maggie took a much needed breath.

“You’ve been jet setting too long, sister.” Maggie walked to the doorway of the bedroom and held up a tight black dress and a paisley purple dress.

“Purple. What are you talking about?”

Heather shouted from the bedroom. “You have been wrapped up in the art world for so long that you think a good time is sipping champagne and discussing the difference of three black dots on a white canvas. You haven’t let your hair down in a long time. Tomorrow you can put it back up and look at your dots, but you are coming out tonight.”

Heather did make a persuasive point. You do have to let your hair down to put it back up.

“If you come you’ll be able to meet my new boyfriend, Matthew.” Heather appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing the tight black dress. “What do you say?”

“I need to get ready. Give me half an hour.”

“Yes! We are going to get so wasted!”

The last seven years had been a blur for Derek. He had to stick with the construction crew for four years because he could not find a permanent teaching position. To deal with the physical strain and monotonous work Derek turned to alcohol, and as a result does not remember much of his twenties. On the night of his twenty seventh birthday he got so drunk in a local bar that he climbed a tree on a dare. Two hundred and twenty pounds was too much for the top branch, and just before Derek finished singing ‘We are the Champions’, it snapped. Derek fell thirty feet and fractured his left ankle, shattered both knee caps, cracked two ribs, dislocated his left shoulder, and broke his nose. Alcohol has not touched Derek’s lips since.

“Here it is. Are you sure that you want to go in? I can have Heather meet us someplace else.” Matthew was concerned for his friend.

“No. We’re going in and I am going to have a drink and prove to myself I can handle alcohol like a normal person does. I mean, its not everyday Vanderbilt accepts me for graduate school.”

‘Billie Jean’ rang out from Matthews phone.

“Heather’s texting me. They are right by the restrooms.”

“They?”

“Heather brought her old college roommate. Well, she’s not old. They have just known each other for a long time.”

Matthew opened the metal, which above it was graffitied ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter’.

The music rattled the insides of Derek’s eardrums. Every other person he saw was wearing a belly shirt with glow paint on their faces and exstacy in their system. They were not sure if the doors were the bathrooms, but Derek and Matthew headed towards doors with “Penises” and “Vaginas” painted in yellow glow paint.

“You guys made it!” Heather extended her arms around Matthew. “Maggie, this is my tall drink of water, Matthew. Matthew, this is my best friend and second sexiest girl you’ll meet.”

“Nice, Heather. Humble. Hi, I’m Maggie.”

“Matthew. Good to finally meet you. Heather tells me you were painting in Rome. That’s so cool.”

“Not quite. I was an assistant to a painter, but then I did not want to be in the same room with him.”

“He sexually assaulted her.” Heather said assuredly.

“No he did not. I made sure of that.”

“Good. Good for you. Sexual assault is worse then having to park four blocks over from your apartment building at night. Which oddly enough is how most sexual assaults begin.” Matthew successfully made the conversation too awkward for anybody to make another comment.

“Maggie, this is Matthew’s friend Derek.” Heather broke the ice.

“Hi, Derek.” Maggie extended her hand for a shake and when Derek placed his hand in her’s the DJ’s turntable short circuited and skipped the music.

“That would totally stink if this place burned down.” Heather commented.

“Hello, Maggie.”

They eyed each other suspiciously as the feeling that they had met before grew larger. The two secretly tried to place the other’s face for the rest of the night until Heather picked up the wrong cup and drank a double dose of ecstacy. She began a crying fit, which was the exct opposite effect that ecstacy should have on a healthy human mind.

Concerned for the well-being of their friend, Matthew, Derek, and Maggie brought Heather back to her apartment where she refused to lay down without Matthew signing her nursery rhymes.

“Am I still your little teapot?” Heather asked as Matthew shut her bedroom door leaving Derek and Maggie in the living room.

“I’m just saying that that was embarrassing.”

“Not as bad as the sexual assault joke Matthew made.” A silence grew.

“Music. Let me put on some music.” Maggie got up from the loveseat and put the newest Sonic Youth record on the turntable.

“How about a drink. What do you like.?”

“Bourban if you have it.”

“That’s all I have, actually.” Maggie returned to the loveseat. “There’s some cherry coke in there too.”

“Perfect. That’s good. Sonic Youth?”

“Excuse me?”

“The music’s Sonic Youth.”

“Yes. I’ve been into them since I was in college.”

“Me too. I heard ‘Cool Thing’ for the first time and I’ve been a fan every since.”

“Holy shit. I don’t mean to swear, or spit cherry coke and bourbon on you, but that was the record that got me into Sonic Youth too.”

“Then you should know that they only released it as a single and not as a record.”

“Wow. Mr. Music I.Q. Can you name all of their albums.”

“Please.”

“Ok. Who was their original bass player?” Derek was stumped. “I don’t know either.” Maggie laughed at her clever joke.

“You would have loved this guy who I bought records from. This total creep of a guy that everyone like. When he had something important to say he would suck in through his teeth and you could hear his saliva go around his lip ring. Everybody called him Lisping Cliff.”

“The Reclose Record Shop!?”

“You were at North Cumberland Gap?!”

“I got my Bachelors in art there.”

“Wow, small world.”

“What did you go for?”

“English.”

“So we probably never had any of the same classes together.”

“I doubt it. We probably walked by each other though.”

“I’m sure we had to have at least done that.”

“Totally.”

The social cue to break the awkward silence between two people all but disappeared for Derek and Maggie. A comfortable silence was reached and each reveled in that fact. They might have only scratched the surface about how close they had come to each other over the course of their lives up until that night, but it did not matter. They had the rest of their lives to figure it out.