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That Old Time Religion
Thursdays, Ford and Jake shared an evening shift so they spent the afternoon having lunch together. This always entailed the following conversation:
"What do you feel like?"
"I don't know. What do you feel like? Italian?"
"No. Mexican?"
"Too spicy. Garden?"
"Too leafy."
And so on. The principles may have changed, but the conversation was always the same. Where they invariably ended up was Skai Hai Thai, on O'Farrell. Skai Hai was in a run-down, yellow building, just a short walk from the Mitchell Brother's O'Farrell Theatre. Not the best neighborhood for leaving your car unattended, but the Misery Machine, Ford's kiwi green Ford conversion van, seemed to fit right in.
"So we pull up the driveway and LaTasha hops out of the car and starts shouting at this woman," Jake said, shaking a forkful of noodles in Ford's direction. "She's shoving a bag into the trunk of her car and she sees us and tries to slam the trunk shut real quick before we notice."
"Typical," Ford said, around a mouthful of Szechuan burger. "They always think they're getting away with something if they just play dumb."
"Right," Jake agreed. "So we have her open the trunk up and the duffle bag is stuffed full of parts of her husband."
"Ick," Ford noted, then took another bite.
"LaTasha opens the garage door and the guy's work bench and power tools are just soaked with blood." Jake paused to stuff a forkful of noodles into his mouth, then washed them down with sip of his Mr. Pibb.
"And, get this," he continued, suddenly laughing. "The guy's head is on the bench, right? Shellacked."
"Get out!" Ford said. "She preserved the guy's head?"
Jake nodded.
"For what? A trophy?"
"LaTasha asked her if she was trying to make sure he looked good in the newspaper photos."
"You fellas make too much noise," said an older woman, approaching the table.
"It is... Queyen... Omi Dala... herself," Ford replied, doing his best Nute Gunray impression.
"You funny," said Queyen Omi Phuong, owner of Skai Hai Thai, sarcastically.
When her husband died in 1982, Phuong moved to San Francisco to be near her son, his wife, and their two children. She knew enough English to get by on, and enough to know that the Americans got her name backwards, often referring to her by her last name, Queyen. Her grandchildren, who both spoke English, took to calling her "The Queen," a moniker that stuck for quite some time. Recently, however, friends and acquaintances had been playing off her middle name, Omi, and calling her Queyen Omi Dala.
"I finally see this movie," Phuong said. "One thing I don't get."
"What's that?" Ford asked.
"Why there no Asian jedi? What do white people know about martial arts?"
"Plenty," Ford said, washing down a bite of burger. "Bruce Lee spilled all the secrets. We white people know everything now."
"Oh, you so funny. Ha ha." She replied. "Oh, your knife come. I get it."
"Oh Cool!" Ford said, spinning in his seat to watch her go.
"Knife?" Jake asked.
"Yeah, a really cool knife I bought from a collector through the Queen."
A short time later, Phuong returned with a plain cardboard package. Ford, giddy as a kid on Christmas morning, peeled the tape off the box and opened it. Giggling with delight, he fished through the styrofoam peanuts and retrieved a length of silk, folded about three inches wide and almost two feet long, then tied with a ribbon. He sat it on the table and slowly unwrapped it.
"Wow!" Ford gasped. "It's even cooler than I thought it would be!"
Jake leaned over the table to see what was inside the silk. Sitting on the table was a solid piece of metal, about twenty inches in length. The bottom third had been scored, creating a grip, while the top two thirds had been polished and sharpened on one edge, making a blade. Carved into the grip were a series of Chinese characters.
"Hey," Jake nodded. "Pretty nifty."
"Nifty?" Ford protested. "Nifty?! It's more than nifty, it's a 1500 year-old Japanese tanto!"
"1500 years?" Jake asked, impressed.
"Yeah," Ford replied, somewhat placated. "It dates to the Kufon period."
"Kofun," Phuong corrected.
"Right, whatever. It belonged to somebody-or-other the Great who used it to destroy what's-his-name the Evil."
"You know Japanese history ver' well," Phuong said.
"Thank you," Ford replied. "It's solid silver, if you can believe it. And it's supposed to be magical."
"Magical?" Jake asked. "What kind of magic?"
"I dunno. Supposed to defeat demons or chase bad luck or something. The guy I bought it from lives in an old temple outside of Saigon. Wouldn't even talk to me because I'm white. I had to go through the Queen just to see pictures of his collection."
"Japanese man no want whites with Japanese magic," Phuong said. "So I buy for him, he give me money. Good thing he don't ask for Vietnamese magic, then I say no. But Japanese magic ver' weak."
"So what are you going to do with it?" Jake asked.
"What am I going to do with it?" Ford echoed. "I'm going to hang it on my wall and show it off to all my friends who are too poor to buy this kind of stuff."
"So how much of your savings did you spend?"
"Most of it," Ford shrugged. "But that's not important. What's important is that I have a magical Japanese sword, and you don't. Neener Neener."
"Brilliant logic," Jake said. "Hey, we should probably be getting to work."
"Yeah," Ford sighed, wrapping the sword up again and putting it back in the box. "I guess you're right. Hey, Phuong, thanks again."
"Yeah," Phuong said. "Anytime. You come again. I make fifteen percent commission."
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