Chapter Fourteen: North of Center — Part 3

Aside — Nita at the Break

It’s late, and Nguyet is simply too exhausted to cook, so she takes Chan to his favorite place to eat. Nguyet hates American Fast Food. It smells of grease and low-grade meat, and she can imagine it clogging out her arteries every time she eats it. The people serving her always make her nervous. Especially the cashiers, who look at the scars on the back of her hands and arms like she might somehow spread her fate to them. Age has softened her tone, and improved her English. Being a mother and single parent has taught her patience. She bites her tongue as they bring her the bag of horrific crapulence she’s just ordered solely because her son loves the greasy mess. She’s not ordered herself anything, she can’t stand it that much. She’ll nibble on his fries, maybe. Her weakness, and she is a little ashamed to admit it, is sushi with a nice spot of hot sake. The scary little boy with black lipstick and multiple facial piercings ringing up her order, but stares at her hands longer than normal, and she manages to get his eye contact as sweetly as possible.

“You want to know how I burned my hands, don’t you?” Nguyet can sound almost singsong when she talks, an effect that is hypnotic on young American boys.

“Yes. Sorry for staring Ma’am.” The boy says, handing over her change.

“I used to work fast food. Those fryers are killers when they blow up on you. If it wasn’t for the face shield, I might be dead right now.” Nguyet’s laughter is the precise laughter of a woman trained in the art of seductive evil.

As Nguyet heads to a table by the massive child ball aquarium, the cashier looks back at his manager, a young man not much older, and in many cases a little younger than most of his staff. “Joe, our fryer doesn’t have a face shield.” He sounds almost frantic. “It doesn’t have a face shield!”

In a matter of minutes there is pointing and talking in the kitchen, the staff, usually as docile as the cows they cook for the masses, are now stampeding. Her son is at the table, eating his deep fried meat, bread and potatoes, while Nguyet focuses on him, his face one of beauty and delight, even when he is being a horrible pig. Nguyet worries sometimes, that without a father and with his features as soft as they are, that Chan will grow up to be more like Blake and Joe, and less like the man her father was. While on many levels this is really quite appealing, since her father did sell Nguyet to pay off his gambling debts, she isn’t entirely certain she can come to grips with the whole man on man butt sex thing that Blake and Joe were so obviously into. The words butt sex ring in her mind for a moment, in English, because she keeps her Cantonese thoughts separate. She chuckles, ever so slightly because the words sound so funny to her, until she is disturbed by the manager, who is almost afraid to approach her.

“Excuse me ma’am, but your comments have caused chaos in my kitchen.” He says, sounding both angry and apologetic at the same time. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“The truth is chaos.” Nguyet says, returning her attention to Chan, who, for the most part, is ignoring the manager because his hunger is being sated.

“Deep fryers don’t just blow up ma’am, they’re incredibly safe.” The manager says.

Nguyet holds up her left hand, her smile gentle and rehearsed. “Word,” she says then holds up the other hand, “Truth.”

Of course it is neither her word, nor is it the truth, but Nguyet isn’t about to let that stop her fun.

Behind her, the entire staff has seen her hands. “We need a face shield goddamn it!” One of them yells.

“I don’t know sweets,” the oldest woman says, her eyes so wide that the whites of them stand out against her black eye liner. “Even with a shield, you won’t get me near that fryer again.”

In the back, things are clattering, in the front customers are getting angry. Lipstick boy is hanging up his apron. He’s quit, just like that, and the rest of the staff is thinking of doing the same. Nguyet is happier than she has been in years. The mirth, she hopes, will keep her arteries well lubricated against the clotting that she imagines even breathing the air in such a place must bring.

“If you don’t leave, I am going to have to ask you to leave again, and then if you don’t leave when I ask you a second time, I am going to have to call the police.” The manager, whose name is Todd, has invoked the Authorities.

Nguyet isn’t actually expecting any trouble of this nature, and now that it has come for her, she is ready to pack and leave, even if her son hasn’t finished his food, because the police are not people she wants close contact with. The problem seems to escalate beyond her however, as if the universe itself has decided to join in on the joke. Because of the good intentions of a massive, slightly heavy, mostly muscular, scraggly, and totally bald monster of a man in a ragged biker coat, denim pants, a heavy pair of engineer boots with factory soles, and a badly shaved face, the universe will have its way. He hasn’t gotten up yet, but he’s stopped eating, his skin is dark enough that it contrasts the darker indigo of his denim jeans almost perfectly. His powerful voice rips across two tables, drawing all eyes to him. Nguyet looks at his hands, which are bigger than any she’s ever seen. He isn’t a giant, technically, just rather powerfully large. She suspects that he could pick most grown men up by their skulls using the cupped palm of just one hand.

“Hey!” He shouts at Todd. “Let the woman and her boy eat in peace.”

“She’s not eating, she’s disrupting. So mind your own business.” The manager says angrily before he can fully assess what he’s saying, and to whom he is speaking with.

The man stands up, moving somewhat like a landslide with conscious will, his features shifting to a brittle kind of anger that cause his eyes to look dark and sunken. “If you were in the back promising to have a face plate installed on your grease pit, you could have settled this by now. So why don’t you go do that and leave your paying customers alone?”

If the universe is capable of laughter, Nguyet thinks, then it is now in hysterics. With this massive man defending her, she shrinks smaller into herself, wishing she could become invisible just by thought alone.

Todd almost wets himself, uses all of his composure to keep that from happening, failing for the first part of a trickle, and stares up at the man, whose nipples are just level with his chin. “That does it, I’m calling the police.”

The biker tosses a wallet onto Nguyet’s table, where a shiny silver and brass badge glimmers in the light. “The cops are already here, bitch. Now get in the kitchen where you belong or I’ll bring you in for harassment and put a call in to the health inspector, just because that’s the kind of asshole I am.”

Todd turns sheet white. Any hopes of not pissing himself further lie exclusively in his choice to retreat back behind the counter, where, hopefully, he can regain his composure and convince at least two or three of his crew to get back to processing orders. Nguyet has her head down, as the situation is now absolute chaos, beyond anything she intended. A behemoth of a man has come to her defense, using the threat of brute force and a badge, of all things, to defend her honor. The combination absolutely terrifies her. The universe must be grabbing its proverbial ribs from the pain of its laughter. She is certain that she is the butt of some sick cosmic joke. She is certain that the punch line hasn’t even been told yet.

“Badge says your name is Cody.” Nguyet is nearly inaudible.

“Everybody calls me Kodiak. But you can call me Cody.” Cody, though he goes by Kodiak, with the exception, apparently, of Nguyet, crouches down carefully, so as not to seem imposing. He talks to the boy in a level tone. “How’s the burger?”

“Good. Thank you for making the man pee himself.” Chan says between bites. “It was funny.”

“Bitch had it coming.” Kodiak says. “What’s your name?”

“Chan.”

“Chan, huh? Everybody calls me Kodiak, but please call me Cody. If that man gives you or your mama any more trouble, he’ll do more than piss himself when I’m through with him.”

“You’re trying to make a good impression with my mom.” Chan says curtly, and then grabs a handful of fries and stuffs them in his mouth.

Kodiak pauses, smiling at Nita for a minute, looking perhaps a bit more uncomfortable than he had before. “So what’s your name?”

Nita is about to answer at the same time that Kodiak is about to pick up his wallet, but a combination of sensations distracts him, and to a lesser extent, her, and he starts to look around while Nita lifts her feet up so she can move more quickly from her seat. He’s crouched down so that most of his body is on the plastic table, and a tingling sensation is working along all of his hair from the foot touching the ground. To him, it actually feels like the source is a metal support post about ten feet from him. Outside, one by one, then in groups of a hundred or more, the streetlights are exploding. Then the pistol in the back case of his FLHRC Electra Glide Classic discharges, and as the shrapnel rips into his gas tank, his bike blows up, creating an unnatural chain reaction of explosions in other vehicles around it. Sparkles of lightning start climbing in fickle tendrils from the ground to the ceiling, and people caught in their grip are being thrown around, barely having time to scream as they die.

The Harley Davidson FLHRC Electra Glide Classic is an awesome bike for touring, and big enough for a guy like Cody to feel comfortable on: It even has its own stereo sound system. I took my Vespa GT200L out of New Orleans nine hours into Texas and was quite comfortable without a radio, thank you very much. Of course, if I woke up tomorrow and found the title of just about any Harley Touring Model left under my pillow by the Awesome Fairy . . . there would be no complaints here.

Advertise Here