Dim Sum Asylum(10)

Six stools lined up for customers, but only five were open to the public. The sixth was reserved for Goma’s favorites, and he was stingy with his invites. My mother sat on that stool whenever she came by, and one oddly strange normal day, he’d stopped me from sitting down at one of the five with a deep, harsh grunt, pointed to that stool at the far end of the stall, the one closest to where he stood to cook, and ordered me to sit there instead.

I don’t know what I did or said to earn my ass a place on that rickety, cracked vinyl–topped wooden stool, but I fucking sat down as quickly as I could and have sat there ever since.

Goma looked up from his steaming pots, then pointed with a wooden spoon at the stool directly across of him. I was bigger than I’d been when I was fifteen, and the stool creaked slightly under me when I gingerly adjusted my weight across the seat. Thankfully it held, and I hunkered in closer to the plank, using the stall’s wide awning to keep the thickening drizzle off my back. The other stools were full. A skinny guy at the end kept glancing at me nervously and began to suck down entire mouthfuls of noodles, working his chopsticks in and around the steaming threads in an attempt to shovel them faster down his throat.

An elderly black woman burped, then slid off the scratched-up gray metal stool next to me, tossing a few coins into the dented coffee tin Goma used to collect tips. She was barely clear of the seat when she was replaced by a young man in a suit, his black-and-orange wings tucked up as tightly against his back as he could get them, the folds wrinkling his jacket’s darted back.

He and Goma exchanged a few quick words. Then the cook plopped a bowl of rice and fried tentacles in front of the man, the grilled char siu octopus slathered with glistening bright magenta glaze. I scanned the small huddle of people waiting in the dubious shelter of a couple of fire escapes with blue tarps strung up across the span. I recognized a few, mainly thugs who’d been hauled in a time or two when I’d worked patrol, but I was more interested in filling my belly, and unless someone acted up, I could leave well enough alone.

That apparently wasn’t enough for the skinny guy at the end, because he bolted down the rest of his food and fled into the rain, knocking the stool over in his haste to disappear.

“Should I worry about that one?” The stool rocked a bit under me when I turned to watch the kid disappear into the crowd, but I didn’t fall over. Wedging my foot against the stall steadied things out, and I leaned forward, resting against the plank.

“Forget about him. You look like shit.” Goma squinted at me through his thick glasses, his narrowed eyes rheumy and suspicious.

“It’s been a long day.” The ink on my back still felt like a million pounds of grief under my skin, and despite Gaines handing me back my badge and gun, I questioned whether I could still carry them. “They mourned the girl today. The one Arnett killed.”

“Ah.” He hissed through his teeth, a mournful low whistle sharp with sympathetic regret. “And you’re carrying her?”

I nodded, then shrugged when he shook his head at me. “What other choice do I have? Who else is going to? It’s just that some days, when I take flowers to a dead girl’s funeral, I’ve got to ask if I’m doing any good.”

“If you ask, then you should know you are.” Goma shook a handful of noodles into a sieve, then hooked it into a pan of boiling water to warm. His hands were slower than I liked, gnarled knuckles wrapped around a knife handle so he could make short work of a piece of roasted pork belly. Green onions and a bit of egg omelet joined the pork on the chopping board, sliced thin with a few passes of the blade. “Let’s get some food into you.”

Goma needed something. I could tell by the set of his shoulders and how his back tightened when he turned. After a few minutes, he placed a large bowl of ramen swimming in a miso broth in front of me, the tangle of noodles he’d pulled from the hot water now buried beneath a mountain of trimmings. He put one last dash of minced green onions across the top and handed me a spoon and a pair of chopsticks.

The spoon was a bit ambitious. It was going to be at least twenty minutes before I’d even see the soup.

I got in about seven mouthfuls before one of Goma’s workers joined him in the cooking area, freeing him up to talk. Sidling up to the end of the cook station to get out of the fae kid’s way, Goma cleared his throat and spat out what was sitting on his tongue.

“Your grandfather’s looking for you,” he finally said.

Not what I wanted to hear after the truly shitty day I’d had. I looked up from my ramen only to have Goma’s eyes slide away from my face.

That troubled me more than my grandfather asking after me.

I couldn’t think of a reason my father’s father would be trying to get ahold of me. I hadn’t spoken to him since my mother’s funeral, when he’d had the bad taste to approach me about throwing away my badge and stepping into the place he’d made for me… the one right by his side.

Never going to happen. No matter how hard the old bastard pushed. It just wasn’t going to happen.

“Can’t imagine Takahashi coming to the alleyway and knocking on your door, Goma.” I kept my tone light as I ate, but my appetite wasn’t as good as it had been a few seconds ago. Still, braised pork belly, so I was going to at least make an effort. “Who’d he send?”

“A couple of his boys. No one important.” Another shrug, and this one was lighter. Goma hated secrets. They dug at him, poisonous sea urchins with sharp barbs looking for a way out of the cove they’d washed into. “They were sent around to ask if I’d seen you, not if I’d tell them when I saw you. So not too bad, yes?”