M A N H A T T A N    T R A N S F E R (2,386 words)

   Verleen steps through the door of Sumida-ya and suddenly the traffic noise of Lexington Avenue gives way to samisen and koto. Teriyaki sauce mingles with the smell of hot vacuum cleaner being plied over industrial carpet and the harsh pong of bleach. Takahashi-san, the owner, runs a tight ship. Sure, he bribes the public health guy with free sushi and a couple of beers, but it’s only to be friendly. You could eat your futomaki sushi off the Sumida-ya’s floors – they’re that clean.

Verleen’s setting up today and already behind schedule. She moves from table to table, laying down chopsticks, napkins, tea cups. Already her hair’s springing out of its bun. She jabs it back in place. A year from now, she’ll be out of here. Doing graphic art in Japan, wowing them with her brilliant portfolio. All she needs is a little money, enough Japanese to get by. Then sayonara Sumida-ya and Hello Tokyo.  

 Eleven o’clock. Verleen hears the clink of coins and brisk swish-swish of folding money as the cashier fortifies her cash register between sips of coffee. Uehara, the sushi chef, is honing his knives. Sugiura, the bartender, is harvesting lemon zest with a flourish, perfuming the air with that sharp, clean tang. Verleen lingers there a moment, remembering warm California days.

The door opens and a blast of Manhattan comes in, frigid and full of exhaust. Uh oh. Tomi’s here. Verleen puts down her last ashtray on the bar and hurries off to the pantry.

Tomi slams out of the changing room, reeking attitude and Charlie. Verleen can feel those eyes on her, languid, but lizard-quick.

 Tomi’s a bully. Verleen, being the new girl here and the one and only non-Asian, has put up with the usual jibes, the smirks, the whispered comments and arch looks.

Sticks-and-stones stuff, too:  a shove here, an elbow there, just as she’s passing by with a drink-loaded tray.  Or she’ll be running short of time – the cook’s messed up on her order and she’s got a couple of angry power-broker types waiting for their sashimi –  Come on, time is money, we don’t have all day! And Verleen rushes into the pantry to get that order of tempura – but it’s gone. She knows it was there, know it was hers, it had her number on it, but Tomi’s taken it, dropped her number back into the dumbwaiter.

Tomi’s customers love her, compliment her on her speediness. They don’t know she steals other people’s orders. Tomi’s canny, Tomi knows how to play it. Like all those bullies Verleen went to high school with…

Verleen’s parents were good people, firm Christians. But they never prepared her for this world. Turn the other cheek – always that, from both of them, gently, resignedly. When most of the time it only got you a good slap on both cheeks. Still, Verleen turns the other cheek. Every single day.

Customers are filing in, conversations are buzzing. First orders are being taken: Sukiyaki for two, one order of sushi, two tempuras. One Budweiser, two Yebisu, four Kirins, okay I bring soon!  Waitresses are full of patient goodwill with their customers, snarling irritation with each other. ‘Oh look your new baby, she pretty – just like mother!’ ‘Hey, anyone seen my order sashimi – special one?’ ‘Yes – fish stew, tastes good, lots of crab, scallop, mussel – I think you like!’ ‘Who’s on dumbwaiter duty today – tub is full!’ ‘Yes, okay, two Kirin, one Budweiser, right away!’ ‘Aiyaaa! Tell the dish-washer man these glasses are dirty, need more clean ones NOW!’

 The noise level is tremendous. Customers talking, getting seated, eating their lunches, queuing for the toilets. Waitresses scurry and hot-foot it back and forth, ferrying water, drinks, tea, steaming plates of food. Getting from the main room to the bar or pantry becomes an ordeal as waitresses run fur-coat and Burberry-lined gauntlets of stockbrokers, secretaries, bank managers, executives.

Tiny Kimie grasps a tray laden with steaming fish stew in iron pots, the tendons fairly bursting from her slender arms. ‘Here you are,’ she says, her voice weak with relief as she places them on the table with a flourish. ‘Pot is very hot, be careful!’

 Michiko, four months pregnant and miserable with 24-hour morning sickness, smiles her way out of a conversation with a couple of noisy drunks and races to the kitchen to get her next orders. Tomi keeps a couple of fashionably dressed career women waiting while she flirts with a married man. He’s sitting with his wife, whose smile chills Verleen to the core, but if Tomi notices, she never gives a sign. Brushing past Verleen, she makes it to the pantry first.

 ‘That man, he say my hair is looking good,’ Tomi confides proudly to no one in particular. ‘He say that in front of wife!’ Verleen hurriedly loads soups and bowls of rice onto her tray, giving Tomi a wide berth.

 ‘Have the two tonkatsu specials come up yet?’ asks Michiko, trying to swallow a retch. She turns away and heaves silently, her shoulders hunched.

 Table 6 is a party of four, one chicken teriyaki, one tempura, one sushi special, one double sashimi. Three Kirins, one Coke with lemon. Verleen gets the drinks first, carrying them high, fearful of queuing customers’ arms flung out in grand gestures. Once she’s set them down, though, turns out the lady with the lemon and Coke has decided she doesn’t want the lemon. She doesn’t want to make trouble, she says, she’s just changed her mind. No, if Verleen takes the lemon off, it’ll still taste of lemon, won’t it?  Can she just have a fresh drink? Without lemon? Pleeease?  Verleen’s exasperated, but says Of course.  (Catch her ever pulling something like that in a restaurant, she thinks.) 

Back to the bar for a coke without lemon, into the pantry to see if table 3’s fish stew has come yet, deliver lemon-less Coke to woman – who murmurs a thank you and wonders if Verleen will be a doll and get her a pack of cigarettes. Camels, as soon as possible. Verleen takes her money. Rushes back to the pantry for that elusive fish stew and runs head-on with Tomi, who’s adjusting an umbrella in a fancy drink  and not looking where she’s going. Tomi’s full of spitting rage.  Her swearing is legendary, near-native in proficiency:  stupidass clumsygoddamn bitch! – Make me spill drink! – Look where you going next time why don’t you?

   The fish stew is nowhere in sight, and the chicken teriyaki has arrived, but not the tempura. Uehara-san, usually mild-mannered and gentle, is harassed behind his sushi counter, and abrupt. She’ll just have to wait her turn for the sushi special and double sashimi. Michiko and Kimie have orders in first, meanwhile he’s trying to prepare stuff for the people at the bar.

Take the chicken teriyaki to the party of four at table 6, ‘I’m sorry the tempura, sashimi and sushi are late, they’ll be here soon’ (cross fingers), and the no-lemon-in-her-coke lady wants to know – all fake polite voice – if Verleen has those Camels yet. Go get the wretched Camels and pass the table with the poor fellow whose lunch break is almost over and who still hasn’t got his fish stew.

‘I’m sorry,’ Verleen commiserates, the kitchen’s really slow today. I keep telling them to hurry, but for some reason…’. Verleen likes this man, feels bad about the fish stew. He’s not happy: it’s hard to be patient and understanding when you’re hungry and rushed and getting no satisfaction.  Tomi’s probably taken the fish stew for one of her customers. Probably forgot to put in her own order for it, so she just decided to take Verleen’s. Happens all the time.

Three customers are at the cashier’s, ahead of her. She waits to buy Camels for the awful woman at table 6. Two ladies just in front of her are having a hilarious conversation about pantyhose. The missing fish stew weighs on Verleen’s mind like a brick.

  Finally, Camels in hand, she rushes back to the pantry to see if the fish stew is there. Hallelujah:  it is!  Rushes through the crowd to table 3 with fish stew – only to find that he has left. No tip, either. Well, of course not. He never got his order, did he? Taking the fish stew back to the pantry (maybe someone else will order this before it gets cold?), she passes table 6, and the three people who haven’t got their orders yet give her pointed, icy stares. ‘My Camels?’ says the woman in arctic tones, her lemon-less Coke still untouched.

‘Are you like some tea?’ Kimie asks a chatting couple, teapot at the ready, her voice unctuously gracious. Verleen’s gently corrected her grammar any number of times, but it’s had no effect at all. ‘And he never did get that fish stew,’ Verleen hears one customer telling another as she hurries past their table. ‘But he asked for it half a dozen times. The service here leaves a lot to be desired, lately.’  

Two hours later, and it’s all over. Clean-up time. Verleen’s shoe is broken: Tomi stepped on the back of her heel and the strap snapped. They were brand new, these shoes, and she knows it was intentional. Tomi never said she was sorry either: she never does.

 Verleen’s seething. What’s wrong with her? Why didn’t she say something? Why does she just let it happen? Is she turning the other cheek or just being a wimp? It’s all building up in there, the anger, it’s all piling up and going nowhere. Day in, day out – why doesn’t she just get up the nerve to say something, do something?

Verleen’s back in high school again, eating lunch. By herself, as usual. Four girls across from her are giggling, when she drops her apple and it rolls under their feet. She wants it back, doesn’t dare ask for it. Finally gets up and goes around behind them and reaches for it. It rests on its side, only two bites missing, among their stylish legs. Her hand’s almost on it when one of them notices her and begins the familiar taunting. Verleen, Verleen! calls the girl in Grand-Old-Opry voice. The homely teen! finishes her friend, and the others shriek their approval.  Turn the other cheek, she hears her mother sigh. You can’t change folks like that, so turn the other cheek.

  Verleen’s at the dumbwaiter. She’s mopped the floors, scoured the counters. The others are tidying up the tables, gathering the trash, vacuuming the carpet. One last plastic tub of slops to send down in the dumbwaiter and there’s Tomi kneeling right in front of her, bundling up the trash. Her back is a smooth expanse of stretched black nylon uniform, offering itself up to all sorts of possibilities…

How did it happen? One minute, there Verleen is with the grey plastic tub awash with used tea leaves swimming in cold tea, teriyaki sauce, leftover rice, crusts of tonkatsu fat glistening with oil.  The next minute – swoosh! – it’s all over Tomi’s back! And the screams, dear Lord, the screams!

They’re all there, wanting to know what happened. Verleen cannot believe she has done it, but she has. Tomi’s beside herself with fury, gasping with rage. You stupidfucking-goddamn-sonofaBITCH!  

Verleen apologizes profusely, her mind a jumble of emotions. A searing, soaring sense of release. It’s all over now, she’ll be fired, of course. How could she do that to someone? Intentionally! To think she has that in her! Thank God she did it – it was worth it!

Then the boss is there, voice booming, What happened? Tomi swats away Verleen’s hands as she blots ineffectually at the tea leaves and soy sauce on her back. She did it to me, she dropped tub on my back!  The rest of them stare, their eyes darting from Verleen to Tomi. Takahashi-san peers into Verleen’s face and she stares back at him, aghast. Is it her imagination or can she see a smile there? In his eyes? Trying to push his nostrils open?

‘Is true?’ he enquires, obviously amazed. ‘You did?’ What can she say? ‘I don’t –’ she says, her voice wavering. ‘It was – it was an accident.’ Even to her this sounds pathetically false.

Someone gets Tomi another uniform. It’s too small, but it’s clean. Tomi changes into it with ill grace, still muttering angrily. The others help her, but there is something furtive in their actions. Looks are exchanged. Lips are compressed. Someone – Kimie? Michiko? – pats Verleen on the shoulder. She looks up, but whoever it was is gone. Later she meets Kimie in the changing room. ‘You okay, Verleen?’ asks Kimie, smiling. Verleen can only manage a nod. Any show of kindness moves her, no matter how small.

‘You don’t worry, Verleen, you’re okay girl, good waitress, too, no problem.’ Verleen nods again, biting back tears.

Verleen quietly wipes up the last of the teriyaki and tea leaves, changes out of her uniform. Her mind is still crowded with conflicting emotions. I resorted to violence, she thinks.  Oh no you didn’t, a voice within her answers. You had your chance earlier. Knives, hot soup, bleach. But what did you do? You poured the slops on her. A whole tubful of slops. And good for you, too!

Tomi’s sitting at the bar in her too-small uniform. Verleen stands there awkwardly, wishing the others would show up. The silence is awkward, thick as cooked oatmeal. There is nothing Verleen can think of saying to Tomi. Nothing. Then Tomi speaks. ‘You like kimchee?’ she asks nonchalantly, catching Verleen off guard. Tomi’s not looking at her, she’s staring straight ahead.

Tomi clears her throat and continues. ‘Only Kimiko say one time, she tell me you like kimchee.’

Verleen stares at her in amazement, then catches herself. The truth is, she does like kimchee. She loves it. Quietly, cautiously, she admits her fondness for pickled cabbage, and sits down uneasily next to Tomi. Sugiura the bartender polishes a couple of glasses and whistles ‘Strangers in the Night.’

Tomi reaches over and pats the back of her hand. ‘Okay, you like kimchee, I make big bunch two, two-three times a year. Next time I make, I bring you jar.’