Asimov's SF, January 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Over the ear-numbing drone of the gun, she replied, “My boss and the other cooks, they can't stand the sound. Some of the early customers, they can hear it, ruins the whole exotic dining experience. Now the inkjet printer we use to print designs on the starch-paper, that's pretty quiet, compared to this. If you ask me, aside from being useful for wrapping up sushi rolls, starch-paper covered with pictures of maki rolls and amazu shoga and heni shoga pinwheels is just a piece of starch-paper, y'know? It's still something extra, which you don't need. But what I'm doing here ... this is true edible art. ‘Cause the art is in it, a part of it, even if it's a subtle taste thing. I mean, these slabs are gonna be chopped up, and steeped in broth, so all the customer sees is a hint of color on each piece, and maybe detects a hint of onion or citrus if their taste buds are halfway alive, but still, it's there, part of it. It's not a coating of cartoon sushi someone slapped on as an afterthought, all because some guy down in Chicago came up with it a couple of decades ago in his restaurant. I dunno ... does this make any sense at all to you?"

  This time, she was asking a question. But how to answer? Even as she spoke of food, novelty dishes, to be precise, Masafumi was reminded of his former art, that of kimono-painting. That same art that had eventually brought him to such a state of despair, of utter inability to decide something as simple as which new outfit to wear upon waking, that he'd taken the route of no road, of no destination. Staying in his room, week after month after year, where nothing associated with his former art could be found—no aobama ink, no tiny zinc granules of makinori to be sprinkled across silk, then fixed in place with rice paste, prior to being coated with wood wax, then fixed on the fabric with soy juice ... and no disassembled eight panels of silk, waiting to be painted, resist dyed, then sewn back into that ancient “T” configuration which had been the staple of the kimono design for centuries. Eight panels of cloth, eight chances to turn the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional, once the final element of his art was included ... the woman wearing the kimono. While Harumi understood the excess of something merely added, Masafumi didn't know if she'd understand the inherent obstacle of his art in itself—there was the design to be added, then there was the woman within, who'd give life to the design, but in the middle was the kimono, eight inevitable squares of cloth, two each for the front and back, the remaining four for the sleeves, culminating in literally a “thing worn"—always, no matter how one decorated a kimono, in anticipation of the woman who was to wear it, the “thing worn” itself had become his creative nemesis. When those eight pieces of cloth began to insinuate themselves between Masafumi and his artistic ideal, preventing him from instilling his creative will directly onto the being that would give it real life, he'd given up, withdrawn, become a twilight ghost who only ventured out of the house for short trips to the neighborhood konbini, the Japanese answer to the convenience stores that popped up in fungal stealth by the day in his new country, his adopted city.

  True, cartoon sushi and hand-painted kimonos had little in common save for being something worn by something else, but Masafumi didn't know if Harumi cared about his hikikomori episode, his lost years ... even if she'd asked him in a direct question about her own art, and its purposefulness.

  “I suppose ... one is an embellishment, while the other is an ... ingredient. Both are edible, but only one is essential."

  She smiled at that. For the first time, he felt bold enough to sit down on the tatami mat next to hers, his chest level with the tattooed sheets of momonogoshi. He wasn't certain, but he thought he smelled the faint odor of citrus and onions against the creamy bland near-nothingness of the tofu. Leaning over to peer at her freeform designs, he surprised himself by suggesting, “If they serve kinugoshi, do you think branding the tofu first would survive the deep frying process?” He hadn't thought of kinugoshi in years, but the mere utterance of the word brought back that creamy, custard-like texture of the silken tofu's interior, after one bit through the deep-fried exterior, which rested unseen but curiously felt on the tip of his tongue, like a lingering aftertaste combined with the phantom sensation of silken smoothness.

  “Oh man ... they could call it ‘kiss of fire’ tofu, whatever the Japanese is for that. I mostly know kitchen-Japanese, just what my dad's people used to use when they cooked for family gatherings. That's what happens when races intermarry ... my name's more Japanese than I am. Guess how many nationalities I could check off on a census form?"

  How to answer that? Not only was her hair autumn-leaves-on-wet-cement mingling of browns, oranges, and a hint of red, while her eyes were a sparkling green-brown hazel, but her skin was creamy pale, more so than that of mainland Chinese women. Her eyes were closer to almond than Asian, with only a slight corners-tilt of the eyelids to hint at an ancestry not wholly European. Her voice was purely Minnesotan, a closed-mouth way of speaking, with rounded “o” sounds within words. But with a lilt that reminded Masafumi of bamboo wind chimes....

  “Eight.” Shutting off her magic wand, she ticked off nationalities on her fingers and thumbs: “Japanese, Norwegian, English, Irish, Swedish, German, Polish, and, again on my dad's side, Chinese, from some mess during some war nobody wants to speak about. Every generation on his side, the people's hair and eyes got lighter and lighter, and their eyes got rounder. But we all go in for Japanese first names. Drives everyone else nuts. And I'm shit out of luck if I get sick and need new bone marrow or an organ transplant. No way no how they'll find a matching donor for me ... which is why I decided years ago that I'm gonna live the way I want, ‘cause there's no turning back for me. I can't abuse myself with a backup plan of getting a new liver from someone else, so I can tear myself down all over again. I consider myself a statue I carve day by day ... if something gets hacked off, it has to stay off. I mean, some art is meant to be disposable, no?"

  Another question. Not sure how to reply, he demurred, “So that is why you tattoo and brand yourself, because you are your own artwork. And what you do with your hair—"

  “Yeah. I thought I'd visually add another ethnicity into the mix. ‘Dreads, on account of nobody in the family hooked up with a black person. I like ‘dreads. I don't have to wear a hairnet or scarf while I cook."

  “You don't serve at the restaurant?"

  “Do I look like I fit in with the décor?"

  A rhetorical question, which could be safely ignored.

  “That idea of yours, about branding the tofu ... mind if I run it past my boss, see what he says?"

  A shrug, followed by a smile from her. Putting aside the gun, she got to her feet and began pulling the cheesecloth over the trays, prior to restacking them. Slipping the bottles of edible dye into her shorts pockets, Harumi stood up, and said as she lifted the trays, “You come by the back of the restaurant, later on, okay? I get a smoke break after one. Can your boss let you go for half an hour or so? I just gotta talk to someone. You'll be there?"

  So many individual questions, but thankfully, a lone answer.

  “Yes ... I will be there. He'll let me go."

  (Masafumi was still an apprentice tattooist; his main daily duty was to sterilize equipment, plus dye the batches of carbon nanotube ribbon some customers wanted implanted in their skin—an off-the-books procedure, thanks to the increased invasiveness of the implantation process—unless some skin-virgin wanted a bit of off-the-wall flash spotted onto their skin from a pre-drawn stencil ... “tourist tattoos” his boss dubbed them, basic, simple designs deemed suitable for Masafumi to ink their waiting flesh,)

  “Good. See ya then.” She was gone, leaving only the smack of her flip-flops against her bare feet to echo in Masafumi's ears.

  Once she'd left, Masafumi's boss Ignazio pushed aside the beaded doorway curtain and stood there grinning, his bare chest (embellished with flames both tattooed and carbon nanotube augmented; the flames seeming to flicker in the early morning sunlight) already sheened with a fine coat of sweat from the July heat, while his thin sushi-pale lips curled into a smile over sl
ightly protruding front teeth.

  “How ‘bout you convince her to do her thing out in the main area, where the customers could watch, huh? She'd bring in more business—"

  “It is not sanitary ... there is blood, out there. There is none back here—"

  “Not so literal, Masa, not so literal ... just wishin'. I know ‘bout health regs for the food business. I'm just sayin’ she's one fine lookin’ woman. And yes, you can go meet her at one. Don't go givin’ me that look, kid. Remember, this door's got air holes.” Giving the strings of beads a clinking shake for emphasis, he went on, “I'm just yankin’ your chain. Sounds like she's got somethin’ on her mind, and believe you me, there's nothin’ more intimate than a woman who unloads from the inside out. Better than her takin’ off her clothes. Clothes, they come off, they're off, but a woman who unburdens, that's a one way ticket to real intimacy. Some guys don't want no part of it when a woman dumps a mental load on them, but take'er from me, that's when you can get real close to ‘em. And that one's worth getting next to, from the inside-out. Me, I've done all her inkslinging, I've felt damn near every part of her, but do I know her? She doesn't say so much as ‘ouch’ when I'm workin’ on her, not even when I give'er the kiss of fire with the branding tool. But you, you get an e-ticket. She's gonna have A Talk with you. Tell you what's been makin’ her so jumpy lately. Now that's gettin’ close, my man. Consider yourself blessed. Uh-oh, someone's comin’ in. But enjoy the flavor, man. That woman, she is how you folks say, oishii. Peace, man,” and with that, he was gone, headed for the tattoo chairs, leaving Masafumi to his stainless steel autoclave, and his low-sided vats of dye-bathed nanotube ribbons.

  Giving the nearest tub of crimson dye a slosh, to better infuse the nearly transparent ribbons (far thinner than human hairs) with a shimmering wash of color, Masafumi winced over his boss's misuse of the word “delicious” ... true, in a vulgar sense the word might apply to a woman, if one thought of her in such a crass way, but in a more elemental sense, Harumi was"oishii," if one thought of something delicious as that which leaves a beautiful memory of its flavor in one's mind. Not like his memories of Mieko, an underlying bitter emotional aftertaste. Even as she had helped him, she'd also taken something from him, which created a sour lingering unpalatability which forever clouded her good intentions in his impression of her.

  But what Ignazio had said, about someone who unburdens themselves becoming more naked than those who disrobe (not that the Miami transplant had uttered anything that eloquent), only served to remind Masafumi of his former passion and nemesis, the kimono ... given that there are so many layers to a kimono, one cannot begin to remove it without first untying the obi which binds all the inner robes into one garment....

  * * * *

  II (Osode)

  "Ancora Imparo” ("I am still learning")

  —Michaelangelo

  When she saw him walking toward her, Harumi held out two black lacquered bowls of zaru dofu, the mauvish-blue hued “black” variety he hadn't seen since he'd left Japan, and each bowl had a spoon stuck directly in the center of the moussé-textured tofu. Masafumi's spoon was sliding downward to the east as he took his bowl from her, but he'd grabbed the long silver handle of the utensil and shoved a frothy rounded spoonful into his mouth before the handle had a chance to fall against the side of the shiny bowl.

  As he swallowed down the delectable treat, Harumi said, “I didn't know if you liked zaru dofu, but I figured it was way too hot out for me to bring a plate of katsu-dou."

  Considering that most non-Asians might consider fried pork cutlets with scrambled eggs and sweet donburi sauce-covered rice a breakfast dish, and since Harumi was seven-eighths non-Asian, Masafumi decided she was joking. Smiling as he swallowed his next spoonful of fluffy tofu, he added shyly, “And two orders of tekka-don might be too messy to carry, no? The strips of raw tuna and pressed seaweed might fall off the rice?"

  “I told my boss he needs to put food like that in a wrap, pita bread, or a soft taco, but the guy's a purist. Totally jumped the couch when I suggested he put zara dofu into soft drink cups, and stick a straw in it. I mean the straw part was the joke—"

  The image of a tall plastic cup filled with white, green, or black moussé-textured tofu was a funny one. Chuckling as he scraped the bowl clean with his spoon, Masafumi said, “Ignazio, he likes to repeat something that singer Johnny Cash said. ‘You know you've made it when your face is on a Slurpee cup.’”

  “Ignazzy's a cool dude. Did all my ink, he tell you? Thought so. He wants to put pictures of me on his wall, but I told him no. Last time I refused, he said he'd sign the next fineline work he does on me. Ever hear what he says about doing portraits on customers?"

  Ignazio spoke so much, and so often, it was difficult for Masafumi to take in everything he said, so he merely shook his head.

  “Ignazzy says, ‘If you're doin’ a dude's face, and it ain't turnin’ out so hot, make it into Johnny Depp. He's played everybody there is, so chances are whoever you inked looks like him anyhow.’ I thought he was just talking to hear himself talk, but I looked into it, and Ignazzy's not lying. Depp was Hunter S. Thompson, George Jung, that dude who pretended to be Donnie Brasco only I don't know who he really was, the guy who wrote Peter Pan, some English poet who was like a total sexual pig back when guys wore those powdered wigs, and somebody else I know I'm forgetting—"

  “The chocolate maker?"

  “Yeah, he was a character in a book, but Depp played him, too. He played everybody at some point or another. Chances are, you put his face on someone's arm, they're gonna be pleased, even if they wanted someone else. But you should listen to Ignazzy more often. He was smart enough to get his butt out of Miami before the big hurricane in ‘24. People didn't learn from Katrina twenty years earlier. ‘Course, Miami wasn't under sea level like New Orleans, but still, who'd have guessed about that category five—"

  Masafumi wondered if the mental unburdening Ignazio spoke of was preceded by a woman clearing her mind of inconsequential trivia. He doubted that her concerns over portrait tattoos or a flight from Hurricane Xenia's path had made her so nervous that morning that she'd almost knocked over a tray full of freshly inked tofu.

  Between blurted out observations about his boss ("—he told me that white and green zaru dofu would ‘give Wayne Thiebaud a boner’ and I had to go online to find out he was a guy who mainly painted desserts, cakes with layers of frosting so thick you could spoon it off the canvas—") Harumi slid spoonfuls of the frothy tofu into her mouth, and, when her bowl was empty, she set it down on the ground alongside his, and began pawing through her shorts pockets for her pack of clove cigarettes and a lighter.

  It took a few puffs to clam Harumi down, but once she began tapping fragrant ash upon the back wall of the building she was leaning against, she half-closed her eyes and asked, “Does a wanna-be donut-graveyard named Walker Ulger come into your boss's shop? Sorta fat dude, in a security guard uniform? Has this shapeless round face, like a manju?"

  He tried to picture a man with a face that resembled a bean cake filled with red azuki bean paste and sugar, but it was difficult. Yet, her description had the vague half-remembered reality of a dream—

  “If you'd seen him, you'd remember. Fat fleshy upper ears, like thick-sliced amazu shoga—"

  Where the manju reference failed, the comparison to pickled pink ginger succeeded. Only Ignazio didn't use food as a point of comparison.

  ("If that slug-eared rent-a-cop comes through my door again, I will personally cover his pink hide with sorry marks from my own fingernails.")

  Masafumi found the mental picture of his boss creating Aboriginal ritual scars on someone's body a disturbing one, so much so that he'd never let Ignazio know that he'd been listening in on his conversation with that customer who was getting the fine-line full back design of the Corpse Bride and her reluctant groom. The customer was a city councilman, or so Ignazio claimed, and Masafumi felt it unseemly to admit he'd been listening in when a g
overnment official—no matter how minor—was involved. But he'd still heard what the man said in reply:

  ("Not to worry, Iggs. After what he did in the Mall of America, when he was assigned to the kiddie park section, no way no how is he going to get anyone to give him a nano-ribbon jacket. As if he's gonna be hired anytime soon by a real cop-shop. He's lucky to be wearing that Halloween costume and Happy Meal badge of his—")

  Masafumi had to take something into the autoclave room that day, so he never did hear the rest of what the councilman had to say, nor did Ignazio ever discuss the matter later on, but Masafumi knew the two men had to be discussing Ulger. With his pickled pink ginger ears.

  “I've not seen him, but I've heard about him. But not by name—"

  “Oh, there can't be two of him ... nature wouldn't be that cruel or that damned stupid. I suppose Ignazzy still does nano-tube body armor, under the table, on real cops?"

  Nodding, Masafumi replied, “Since it's still a medical procedure, it is not fully legal, but considering how expensive doctors can be...” his voice trailed off, but she knew full well that inserting nano-tube ribbons into the topmost layer of flesh was a quasi-legal enterprise at best. Technically, there was no law against it, just as there were no laws against a bod-mod expert doing just about anything to a willing client—as long as no anesthetics were used. Nano-vest installations were uncomfortable, but less painful than the kiss of fire, or a full back tat. What happened was this: ultra-fine ribbons of pulled and spun nano-tube “yarn” were laid onto lightly scored flesh, along the neck, upper shoulders and outsides of the armpits, spots where a Kevlar vest failed to cover the body. He'd never seen it done, but saw a tape of the operation on public access HDTV. Akin to a hair transplant, fine shallow hash-marks and cross-hatching were incised with a raked tool, barely scoring the epidermis, then a baster-like syringe loaded with miles of “yarn” was laid down and drawn—depositing strands of “yarn"—across each incised spot, laying down an internal bulletproof webbing. Once all the scored skin had been seeded, everything was wrapped up, and, within a few days, the incisions healed, and cross-woven nano-ribbons within formed unseen body armor. The voiceover on the tape said that this application of nanotech had saved over one hundred officers from death due to bullets which missed their body armor. At the time, Masafumi thought the whole process was far more disgusting than tattooing, branding, or piercing could ever be, save for traditional Irezumi tattooing in Japan, which used to involve literally tapping the ink into the flesh with a multi-toothed stick and a mallet.