Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories

by Various

  “What did you touch?” Bailor asked her.

  It took her a minute to understand. “The shed door, in back. The mower steering. The padlock. The rake.”

  He nodded, looking wearier than ever. “I’ll go back, wipe your prints. Keep you out of this, like I said. You can hitch a ride into town.”

  She looked at him. “Bailor . . .”

  He looked off down the road. “He was carrying a straight razor. Did you see it? I didn’t think anybody used those anymore.” He shrugged. “I’ll get shit for not calling backup, but nothing worse. Believe me, with this guy, nothing worse.”

  Emily nodded, wiping her dirty hands on her jeans. Her left palm stung. She looked at it and saw she’d torn a callus.

  Bailor sucked in his breath. Looking up she saw him staring at the scar on her wrist, the neat red line with the staple holes to either side, like the track of a lizard in the sand.

  He met her eyes. “Listen,” he said.

  She shoved her fists in her pockets and shrugged. “Not your fault.”

  “Emily.” A beat. “I won’t ask you again.” Another beat. “I promise.”

  They both knew he was lying.

  But it was nice of him to say.

  Originally published in On Spec Summer 2000 Vol 12 No 2 #41

  Holly Phillips published her very first story in On Spec in 2000. Since then she has published more than 30 stories, including two story collections, as well as two novels. Holly lives in the Lower Mainland with The Two Esses (Steven and Savoy), and is nurturing a fledgling consultancy in technical writing and document design.

  Closing Time

  Matthew Johnson

  Nep Gao stood on his tiptoes in the quiet garden to the back of the restaurant, working his small silver knife along the thinnest branches of the prickly ash tree, and wondered when his father’s ghost would leave the party. He had died five days ago and was still holding court, entertaining all his old friends and customers.

  It was just his luck, Gao thought, that his father had died in the middle of qinshon season, the few weeks when the tree’s buds had their best flavour. Already, chewing carefully, he could detect a bitter note in what he had just harvested. At the rate things were going his father’s ghost would still be around in a week, when the qinshon would be edible. This was usually their most profitable time of year, but so long as his father was enjoying the food and the company enough to stay on Earth, Gao was bound to provide food and drink to anyone who came to pay their respects. So far there had been no shortage of mourners, most of them just happening to come around dinner time and often even staying until past dawn.

  With his basket full of tightly curled green buds clutched under his arm, Gao went back into the restaurant. Though it was only midmorning, someone in the room was playing a zither, shouting out parts of the Epic of the Hundred and One Bandits. Louder, though, was his father’s commentary on the action as it was sung, “That bandit’s pretty clever, but not as clever as that butcher that used to try to sell tame ducks as wild. Nobody but me could smell the difference from the blood in the carcass!”; and, “I heard the great Xan Te play that verse once when I was on a trip to Lamnai. He hardly had a tooth in his head, but he ate two whole boxes of my pork dumplings.”

  Gao could not help blushing when he heard his father telling the same tales he had told a thousand times before. He had never done anything but run the restaurant, never traveled except to buy food or collect recipes, but to hear him tell it he had had more adventures than all the Hundred and One Bandits put together. Gao could not count the number of times he had heard his father tell the story of how he had gotten his trademark recipe—the garlicky duck from which he had taken his name, Doi Thiviei—from a hermit who had lived in a hut that was at the top of a mountain when he arrived in the afternoon, but at the bottom of a valley when he left at dawn. The zither player had fallen silent to hear the story, and Gao could see a half-dozen others kneeling on mourning stools, listening and chatting as they ate the leftovers of the previous night’s meals.

  “And then, just when I opened my eyes, I saw—nhoGao, is that you? Don’t lurk in the doorway, son, come in and sit down. I’m just at the good part.”

  “I’m sorry, Father, but I must start to cook for today’s mourners.”

  “Oh well, all right then. Bring us some fresh tea and some red bean dumplings, will you? Now, where was I? Oh yes—when I opened my eyes, I saw that the hut, which the night before had been on a mountaintop—”

  Gao picked up the empty bowls, hurried on to the kitchen before his father could think of anything else to ask for. He could not help but notice that his father looked no more vaporous than he had the day before, and felt guilty for wishing it otherwise. For most people the mourning party was a formality, a way to make the spirit linger for a day or two at the most. It was supposed to be an expense—if it was too short, cost too little, there would be doubts about one’s respect for one’s father—but not a ruinous one. Sighing, Gao laid the qinshon buds onto a square of silk which he then tied into a bundle; any rougher cloth would rub their skins harshly and make them lose their flavour. That done he put a pot of water on to boil and looked around the kitchen, wondering what he could make as cheaply as possible that would not offend the mourners. He sipped the chicken broth that had been simmering since the night before, tossed in the bones from last night’s dinner. He could put pork dumplings into the broth, make a soup with noodles and fava beans, top it with chive flowers from the garden. For the next course, he could deep fry thin strips of pork in batter; if he made it hot enough he might be able to use a pig that wasn’t so expensive.

  Feeling hungry now, he pried one of the stones in the floor loose, lifted the lid off the shallow earthenware pot that lay below, reached in and pulled out a pickled pig’s knuckle. Looking carefully over each shoulder he took a bite. He had promised to give up eating pork when he and Mau-Pin Mienme had become engaged, but nothing calmed him down when he was nervous the way pork knuckles did. Her family were followers of the Southerner—her name meant Sweet Voice From the South—and so did not eat meat at all. When she had insisted that he at least give up eating pork it had taken him less than a second to agree. It had taken him only a day, following that, to realize that he could not possibly keep his promise, so he had bought a pot of pigs’ knuckles one day while she and her family were at prayer and hidden it under the floor in the kitchen, so that she would never know what a dishonourable man she was marrying.

  His mouth was now full of the sweet, salty, vinegar taste of the pigs’ knuckles, and he could feel it easing his mind. It was true: he was a dishonourable man, dishonest and unfilial, breaking his word to his wife-to-be and wishing his father’s ghost would leave him alone. He doubted that even Mienme, who, like all those of her faith had studied to be an advocate to the dead in the Courts of Hell, could convince the Judge of Fate to send him back as anything nobler than a frog. He sighed. It was only because he was due to inherit a good business that Mienme’s father, a lawyer on Earth as well as the next world, was allowing her to marry him at all. He had always known how unlikely it was that he should be able to marry a woman like Mienme. She was beautiful and intelligent, while he was cursed with an overfed body and the doughy face that had made his father call him “Glutinous Rice.” He knew better than to question the divine blessing that made her love him, though, and he had believed since they were children they would one day be married. In all that time he had never imagined it might be his father that would be the problem.

  Thinking of Mienme made him want to see her, have her listen to his problems as she had so often done. Like other women who followed the Southerner she was allowed to go out alone, to spread His word, and he thought she would most likely be at South Gate Market this time of day. That would work out well enough; he could get all of the vegetables he needed there, and buy the pig later in the day when he was alone. Seeing her face, and hearing her advice, would be more than worth the extra trip. After
carefully putting the pot back under the floor stone he opened a small jar in the shelf, took out a boiled egg marinated in soy sauce and popped it into his mouth to cover the smell of the pork knuckle. Then he poured boiling water into the large teapot, put a few of the red bean dumplings he had baked the night before onto a tray, took tray and tea into the front room where his father was still spinning his tales to a rapt audience.

  “—of course, a chicken that laid eggs with two yolks would be worth a lot of money today, though we didn’t think like that in those days. No, we only hoped she would survive the trip home so we could make Double August Sunrise for the Emperor—nhoGao, you’ve brought the dumplings. Won’t you stay and hear this story?” His father was, if anything, more solid than when he had last seen him, the party more lively as noon approached.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I have to go to the South Gate Market to buy food for dinner.”

  “Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Do bring me back some of those preserved mushrooms, and some sweet beer for our friend here, whose throat must be getting dry.” The zither player had not sung a word since Doi Thiviei started talking, nor was he likely to for the rest of the day, but Gao nodded dutifully before stepping back into the kitchen.

  Once out of his father’s sight he picked up the rag that held his shopping list and wrote “sweet beer” on it with a piece of charcoal. His father did not like him reading, saying every other generation had learned to memorize their customers’ orders, but on the other hand Mienme said if he were illiterate he would not be able to read the charges in the Court of Hell and his advocate would not be able to help him. He had to admit it meant he took fewer trips to the market, since without a list he always forgot something. He folded the list, strapped his grocery basket on his back, and went out into the street.

  The streets between the restaurant and the market were crowded, even in the heat before noon, and the wind blowing from the west carried a heavy scent of medicinal incense. Someone in the Palace must be sick, he thought. As the massive iron pillars of the South Gate came into view the smell of the incense was met and quickly defeated by that of spices, sizzling oil, and a dozen different kinds of meat cooking. Pausing for a moment, Gao closed his eyes, tested himself the way his father had done when he was a child, making himself find his way around the market by smell alone. There, off to his right, someone was making salt-and-pepper shrimp, heating the iron pan until the shells cracked, releasing tiny gasps of garlic- and red pepper-scented steam. To his left someone else was frying mat tran on a griddle, making sure they would have enough for the lunch rush customers to wrap around their pork and kelp rice.

  Satisfied, Gao opened his eyes again, scanning the crowd for Mienme’s familiar face. He found her standing just inside the gate, handing out block-printed tracts to a family of confused-looking farmers. One, an older man with a white-streaked beard and a broad bamboo hat, was listening politely while the others kept a tight rein on the pigs they had brought with them. Gao waited until the farmer had accepted the pamphlet and moved on before approaching.

  “You do your faith and your father honour,” he said formally when she noticed him. Though they were engaged, there were still certain proprieties to be observed when they were in public.

  Or so he felt; Mienme often seemed to disagree. “You know as well as I do that none of them can read,” she said, shaking her head. “Our temple offers free lessons, but they won’t stay in the city long enough for that. Besides, only the Master could convince a pork farmer to give up meat.”

  “And you try nevertheless,” Gao said. “Such determination will serve you well when you argue cases before the Judge of Fate.”

  “That’s very sweet, nhoGao,” she said, making him blush at the use of his childhood name. She was dressed in the brown cotton robe and leggings all her faith wore when preaching, and from a distance she might also have looked like a man. “But you don’t have to reassure me, I’m not about to lose my faith—I’m just hot and tired, that’s all. Why are you looking so glum?”

  He shrugged slightly. He had not realized his mood was so apparent, resolved to better hide it from his father. “The mourning party is still going on today. If this continues my father’s ghost will outlast his restaurant.”

  “What is it now, four days?”

  “Five. My father is enjoying his party so much I think he is happier now than when he was alive.”

  Mienme put up her hood and extended her hand to him. With her face hidden anyone who saw them would only see a young man helping a monk through the crowded streets. “It’s the food everyone’s coming for. Couldn’t you do something to it, put in something bitter so they won’t like it so much?” she asked. “You could say it was a mistake.”

  “If I made a mistake like that, my father would stay another ten years just to punish me.”

  They stopped at a vegetable stand and Gao haggled with the merchant for beans and cabbage while Mienme seemed lost in thought. “I’ve got it,” she finally said after they had put their groceries in the basket on Gao’s back and moved on. “Remember the night my parents came to the restaurant and you made Temple Style Duck?”

  “How could I forget?” Gao asked. “Your parents thought I was insulting them, making bean curd so that it tasted like duck. My father thought I was insulting the duck!”

  “Exactly. Make him that and when he complains, say you’re concerned about what the Judge of Fate will find if he keeps on eating meat after his death. That way it’ll cool the party down, and you’ll only be acting out of filial affection.”

  “That’s true.” Gao thought for a moment. “That’s an excellent idea. You really are too smart to be wasted on a person like me.”

  Mienme laughed. “I know. I took an oath to defend the hopeless, remember?”

  Five hours later Gao held his breath as he lifted the steamer basket’s long oval lid. All around him lay the remains of the bean curd, sweet potato, arrowroot and other vegetables he had used. He did not make Temple Style very often—even most followers of the Southerner did not eat it; it had been created for high ranking converts who wanted their vegetarianism to be as painless as possible—but he enjoyed the artistry it involved, matching flavours and textures in a way that was almost magical. Gao, the youngest of his father’s four sons, had mostly learned cooking from his mother, and she had been the vegetable cook. For that reason his father and brothers had been responsible for the meat dishes the restaurant was famous for and he had been left to take care of the vegetables and small items like dumplings. But his brothers had all left, one by one, to start their own restaurants in other cities, and for the last few years he had been doing all the cooking by himself, his father only planning the menus—menus he had changed, slightly, to include more vegetables and some of the things he had learned cooking for Mienme.

  When the steam coming out of the basket cleared, he could see, inside, something that looked almost exactly like thin slices of barbecued duck, grayish-white with streaks of an almost impossible red. Getting it to look right was the easy part, of course; the flavour and the smell were harder, and much more important. He carefully lifted the slices out with a slotted spoon, and slid them into a waiting skillet full of oil and the sauce needed to complete the illusion. In seconds, the oil sealed the outside of the slices, browning them, and making the red streaks even brighter. He lifted the smallest piece to his mouth, burning his tongue slightly tasting it. It was perfect, better even than the cooks at the Temple made it. It had taken him months to duplicate their recipe, making sure he had it right before he could even invite Mienme’s parents to dinner, but he had also improved it, giving it that crackling texture the Temple cooks had never managed. This was the dish he made better than anyone else—Trianha Thiviei, Temple Style Duck. This ought to be his name, not Glutinous Rice, something he had made every day for the poorest customers because his brothers were making more complicated things. He could not change his name while his father was still around, of course,
but soon, perhaps . . .

  Gao sighed, asking forgiveness for wishing his father gone, took the remaining slices out of the skillet then laid them on a bed of steamed and salted greens and white rice. He took the plate with rice, greens and “duck” in one hand, and a platter with ten small bowls on it in the other and went out to the front room.

  “—so there we were, bound to make dinner for an official of the Fifth Rank and his family and all the salt brokers on strike—nhoGao, have you brought dinner?” The crowd of mourners had grown since the afternoon, with the new arrivals more than making up for the few that had left—word that one of the best restaurants in town was giving away free food had gotten around.

  Gao nodded, not quite able to speak. For all of the justification Mianme had given him he could not escape the fact that he was giving his father something he would not like. Someone was rolling his stomach into dumplings as he spooned out the first bowl of trianha thiviei.

  His father sniffed at the bowl. “Is this duck?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

  No sense adding a lie to his long list of crimes. “No Father, it’s Temple-Style. I made it because—because Mienme was worried about what will happen when you stand before the Judge of Fate.”

  “Is that so? What a kind girl she is.” His father took up his sticks, brought a piece to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Yes, Father. She is very concerned about your trial.” Gao felt like a red pepper pickle had been poured down his throat, wondering what punishments awaited him as a result of this.

  “You know,” his father said finally, “maybe it’s because I’m dead, but I don’t think I gave this stuff a fair chance last time. It’s really quite good—and for my soul too, eh?” He laughed. Gao echoed him nervously. “Needs a bit more salt, though. Which reminds me, I was just telling them the story of the big salt brokers’ strike—you know this one—it’s a good story—”