Sushi for the Soul

Before work last Sunday, Mika headed to a diner and ordered a plate of toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs – soul food, she thought. 

Mika was troubled by the particular poignancy of her apathy, her decadent unemotion. She’d already tried walking, running, no sugar diets, high sugar diets, keto, electrolytes, at home IV drips, CBT, DBT, prayer, donating to charity, volunteering for charity, reading the news, not reading the news, a gratitude journal and buying a kitten. All to no avail. The diner had checkerboarded floors, back-to-back vinyl booths, and a jukebox purring acoustic music. All of this had the effect of legitimating its sincerity to Mika. Yet, placed down in front of her, her tawny plate looked fraught – the runnyness of the eggs looked teary, and the greasiness of the bacon like sweat! And did the arrangement not seem to be … frowning? She sliced at it surgically, as if it were once alive, letting it go cold before eating an oil-slick egg-white with hungry-discontent. 

Later that night, as Mika stood behind the register at work counting the till, she asked Irene, tending to spectral grime on the windows, whether she’d want to grab a drink next week. Her life needed a “shake-up”. 

Irene was a coworker, less a friend, but after her intense hermeticism, Mika knew herself far from being in a choosy position. She has long, espresso hair – not unlike Mika's – androgynous facial bones, par a snubbed nose, and a perennially ox-eyed stare. Her hips were svelte, propping up a small frame, which itself propped up a stark pair of breasts. She is quite beautiful, Mika thinks, then adds the qualifier: in her way.

On her way to the sushi restaurant, Mika is unexcited. She arrives only ten minutes late, and Irene is already seated! On the way in, she's greeted by a rakish, non-Asian waiter, leaving her irked by the restaurant’s cultural incongruities. She looks to the back of the room: couched in a sunken, bijou booth, Irene bears the stamp of complete insouciance. 

The lights are dim, practically off, and Mika wonders whether they save on electricity. 

She sifts through whirrs of drunken monotones and shimmies herself into the booth.

Irene stands up. She is wearing a heathered charcoal dress and wine coloured flats. The dress drapes over her immense, unencumbered breasts, and renders the rest of her body a tenebrous idea. She has already ordered sakatinis and some tasting plates – she's starving. Ten minutes later, they are handed two impossibly small plates of fish and paper-thin glasses. 

“How have you been,” Mika begins, flanking her sentence with sips of the sakatini. 

Irene says she’s fine, she thinks, she's quite good, actually. 

“That’s good.”

An elephantine silence settles plumb in the middle of their horigotatsu. Mika fiddles with a scallop and makes paltry progress on some kingfish. She waylays the waiter for another round of drinks and notices her voice come out in a slackened, contralto tone; kind of sexy, she thinks. 

The room fills in. Duos and trios arrange and rearrange relaxedly, leaving behind wakes of subdued intimacy. 

Mika’s leg is going dead under the table.

Irene asks her what's up. Mika slips her a smile of nonresponse. A couple of booths away, a girl with bespangled eyelids is poking a picturesque bruise on her thigh – blood-ripe and tie-dyed – and staring vacantly at the man sitting across from her. Her fingers are very purposive, Mika thinks she might poke at the bruises to keep them bruised. Maybe, she thinks, she keeps them bruised so she has something to do on dates. Mika hopes she doesn’t get the bruises from the dates! The man also fiddles under the table. With his long, square-built fingers, he scratches his devil-shaped hairline and deposits curdles of dandruff on his pant leg, quickly wiping them away after. 

“You know it’s funny — I never realised how shy you actually are. I always just thought you were playing disaffected bitch for customers at work.” She smiles in a mass-produced way. 

“I haven't been out for a drink in probably six months.” 

“Jesus.” 

The next round of drinks arrive, Mika had gone out on a limb and ordered them the Hanami Fizz. Irene takes to it quickly. 

“Why?”

Mika experiments: a resurgence of mono? Chronic fatigue syndrome? Lyme’s? She isn’t one to lie, and is confused by the medical nature of all these responses. But then, she considers, perhaps the reason is medical, has been medical all along, and, in a trice, finds respite in this explanation. She needn't have some dark cast mind, some maladjusted character – and she is, after all, so thin. The thought brings with it a soothing presence, lavender scented.  

Irene stares at her expectantly. There is a suggestion of annoyance in the slight furrow of her brows. Or perhaps they are just drawn that way, Mika thinks, and stares back at her Hanami Fizz. 

“I don't know… I didn't feel like it.”

Two hefty plates of cabbage are placed down. The Yamitsuki Cabbage? When did they order this? Mika regards it with suspicion.

Mika notices the white, ephebic waiter stare at them from the bar, his elbow-stance now exhibiting a kind of vegetable languor. 

She also notices the faint tom-tom sounds of some song. 

“What's that like?” Irene offers, “the not feeling like it.” 

A mosaic of cross-legged monks on a sprawling, persian rug; the lilac smell of mold on rumpled towels.

“Something like feeling relaxed.” She interlaces her fingers around her glass of Hanami Fizz and cups it with both hands.

A group of wooden-heeled women clop past on their way to the bathroom: drunk, pushing through the crowd like bull in a china shop, speaking loudly, but in a censorious tone. 

Mika takes a dainty bite from the besabered lychee in her cup, and a droplet of juice falls from her mouth and bleeds into a napkin. Irene seems to ignore it. 

A polyphony of voices stamp their rhythms in her ear, pirouette in her head – in fact, she is disoriented. Mika thinks about the staticky quiet of the store, the ersatz warmth from the heater. She craves the echoey, euphonic pulses of the 432 hertz from her airpods, played as she walks Ludmilla, her Russian Blue. 

Two weeks ago, Mika expounded her speculations of being still a bit taken by an old boyfriend Jedd (two d’s), during her third appointment with her therapist, Sandra. Sandra said to her that perhaps it might be helpful to think of her relationship with Jedd as an old shirt, something she had outgrown, and which she should let find a new home. Naturally, this was one of the stupidest things Mika had ever heard – she lamented the platitudinous orientation of Sandra’s therapising – but, notwithstanding, after this Mika could not help but think of a whole host of things as old shirts. This conversation, this restaurant, whatever neuralgia had inspired her into arranging this helpless tete-a-tete: these are all old shirts.

It has doubtlessly been over a minute since Irene asked Mika something she cannot remember, but the room suddenly erupts into an acapella of happy birthday.