“Two saimin, yeah?” The waitress was small, but her arms were strong, expertly balancing the two steaming bowls on her tray. Eric couldn’t tell the ages of the Japanese. The waitress could have easily been either his mother’s or his grandmother’s age. At the next table were an older couple that Eric recognized from their Four Square church. And at the table after that were some students in UCLA gear.
“Don’t let it go cold.” Charlie was already slurping up the noodles with his plastic chopsticks, a few drops of soup broth spilling onto the Formica surface. “Use fork, okay? That’s why Doris brought that for you.”
Eric had wanted to try the chopsticks after watching Mifune devour rice with his, but he listened to Charlie and picked up the fork. The noodles kept slipping off and Charlie admonished him, “Use spoon too,” referring to a plastic ladle that Eric had seen in Chinese restaurants.
Guiding a slippery wonton onto the ladle, he was finally able to take a bite. He had never eaten anything quite so delicious. “I wonder if the samurai ate this,” he said.
Charlie laughed, making sounds from the back of the throat. He didn’t confirm or refute Eric’s musings. Truth was, he had no idea but he would like to imagine that they were eating the meal of warriors.
And now, finally, the day Eric was dreading. The Kokusai Theatre was closing on the day before Halloween, 1986. Sab explained that there weren’t enough Japanese living in the neighborhood anymore. He hoped to reopen in Little Tokyo, but he wasn’t sure if it would happen.
Eric couldn’t be a part of a Little Tokyo incarnation of the Kokusai. He could be a part of this up to now because it was on his home turf.
“Pick up the trash after the final screening. One last time. Moe will be coming to wipe the floor down.” Sab didn’t seem particularly sad about the closure of his operation.
Eric stood in back of the theater and listlessly watched the last offering, Lost in the Wilderness. The movie was about a Japanese mountain climber who was the first man to reach the North Pole by himself. No fight scenes and half of the story was about the man’s wife, stuck at home.
There were only about twenty people in the theater, which was actually more than usual on a weeknight.
In the back row near the door, there was a low rumble of voices that got louder and louder. Eric couldn’t understand the argument because it, like the movie, was in Japanese. Two men were fighting and before Eric could let his boss know, Sab burst in with the janitor, Moe, who sometimes played security guard.
“You, out!” Sab yelled.
Before they could collect themselves, Moe ushered the men out of their seats.
Eric, captivated by the men more than the movie, went out the other door to follow their activities in the lobby. One was a clean-cut Asian man wearing a fresh-pressed collared shirt and a sports jacket. The other one was smaller with wild, angry eyes. For a full second those eyes met Eric’s. He averted his gaze, hoping not to draw attention to himself. But it was too late. Both men were pushed out the door by Moe and they stalked off in different directions.
The lights went up shortly afterward, with a few of the white moviegoers clapping to commemorate the Kokusai Theatre’s long history in the neighborhood. Several of the Japanese customers stayed back to offer their appreciation to Sab.
Eric rolled the trash can down the aisle and picked up strewn popcorn containers and empty giant drink cups. He started from the front row and worked himself to the back. When he got there, his foot stepped on something hard. Eric looked down at a black plastic bag. Inside were two VHS tapes, unidentified aside from Japanese writing on the labels stuck on the spines.
He rolled the trash can back to the lobby and pulled out the battered lost and found box that was stored behind the counter. Inside were a green sweater, a set of keys from five months ago, and three pairs of sunglasses. Eric was about to drop the VHS tapes into the box but then stopped himself. Sab had said that he could keep anything he wanted in the lost and found. He chose a pair of oversized tortoise-framed glasses and held onto the bag of VHS tapes. Even though it was dark, he wore the sunglasses and stuck the bag in his jacket as he retrieved his bike from storage and went out the back door.
Later that night, Eric snuck out of his bed when everyone was sleeping and carefully pushed in one of the videotapes in their VHS machine in the living room. On the TV he was shocked by what he saw. He had seen women’s boobies in Hustler magazines that boys brought to junior high school but he had never seen what this man was doing to the woman’s body with his burning cigarette, first to her nipples and then—
He heard his father stumble in the hallway en route to the bathroom. His heart pounding, Eric quickly ejected the tape and placed it inside his pajama bottom to cover his erection.
The next day was Halloween, but of course the Montgomerys wouldn’t be celebrating it in any way. Instead they walked to church for Friday-night service, Bibles clutched in their hands. Eric didn’t complain about missing out on any parties or trick-or-treating (even though he was too old for it, a few in his class still went out). He felt sick to his stomach about what he had seen on that videotape. It looked like real tears were rolling down the woman’s cheeks, her lopsided mouth crying out for the man to stop it.
While Eric sat in the sanctuary, he prayed for Jesus to erase those images from his mind. But even when he closed his eyes, he didn’t picture his Savior, but the pale naked body of the woman.
On Sunday, there was more church. Hal noticed that his youngest son had seemed subdued the last couple of days, and announced after service that he was taking the family to the coffee shop at Holiday Bowl for a late breakfast. Jessie was surprised but thankful to have a break from cooking for four ravenous males. She worked as a nurse three nights a week and was exhausted.
It wasn’t Doris who served them today, but a younger woman with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. Everyone in the Montgomery party ordered grits and bacon with their eggs, except for Eric. No, he went for his rice and Portuguese sausage. Nobody teased him that morning because they were too hungry to care.
Heading to the restroom before his family left the bowling alley’s coffee shop, Eric saw the woman at a table in the back. He thought that it was perhaps Satan playing tricks on him. But the woman in the video... he recognized her drawn face with a wide mouth that tended to lean right when she spoke. Eric stopped dead in his tracks on the carpet and someone behind him almost crashed into him. “Boy, watch it,” said an old Black man.
Eric kept walking but snuck a look before he turned for the restroom. He was shocked. Her companion was the Asian man — the clean-cut one that looked like a cop.
As he took a piss at the urinal, he thought to himself, What is she doing with him? Is she in some kind of trouble?
He washed his hands with a puff of soap as his mother taught him, and there he decided. He would do what he could to help the woman.
He returned to his parents, who had already left the table to pay the bill at the cash register. “I’ll walk home,” he told them. His older brothers were off to meet up with friends.
“Suit yourself,” his father said.
The man got into a shiny Buick, while the woman took to the sidewalk, walking south.
This was meant to be, Eric thought, and slowed his usual pace to trail the woman. About three blocks down, she entered a mall and walked into a women’s clothing store. Eric noticed that she was wearing a name tag and realized that she worked there.