Tokyo Rows Cafe

                            Tokyo Rows Café

    William Abbey killed Milford Small after a poolroom fight in nineteen sixty-eight.  It was a brief altercation in the pool room; each taking a turn practicing headlocks and left-hand jabs.  Milford was poked in the eye with a pool cue belonging to a patron of Dixie’s Pool Hall, who was observing their weekly tussle.  Milford escaped the pool room with the measured gate of one who’d consumed eleven dark ales, and was focused only on finding his way home. 

    He yelled at James Abey over the saloon’s noise, “Your wife is a… and I wanted you to know.” William Abby didn’t hear much of what Milford said about his wife, but the fact he said anything at all was too much for William Abey.

    William let the words he did hear settle, and then broke the cue he was holding on the pool tables’ edge. He ran out the door, and with the agility and precision of a javelin throwing Olympic gold medalist, hurled the cue at the staggering Milford Small. As fate would have it, the cue found its target.

    Those that witnessed the event said the splintered end of the cue entered Milford’s body just below his left shoulder, grazing his heart as well as ruining the hand-embroidered-talking fish logo on his bowling shirt. 

    Milford collapsed like a dead man hopeful of a reprieve. He grabbed the railing separating the walk from the river and lowered himself onto the concrete . When James saw what he’d done, he ran to Milford and held him in his arms hoping Milford would forgive him.

    Milford, although down, was not out.  He sank his teeth into the ear of the contrite William Abey as he wrapped his arms around him and forced himself backward under the railing, taking James with him into the river. They found them locked in each other’s arms a week later by the dam. They now lay side by side in the Veterans’ cemetery; it is reserved for those that had died in battle or other related events.

   James Junior, who was twelve at the time, inherited his father’s café. When he turned eighteen and became a proud, if not distinguished high school graduate, he reopened the Tokyo Rows Café.

    The Tokyo Rows Café was known for its iconic painting on its front window of a sailor assumed to be William Abey, rowing a boat on a placid lake covered with flower petals from the cherry trees that lined the bank. The woman was dressed in a traditional kimono, her face obscured by a pink parasol.     

    James Abey reopened the café thirteen months after an electrical fire damaged the kitchen, and again sixteen months later when a disgruntled employee, who no one ever remembered seeing, threw a Molotov cocktail through a window at three in the morning on the Fourth of July. 

    Both times, James, who lived in the apartment above the café, narrowly escaped with his life and his forty-five-inch TV. The restaurant would have closed for good, but for the “luck of a Jewish pig,” as the people of Sandusky proper were fond of saying.

    James Abey was the sole proprietor, chief cook and dish washer. He knew more about uplifting spirits than he did about running a café.

    Billy Jean came in one day and ordered the daily special, knowing full well she had no money. When it came time to pay she told James that she was broke, and would have to do dishes in lieu of payment. James smiled and then punched her in the eye, knocking her to the floor unconscious. 

    James, after his emotional level receded, began to think over her proposition, and decided it would be cheaper to feed someone to do the dishes than pay someone; he hired her for two meals a day and all the pie she could eat on Sunday. On Monday she moved into his spare bedroom, on Tuesday she began to wait tables in her spare time, and on Wednesday they were married in Du Chien by Brother Godspell, as he insisted on being called. 

    As it turned out Billy Jean was a born fry cook. Soon, James was doing the dishes and waiting tables; something that was more suited to his temperament. 

    There wasn’t a better liar in all of Iowa County than Brother James as he took to calling himself; he had found God in a steam cloud above the leaking radiator in the room he called “the office.”

    Word got around as it often does, and soon Tokyo Rows was the place to go, particularly if you didn’t have any money. 

    The third floor of the building had once been a psychiatric ward for dysfunctional Confederate soldiers who refused to return home. It was converted to a shelter by James and Billy Jean for disadvantaged consumers, providing temporary shelter for down on your luck patrons. 

    They put a few cots in the meeting room, a radio, and on weekends Billy Jean would teach the boys to dance. It was on a Saturday night in October, when the Festival moon shone its brightest, that Efran met James and Billy Jean.

    Efran offered to pay for his meal with the aluminum cans he’d collected from the bottom of the lake adjacent to the golf course, but James wouldn’t hear of it. He told him to “go on upstairs with the rest of the worthless bastards, you can pay me back in the morning by going to church for me.” 

    “You want me to go to church in your place, to pay for my meal?” Efran thinking he misunderstood James.

    “No” James shouted, frustrated by his inability to properly manipulate the English language.  “No, I want you to go to church instead of me. You take my place in church, and I’ll call it even. What do you say?”

   Efran said nothing, hoping the reason for what he was being asked to do would become clear to him, but it didn’t. 

    “Look,” James finally said, sensing the boy’s confusion, “All I want you to do is put on my coat and hat… here,” he said handing him a black trench coat and a floppy hat that smelled of fish, “and pretend to be me. She’ll never know the difference. You do have sun glasses I presume?” 

    “Who won’t?” Efran was now more confused than ever. 

    “Billy Jean, who’d you think? This church stuff is her thing not mine, but if I don’t go along to get along, it’s the one-eyed squint for me. So, what do you say?”

    What could it hurt; Efran thought. All I have to do is stand around in the back of the church and pretend to be someone other than me, and for that I get a place to stay and something to eat. Seems more than fair he thought; even though the idea of church has always given me an uneasy feeling, perhaps because I don’t go. If I give it a try, I might find it enlightening or even entertaining. 

    It was his fourth appearance at the service as James;  Billy Jean was waiting for him outside the church. She looked at him and shook her head, and then she did something remarkable he thought, she thanked him for pretending to be James. 

    “This is better than him not bothering to do anything at all. This way I know he’s thinking about the church and me. Know what I mean?” 

    Efran didn’t, but pretended he did. She smiled and invited him to breakfast at Rows; she said she’d make him something special and they could watch James not only do the dishes, but for dessert she said, “I’ve saved a particularly blackened brisket tin for him.”

   Efran liked Billy Jean; she had a calming effect on him as well as others. One evening after closing he was helping her clean the tables, a man came in. Billy never locked the doors. “What would be the point,” she’d said, “they’d just break the window and I’d have to clean up all that glass.” 

    The man stood in the doorway trembling. She asked if she could help.  He pulled a gun from his coat pocket and told her to give him the money, waving toward the register with the barrel of the gun. 

    She walked to the register and pushed the no sale key.  The drawer sprang open, the wooden tray was empty. Billy waved her hand over it as if to say, “Help yourself.” 

    Boots on the wooden stairs echoed down the hall like gunshots. The familiar screech of the door as it arched toward the wall; James standing in his underwear, scratching… “We got any…?”

    The man’s eyes grew large at the sight of James.  Suffering from withdrawal, his entire body shook. He pointed the gun at James and motioned with the barrel for him to join Billy by the empty cash register. 

    “Who the hell are you?” James yelled, glaring at the man. James’s voice after a few drinks was normally jovial in the afternoon, but turned cold and pointed. He continued to stare at the man, but remained silent.  He pulled his t-shirt over his head and threw it on the counter. He was naked except for the dark blue boxers emblazoned with bright yellow lips and pearly white teeth and his boots. 

    “If I have to come over there, I’m going to beat the living crap out of you. You do know that don’t you? And what do you think you’ll be doing with that toy gun of yours?”  When James was angry he spoke with the brogue of an Irish slum lord.

    The man’s eyes darted about the room attempting to remember where he was and why he was there. He stepped toward the open cash drawer and peered at its empty tray. “Where’s the money?” his voice cracking, as though he were about to break into tears.

    The would-be robber began to pace before the counter stools. His hands in his pockets, his head down, seemingly searching the floor for answers.  

    “Where’s the money?” he demanded again, shouting at Billy whose face became sullen, her skin ashen. 

    “I need money,” he said pulling a second gun from his other pocket and pointing it at her.

   The order window was between the kitchen and counter area. Efran stood motionless watching the exaggerated movements of the gunman. He could see James; his face having regained its indignant profile. “You,” the man said waving the gun at Efran, “Come out of there.” 

    The gun was real; Efran had no doubt about that. The revolver, although tarnished, had an unmistakable authenticity that Efran could feel looking down its barrel. He watched as the man moved his trembling finger from the guard to the trigger. The pressure of his finger caused the cylinder to advance slightly. Efran felt as though he was looking through a magnifying lens. He could see the tips of the bullets peering out from the dark chambers.

    “Where’s the money?” the man screamed at Billy, slamming the butt of the gun on the counter. Billy jumped; the noise erased her composure, tears escaping her eyes. Her body shuddered with her attempt to breathe. She cried, not for herself but for what had died in the world, a value lost that couldn’t be recovered.

    Billy saw the reincarnation of hopelessness, an addict with a gun attempting to steal back his dignity. She looked into his face and could see tears well in his eyes; he wept for the person he thought he could never become. 

    James’s anger increased; his facial muscles rippled with an arrogance that grew as his frustration increased. He was a generous man until pressed. He’d give anyone his last shirt if they asked, but demand?  He’d burn every shirt, including the one on his back to deny you any satisfaction.

    James reached in the corner where his double barrel shotgun was propped against the wall. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be at the hand of some drug-starved idiot whose future was just a fix away. He felt the cool steel of the barrels and wrapped his fingers around them. He would wait for an opportunity to present itself. 

    He knew several people who needed killing, but not enough for him to throw his life away. One time he and his friend Ozzie put together a list of people they’d knock off given the chance. 

    “What would you do Ozzie,” James asked “If you knew you were going to die? You know, some doctor comes in, clears his throat, looks at his shoes, and says, “I’m sorry Ozzie, but I have some bad news.” 

     “I’d get my gun, buy a fresh box of shells, take the short list I keep behind the picture of Jimmy Carter on my TV, and go hunting. You do know Jimmy was the best man for the job, maybe not the best president ever, but the best man in the White House since… he was the best, no doubt in my mind. 

    James remembered being surprised by Ozzie’s candor. He had been shocked to learn he was not the only one who had considered taking a few arrogant souls for a ride. Handing Ozzie a beer James askes, “am I on your short list by chance?” 

    “I’ll let you know on Wednesday,” Ozzie grinning, “after my doctor’s appointment.”  

*

    “Where’s the money?” he screamed, the tremors in his arm made the gun move erratically. James raised the shot gun slowly from the floor until both hands could reach the stock; he lifted the gun into the air and leveled it at the gunman. He quickly pulled back both hammers. 

    James’s thumb slipped off the hammer causing one barrel to discharge, blowing a sizeable hole in the jamb above the man’s head.   

   The man jumped at the sound of the blast, his finger reflexively pulling the trigger sending a bullet close to Billy’s head; she felt its breath on her cheek. The second and third bullets were fired reflexively into the ceiling, plaster dust falling like snow. 

    James was rummaging through a cabinet looking for more shells, Billy Jean stood quietly as if waiting for death to knock once more. Efran stood in the doorway unable to decide what he could do, if anything. 

    The dust covered man looked over at James who had begun to slide a shell into the chamber. He stopped mumbling to himself; the realization of what was to come next found its way through the anxiety fog to his brain. He turned and ran to the door, gripping the handle he pulled but the door wouldn’t budge. He pulled again while looking over his shoulder at James, who had finished sliding the second shell into the chamber;  the sound of the barrels locking into the stock caused the man to freeze. 

    Smoke from the spent gunpowder filled the room.  A thin blue cloud engulfed them as James pulled the stock of the gun to his shoulder and placed the glistening ball sight on the man who had resumed his unsuccessful attempt to open the door.

    Billy Jean looked on as though trapped in a nightmare she couldn’t escape. The man looked over at Billy, his pale face void of emotion; he heard the unmistakable click of first one hammer, and then the second, tying the triggers to the firing pins. James’s finger slid past the guard and rested on the half-moon triggers. 

    What a difference and inch makes, her thoughts on feeling the bullet pass her cheek and embed itself in the wall.

     The man’s impotent attempt to escape abandoned, he lunged at the door shattering the glass. He fell through the opening onto the stoop and rolled down the steps to the walk. A thin rivulet of blood seeped from his cheek; his dust-covered hair was matted with plaster and imbedded with glass shards from the door.

    James continued to watch him, his cheek on the guns stock, his eye following the long barrels to their target. The man forced himself to his feet, looked back through the broken door at James and the gun leveled at him.

    No one moved for several minutes; lost, confused, not knowing what to do next. 

    James broke from his position by the stairwell and ran to the broken door; kicking it open he hurried down the steps, the guns sight began searching the street for satisfaction. By the time James got to the walk, the man was a hundred yards away; the man looked back over his shoulder at James and ducked into an alley.

    James knew the man was out of range, but felt a pleasurable relief in pulling first one trigger and then the other. The explosions echoed down the street disappearing into a nothingness he’d come to accept. 

    Killing was not the disciplined act James had imagined it to be, it required far more will than refusing a second jelly donut.

    Billy Jean had been shaken from her paralysis by the blasts she felt explode in her head. She stood looking out at James who continued to point the shotgun down the empty street.  

    “Jesus James!” she yelled, the words sounding to her like they had been spoken by someone else. 

    “I missed the son of a bitch” he said opening the breech, allowing the shell casing to eject onto the sidewalk. He walked passed the broken door and leaned the gun against the wall. He walked to where Billy stood. He looked at her and calmly asked, “You all right?” 

    She didn’t respond, waiting for, hoping for something more. She folded her arms across her chest, and held her shoulders tight. Tears came as the realization of what had occurred was over, chasing the remaining fear from her mind. James put his arms around her; they stood holding each other and rocking slowly to a tune only they could hear.