Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (27 page)

"I've been telling Sean he should set up a restaurant again ... settle down," Florey said as Didier dipped his moustache into his stout.

"Oh, you cook?" asked Didier, his interest only possibly aroused by this man who was pale as a cook but had the hardness and build of a longshoreman from the days before shipping containers.

"Used to," dismissed Sean, shooting a sidelong so-there-you-go-again glance at Florey before cutting into his trotter.

The Cardinal was undeterred. "Sean could make pork sausages better than anyone, until you. And his fried bread ..."

"Yeah," Sean said, and grinned, "As they say here—to die for."

"Why did you stop?" asked Didier.

"Got tired of talking to the fat."

"He sells luggage now," Florey explained. "Travels around the world. No home life. That's no way for a man to live, Sean."

"Your Eminence," Sean smiled. "You care for me like a father."

"Yeah, well ..." His Eminence replied. "Somebody has to."

The Cardinal's intent failed miserably. Sean wanted to settle down and open a restaurant, particularly a
fancy
one as much as Didier wanted to open a shop that sold blow-up dolls.

But their friendship was established at that first meal, mostly because Didier knew Sean didn't just sell luggage, and Sean knew Didier knew.

Their differences complemented each other, though they never spoke of much in particular and Didier couldn't say he knew the man. One Monday night in August, Sean took Didier to a little place out in Brooklyn, called Sneads. It was a bar, the kind where you can get a meal with your drink, but don't look at the state of the floor or the glassware.

Sean took Didier out back to the cramped kitchen. "My cousin, Troy. His fried bread's also to die for," he laughed.

The T-shirted Troy flung a grey towel over his shoulder and stuck out his ham-sized hand to Didier. Didier and Sean stood in the oppressively hot doorway watching as Troy cooked them a feed—a meal that only a born cook can produce. The man had never used any gauge for amount, timing, temperature, except his nous. The whole meal was like the fried bread—to die for.

Sometimes Didier wouldn't see Sean for months, and then he'd pop up and they'd have a few quiet wind-down drinks late at night after Didier knocked off work. Didier always thought Sean found him soothing to be around and that this was one reason why the Cardinal wanted their friendship to bloom.

Didier's last friend was Abdul. He was the only fan Didier enjoyed, and he was probably Didier's most dedicated admirer. One busy Friday afternoon at Aether, the urgent question came to Didier, "A customer wants to make a booking now, but only if he can have dinner served
déshabillé
."

"I'll take it," Didier said, and picked up the extension phone. "Hey, man, when you gonna get over the crap?" the man on the other end laughed. Didier recognised the voice. Abdul, who'd followed him from restaurant to restaurant in France. "Come tonight, two-thirty, on the dot, Abdul. That's the only booking I'll make for you. Table for two only. Us." And Didier hung up.

Two-thirty a darkened doorway resounded with Abdul's knocks. Didier was ready, and they ate a meal made just for them. Only Abdul, of all the others, truly appreciated pork like Didier. For Abdul, Didier riffed, danced and sang in the kitchen. Abdul's only visible sign of work was his mobile phone calls—always to banks with names even Didier had never heard of, followed by furious tapping on a Palm Pilot. Abdul dressed like he cared about clothes, but that was only a show. It was at Didier's restaurants that he lived, and he lived best when the doors were shut and Didier cooked for them and them alone—and of course everything was stripped bare of artifice.

~

Didier didn't try the Cardinal. Of the prospective guests he did ring, 100% were intrigued beyond patience.

Lillian was between tours, so she was free.

Ben Dreiser (who Didier didn't think of as a "friend", but needed to prove himself to) had a life-crisis happening with one painfully boring client who just
couldn't
let him go.
Not now.
Ben prescribed a stay at Wildhearth, which he half-owned, and took the first plane out.

Satoru turned the management of his present restaurant over to his manager. There wasn't much to it as long as the ambulance number was kept by the phone.

Didier didn't have Sean's number, but he got the number for Snead's and rang Troy there. Sean rang back an hour later, most intrigued at Didier's emergence from the vanished. Before flying out to this secret destination, Sean had to make some calls so that his sudden disappearance did not cause any unnecessary activities anywhere.

Abdul just left on the next flight, in jeans and T-shirt.

When Didier arrived home, it was on a very low-in-the-water blue boat. It took six men to carry his boxes and bags.

~

That night, Didier cooked a dinner for everyone on Sufisi—a massive baked dinner with roast vegetables—and for dessert—nobody could eat desert without having eaten their vegetables (but these vegetables were good)—for dessert, an enormous and everyone thought scrumptious
pain d'épice
(actually Grandma Grossnickle's gingerbread), and cute (but amateur) green-plaited cups of shiny rosy delicious ... "What is it?" everyone asked, as they turned the cups inside out and licked them clean.

"Sago," Didier smiled, suppressing a burp.

The men, as one, turned to their wives with faces that were downright accusatory.

The women looked utterly confused.

Eva asked first, with a polite little voice. "Will you teach us, please?"

~

After the burping was over, Didier, to the village's delight, moved six list members up the list (actually seven, since number six—Krischin Pu'atoi—chickened out and number seven took his place, so Krishchin was eliminated, at least temporarily, from the list).

The normal Sunday rage was changed to Saturday, Moses dropped off Dr. T. on Saturday, and on the Sunday before Didier's big dinner party night, Dr. T. and his artistic fingers performed. Flora was, as always, a more than skilful nurse. Dr. T. could have used her permanently if she'd only leave. But not only was she rich from her pay for these operations (Didier paid generously for all work performed in his interest) but she loved caring for her islanders in "Flora's Hospital", as everyone called it.

Tuesday afternoon there was an uncharacteristic knock on the "great kitchen" door. People weren't usually that formal, even with Didier, but he was creating, and they respected that. He wiped his hands on a towel and went to open it, wondering where Tomasi was. He hadn't seen him all day.

Tomasi, Jimmo, and two other men backed into the big room carrying a massive table, followed by six other villagers, each carrying a throne of a chair. They placed them in the big airy open space that was the entertainment part of the room.

"For your party," Tomasi said. "A present from us all."

They left quickly, because they didn't want to embarrass Didier, who had started to cry.

When Moses arrived Wednesday afternoon to take a rested and blissful Dr. T. back to Paurotown for his flight home, Moses also dropped off his boatload of passengers.

First off was Ben, next was Lillian (and the boat rose in the water when she disembarked), then Satoru, then the two last guests—Abdul and Sean.

The whole population stood on the sand, heads garlanded with frangipanis, Fred going hammer and tongs on the ukelele, Thuro clacking a frenzied jig of a rhythm with his two steel spoons. All were singing, and the forty-eight other Sufisians either clapped or thigh-slapped to the intoxicating rhythm.

The sun was a persimmon ball over the shimmering sea. The palms on the beach bent their heads to the ocean in this idyllic scene. The visitors were charmed instantly, and Didier's eyes moistened with appreciation for this magnificent greeting.

The kiss on both cheeks was Abdul's way. Sean pounded Didier on the back. Satoru shook Didier's hand and bowed reflexively. Ben hugged him. And Lillian just stood there at arm's length, shyly smiling. Her riotously flowered muumuu, under which three 10-year-old boys could shelter from a thunderstorm, strained at the hips.

"I told you I had a surprise for you, Didier," she finally laughed. "Elegance these days lives on plates. But maybe it's the plates themselves. When they all got bigger, so did my clients. Or was it the other way around? I was losing business. It was redecorate myself or shut up shop. Now all my tours guarantee doggie-bags at every stop." She snorted. "It was work at first. I'd dieted for so many years." She looked down and patted her hips. "It isn't work now. They like it ... I must admit, I do too."

Didier chuckled. "You sound carefree."

"Not quite," she frowned. "I've got to find a new farm. My place has been hit by the rezoners. They're splitting it with a through-road to a new casino they're building. Time to move on."

Still, she acted relatively happy, Didier thought. Not as furtive as the old days.

Lillian had her misgivings though, looking at Didier. Nothing jiggled on him any more. He looked big, but hard and fit. In fact, all the welcoming beach party—everyone at Sufisi looked big but hard and fit—all of them except the wiry man with the beautiful calf's eyes. The people looked sculpturally monumental. The women reminded her of Soviet heroic art.

The most magnificently sculptural woman came forward. She was the hugest of the women, but smooth and hard as rock.

She placed a crown of frangipani flowers on Lillian's head and smiled at her, saying, "Welcome to Sufisi."

Tomasi couldn't take his eyes off Lillian. Those thighs that made him think of custard apples—or brain coral. Those buttocks—he could store all his savings between those cheeks. These past months had not gone well for him in the love department. Not only had Flora not fully appreciated his brilliance—she'd gone all skinny on him—must be only 250 pounds these days. Now that he could gaze on the two of them, still facing each other, he knew that Flora was only a princess to this queen of women who could sink a boat.

Satoru had been hard for Didier to track down. He was now owner of Russian Roué (Roulette was too much), a yakuza hangout on a sidestreet in Tokyo's red-light district. You spin a wheel to pick each round. Choices were few: fugu and saki; beluga and papaya seeds, with vodka; nori-roasted apricot kernels and absinthe. The Health Department banned the potato leaf pickles. Frequent visits from siren-wailing ambulances completed the ambience.

Satoru's life had been changed irrevocably eighteen months before. He'd been on one of his koala-turd collecting trips at Wilson's Promontory, at that strange holiday suburb on the southern Australian coast. It was winter. He was bending down, picking up the scats on the lawn under a small tree, a koala frowning down at him from the branches. Inside the square brick two-story, the front curtains were unexpectedly opened. Satoru looked up, and in the window, a four-year-old girl giggled delightedly as she held her dress over her head. Her mother rushed to pull it down—this habit was getting to be a problem. As she pulled the dress from behind, she glanced out the window and saw Satoru in suspended animation, his face a picture of guilty horror.

Did they guess his secret?

The mother sure did. She rang the police, and they miraculously arrived, siren screaming, two minutes later to find a mute Satoru two houses away, cowering in the bushes. He'd stashed his paper bag in a rubbish bin.

He'd never had to speak good English, and shame and terror only served to make him more linguistically incompetent. So when he was dragged out of jail to face the judge Mr. Justice Lionel Whithers, he still didn't understand the charge.

When the judge carefully explained the fix Satoru was in, he was stunned. He only dimly remembered the state of the girl—he'd been transfixed by
anyone
being at home, particularly the woman.

He pled "not guilty" and was led away.

Justice Whithers then held an interview with the adorably curled little Emma Hodgkins. Emma looked just like his own granddaughter.
How could men prey on these innocent tykes?

By the third minute of the taped interview, a red-faced judge and a tearful mother met. Emma, her dimpled cheeks running with tears from an impromptu spanking, was severely buttoned into her long, tube-shaped coat, and taken away by Mrs. Hodgkins for years of expensive counselling.

When Satoru stood before Justice Whithers again, the judge cleared the room.

"What were you really doing, Mr. Yakaburo?"

Satoru hung his head. He felt rumpled and filthy, inside and out. "Looking at koalas."

Justice Whithers was almost impatient. "You told us that before, but the koala was above you, and you were crouching down. Please tell me the truth."

Satoru knew his life was over, his honour gone. "I was collecting koala droppings, your honour."

"Koala droppings?" Justice Whithers' brother Seymour was the Australian Museum's expert in marsupial poo of all kinds. His book
Scats and Tracks of the Eastern Australian Coast
had been a best-seller of its kind for twenty years.

" Mr. Yakaburo, why didn't you
tell
the police that you are a naturalist? It would have been much easier if you'd told us that all along. Good luck in your natural history endeavours. By the way, have you read my brother's book, Scats and Tracks—"

"Of the Eastern Australian Coast," Satoru completed, and he felt a huge wave of relief as they both smiled in brotherly understanding.

When Satoru walked down the steps from the court, it had been seventeen days since the "incident at the Promontory". Satoru's name was on every internet "Sexual Offender" site around the world.

He was a social pariah in Sydney, would not have been able to even find an apartment in the US, and had to go back to Japan. Even there, not to the respectable world.

The Roué and other spin-offs were his only avenue. To top things off, he needed money. His legal costs in Australia hurt, the restaurant there had no goodwill to sell by the time he left the country, and he'd owed the bank from an all glass-and-fountains refit.