#ionlyusedoneofthewordsthistimebutthatokilovemyself!

[derickandveronica-blog]

V #5. Ritual

They had a celebration at work—Officer Williams retiring—that ran an hour past his shift, so instead of busing over, Officer Ryan ran.

When he got there, sweaty and red-faced, he thought maybe the owner looked relieved to see his regular. Or maybe it was something else. He ran to make it here? He comes every—

It didn’t matter.

He ordered his usual, the kelp and veggie hot pot with udon noodles.

They brought it out fast because there weren’t many other customers at the restaurant. He got started.

He had a ritual.

He always looked at each ingredient and took a little nibble to see if everything was fresh and ready, kind of imagining himself as a rabbit. Then he heated the water. The small instructions taped to the table for newcomers recommended 100 degrees Celsius but he always chose 90.

Then he added the straw mushrooms, bok choy, and broccoli. He let them simmer for a minute and a half. He lowered the heat to 70 and added the already-cooked noodles.

He’d admit that he enjoyed it immensely.

Sometimes he whispered to each ingredient before throwing it in the pot. A kind of “thank you” and “I’m sorry” that just came out as a breathy sound.

He liked to see how dexterous he could be with the chopsticks, if he could pick up individual grains of rice or lift a slippery udon noodle from its clump of friends. Things within him stilled during this time.

He knew he had a certain flair. Other customers smiled curiously at him, like he was a cute child. He still wore his uniform when he came, dark blue and heavily padded. It was a novelty for them to see a cop at a restaurant.

He had stopped caring, years ago, what anyone else thought. The veggies stayed quiet.

He clicked his chopsticks together three times before he allowed himself to eat; the commencement clicks.

 Once he began eating he let his mind wander from the food. The broth had a way of doing that to him, opening his mind like a steamed clam shell.

He didn’t particularly care to see officer Williams go. The man had never worked hard and once, when Officer Ryan reported the story of how he’d chased down a drug dealer for blocks, hopping fences like in an action movie—the one time he’d really spoken before the whole squadron, and making them smile and laugh and gasp—and Williams had looked up from his thick white belly and said, not kindly at all, “What’d you do all that running for?”

Williams had made it clear he was delighted to retire. And the others didn’t blame him. Their job had become bizarre and terrifying and deeply sad. They never said such things to each other, of course, but Officer Ryan felt the current of it, winding through the office and soaking into the cop cars.

He'd spent most of today shooting Narcan into nostrils and feeling for pulses. It was hardly the work he’d thought of as a little boy. But he felt, underneath his frustration and dismay, a violent worry. If he wasn’t here to do this, who would?

He didn’t totally mind it though. Reviving had a ritual too.

First he felt for a pulse.

He liked to imagine what each person sprawled out before him looked like as a little baby, bundled up in a blanket. He imagined them as an infant left out in the cold that needed help.

Today he had revived a teenage boy. When he and his partner had showed up there was a small crowd of people gathered around the boy. They all scattered, fearful, scuttling off into the city’s alleyways.

The boy couldn’t have been older than 14. He was filthy and stunk like piss. His baggy denim jeans hung off him, his hip bones poking up sharply through the exposed edge of his boxer shorts. Ryan’s partner ignored him and they went through the ritual, looking the other way when Ryan murmured words under his breath and tapped the boy’s ribs three times on each side.

When the boy came back to life he sulked off, angry that the cops had stolen his high.

There was something predictable in this.

 He always asked for extra bok choy when the broth was getting low. He liked to let it seep in and soak the crunchy stems.

He signaled for the waitress, a thin Japanese woman with strange color contacts that made her eyes look silvery and alien.

“More bok choy, please.” He realized he hadn’t yet spoken in the restaurant tonight. When he had ordered he had merely pointed at the menu, number nine. Sometimes he lost track of his voice like this. He preferred to stay in his own head, to follow the script.

“The kitchen is closed.” The waitress glanced behind her, as if to confirm with some invisible friend. “I’m sorry, sir.”

The woman did look sorry, but she also looked something else, a shadow of it passing over her face briefly. Something familiar.

He had been coming here for years. Five nights a week, like clockwork. Right after his shift. When he’d first discovered the place something sweet and warm had grown inside of him. He loved everything about it; the way they ignored you and made you cook your own food, that some people thought this was a great and fun novelty, the dim lights and greasy floors.

He always tipped generously and he never caused a disturbance. He had his ritual to stick to and it didn’t bother anybody, he was a man of few indulgences and—

He nodded, staring down at his lap. This had never happened before.

The woman hesitated and then left. A moment later she brought the bill. All the other customers had left.

He dreaded leaving the warm restaurant and busing back to his empty apartment.

He waited for a moment of privacy to enter the pin for his credit card into the till, but the waitress hovered. She glanced at the door and back at the kitchen and down at the floor. But she watched him with her presence, her shoulders always turned to him.  

He had a ritual for saying goodbye to the plates and cracked spoon. And there were the chopsticks closing clicks. He liked to slide a finger across each dish, spelling out kind words and compliments. Thank you for your crunchy texture, thank you for your heat, thank you for your flavor. He liked to think back on the way the veggies had looked laid out in front of him, prepared like a feast or a bouquet, and imagine them mashed up and dark in his own stomach.

The waitress sighed and shifted from foot to foot, squeezing her clasped hands.

He realized that before, when she had said sorry about the bok choy, it had been fear passing over her face.

So he got up and walked out into the night, swallowing the ritual down deep inside o