Fiction
by Marc Kipniss
CHINESE RESTAURANT
I'm sitting
across from Descartes, at a table near the kitchen.
The waitress comes over and readies her pad and pencil.
I put my menu down, hold my hand out to Descartes.
He clears his throat and says, with a faraway look
on his face, Cogito, ergo dim sum.
The waitress smiles at him, then
at me.
I'll have the same, I say. Only
different.
The waitress smiles again, takes our
menus, and walks off. Fifteen minutes later, she brings
us two specials.
I dig in. Descartes picks up one
of his chopsticks, but just pokes at his food.
What is it? I ask.
He shakes his head, picks up his
other chopstick, makes like he's a walrus.
Very funny, I say. Now eat.
He shakes his head again, tries
to start a sword fight with me.
I parry and say, Knock it off, I'm
hungry.
Descartes jabs my chest pocket.
I stare at him through my eyebrows. He pulls his arm
back, skewers a prawn, flicks it at me. I retaliate
with a black mushroom. It misses him and hits a guy
at the next table, who tosses a pair of pot stickers
in my direction. I duck. The people behind me are
upset. The people behind them are, too, and it isn't
long before the father of modern rationalism has everybody
in the restaurant splattering food all over the walls
and windows and light fixtures and plants and fish
tanks, in a wild and ecstatic frenzy.
BEFORE A FASHION, AS
WELL AS AFTER
Suppose everyone
wore epaulets at night. Not just regular epaulets
but special epaulets with fringes. Not just regular
fringes but the kind that glow in the dark. So that
everyone could see them. So that everyone could touch
them. So that everyone could feel how soft they were
between their fingers.
In the daytime no one would wear
ascots. Dickeys would also be forbidden. Football
players wouldn't even be allowed to wear them with
their shoulder pads. Football players wouldn't even
be allowed to play football.
One could make an exception for
chaps. For chaps with fringes. For fringes that lit
up.
But only at night.
LUXURY ITEMS
Have you ever
met somebody who straightaway it hits you they look
like a certain kind of animal only you can't think
of which one because they're droning on and on about
something you're supposed to be paying careful attention
to and then you suddenly figure it out that what it
is is a frog? Well that's what I suddenly thought
of while this man in our living room tried to lengthily
explain to my wife and me the different features and
packages and costs of the satellite dishes his company
was selling, but as soon as I realized how closely
he resembled a frog in his flat face and small round
glasses and neckless hunched-up body I completely
lost track of what he was saying and started waiting
instead for him to do something a typical frog would
do such as spit out his tongue at a passing fly which
there were in fact quite a number of because it was
summer and the kids were always leaving the back door
open or another door open and so the bluebottles flew
right in, the kids were always doing something like
that and I was forever yelling at them about it or
yelling at them to clean up their rooms or to stop
fighting over whose turn it is to watch a favorite
cartoon or to not talk with a mouthful of bologna
sandwich and so on, only the man didn't spit his tongue
out at anything and it started to seem as if he would
never finish telling us which kind of surge protector
he recommended and what the installation fee would
be and the various movie stations we could get and
how much money we'd save in the long run, though he
said we'd have to pay extra if we wanted any of the
local stations which I told him seemed stupid, they're
broadcasting barely a stone's throw from here, but
the man said the problem was the local stations didn't
bounce their signals off a satellite up in space since
they didn't need to because they were after all only
a stone's throw from here and that's why he would
have to put in an additional dish or an additional
box of some sort for us to be able to watch the local
programs which still seemed stupid to me so I told
the guy to forget it and threw him out and poured
myself a double scotch. My wife said she thought I
had been a tad rude but then I said the guy looked
like such a frog I couldn't stand him and she said
you should never judge people by appearances and besides
we probably couldn't have afforded it.
Money, my wife is constantly worrying
about money, even though I make plenty, enough anyway,
depends on the season, we just have to watch our spending
on luxury items like my wife's clothes and school
supplies for the kids, the school should supply everything
anyway, that's why we pay taxes, or used to, I stopped
paying to protest funding of those left-wing arts
programs that are ruining the nation and religion
and, well, it's the holidays, the holidays kill us,
Christmas and birthdays and the rest, but of course
you can't ignore them, that would mean you were abnormal,
nuts, some kind of radical, especially on the Fourth
of July, I like to go all out on the Fourth, go out
to the Rez and buy a bunch of fireworks, except we
end up sharing them every time with the neighbor kids,
who come over and beg to shoot stuff off and then
complain that they hurt themselves and their parents
call and threaten to sue and I threaten to kick their
sorry asses and that's why this year I decided we
would keep to ourselves, blow off our fireworks inside
the house instead of out, so I bought some safety
goggles at the hardware store for the kids and my
wife and me, then disabled all the smoke detectors
by removing their batteries and letting them hang
on their wires from the ceiling like oversize bathtub
plugs hanging from their chains upside down, and just
in case something caught fire I filled the tub with
water and ran a siphon hose from it downstairs and
filled the fridge with beer and boom-boom-boom did
we have a great time without anyone getting burned
and the fireworks sounded louder than ever since we'd
exploded them inside instead of out but not with the
windows closed, there had to be someplace for the
smell of gunpowder to go after all and I had locked
the doors in case somebody tried to run away, you
can't run away from your problems, I always tell the
kids this, you have to try to defuse them somehow,
to vent your anger so to speak, though at the same
time the locked doors were meant to keep the neighborhood
kids out, salesmen, the Internal Revenue Service,
the taxi driver my wife called to take her and the
kids away to her mother's house, which I told her
was ridiculous, everything is fine, I said, we're
just celebrating the birth of America is all, greatest
country in the world, come on and light one more Roman
candle, don't be a spoilsport, this is our patriotic
duty, and look how much fun the kids are having, really,
they're only crying a little, because they have smoke
in their eyes a little, the goggles I bought maybe
leak a little, next year I'll spring for gas masks,
okay?
