KAFKA'S UKULELE

Kafka's Ukelele was a strange instrument, an item foreign even to the Czech Repulblic's largest metropolis, Prague. The instrument was constructed out of mahogany, brass and four gut strings. Initially, it was thought that the instrument was a cavaquinho, but the G-C-E-A tuning order differed from that of the traditional portuguese instrument which most commonly touts a tuning order of D-G-B-D. This arrangement suggests the string instrument was indeed an ukulele, the version of the cavaquinho that Portugal began exporting to the Hawaiian Islands along with migrating field workers beginning in the 1880's.

It is not known how Kafka had come into possession of such an instrument. Nor is it known why of all plucked instruments found within closer geographic proximity — the harp, guitar, lute, bladder fiddle, zymbal, and mandolin — he had chosen the ukulele as his stringed instrument of choice. The ukulele was found under Kafka's cot in Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna, where he succumbed to starvation via tuberculosis, June 3, 1924. The disease had caused his throat to constrict, making swallowing painful and unbearable. He had lost the ability to speak, and in his later days, lost the desire to write. With medical practices of that time predating any intravenous method of nourishment, Kafka was doomed to die as a hungry, emaciated artist strumming the ukulele gently into the night.

As the author most notable for writing of The Metamorphosis, a novella in which his protagonist, Gregor awakens transformed unexpectedly into a large grotesque insect, and The Trial, in which the main character, K. is found guilty of a crime that is neither disclosed to him or to the reader, it will be surprising to most academics that his forays into existentialism and hopelessness — of working class individuals facing surrealist, somewhat supernatural quandaries in a universe indifferent to their plights — could have formed an artistic allegiance to the light, playful notes of the Ukelele, which when translated means jumping fleas. That every living creature lives and dies by the unsympathetic, unforgiving currents of a larger godless universe could have been forgotten by an employer of sadness and dread when plucking away is a mystery. Had his posthumous collection of musical compositions, along with his ukulele (strangely it had not been incinerated along with his bedding) not been confiscated by the Gestapo from Dora Diamont, his last and final lover, Berlin 1933, his musical legacy would have exceed his literary accomplishments. There was Mozart. There was Beethoven. There was Kafka. With words, he delved into the deepest darkest corners of humanity. With music, he reinstated the light.

It is my contention that such a collection exists. And if it were found, all human sadness would end. But that is a strange thing to hang my hopes on, Kafka's Ukulele. Still, in this world of nonsense, of one absurd, nightmarish atrocity after another, I feel very strongly, that its existence and eventual discovery is all we have going for us. It is said that within the ukulele's base was a crumpled note. It read "My love. Take this Accomplice and Companion to my Demise. Take this and play it. It will save you. It will save you all."

* * *

"My stomach hurts worse," she tells me. "It hurts" she says to me on the way to the hospital. Her fine brown-streaked hair is covering her face and she doesn't bother to brush it aside behind her ears. The ukulele she had begun to learn to play sits in the back seat. It had been sitting there for days after her fourth ukulele lesson this past Friday, March 11, 2011. It is the same day the earthquake and tsunami rocks Japan's north-east coast.

I park the car and help her onto her feet. One foot, then the other unfolding onto the concrete from the passenger seat. She stands up gingerly. I can't see her face. She is trying to keep her hips square so as not to upset any unreleased pockets of pain. She straightens slowly. I close the door and she takes my arm. An SUV passes us by. We begin to walk — one small step at a time. Then I stop in the middle of the parking lot lane as a red honda rounds the corner. The driver stops and waits, watching us with impatience and confusion as another white van rounds the corner and is held up.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"The uke," I say. The driver, with his rounded ruddy face and rectangular-rimmed glasses honks his horn and starts inching forward. His engine idles and revs. "The ukulele. Do you want me to bring it?" I ask. The air is growing hotter.

She looks at me as if I'm crazy. She tugs weakly toward the elevator but I resist. I want her to say yes. Please, I'm thinking. Say "yes, bring it for me".

MORNING LIGHT BY METRONOME

"You know about desks and noses, proteins, mortgages, orchestras, nationalities, contraceptives; you have our ruins and records, but they won't tell you what we were like... We were one of a million species who continually cried out or silently wept in pain. I am proud that we alone resented taking part in the chorus... We did invent boredom, a fruitful state. It hid the size of our desires. Because we could say, 'I am bored'... and we could go to Paris or the movies... rather than sink our teeth in our lover's throat and shake till things felt right again... What was most wonderful about us was our kindness but of this it is impossible to speak. Only someone who knows our cruelty... our fears... can know how heartbreaking our kindness was... One of us said, 'I think our life is not as good as the mind warrants,' another, 'It is hard to be alone and alive at the same time' To understand these statements you would have to be human... Our destruction as a species was accidental. Characteristically, we blamed it on ourselves... Look closely around you, study your instruments, scan the night sky... Nothing in the universe resembles us."

from Report on Human Beings, by Michael Goldman

* * *

ONE DAY BEFORE THE END OF CIVILIZATION, Marty Machowsky got to his Kaimuki home at two on a Thursday afternoon when he found his girlfriend, Melanie Paik, of three months sitting at the dining room table smoking a marlboro and a nursing a snifter of brandy. He carried with him a crumpled, brown paper bag full of baguettes, a bottle of cheap merlot, pasta noodles, tomatoes, onions, garlic and basil, and — in his pocket — a twenty dollar bag of weed. Neither of them were aware of the news reports, the elevated threat levels, the scientific speculation and fanatic prophesizing that had begun to simmer over the strange new light streaks over the stratosphere, rippling over the cities across the world. To Marty Machowsky, as well as to many others around him, this was just a normal day, he would have never thought of this day as his final chance at breaking the streak of romantic failures along the years.

“Hey there,” he said as he entered the home, kicked his shoes off and kissed her brightly on her cheek. “Nice to be home so early. Though fourth period went on like pi.” He unpacked the items in columns onto a wooden table with fold away edges, fetched a snifter from the cabinet next to the refrigerator, and poured himself a glass. “Driving me crazy, those kids. All afternoon, I’m thinking ninth grade is the worst. Machowsky sighed, folded his shopping bag and stored it in the bottom shelf next to the sink. “All day, cheat sheets and crib notes” he slapped his right palm flat onto the table lightly. “I’m losing them. And it’s only the first quarter.”

Melanie flicked her ashes into a small Las Vegas ashtray and blew a faint, narrow spray of smoke into the air. “It’s just the antsiness associated with long weekends,” she said. Her obsidian, oil black hair was coiled into a bun. She wore mustard cardigan over a tribal tank top. “Furloughs don’t help either. All around the country, you hear how education is getting the shaft. How are they supposed to feel about that?”

She sat motionless save the intermittent swirling of her glass, tilting it delicately on it’s edge then turning it with her fingertips as if to coax it into levitation. She lifted her cigarette to her lips, inhaled and teased out a smoke ring with her tongue then leaned forward and gazed through it as if it were a floating monocle. Her eyes closed and her lashes bowed before him like a pair of Japanese fans. “I’m sure they’re all good students. Even the morons. You just need to reach ‘em.”

“True that, Dangerous Minds.” Machowsky said. He sank into the chair opposite her. “Well, all I wanna do now is get boozy. I bought you a bag of the good ol’ sweet leaf, and we can just chill the hell out for the rest of the day. How’s that sound?”

Melanie kept her eyes closed and let a ghost smile haunt her lips. She opened her eyes and raised her dark brows and her bangs fell lightly over one side of her face. For a minute her face was all shadows and contours and she looked like a skull. She took a finger and slowly tucked her hair behind her ear and there she was again, bright-eyed.

“You okay?” he asked. “What’s up?”

There was sheet of paper in front of her that he had failed to notice, and she slid it over with a finger as if it were a contract offer with a hit list. “Read this,” she said.

“What is that? A prenup?” Machowsky picked up the sheet of paper, squinting at it incredulously. He read quietly, and his face flashed red like and angry el diablo squid. Slowly, all of his facial muscles began twitching like a man who was just learning to smile. He cleared his throat. “Stifling?” he read aloud. “Manipulating? What is this? Did you actually compose this list?”

“Like a report card,” Melanie said, coolly. She extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray and downed the rest of her drink.

Earlier that day, Machowsky had thrown his eraser against the chalkboard with a big whomp, and turned to the kids and muttered something about them being privileged brats who knew nothing about the world around them and as a result, took education for granted. He felt like doing that in front of Melanie with his glass of brandy. He took a breath and said “Well. I never. Ever. Saw this coming.” He set the sheet of paper down and eyed each item. “So I subtly manipulate you into doing things by making it seem born of your own free will? I make you feel ugly when I compliment you, by leaving certain things out? I don’t understand. Is this a joke?” The words on the list blurred and the letters dissolved into grey, shimmering hexagons. “Self-involved? Narcissistic? Overbearing? Fuck all,” he muttered. He ran his finger across his eyes and lowered his finger inside his pocket as if to store the tear for later. “Jesus, Mel, all I wanted is for you to be happy. And you never showed any inkling. So what gives?”

Melanie slid her seat back and legs of the chair grunted gruffly. Her eyebrows were hidden by her bangs again, leaving her eyes without the usual indicators of emotion — an abstracted version of herself. “I’ve had this list for about a month or so. And it was to help me think this out. It would have never seen the light of day if—”

“If what? Had I what?” Machowsky snapped. “What was the tipping point? What did I do?”

“Well, at dinner last night, you held the door open for me, and you placed your hand on my lower back, as if to guide me into the establishment.”

"And?"

"It was very degrading."

“Are you serious?”

“Look, I'm just not like this. And, it got me thinking. I took out the list and looked at the thing, and it just seemed pointless to add another item to it. It was all there on paper.”

“God damn it, I mean, have you ever heard of a list of pros and cons?”

“It wasn’t just that. There are a lot of things that aren’t on that list. There are a lot of other things that it would have been unfair to include. Things beyond your control. Or expectations that may be unfair.”

“Like what?”

"You don't give to charity."

"I can start!"

“You snore. You smell. A weird smell, lately. And you know what they say about scents and compatibility. Doesn’t work if the olfactory senses don’t jive. And then there’s your age. Our age difference.”

“I’m 40 and you’re 37 for fuck’s sake!”

“I’m just not going to settle down yet.”

“Most women would love to settle down at 37!”

“You see? You see what you do?" Melanie sighed and rose from her chair, blotting out the window behind her, becoming a dark shadow, a faceless stranger in Machowsky's home. "Here, take your keys. I’m sure they'll make someone very happy in the future.” She picked up her Louis Vuitton bag and headed for the door.

Machowsky held his hand out in front of her and gently caressed her thigh. “Be reasonable” He said. “This is the first time you’ve brought any of this stuff up. This should just be the beginning of a discussion.”

She paused. "There's no more to discuss." He couldn’t believe that she was even considering leaving after their first argument. Melanie rolled her tongue under her cheeks and tilted her head. She looked down at Machowsky’s pocket. “Did you pay for the weed with the cash I gave you this morning? If so, can I have some for the road?”

“You want your money back?”

“No. The weed'll do.”

Machowsky slid down in his chair as if trying to slip out of himself. He reached into his pocket and tossed the bag, spinning onto the table. “Here,” he shrugged and stood up to open the door. “Take it. Smoke it on the mothership.”

* * *

Machowsky moved to Hawaii seven years ago, at the behest of his then wife, Lilian who had found a job teaching at the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii. They were married for 5 years, until she filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences — the differences being in the way he looked when they started dating, and the way he looked 5 years and 20 pounds later, he would jest. She had fallen in love with a colleague and together they moved to San Francisco. His love life since then had been one long sitcom in which several romantic leads shuffled on set, revealed their neurosis, then shuffled off, to a variety of space vessels in which they would launch themselves into the wild and wacky cosmos. There was Stephanie Dixon, the ex heroin addict whom he tried to take care of and save before she ran off with his television. Then came Cora Nishita, the librarian who was into S&M, who turned around an accused him as being too capable of acts of incredible violence when he got too enthusiastic one night after a few too many martinis and uncoordinated sex. There was Nicola Snipes, who talked him into tattooing her name onto the back of his calve, before deciding to get back together with her ex boyfriend, Marco, the next day, who had also had her name tattooed on his calve. “In the same style of German typeface?” Machowsky had asked, half outraged. And finally there was Melanie Paik, fair-skinned with black hair with eyes shaped like leaflings, who seemed perfectly happy up until that evening. The roster seemed comical, although emotionally, they had each taken their toll, punctuating his prolonged periods of loneliness with brief fits of madness.

Machowsky found himself at a rustic bar downtown on Bethel street, eating Tallegio and Gouda cheese and some cabernet. He had driven out, dragging his forearm against his weepy eyes as he sped along the H1, blasting the cabin with an old Chicago album. When he got to the bar, he downed a shot of whiskey and began tapping the counter top wildly.

“Bitch went wild,” he scoffed to the Mike, the bartender when there was a lull in service. “Wrote up a list of grievances and slid them over a like a true lawyer.”

He drank his fill of the Cabernet and immediately ordered a refill. The bar was quiet for a Thursday evening. Across the street, the Hawaii Theatre was a full house. In a few hours, the street would fill up with locals wanting to stuff themselves with cheese platters, herbed escargot and vino.

“I teach algebra and calculus at school and know not a thing about the equations in women as to how they reach their conclusions. Nada!”

“Messed up, brah,” said Mike. He was a 30-something Hawaiian-Chinese kid who had been working there since the establishment opened and had seen Machowsky though a fair share of his romantic debacles. He was tall, and he had a wide, asymmetrically muscled forehead, like the flank of a bull on hormones. “Seriously. I used to call you Don Juan but now I’ll call you John Doe.”

“That makes no sense, Mike. No sense at all. I’m the one drinking, not you.”

“Relationships — dead on arrival... Cha hoo!”

“I think that's D.O.A., Mike. Nice work.”

“Gotta go tend to this lady.” Mike walked over to the far end of the bar and took an order from a blond woman in her late 30’s. He leaned over and nodded and came back to where Machowsky was sitting. “Hey Mr. Bukowsky. Lady there wants to buy you a drink.”

Machowksy looked over and smiled, raised his glass and then motioned with his hand that he was cutting himself off. “Will you tell that fine woman that I graciously decline. Tell her that I’m just coming out a relationship and that I just want to be left alone to wallow.”

“You know, the way your luck is going, dude —” Mike nodded, "it’s good to be a little discriminating. Good for you. Reassess your decision making. Do the exact opposite of what you would normally do.”

"Like George Costanza did that one episode on Seinfeld."

"Worked out for him."

"But he lives his life in 30 minute increments."

"And you're messed up life is commercial free. Fair enough. Another drink."

"Sure."

Over the course of the next hour, three women had offered to buy Machowsky a drink – two of which had recognized him from an old First Hawaiian Bank commercial he had done years ago for a friend who worked in the advertising industry. All three times, he had declined. But by nine-o-clock, he was feeling good. He was starting to feel as if the prior events of the day could all be erased, perhaps by some fateful twist in the evening. Anything could happen, and he was up for it. However, when ten-o-clock announced its arrival with a clomp of a beer bottle in front of him, his posture on the bar stool had degenerated to that of an abandoned ventriloquist dummy hunched over a depleted cheese platter. He was rambling. “Truth for the matter is, Mike. I’m a stolid guy. Stolid as a rock. I just wanna settle my mettle. You know? Marry. Have kids. Keiki. Raise em here in Hawaii despite the shitty school system.”

“Hey hey, brutha! Don’t diss, don’t diss.”

“Hey, I work in it, boo," he said. "Remember? Fuckin' math. Anyway, cream always rises to the top, no matter how bad the circumstances. Don’t worry about it. I just need a real woman is all!” He slammed his fist onto the bar top and the plates and forks rattled. A few of the other patrons turned around from their tables and regarded Machowsky wearily.

“Hey hey. You gotta keep it chill tonight, 'aight? I mean, looks like you getting into that dark mode again. No more fights or you banned for real. Got that?”

Machowsky looked around the bar and the walls wobbled along accordingly. Every time he moved his eyes, he went momentarily blind and had to refocus and reassemble whatever it was that was magically teleported into his field of vision. The tables seemed to zip by as he scanned passed them. In the far corner, he saw a duo of men in Aloha shirts and khakis materialize. They had been staring at him. “What up, fellas? I like dat Aloha spirit!”

“Hey, Machowsky,” Mike called out for the other end of the bar. “Don't do that," he warned, pointing at him with a rolled up tablecloth as if it concealed a gun. "Chill out. That’s your last glass right there.”

“Hey Mike!” Machowsky called back. “I’m good. Really!” he held his hands out. “I’m a peace-nik. I’m a lover! Not a fighter. No wait. I’m both.” He made a fist and held it out in front of him, looking through the protrusions of his knuckles as if they were gun sights. “I wanna either fight, or fuck. You know? Let fate dictate!” He let his eyes linger on the bruises along his knuckles and the events of the day came flooding back.

Mike slammed his white towel onto the bar top producing a white blur that snapped Machowsky out of his reverie. It looked like a white dove. “Hey what the heck was that? Was that a bird? You a magician? You made all of my problems disappear!!!”

Mike firmly grabbed Machowsky’s arm. “That’s it, Von Kaiser. You gotta quiet the fuck down or I’m hauling your ass out.”

“Run my haole ass off the aina will you?”

“Dude. Drink some water. Call a cab.”

“Nopes” said Machowsky. “Nope!”

From behind, someone grabbed a handful of his hair and slammed his face down into the counter. His head bounced up and he tipped his water over. The bar spun. From behind him, one of the two men in the Aloha shirts said, “Hey fuckwit, drink’s on you right?”

Mike ran over and pushed the two out into the street. “That’s it. Get out. You guys ain’t coming back here. Shit. Brah, you know he didn’t really provoke you guys all that much.”

The two men walked off, laughing.

Mike returned to the counter and took a relaxed posture. After a moment of thoughtful silence, chewing on the insides of his cheeks, he asked "So, what's the most filthiest thing you can think of to do to a midget?"

"What? asked Machowsky. "Huh?"

"Never mind," said Mike.

Machowsky resumed rubbing his forehead when from behind, another gentler hand landed onto his shoulder like an angel setting up shop. “Get him another water,” a woman’s voice commanded.

“You know this guy?” asked Mike. He straightened and nodded, patting Machowsky on the shoulder. “What a lucky bastard. You came at the right time.”

“We go back,” said the voice, softly and reassuringly. “I’ll talk him down and we’ll leave.”

Mike returned with a glass of water. “Drink this, Don Juan.”

The woman sat down next to Machowsky. Her eyes, the blurred, dark circles of the grim reaper himself hardened into the soft eyes of woman he recognized. Her skin was light and delicate, as if they could tear if pulled hard enough. She had thin lips, perpetually pursed, and when she smiled, fine wrinkles ran along the corners of her eyes, like faint Asian pictograms being magically etched into her skin like secret messages.

“Allison,” he said finally. “What brings you into town?”

“You seem troubled,” Allison said. “How long have you been here?”

“Let X equal the number of drinks I’ve had. Let X equal my ex... or something or other,” Machowsky slurred.

“Wow, you can’t even speak, and you still manage to piss people off.”

Machowsky struggled to hold her in his gaze, but his eyes failed him, as if he were seeing her through a video camera with the lens zoomed out and the auto focus gone awry. “I think my binomials just expanded,” he mumbled. “You wanna get to know the terminal side of my angle? Girl, let me be your derivative and I'll lie tangent to your curves.”

“My god,” Allison touched her temple and ran her fingers in a circle. She raised her hand and called out to Mike. “Bar keep. What’s the damage here?”

"Extensive," said Mike.

Outside, the air grew colder. A bright web of lightning crawled across the sky and vanished. "That was strange," said Allison, craning her head back. "Looks like a storm is brewing. We'd better get home."

* * *

Machowsky woke up naked. He bolted up skank and nude and surveyed his surroundings. What was once a drunken wash of indistinct shapes and colors hardened and steadied into a pristine bedroom high above the city. The air conditioner was on and he was shrunken and shivering. He stepped onto the cool hardwood floor and found his clothes scattered on a wool shag carpet. The bedding and floral pillows were strewn about the floor near the bathroom. He stood at the window, focusing beyond his haggard reflection out to the city below, and saw that it was sleeping. The H1 freeway was just starting to clog, while the skyline, with it’s slow pulse of red and blue lights, slumbered on.

A slow burning pain awoke on his left deltoid as if it had been scraped by a fall. He felt around and saw that it was a bruise. “Yikes,” he said. He stumbled out into the living room saw that everything was nicely decorated. Everything had a clean line, as if it had been laid out on a grid. In the corner sat a computer and a desk stacked with books on classical music. The shelves were lined with textbooks on Beethoven and Mozart and complete collections of musical scores by composers he had never heard of.

He heard stirring in the kitchen — the sound of eggs being beaten and the tines of a fork scraping against metal. “So, who’s Nicola?” the voice asked.

Machowsky sat nude on a recliner. It had not occurred to him to put his clothing on. “An ex girlfriend,” he answered. There was an antique metronome on the glass end table next to him and he set it into motion.

Tick... Tick...

“Must have been really serious. You never struck me as the body art type. How long were you two together?”

“A week,” Machowsky answered.

There was the sound of a bowl being set down abruptly. A shadow filled the kitchen doorway. “A week? By god, man. You really fall hard and fast don’t you?”

“Allison?” Machowsky called out.

“Yees?”

“How did I get here? And naked?”

“We walked. Or, I walked, you stumbled. You fell a few times. We got here and you stripped, uncoaxed, by the way, and fell in bed. I tried to wake you to put your clothes on, but you were gone.”

"Is that how I got this bruise on my deltoid? I fell?"

"Yeah."

"Then how come this bruise has teeth marks?"

Allison didn't answer. Instead, she turned on the blender, although, judging by the sound of it, it was completely empty. Machowsky thought to ask if he had really gotten undressed on his own but refrained.

“What time is it?” He asked when she was done.

“Four. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t remember you being such a snorer.”

“I’m sorry. I took up the bed... where’d you sleep?”

“Sofa, ersatz cloud nine. Don’t worry about it. You needed to sleep it off. You couldn’t even tell me where you lived.”

She was chopping something now. Machowsky got up and fetched his underwear but left the rest of his attire on the floor. When he walked into the kitchen, he saw that Allison was in a satin robe, chopping chives. “Omelette?” she asked.

“Sounds good. My head feels like there’s another head in it.”

“Talk about your theatrical happy and sad masks. You were running rampant at the bar. A noisy drunkard one minute, sentimental and maudlin the next. Looking to the future, reminiscing about the past, talking about the end of the world and how you wouldn’t have a person to hold when it happened,” she smiled. “You were seriously depressed. So unlike you.”

Machowsky clenched his fist again and a dull throbbing pain swelled up to his wrist as if there had been a rubber band wound tightly around it the whole time. He began to recall that part of the evening. She had bought him a glass of water, ordered a drink for herself, and closed out the tab. She had told him that she had composed the music for a production across the street that she had been working on for a year and had finally come to see it to its fruition. En route to another establishment to celebrate with her friends and colleagues, she happened to see Machowsky sadly folding a limp sliver of cheese into a pair of puckered, pouting lips. “My heart went out to you right then and there,” she said. “Pretty pathetic. In a funny, cringe inducing sort of way.”

He recalled her lightly kissing his forehead as he slept. “I’m glad you came by the bar,” he said. “It was a pleasant surprise. The entire day–turned–night was going really bad for me.”

“I know. Glad I could take your mind off it for while.”

On the walk to her apartment, they had reminisced about their own short lived relationship. They talked about her passion for the works of avant garde composer John Cage, who’s experimental works baffled Machowsky. Whenever she had played his work Machowsky would grow agitated as he listened intently for a clue to some melody that he was no doubt missing. “You would always say, ‘there’s no music in this music’ and I would tell you it was the music of chance, and you would say, there is no chance in music. What’s the value in chance compositions?’ You were so stubborn on this matter that it confused me. Why should it have mattered to you? You were a mathematician and I was a musician and our languages didn’t really need to overlap but you were so closed-minded about such things. Anyway, these days I have more in common with John Williams than with John Cage,” she had said wistfully. “But that’s where my career has taken me. Now that I’m back, maybe you’ll appreciate the music more.”

Machowsky recalled taking her hands in his and kissing them with the exhilaration of rediscovered familiarity filling the spinning world to it’s blurry edges. “I like the tune I’m hearing now,” he had said.

That exhilaration was gone now. The memory of Allison was a mere calendar square on a much greater timeline. The camaraderie of reminiscence had begun to fade, and through that time warp on the walk to her apartment, to her bedroom and now to the kitchen, she had become a stranger again.

“You know,” Machowsky began. “There’s more to the evening than just Melanie,” he said.

“Who’s Melanie?” Allison asked, her eyebrow arched.

“My ex. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Well, no. You didn’t. Exactly. You were mostly griping about being lonely.”

A thin wall of silence spread out between them like the glass that separated prisoners from visitors. The metronome ticked on.

“We broke up yesterday afternoon.”

“I see,” said Allison. She cleared her throat. Suddenly she looked very tired. "So you’ve only been alone for an evening.”

Machowsky realized that his histrionics must have misled her. He couldn’t remember if he had concealed this information from her intentionally in hopes of getting laid, or if that alcohol had put him in a haze of temporary happiness, where everything outside of that protective blur didn’t matter.

Still, clinging to some air of intimacy, he felt like confiding and she was all he had. He leaned against the counter. “I had just had the worst day of my life and I just wanted to forget it when Mel pulled that coup. But now that I’m with you, I feel okay. We're old friends right? I can tell you things, can't I?”

“Sure. Uh huh. Tough day at work. Students giving you a hard time. Girlfriend dumping you. Go on.” She had dropped all of the flirtatious affectations of the night before, like a smoky cocktail dress to the floor.

Machowsky knew that it would have been better to change topics, yet he pushed on. “Kids. You know how cruel they can be.”

“Sure,” Allison said. She set her knife down. She took a deep breath then exhaled.

“I mean, you do know. It’s been on the news. That Massachusetts case.”

“Sure.”

“That girl who had been bullied and who was driven to commit—”

“Yes,” Allison said, her voice now tinged with impatience.

“I hit a kid today,” said Machowsky. He clenched his fist again and felt the pain throbbing around his knuckles.

“What? You hit a child?”

“This kid was more of a man really. A senior. He’s a big kid. Played football before being booted off the team. Good linebacker. Bad student. Held back once. He’s an adult in my eyes. He’s just got this mean streak. And during recess, I saw him taunting this girl, getting real evil on her.”

“Go on,” Allison was still on the fence as to whether she should finish his omelette or throw out the ingredients. She let her hands rest on her hips.

“Horrible. There was a crowd gathering around some dispute. A lot of screaming and shouting. And where were the other teachers? As I walked up I noticed there wasn't another colleague in sight. With all that commotion I found it suspicious that no teacher would peer out of their classrooms and put a stop to this. So I walked out there. He was calling her all of these things and she just stood there, terrified. She was a good student. Quiet. Worked hard. But I did notice that her grades had been slipping. I have no idea what the politics of the situation was but the way he was berating her you could see this wasn’t anything new. She looked worn down by it. Defeated. I could see a hidden pocket of potential violence bubbling up around them. He was getting really worked up. I walked up and broke up the circle and the kid, Josh, stood up to me. We were eye to eye. Like I said, he’s a big kid. He continues berating her, then he takes his soda can and empties it over her head. It wreaks of alcohol. So I step in and grab this can from him and he shoves me off. He comes at me, grabs my collar, and tells me to mind my own business. Then he goes back to her and spits in her face and that’s where I spin 'em around and sock him.”

“In the face with a closed fist,” Allison confirmed.

“That’s right. He went down, and then I kicked him.”

“You kicked him?” her jaw dropped.

“Just seeing what I had seen, and from the stories in the news, I just snapped. I hit the guy then I kicked him when he went down and I knew right away that was wrong. But also, he was asking for it. I should have just pulled him away and cooled him off. But this kid was volatile. He needed to be subdued fast. And he needed to know in his terms, in a way he could understand, that you just don’t do shit like that! That's when all of my colleagues come running. Nice and easy as they please. They restrain him as he's getting up and they restrain me. Anyway, I was let go earlier that day and people are reviewing my situation and I’m sure I’m getting what’s coming. A lot of students and colleagues are saying that I was acting in self defense and that the kid was actually scaring them, but when the story becomes clearer I’m sure I’m screwed. But you know what? It felt good. It felt as if I was standing up for decency. And that's an important thing. I was a hero. All the students looked at me differently. I wasn’t some over-the-hill teacher. I was still vital. I was more than that. If I had the choice, I would probably do the same thing.”

"And the girl? What did she do?"

"She cursed me out. I was shocked."

Allison sighed, retrieved a stainless steel pan from the cabinet and turned on the stove burner. The flame came on like a phantom sunflower and hissed at the underside of the pan. “Go take a shower,” she said. “I’ll have your food ready for you when you come out. You look like you need a warm shower.”

“Yeah,” said Machowsky. “I suppose that’ll set me right.”

“You know,” Allison said over her shoulder. “It was wrong. There’s no detour around the shit storm you’re approaching. I won’t waste my breath explaining why. I... I don't think I can abide by that.... look, go take a shower, and when you come out, eat your breakfast. Take your time. I... I’ll be gone by then so you can let yourself out, just lock the door.”

Machowsky stood there waiting for more but she had gone silent. “Maybe I should just go,” he said.

“Your call.”

Machowsky went into the bedroom.

Allison followed him and stood behind him in the doorway, her robe wrapped tightly around her making her look like a summer roll. “You realize you lowered yourself to their level! You’re twice their age! I can’t believe you! Really? You feel good about punching out a student? I can’t believe it. What you've done is unforgivable. It's like a case of malpractice.” She sighed, filling the air with disappointment, letting it intermingle with the cloud of shame that was already filling the room on his behalf.

“I guess I have a lot to learn. It’s the perfect time to make some changes in my life,” he said.

He could see that she took the statement to be nothing more than transparent posturing and a callow call for pity. “Shower off,” she said. “Because right now, you wreak of alcohol.”

* * *

In the bathroom was a small window overlooking the downtown area. Machowsky peered out the window and surveyed the little lights below. There were dotted lines in his head, imaginary markers that he superimposed over cars and the lights of certain apartments, representing all of the places Melanie could have gone. For the first time that evening, he stopped feeling sorry for himself. He recalled the list Melanie had written and began mentally adding to it in an act of self loathing.

Childish. Immature. Selfish. Deluded. Lost.

Machowsky leaned against the tile wall and began to cry. He wondered how he had gotten so far off track. Here, he sat in the bathroom, suspended high above the city with a woman he could barely remember, while the woman he loved was moving fast away from him. She could have been on a plane over the Pacific. She could have been weeping by herself in a hotel room. She could have been with some other man in a new apartment, waking up feeling so new and recharged that it felt like the first day of her new and happy life. Of course she had left him! She must have sensed a storm coming! His career was ruined. He was ruined.

Machowsky cried his tears in the shower, whimpering and pounding his fist over his head. He wept until he could no longer wring anymore from his eyelids, took a deep breath and got out of the shower. When he emerged from the bathroom he felt reborn of steam and heat. He felt vacuous and clear. He felt vaporous. Vapid. He was ready to take on the color of whatever came next.

The power flickered on and off for a moment, and the bathroom light went out. When he walked into the kitchen Allison was gone. “Allison? You here?” He surveyed the living room. The air conditioner had been turned off. A dim light had begun to energize the sky, although it seemed too early for dawn. The metronome continued chipping away at the silence.

Tick... Tick...

On the counter top he saw a plate set out. There wasn’t an omelette. Instead, there were two eggs, sunny side up, and two slices of bacon arranged to resemble a happy face.

Machowksy felt wounded. This was Allison’s old way of telling him to grow up. In her eyes, he had become a child. He regretted telling her that story about the kid. Embarrassment and regret washed over him. He felt as if he had been dumped twice in one evening. He looked around the apartment again. There were no notes or clues as to where she had gone. He returned to the dish and stared at the grinning ocelli and talked himself out of eating it.

He was about to dump it down the disposal when he saw a little napkin on the floor; a draft must have blown it from the counter top when Allison opened the door to leave. He picked it up, took a deep breath and read it. Good luck. Don’t worry about the dishes. Take care.

* * *

When the first close streak of lightning slashed horizontally across the skyline, Allison's house phone began ringing. Machowsky searched the living room but couldn't locate it's muffled tone. Another streak of lightning flashed across the window only a few yards away, soundlessly. The hairs along his arms and neck stood on end. The phone continued to ring and the answering machine picked up. "Just tried your cell. Are you seeing this?" a stranger's voice asked from within a whorl of static. "Call me back as soon as you can."

He gathered his things and made for the door. While putting on his watch he stopped to look out the window to examine the skyline. All was calm again. The image of the city doubled as his eyes focused on the glass pane that separated him from everything and everyone else. He lingered on his own reflection — a lone figure afloat over a city at dawn. He looked beyond himself and noticed a shimmering sequence of lights above Diamond Head. It was a strange, unnatural set of pin pricks. The sun had yet to rise, and the sky above was a deep abysmal blue. Were they stars? Planes? Meteors? The lights grew brighter, and three distinct luminous pinwheels emerged from the clouds beyond the mountain. They coalesced and emitted a series of blinding flashes, setting parts of the city ablaze. "Oh my God," he said, dropping to the floor. His phone began ringing, Allison, he thought, but realized that she wouldn't have had his number. When he took it out and identified the caller he saw that it was Melanie and when he answered, she was frantic. She was in a panic and he could hear the commotion of a panicked suburban sidewalk around her. Calmly, he spoke. "Mel," he said. "Where are you? Stay on the phone with me until I find you." Pulses of light quickened in the window casting a flickering square of light along the ceiling. Slowly, he slid away from the glass, shielding his eyes. "Where are you?" he asked again. She was crying. Over the phone, she recalled the previous day's events and apologized and told him that she was just confused and uncertain; that she didn't mean any of the things she had said. "It's okay," he answered. "None of that matters. Just tell me where you are!" he called out. The building began shaking. The emergency sirens began blaring.

She told him for the first time that she loved him. She felt it, now. Machowsky closed his eyes and let those words sink in like pennies down a well. He thought about those words and what they meant, at the degrees of truth they held, at how much of it seemed a promise and how much of it seemed a plea. In those moments, he thought about his life — of those instances he had held onto as models of pure emotional need, stripped away of all artifice. He closed his eyes as the walls shook and the shelving in the apartment shivered sheets of fine dust particles over their ledges, and wondered how much of it had been real. And now, as the window flashed white and the building 24 floors up rumbled and shook like the climactic ending of a swaying game of Jenga, here was a woman who was saying those words and offering just that. And, although Machowsky wasn't sure of it's truth, he closed his eyes and let it sink in, let his body absorb that placebo, promising her that if given a second chance, they would never separate again. "I love you, too," he said, and meant it. "And now that we've said it, it'll protect us. Like some protective shield," he continued. "No matter what's happening around you, you'll be safe. You and me," he said, shutting his eyes, enclosing himself in a bubble of darkness as the world around him lit up in a white flower blossom of heat. Here it was, all of life's yearnings distilled into a single moment. All his life he had fostered a vague idea that love alone would one day save him, and in the end, it almost did.

THE BLIND CHUKA SOBA MASTER

Although by now I am a pretty well rounded and well known food writer, there was once a time when I drifted aimlessly, like a single scallion aswirl in a steaming soup broth. And if you asked me how I had come to find my profession, you would find I stumbled upon it just as aimlessly; that it had taken more than one lesson for me to take it seriously.

You see, for a long time, when it came to food, my taste and tolerance for heat had always been near nil. There were certain cuisines that I just couldn't... stand up to. And, I'd gotten used to this. I had accepted the fact that I would forever sweat uncontrollably, as if melting, upon entering any Indian restaurant. I would never be able spoon wasabi into soy sauce. I would never be able to dip a tortilla chip into salsa. Nor would I ever eat any type of curry, no matter how mild the mixture was claimed to be. Never. I had accepted that. I'd come to terms with it. Some people were allergic to peanuts. Others, like myself, were allergic to flavor.

It was a strange year, when this acuity of mine kicked into overdrive, thrusting all food fare into the realm of sheer allergen while at the same time increasing my craving for them. I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I was forced to insulate a hypersensitive sense of taste from the newly amplified heat of ordinary herbs and spices. I had become ten times for reactive to food than any supertaster.

I was dealing with a tongue as reactive to spice as a snail to salt. Even the slightest pinch or dash of black pepper would boil the sweat out from under my skin as if every pore was a roiling hot pot. With any given meal, my preferred ratio of protein to spice would be 6 ounces to a few grains. I had to forget my normal eating habits. Any dish that had been on my regular rotation suddenly betrayed me with a blast of nuclear heat. It was as if I were cramming handfuls of habernero peppers and ghost chilis into my mouth. Simple, throwaway meals that I normally scarfed down and forgot about a few minutes later – like an ordinary can of beef and barley soup – would last me weeks. It took an additional gallon of water to dilute it's flavor to meet acceptable flavor levels, leaving me with a large red, soup pot of leftovers.

For a while, I no longer enjoyed food. Eating on the go required too much portioning, and much of what I purchased at Foodland and Times and the Kokua market began piling up in my refrigerator and going to seed. I had never thought of a cup of rice as pungent and acidic, but when a simple bowl of brown rice began yielding a few unexpectedly piquant notes of its own, I admit I began warming up to the novelty of my condition. After all, it was an economical and healthy way to live. I drastically cut back on my sodium intake and I even lost 20 pounds after the first month. I could stretch items out over a span of weeks. Half a teaspoon of apple juice concentrate in a liter of water was enough for me to taste an entire orchard. I became aware of certain ghostly echoes in everything I prepared as if I were a culinary psychic who could never tune down those voices. I became haunted. I ate with my eyes closed, and counted every speck of pepper and every grain of salt. I was a spirit medium channeling a single grain of salt floating in blackness. I'd let the steam waft up through my palms, and it was as if I could see the world it came from.

* * *

The otolaryngologists could make nothing of it. They told me that everything was in order. All test results were exemplary of a healthy 30 year old male. Aside from being a complete food wimp, I was in perfect physical condition. Although there were individuals in the world that were called supertasters – those with anatomical variations such as a higher number of fungiform papillae on their tongues – acute episodes were not known. My condition, therefore, may have been more of a psychological tenure, as if a certain sustained tension had manifested itself in my mouth. "It could be stress. It could be your diet. It could all just be relative, and it's a matter of perception." said Doctor Shin. He had just examined my tongue with a pair of pincers. He continued, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Has there been any psychological trauma? Or there may be something that you aren't even aware of, mentally. I could recommend a few specialists for you, if you'd like. Or you could just wait this out."

I decided to wait it out, to see where this anomaly would take me. Every kid feels they are special, as they are told, but at some point they realize a certain skill or talent that sets them apart from the others. Some people feel they are attuned to something larger, that there was something in store for them. For a lot of folks, as they grow older, this feeling disappears. For me, it had all but gone away. This new development, strange and inconvenient as it was, was a welcome one.

* * *

There are new flavors that I enjoy. I can taste everything. I can even taste the difference between different brands of bottled water simply for the industrial echoes of their entire packaging process. Dasani tastes a bit more metallic than Evian. Smart water tastes the closest to rain, if it weren’t for it’s own particular tannins, no matter how gentle, that it owes to the brand of plastic its encased in. In some obscure brands I can taste the sand, gravel and crushed granite that filtered it in stages, and in others I can savor the all natural methods of filtration through the slight smokiness of charcoal and wood, and yet in others, those that utilize more modern methods such as reverse osmosis, I can taste the mechanics behind it.

Some call it superhuman, others see it as a sign of frailty and weakness. Some find it annoying while others claim it endearing.

One night, over dinner at a quiet, tucked away Thai Restaurant, my girlfriend and I watched a man take on the challenge of eating a nuclear concoction of curry. He had been sweating, and he had the same sheen as the golden Buddha statue that greeted us at the door. The challenge was simple. Finish the 18 chili curry and your postmortem photograph is placed on an alter, burst capillaries an all, for all future patrons to admire. The man of course had a tongue made of wood - it may as well had been a clothes pin. Meanwhile, I myself had a share of the mildest of yellow curry, just a teaspoon of it, to mix into a bowl of my basmatti rice - the equivalent of stirring a dash of curry powder into it. Its flavor sent fire trucks coursing through my veins, sirens blaring. Sweat pooled in the wells below my eye sockets. I asked for water and drunk it down while the waiter was still there, tasting the bitter citrus-scented dish soap the pitcher had been washed in.

My girl, Nat, embarrased more for me than for herself asked me “Why did you choose this place?”

I dabbed at the little rivulets of sweat off of my eyelids and told her that I was craving it. A moth to flame.

“That was too much? That teaspoon?" she asked. Although we had been living with this disorder, or gift, for some time, she always found it new, and always asked me what if questions.

“You could have been happy with a slice of bread and pat of lightly salted butter. What happens if you eat chocolate. Or something without any spice whatsoever? Like candy or a fruit? Something super sweet.”

“I taste it threefold. It’s super concentrated."

"Do you enjoy anything like any other normal person would? Soda crackers?"

"It's all about portioning. Recently, though, if it’s really good to begin with I sob uncontrollably. This just happened last week. This Thai chef brought some perfectly proportioned curry for me, and it was so good I began crying."

She arched her eyebrow. "Are you sure it was the food?"

"Yes. It was that good." I toyed with the votive on our table.

"It's food. How can it make you cry?" She asked again, brows knit together in concern. She leaned forward and patted my chin with a napkin.

"It's a different kind of emotion. The emotional uplift that makes you cry. It’s brought about by what you would perceive as incredible kindness. It’s called elevation.”

“Elevation?”

I nodded. “I see it as a form of extreme empathy. From one human being to another, something prepared and shared with only the pleasure of the recipient in mind. It’s as if someone understands the meaning of life altogether and they can only articulate it in a specific way.”

"And so you cried? Were you feeling sorry for yourself? About your condition?"

"No. It was just. That. Good." I smiled.

She shrugged. "Why the elevation? Why note it as kindness? They're making money off of it."

"Even if they are making money off it now, it wasn't always like that. Not in terms of humanity. These are echoes of tradition and culture. I suppose I'm beginning an increasingly emotional relationship with the food I eat. It's all very personal to me now. I suppose, now, more than before, I respect every ingredient. I root for each one. I know this sounds strange but, even my dreams have flavors. I even have anxiety dreams where certain foods taste wrong. I pick up my favorite fruit, a platter of strawberries, and they taste like bananas. Anyway... I guess it's the fact that someone could be this good. That they would think to do this in a certain way to, you know, elevate it. It's inspiring. "

“What if you kiss someone,” she asked. “Do you start sobbing? It’s an act of kindness. A gesture of love. Doesn’t that elevate you when you kiss me? Or do you just taste my meal?”

“I suppose that’s a little different.”

“I see. I guess I don’t move you as much do I?”

“It’s not that. I’ve seen you go through tissue packets at weepy romance movies. But I don't expect you to swoon over every gesture I make. It’s the same thing. It’s the conversion of elements at a precise moment in time set against each other in a precise way. And it gets at you.”

I fell silent. Nat dipped her fork into her curry.

“You should take advantage of this new found talent. Don't waste it.” she said. “Maybe we can do a video blog series. We’ll see if there is any chef in oahu that can prepare a dish that’s pitch perfect on your own terms. I’m sure it’ll all taste like oatmeal to everyone else, but that will be the challenge. If he can do it, he is a Master of Flavor.”

“What’s entertaining about that?”

She lifted her head and examined the mustard yellow wall. “Well, the chef could speak for a little while, show the viewer how little that he’s using. Then he’ll bring it out to you, and you taste it. If it elicits the response I just witnessed, you know, the tell tale signs of watery eyes and sweaty forehead, then he loses the challenge. You get a laugh. Then, having set the tone and premise of a low tolerance for heat, the chef brings out his spiciest concoction and you gorge on it.”

“Pretty self flagellating.”

"And funny, too.”

* * *

Of course we really went ahead with it! It seemed playful and funny. We posted a few poorly lit shots of me leaning my elbows onto a checkered table cloth, shoving forks of spicy garlic shrimp or mongolian spicy beef and coming up with a red alert. And of course sometimes I gagged and poured cold water down my throat and over my head for good effect. Nat could be heard laughing off camera and then she would set the camera down on the table and the frame would stop shaking. She’d come over and help me catch my breath. The part that failed with any viewers was the fact that they couldn’t really taste how mild the food really was. I had even dipped the slices of beef into a glass of water to cool it. It just seemed fake. It just ended up being another poorly conceived and poorly executed video on youtube.

Eventually we stopped doing those videos. They got more negative comments than any positive ones. "Stupid" and "Fake" being two of them. But we enjoyed watching them ourselves. We decided to do one more, and it was at a small yatai, or noodle house. We had heard about a remarkable chef there. He was a blind ramen chef. We had heard about his modest establishment in Liliha, and were curious about this blind cook. He was considered a master in Ebisu, his old neighborhood in Tokyo, where he owned a few yatais. He was the blind swordsman of noodles, only rarely did he make a minor error. Unfortunately, that night would be one of those nights. During the preparation of our meal, he used spicy miso and sesame oil instead of watered down pork broth for my noodles and I ended up having a small seizure on the floor. Someone called the chef as I convulsed between the legs of the table, and he stumbled out of his kitchen like a mummy stumbling out of an exhumed coffin. He held his hands out a and walked slowly, eyes blind as water chestnuts. A waitress led him to us. He bowed his head. To Nat, he was very apologetic about the entire ordeal and asked us to come back to dinner, on the house.

"Please," he said. "Forgive me. I am usually so careful with allergic foods."

Nat explained the situation to him; my hypersensitivity to certain flavors. He nodded as she spoke and then said “Not hyper sensitivity." He pointed to his ear. “Hyper sensitive is like how I hear. I hear better than most other. But hyper aware, that is how I taste and cook. He has honed a palette. It is a skill on the cusp. But it is there.”

Nat answered, “It’s a very weak palette.”

The chef nodded, “I understand. It doesn’t take a much. Please come back. I show you what I can do.”

I got up and waved it off to the crowd gathering outside of the establishment's door, which in retrospect was ridiculous thing to do.

* * *

When we returned a week later, the waitress remembered us to the chef. He kindly greeted us and he told me that he had been preparing a pitch perfect broth for weeks, just in case I came back. The broth was perfectly balanced with just enough spice for me to appreciate it’s flavor, yet the only thing I could see in it was the rippling square of the ceiling light reflected on its surface. To enhace the appearance of it, it was served to me in an austere white bowl without the usual japanese-inspired ornamentation. There was a hint of salty pork broth, subtle earthiness of bamboo shoots, the sweetness of shiitake mushrooms, as well as roasted sesame oil, wakame, konyaku, all a swirl in a crystal clear broth. To Nat it simply tasted like water. To me, it tasted like a bowl that had been transported from household in Kumamoto, Japan. I closed my eyes and I could taste exactly two grains of pepper, and a single speck of salt. How did he dissolve it so evenly in the noodles? It was like spreading a pat of butter perfectly over a basketball court. I started sobbing. Despite myself, I started weeping like a child.

We returned there three times a week. And each time, there was a new broth for me to try. Each invention was crystal clear, and he assured me that there were no additives. “No collagen in this whatsoever?” I asked once. The broth sat like a clear lens in my bowl. When I tasted it, it was thick and rich. To Nat, it tasted like water. “None,” the chef laughed. “Do you like?”

I did.

“It’s amazing,” Nat said softly. She delicately dipped my wooden spoon into the broth and sipped lightly. “I can’t taste a thing. But you say it's rich and smoky?”

"It is," I said.

“Do you like a yours?” the chef asked.

Nat brought her face down to her own bowl and took in the aroma of her Tonkatsu broth. “It’s perfect,” she said, dreamily.

* * *

Nat and I had only been together for 10 months But I knew that over the course of those meals, she had become more interested in the soups than I had been. She began asking more technical questions about the preparation of each. The last time we were there together, the ramen chef sat with us and began a soliloquy on the flavors of ramen broth and how they are all a part of one big symphony. He expounded on the tradition of it that was carried through his family, how it began in China 4000 years ago, how it made its way to Japan and how it had become a mainstay in Japan throughout the food shortages during the war. It was a single long noodle spanning through each generation of his family.

He told us about going blind as a cook, how it started in his thirties as dark spot in the center of his vision, as if someone were holding a mirror in front of him that reflected nothing but darkness. Still, he worked in his kitchen, occasionally knocking things over. When the doctors told him there was nothing they could do, he cooked faster, racing against the curtains. When his peripheral vision started to wane, he walked in to his kitchen early one morning before any work had begun and called out to his staff. "Stop! Let me take on last look at this and from this day on, nothing is to be put out of place. Everything now is where it belongs and is never to be misplaced. Understood?"

"Yes chef!" they all said. And for years, he cooked with the aid to two helpers guiding him around the kitchen. Herbs and spices, pot handles and cutlery, refrigerators and freezers were all labeled with braille. There were bad burns and deep cuts, but he continued cooking. He worked slowly and with aides on both sides. No matter how impractical and even hazardous this seemed, it was his was his kitchen, and he would never leave it.

If he thought navigating his workplace was difficult, he would come to know the nightmare of not seeing what he was tasting. Vision, playing such a large role in the sense of taste, had taken with it an entire lexicon for flavors. He had difficulty discerning the difference between chicken and pork. He couldn't tell the difference between kale and cabbage. He had to retrain himself to identify flavors and textures that he had taken for granted. He worked tirelessly. Eventually, his handicap had become his strength. Flavors became more pure. Without the distraction of sight and a visual bias toward foods he was able to cut to the bone of the matter, so to speak, and master flavors no other chef would have ever considered. Soon, he took to strictly composing dishes. He traveled and tasted the flavors of different cultures. And what he learned, he applied to his own creations. Every dish was leaner. More concentrated. They were like symphonies – no note out of place.

The chef waxed poetic about it until Nat’s eyes gleamed like portals to some distant noodle house. I knew the path we were on would offer up a fork in the road soon. She grew quieter and quieter at each meal. And she only brightened up when he appeared. Eventually, she began eating at the ramen shop alone.

One night - and this is the evening I always return to - I got home from work and found Nat in the tub. She was up to her neck in white bubbles. It had been a week since we shared any quiet time together.

"Mind if I join you?" I asked.

"No, not at all," she scooted up and I undressed and climbed in behind her. I massaged her shoulders, and herded bubbles along her arms.

"Do you know that painting by Vincent Van Gogh?" she asked. Her voice, soft, echoed off the tiles.

"Starry night?" So did mine.

"No. Um. Sunflowers."

"Maybe."

"It's a bright, manic painting of sunflowers."

"Ok. No."

"It's the story behind them I'm interested in."

"Tell me."

She sat up a little, forming rounded foam balls in her hands. "They say Van Gogh cut off his ear because he couldn't paint his self portrait right. He was clinically depressed. Maybe bi-polar. He was passionate about his art and he went through manic highs and lows in trying to get at that certain something. And there was Paul Gaugin, another painter who was frustrated as an artist, who longed to leave his home in Paris because he felt it was too corrupt and decadent. Dominated by the wealthy. I guess he wanted to go somewhere pure, where some human truth could be discovered."

"So this is about these two artists who meet and start a commune?" I asked. I let my foot sit on the ledge of the tub. With my other foot I hit the hot water knob and more bubbles and steam wafted up around us..

"Basically yeah," she continued. "They had seen each other's paintings and respected and admired each other's works. They exchanged self portraits. Paintings of nature. And eventually agreed to form a studio."

"Homeboys for life. Brohemians."

She laughed and splashed a few droplets of water in my face. A droplet landed on my lower lip and I could taste enchanted orchid bubbles, dead seas salts, her perfume, Happy, and all of her chemistry swirling together.

"Well," she went on, "Van Gogh proved to be a needy, clingy type of guy. They argued continuously about how they should paint. One argued to paint from nature while the other said to paint from the imagination and sometimes they would compromise. Gaugin, however, was a bit more laid back. A bit more level headed. Yeah, he had his convictions but they never became obsessions."

"But with Van Gogh..." I chimed in.

"It meant everything. And because they were friends, Van Gogh basically would not stop arguing his point. Because they were friends, he needed Gaugin to agree, to be like minded. And this ate him up because Gaugun had his own opinions and wouldn't follow suit. He went off on his own explorations and had his own ideas and this devastated Van Gogh."

"So he chopped off his own ear."

"I suppose at around that time, yeah. This was too much. Gaugin left the studio, and although he remained a distant friend, he never went back to work with Van Gogh again."

"Who would?"

"Van Gogh was admitted into an asylum. He was considered mentally unwell. And until his endgame, he painted. He painted his most famous works while in an insane asylum."

"And then?"

"What remains among his works is the sunflowers. A gift to Gaugin. A symbol of a friendship they could never return to. In a language that is undecipherable by anyone except the two artists involved. I can imagine it. To any other art critic, it's a work of a great artist. To Gaugin, within those strokes, the color choices, the lines and composition, is obsessiveness, stubborness, regret, love, a final appeal for understanding. An entirely different message."

She fell silent. The water beneath the cloud of bubbles lolled back and forth. She lifted her leg out of the water and a series of rivers, tides and waterfalls cascaded along her leg. Through the bubbles it was like a peak protuding through grey storm clouds.

"What are you trying to tell me?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's just been on my mind. Let's say you have a father who is deaf, and you grow up to become a famous opera singer? How do you reach him?"

"Wait. Now why an opera singer?"

"Painting, singing – what's the difference? My question is what language do you use when your primary one isn't enough? Van Gogh wasn't good with people, but he could pour his heart out in his paintings."

"I don't get it," I said. "So.... There's creation and perception, right? Which side would I stand on in this analogy?" I asked.

"Neither! God. None of them are about you. It's just... I'm trying to get at something here. I just don't know, you know?" She sat up.

"What don't you know?" I asked.

"I don't know what I don't know." And with that, she climbed out of the tub.

* * *

I knew what was coming. I deserved it. I was dense and insensitive, and I didn't really pay too much attention to what she was going through. Inevitably, she ended up exiting stage east with him. She couldn’t help it, she told me later. “I guess all the elements converged for me when we met him. I’m going to travel to Tokyo with him. I've been learning under him for some time. I supposed at around that time I started eating here alone. I know you noticed but never said anything. It started off casually enough, but then something clicked. He’ll teach me a thing or two, and he says I have a natural knack for this. I guess I understand the kind of elevation you feel sometimes now when it comes to food. Only, I’d rather be the one on the other side of the restaurant. I want to be in the kitchen, making food people could weep over. I've always wanted to master a language. An art. And I want it to speak for me so that I wouldn't have to say a word. I just never knew what that was. You understand? I can't let this go.”

Before they left a year later, I visited them one last time at the noodle shop. She was working in the kitchen, assisting him with each dish. She had prepared the same broth for me and told me that she was glad that I had come. It turned out that the process of preparing it involved a wood block filtration system. It took an entire week and involved "pulling" and "kneading" the broth. And she had prepared it without knowing if she would ever see me again.

She brought the bowl out to me herself and sat with me as I savored it. It was beautifully done and I swallowed my pride with each spoonful. With each tasting, it's flavor grew weaker and weaker, until it became as bland as water. My sense of taste had readjusted itself, finally. All the noise over my tastebuds quieted. The bowl of soup which started out vibrant ended up flavorless. After that, more flavors were lost to me. And no matter how much I yearned for my senses to reconfigure themselves, to revive their hyper acute state, they never did. Such is a quirk in the face of heartbreak. I was now tasking a bowl of water.

Nat's newfound talent had become considerable, and I had read about her here and there in culinary magazines. She had become a famous figure in her own right, an apprentice of the famous blind chuka soba master. I don't know what I don't know, she had told me. And by that she meant she didn't know where her talents lay. At what depths. At what potential.

The soup bowl sat cold and empty on the table. I looked up at Nat and smiled. She smiled back. "Well, that takes care of that," she said, surely meaning my own tasteology.

"Nicely done," I said. "I'm cured."

"Thank you." she let her hand rest on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Take care of yourself," she said, but when she did, she leaned down and whispered it into my ear. I closed my eyes and let her pick up the empty bowl. She walked away with it and never returned. I would never have another bowl like it again.

Nat had figured things out for herself, and in doing so, she had turned my world upside down. When I left, I shut myself in for a week. I kept my phone off. I rarely ate. For the first time ever, I felt not just adrift, but truly lost. What if I lacked the wherewithal to reinvent myself. What would my path be?

Then I recalled once there was a television channel called BookTV, and there was a small awards program – not unlike the oscars – one that any industry lavishes on it's first and foremost talents. Only in this case, an A-list actor was the master of ceremonies. There was an old woman, about eighty years old, who had dreamed all her life of being a writer. At eighty, she was published for the first time. At eighty, she had won a book award. I don't remember her name or the book she had written. Maybe it was a book on sunflowers. It doesn't matter. What it was about, or even the fact that it was a book is beside the point. When she stood at the podium, she smiled triumphantly and said — as only a woman after a life of hard dreaming and searching could ever say — "I am a prime example that it's never too late to bloom." And if it's true for her, it's true for everyone.