Last Night In Twisted River

Kaori had sat up on the floor. “The two couples are having the guinea hen,” she said. “The business guys ordered the ravioli.”

“I just meant the couples,” Tony Angel said. “I’m feeding them first.”

“The business guys are ready to walk out-I’m warning you,” Tzu-Min told them.

Yi-Yiing found the tip of Ah Gou’s finger in the scallions. Xiao Dee wrapped his arms around Ah Gou while the cook poured vodka on the stump of his left index finger. Big Brother was still screaming when Yi-Yiing held out the fingertip, and Tony Angel poured more vodka on it; then she put the fingertip back where it belonged. “Just hold it on,” she told Big Brother, “and stop screaming.”

Danny was sorry that Joe was watching the television; the ten-year-old seemed transfixed by that image of the people clinging to the helicopters’ skids, and then falling off. “What’s happening to them?” the boy asked his dad.

“They’re dying,” Danny said. “There’s no room for them on the helicopters.”

Ed was coughing; he went out the kitchen door. There was an alley back there-it was used for deliveries, and for picking up the trash-and they all thought that Ed was just stepping out for a cigarette. But the dishwasher never came back.

Yi-Yiing took Ah Gou out the swinging door and through the dining room; he held his severed fingertip in place, but now that Danny was no longer tightening the towel around his upper arm, Big Brother was bleeding profusely. Tzu-Min went with them. “I guess I’m going to give everyone in the emergency room my cold, after all,” Yi-Yiing was saying.

“What the fuck is going on?” one of the businessmen shouted. “Is there anyone working here, or what?”

“Racists! War criminals! Fascist pigs!” Ah Gou yelled at them, still bleeding.

In the kitchen, the cook said to his son and grandson, “You’re my sous chefs now-we better get started.”

“There are only two tables to deal with, Pop-I think we can manage this,” Danny told him.

“If we just ignore the business guys, I think they’ll leave,” Kaori said.

“Nobody leaves!” Xiao Dee shouted. “I’ll show them what kind of crazy, fucked-up place this is-and they better like it!”

He went out into the dining room through the swinging door-his ponytail in that absurd pink ribbon possibly belonging to Spicy-and even after the door swung shut, they could still hear Little Brother from the kitchen. “You want to eat the best food you ever had, or do you want to die?” Xiao Dee was yelling. “Asians are dying, but you can eat well!” he screamed at the businessmen.

“The guinea hen is served with asparagus, and a risotto of oyster mushrooms and sage jus,” the cook was explaining to Danny and young Joe. “Don’t slop the risotto on the plates, please.”

“Where are the guinea hens from, Pop?” Danny asked.

“From Iowa, of course-we’re out of almost everything that isn’t from Iowa,” the cook told him.

“You want to see how your mushroom and mascarpone ravioli gets made?” Xiao Dee was asking the businessmen types. “It’s done with Parmesan and white truffle oil! It’s the best fucking ravioli you’ll ever have! You think white truffle oil comes from Iowa ?” he asked them. “You want to come out in the kitchen and see a bunch of Asians dying? They are dying on TV right now-if you want to see!” Little Brother was shouting.

Tony Angel turned to the Japanese twins. “Go rescue the business guys from Xiao Dee,” he told them, “both of you.”

The cook accompanied the Yokohamas to the dining room, where they served the two couples the guinea hens. “Your pasta will be coming right along,” Tony told the businessmen; he’d wondered why the business guys had so quietly listened to Xiao Dee’s tirade. Now he saw that Little Brother had taken the bloody cleaver with him into the dining room.

“We need you back in the kitchen-we want you like crazy back there! We’re dying for you!” the Japanese twins were telling Xiao Dee; they had draped themselves on him, being careful not to touch the bloody cleaver. The businessmen types just sat there, waiting, even after the cook (and Xiao Dee, with Kaori and Sao) had gone back into the kitchen.

“What are the fascist pigs drinking?” Xiao Dee was asking the Yokohamas.

“ Tsingtao,” Kaori or Sao answered him.

“Bring them more-keep the beer coming!” Little Brother told them.

“What goes with the ravioli, Pop?” Danny asked his dad.

“The peas,” the cook told him. “Use the slotted spoon, or there will be too much oil on them.”

Joe couldn’t get interested in being a sous chef, not while the television kept showing the helicopters. When the phone rang, Joe was the only one whose hands weren’t busy doing something; he answered it. They all knew there was no maitre d’ in the dining room, and they thought it might be Yi-Yiing or Tzu-Min calling from Mercy Hospital with a report on whether or not they could save Ah Gou’s finger.

“It’s collect, from Ketchum,” Joe told them.

“Say that you accept,” his grandfather told him.

“I accept,” the boy said.

“You talk to him, Daniel-I’m busy,” the cook said.

But in the passing of the telephone, they could all hear what Ketchum had to say-all the way from New Hampshire. “This asshole country-”

“Hi, it’s me-it’s Danny,” the writer told the old logger.

“You still sorry you didn’t get to go to Vietnam, fella?” Ketchum roared at him.

“No, I’m not sorry,” Danny told him, but it took him too long to say it; Ketchum had already hung up.

There was blood all over the kitchen. On the TV, the desperate Vietnamese dangled from, and then fell off, the skids of the helicopters. The debacle would be replayed for days-all over the world, the writer supposed, while he watched his ten-year-old watching the end of the war his dad hadn’t gone to.

The Japanese twins were placating the business guys with more beer. Xiao Dee was standing in the walk-in refrigerator with the door open. “We’re almost out of Tsingtao, Tony,” Little Brother was saying. He walked out of the fridge and closed the door; then he noticed that the door to the alley was still open. “What happened to Ed?” Xiao Dee asked. He stepped cautiously into the alley. “Maybe some fucking patriot farmer mistook him for one of us ‘gooks’ and killed him!”

“I think poor Ed just went home,” the cook said.

“I threw up in his sink-maybe that’s why,” Sao said. She and Kaori had come back to the kitchen to bring the business guys their pasta order.

“Can I turn the TV off?” Danny asked them all.

“Yes! Turn it off, please!” one of the Yokohamas told him.

“Ed is gone!” Xiao Dee was shouting from the alley. “The fucker-patriots have kidnapped him!”

“I can take Joe home and put him to bed,” the other twin said to Danny.

“The boy has to eat first,” the cook said. “You can be the maitre d’ for a little while, can’t you, Daniel?”

“Sure, I can do it,” the writer told him. He washed his hands and face, and put on a clean apron. When he went into the dining room, the businessmen types seemed surprised that he wasn’t Asian-or especially angry- looking.

“What’s going on in the kitchen?” one of the men asked him tentatively; he definitely didn’t want Xiao Dee to overhear him.

“It’s the end of the war, on the television,” Danny told them.

“The pasta is terrific, in spite of everything,” another of the businessmen types said to Danny. “Compliments to the chef.”

“I’ll tell him,” Danny said.

Some faculty types showed up later, and a few proud parents taking their beloved university students out to dinner, but if you weren’t back in the kitchen at Mao’s with the angry Asians, you might not have known that the war was over, or how it ended. (They didn’t show that television footage everywhere, or for very long-not in most of America, anyway.)