NaNoWriMo Day 12: An Invitation to Dine

NaNoWriMo goal: 50,000 words by November 30 Average daily goal: 1,667 Today's count: 1,717 Total so far: 18,714

The thieves danced along the sidewalks of downtown, ogling the windows like country bumpkins, clumsily thumping their hips and elbows into passersby who would grumble and instantly put them out of mind and wouldn’t know what had happened until later that night, when they went to pay for dinner or a cab or find an address. But practicing sticky-hand pickpocketing was only a lark—they took the money and left the leather and licenses and even credit cards strewn like a breadcrumb trail, tucked in windowsills and in shop shelves behind them, to be pocketed by equally venal or, occasionally, concerned citizens—and what they wanted to see were the windows.

The streets glowed with electric light and rippled and tumbled with rivers of people funneling off to dinners, the sidewalks interrupted here and there with cars flowing in and out of multilevel parking lots. Annie held Kimo’s hand and squeezed it when a young man with brown doe eyes, the fine bone structure of a patrician prep school descendant of aristocrats, and pinked windkissed cheeks strolled by in a vicuna coat, his innocent schoolboy face turning to hers in a sideways glance. She let her hip brush his as they passed and she shivered.

“Young Gregory Peck,” she moaned.

Kimo huffed. “He’s a baby.”

“Such a handsome baby.” They raised their heads and smiled at the palm trees, festively foreign reminders of tropical climes, so forlorn and dreamlike in the nighttime chill. “Look at that park.”

“Positively Babylonian.”

“I love it. Oh, we’re really here, Kimo. The Barbary Coast. Take a picture.”

He obliged with a disposable Kodak click, assaulting the street in a blue-white burst of electric flash.

“I think I blinked.”

“Your eyelids are so pretty.”

“You’re the greatest who ever lived. I will keep you forever. She is next.” They zeroed in on a distracted looking blonde of middle age who was fussing with a map and had a lot of lovely looking rings on her fingers.

After they felt they had emptied enough wallets for dinner, after they had coveted the bags and shoes and scarves and necklaces and coats and skirts and blouses in the windows of Armani, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Yves Saint Laurent, they went to the Japanese restaurant recommended by the jumpy little guy who worked at the Dante’s front desk, and slipped themselves into a cozy table at the back of the wide open, honeyed-bamboo minimalist room, so they could count their take properly and think about what to do next, when Kimo noticed nearby a familiar face.

“Girl, you’re not gonna believe this.”

Annie glanced up briefly from the take, then kept counting. “We are going to have such a good time, I can smell it. Do you want cold or hot sake? Cold is the way to drink the good stuff, and you know we need the good stuff, but I was thinking I could use some warming up—”

“Baby child, you gotta turn your eyes thataway and check out the girl because I think she is following us and has been following us since the Philippines.”

Annie looked up in time to see a waiter approach the girl at the table across the room, who set down her teacup and conferred with him, in Japanese. She was still wearing her long black wig, now in a ponytail, and was dressed in head to toe black, in a catsuit that coated every inch from jaw to wrist and ankle in a uniform sheenless darkness, looking like a stereotypical artsy type. Then the waiter stood aside, and the girl took a sip of water, rose, and crossed the room to their table.

Annie looked at Kimo and Kimo looked at the door, the floor, his hands, and then at the young woman approaching them. Without ceremony, she sat down next to the tense Hawaiian, all the while her eyes locked on Annie, who noticed, with a pang of jealousy, that the girl had featherlight soft black leather shoes, which made no noise, and were exquisite little objects that seemed made precisely for her feet. I want them, she thought, capable of coveting even despite her general fear.

“Yes, I am following you,” the young woman from the End of the World sighed in her strangely accented English, then held up her finger when they began to try to formulate the loony questions that were scrambling for purchase in their brains. “Please. Allow me to share a meal with you tonight. The chef is preparing something special for me, and I ask you please to join me. It will be my treat, for my fellow travelers and denizens of Orwonti’s bar.”

The thieves looked at each other and shrugged, and Annie slipped the cash back into her purple python satchel.

The waiter appeared, and the tiny black-clad girl slid out of her chair and uncurled, like a cloud of smoke floating into the shape of a girl. It gave the thieves the creeps. She murmured, with a gentle, almost imperceptible nod, “We will dine in a private room. Please, if you will come with me.”

Kimo looked at Annie and Annie looked at Kimo. She whispered, “Shall we go?”

“Let’s.”

“You first.”

“Better be you first, baby.”

“I can’t without you.”

They reached their hands across the table, grasped each other in a handgrip of resolute solidarity, scooted back their chairs, rose as one, and followed the tiny girl and the waiter toward the back of the restaurant, behind a paper screen, and, far to the right of the restrooms, in through a door marked PRIVATE, which the waiter unlocked with a little key dangling from a red silk ribbon around his wrist. The waiter himself, Kimo noticed now, was chopstick thin and entirely black clad, with high porcelain features, long narrow angular eyes that looked slashed into his head with a knife, sharp cheekbones that might slice your hand if you ever decided to slap him, and Beatle-long blue-black hair. How painfully boring, thought Kimo, to have no color and no accessories, as they pushed through the door and into sudden darkness, lit only by a dim red sourceless glow.

The hallway was hot and stuffy, and the two thieves squinted and blinked to adjust to the low light as the door swung shut behind them, with the solid, well-engineered click of an automatic lock. By the time Annie could see down the curved hallway, she could just see the girl’s heel (or a shadow of that heel) disappear out of sight. “There!”

Fat man and overgrown schoolgirl went stumbling into the dark, their arms thrust forward, bumping into each other in the narrow space, Kimo slapping the walls, crying, “Wait up, hey. Wait!”

They nearly fell down the flight of steep stairs, which dropped off without warning around the corner. Their leaders were nowhere in sight. “Should we go?” asked Annie.

“Get a move on, child,” gulped Kimo, clutching the handrail and clomping down.

At the end was a landing, and curving to the left was another stair to descend, lit only by that general low red glow as you’d find in a photography darkroom, but without visible lamps, bulbs, identifiable direction. The second stair brought them into what they imagined was the peach pit center of the earth, a large landing where they caught their breath, mortified, alone, only to see at last, in one corner, a gap in the wall, which led to another long, narrow hallway, at the end of which they climbed three steps up, only to be faced with another hallway. At this point, Kimo was panting. Annie’s feet, in their high-heeled faux-schoolgirl mary janes, hurt. They had seen neither ninja nor waiter since the first turn of the hallway. They had seen no one else, for that matter.

Doubt, fear, and petulance made them sweat a sour, wild odor. The passage they were in smelled faintly of frying onions. Their fear of going ahead was trumped solely by their reluctance to climb all those stairs to get back, so they pressed on, in circles, spiraling around and around, and in general descending, the temperature slowly getting cooler, the smell of onions replaced with the haunting smell of jasmine tea, and then nothing but their own sweat again. At certain turns of the path, they thought they heard the chatter of distant voices, or running water, or the clank of a dish or pan, or other sounds that were impossible to place but might have sounded like wind, but for the ridiculousness of having wind so far down.

They were mostly quiet now, except for the huffing of Kimo’s breath and his occasional exclamation or complaint: “Damn,” or, “We there yet?” or, “You seen them?” Annie was about ready to sit down when the passage came to an abrupt end at another turn, so quick that they nearly smashed their faces into the door. Their arrival triggered a motion light, which coated them in a sulfurish yellow glow. On the unfinished door was carved and scorched, black as a cattle brand, an X a foot square.

“Should we go in?” asked Annie.

“Should we knock?” asked Kimo.

They both reached out, knuckles about to hit wood, when suddenly the door wasn’t there, as it slid soundlessly out of the way. They found themselves fist-to-face with a woman in full geisha makeup and clothing, but her hair was red, and from her eyes and nose it was clear she was no Japanese. They were facing a small entryway with the look of an expensive gift box, papered in a delicate print of cream colored peonies strewn across a field of sheer brushed gold. On a small black lacquered table at the rear was a glass bowl full of water and floating white blossoms. White paper lanterns hung from above, lit with candles, and the air was gently perfumed with a smell half apricot, half leaf.

“Oh damn, sorry!” cried Kimo, withdrawing his hand, and the woman, unstartled, smiled and bowed. Annie and Kimo glanced quickly at each other, then each gave a theatrical, amateur bow. Then the woman gestured for them to follow and they trailed her through a hanging cloth curtain, embroidered with small gold fans, which obscured the space beyond.