By Anthony Lee Gregory
Natasha Anders liked her job for the most part, and those things she didn’t like she usually did not dwell upon. She worked nights as a waitress at the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House on University Avenue, a bar and restaurant of sorts that catered mostly to third and fourth year undergraduate students. She was paying most of her way through graduate school studying philosophy, getting the rest of her tuition from her parents and through loans she would have to pay back in the years that followed, presumably once she got a steady job in Kant’s views of metaphysics, or something else she studied.
She believed in the cause. That is to say, she really was quite fond of the food served at the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House, and so when she would tell customers, “oh yeah, the garlic pot-stickers are excellent”, she really did mean it. This was the first job she truly liked in this manner; aside from other jobs waiting tables she had been a clerk at a museum gift-shop and a telemarketer. Those occupations always bothered her on some fundamental level. But now she was happy with her work.
On November 12, 1998 though, she was having problems in her personal life that would infect her work-time happiness in ways she hadn’t been used to. Her boyfriend, Mitchell Dunlap, had been, in her eyes, neglecting to spend enough time with her. He had blamed it on midterms. She had blamed it on him. They were both right.
On November 11, 1998 though, after a week of what she considered to be especially unfriendly neglect, he had failed to see her at all, which he had promised to do. That is, he had promised to see her, not to fail to see her. The big problem with this was that though Natasha and Mitchell had first met in October of 1997, they had technically become boyfriend and girlfriend of November 11 of that year. One year later, he should have stopped by, but due to midterms in his perception, and his shortcomings in hers, he failed to do this.
So on November 12, 1998, Natasha was angrier than usual when she began her evening shift at 4:30. She had learned her entire life to leave her personal problems at the door, whether that door led the way into school or work. She tried hard, but it kept popping up in her mind that evening that Mitchell was a no-good fake.
No customers came into the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House that day until about 5:15. The first to come in was a young man with frizzy hair, covered by a European apple cap, and a relatively hairless body, covered by navy blue corduroys and a gray sweater. Right behind him came another young man with red-dyed hair, leather pants and a Judas Priest tee-shirt. They were lovers.
The fellow with the apple cap ordered a pesto chicken sandwich and a hard green ice tea. His lover ordered a Caesar salad and a Michelob. The latter did this in spite of Natasha the waitress’ suggestion to forsake the mass-produced beer for the locally-brewed hard green iced tea, the most famous drink of the Tea House.
“Man. Seven-point-five percent,” spoke the one with the red hair, referring to the alcohol content of the green tea, as indicated on the menu. “That’s some serious buzz.”
“Do you think you’re better than me because you’re getting something with less alcohol,” asked his boyfriend, the first customer to enter the Tea House that night.
“No. You’re the one who ordered the premium drink.”
“Well. That doesn’t mean anything.”
This seemingly petty discourse was actually double significant. The customer in the apple cap thought that his lover ordered such mediocre drinks as Michelob to make some sort of statement, saying in effect that he didn’t need to drink more expensive drinks to feel good about himself. The Michelob consumer had a similar sentiment and an opposite theory. He thought that the apple-cap-wearing, hard-green-tea drinker only ordered such fancy drink to feel better about himself. Both of them were wrong. They both ordered alcoholic drinks to feel better period.
“Why is it called ‘Ice tea’ instead of ‘Iced tea’?” asked the Michelob drinker.
“I’m guessing it’s because it has actual ice in it. Ice tea drinks in the bottle are called ‘iced tea’ because they have no ice, but perhaps they once did,” answered the high-class green tea drinker.
This hypothesis was probably correct, along with being one of the most friendly exchanges of words between the two all day and into the night.
“So, are you going to leave for Louisville?” asked the Michelob drinker. The question was out of all appropriate contexts.
“If you keep asking me, maybe I will.” This response was slightly loud.
“Why do you have to act like this? Especially in public. Why are you so ashamed of me?”
“Will you get over that? I’m not ‘ashamed’ of you!”
Truth was, he was a little bit ashamed of him.
Natasha came with the pesto chicken sandwich and the Caesar salad. The two young men did not look up. Natasha felt awkward as she placed the orders on the shiny green table cloth, receiving not so much as the least acknowledgement of her presence.
All she got from that couple was silence. She proceeded to walk to table number 12, where sat the third customer of the Tea House that night.
“What can I get for you,” asked Natasha.
“ I suppose I’ll just have the linguini with clams.”
“ How’s the business?” Natasha vaguely knew this man. She had talked to him before. He was a normal customer at the Tea House.
“It’s okay. The store’s been doing better for some reason lately, but it’s not like it was last year this time.”
The customer managed a music store called Fermatta’s down the street. He fixed string instruments and gave viola lessons.
“It’s actually been pretty tough lately. We lost another employee.”
“Oh yeah? Another incident in the back room?”
The man had told Natasha a month or so previous about the last employee that Fermatta’s lost, a seventeen year-old girl named Betty who was caught doing sexual favors in one of the classrooms in the back of the store for cash. She would usually sneak into the small room, because no one worked there except on Wednesdays from 7:00 to 8:00 PM. This time she was caught by a trumpet instructor who had accidentally wandered into the wrong room and caught Betty and a stranger with his pants down.
“No. Nothing like that,” he assured Natasha. “Not as taboo or sexy, but arguably much stranger.”
“What happened?”
“We caught our newest employee stealing sheet music. He would scribble out some of the notes randomly and add his own changes.”
“Bizarre,” said Natasha.
The next hour crept slowly by, hammering into Natasha’s mind its very slowness by having the gay couple never leave within its sixty minutes. Until they left, thought Natasha, the night could never come to an end.
Natasha noticed a guy with long dark hair and an ambiguous complexion peering through the glass door and scanning the menu posted on it. She opened the door and asked him, “do you want to come in, or don’t you?” He answered:
“Last time I came you were more hospitable than that.”
“Grrrrrr,” sounded Natasha as she walked away, allowing the door once held open in her hand to close slowly, not slamming because of the built-in friction of the hinges. In spite of her rudeness, the guy walked in.
He sat at the third closest table to the door, setting down books and notepads and preparing mentally to order. He was a writer. The atmosphere of the restaurant would find his way into a short story, he thought.
He had just been asked for change on the street by the same woman three times that day. He thought of putting that in his story as well.
Natasha hoped he would not come in, because she did not want to serve him, or anyone else, for that matter. The writer ordered the Green Dragon Special Number Three, which was a sausage pizza and hard green tea.
The thing about the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House that appealed so much to the regionally uncommitted was the menu. They served fourteen types of green tea, including five kinds of alcoholic green tea, and the food selection was a Yuppie melting pot, mixing the finest and most diverse ethnic cuisine with high prices and sun-dried tomatoes. The sausage pizza and beverage would cost him twelve dollars and sixty five cents. It was a small price, he thought, for the inspiration he would gather for his story. He could even mention the price of his order in his story, he thought.
He never bothered to think that this was how he justified all his unwarranted expenses.
“What’s your name?” asked the writer.
“Natasha,” answered she.
“What’s your number?” asked the writer, in a simplicity of style chosen due to the fact that he was a little bit drunk.
If it were a normal day, she would have answered this question politely and strategically, no matter what the actual phrasing of her reply was. This day though, she was caught between the compulsion of blowing up at the insolence of the lusty customer and the temptation of answering him invitingly. He had a pad and pen, after all, and would probably write down and not forget any anniversary between the two of them the way Mitchell did.
She decided to take the easy way out, and give him a number she happened to know was disconnected. If ever he came back and confronted her about it, she would simply say, “oh, you thought I said ‘five’? I said ‘nine!’” This answer would perpetuate his difficulties; the number she gave him had four fives in it.
Delivering the check to the first customers of the night, Natasha caught the very end of their conversation:
“If I’m not special in your eyes any more, the way I used to be, then you should find someone else. I should find someone else.”
“I never said you were less special.”
“So I must have never been special in your eyes.”
If you showed Natasha this dialogue today, she would remember where it came from, but she couldn’t tell you which one of them said what.
“ You know what our biggest problem is?”
“Wha–”
“You don’t listen. You never listen to what I have to say.”
It was at this point that Natasha overheard another customer talking to his companion at the next table.
“ What’s your fortune cookie say?”
“ ‘You will find true happiness on Flag Day.’”
Neither of them knew when Flag Day was. Natasha didn’t either. And then, back to the gay couple:
“ Are you in love with someone else? Someone who dresses better, maybe? Someone with more culture?”
“Of course not. I have no interest in any of that.”
“Why didn’t you wave to me the other day when you were talking with your friends from the architecture department? It must be because you’re embarrassed.”
Crash! A pile of dishes broke in the kitchen. No one in the restaurant cared much. They didn’t think about who would have to pay for them. The restaurant’s customers would have to pay for them. The cost was evenly distributed among all the hard ice teas in the room.
Thirty minutes before her 6:00 break, Natasha went to the bathroom. She used to specifically wait until her breaks, but lately she had been going whenever she felt like it. This was probably best for her body.
She sat on the toilet and read a piece of paper on the wall that explained the history of the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House. The paper had a picture of a water mill on the upper right hand corner, printed along with the text in dark brown ink, and it sat inside of a simple wooded frame of a lighter shade of brown. It said:
In 1884, a mob burned down a Chinese Laundromat called Dragon Wash. When the Ho Kao family, who owned the establishment, went to the police station, authorities responded with a law that made fire insurance for Chinese Laundromats more expensive than for other businesses.
Millard Gallager Green, the philanthropic founder of Green’s Children’s Kitchen, the Green Ballet Hall and the MGG museum chain of Northern California heard about the incident and asked the Ho Kao family to join him and build Green’s Dragon Wash on their property. Since Green now owned and operated the Laundromat, they did not have to comply with all the laws that hurt Chinese Laundromats.
For a while, Green wanted badly to convert the Dragon Wash into a saloon, since laundry services were suffering, but people never stopped drinking alcohol. The Ho Kao family, who under the contract had veto power over most company decisions, refused to convert to selling alcohol.
Until 1923. When liquor became illegal, the Ho Kao family had the brilliant business plan to sell fermented tea at their Laundromat. The authorities never picked up on it, because they never suspected the Laundromats and never suspected tea. When Prohibition ended, the venture continued, now out in the open and called the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House. The Laundromat soon became a chain covering the pacific.
In 1996, Millard Gallager Green III tasted green tea for the first time and fell in love. And so green tea was finally added to the menu.
And over half our locations today still have Laundry machines that actually work.
Enjoy your time at the Green Dragon Ho Kao Tea House, and remember to try our free samples!
Natasha wondered for the first time if this story tracing the origin of the place of her employment was true.
She always had assumed it wasn’t.
The Tea House, impressive establishment of Americana or no, had a lovely atmosphere. Oriental-looking lamps conspired with petite tabletop candles in illuminating the otherwise darkened room, casting ambiguous shadows of faces against the thin oriental-looking shades on the walls. The room itself seemed translucent.
At the bar sat two male undergraduate students, flirting with the female bartender, ever more boldly and ever more poorly with each consumed drop of Anchor Steam Beer. They chose not to drink the green tea, or any other of the alcoholic teas available at the Green Dragon Ho Hao Tea House. They thought beer was more masculine, and more attractive to women when drunken by men.
The gay couple was finally finishing their desert. For each dollar they spent, as a couple, they stayed at that table for two minutes. It was a long time and a lot of money by this point.
Natasha walked in from the bathroom, pushing herself gracelessly through the doorway dressed with beaded curtains, into the eating area. Usually she would slide through with her hands in front of her, as if she were praying, opening them elegantly to wedge herself through the vertical ornaments of the entry way. She often thought this was done for some superficial reason; the incredible lightness of the hanging beads seemed not to warrant such painstaking attention. It was this time, slamming through them carelessly with her hands swinging at her sides in secular devotion, that she realized how incredibly heavy the decorative obstacles could be.
The gay couple was at the end of their conversation:
“Look. I’m sorry about what I said today. You know how I feel.”
“Well, I just wanted to know up front. I felt like after being together two weeks we should communicate more.”
Natasha’s reality was betrayed.
Two weeks? The couple’s feigned passion and conflict made her night seem at least that long.
Her work-shift ended.
Walking down University Avenue, Natasha decided to stop by at Mitchell’s apartment. It was a strangely barren night. She saw a young man and an older one discussing money adjacent to a portable piano, but not many others, except for the people she usually saw on University Avenue, asking people to give them money.
The first one she noticed was the one that always sat on the milk crate next to the donut shop. He wore a spiffy leather jacket and hat and had a silver chain around his neck. This time his girlfriend was in possession of his arm. He asked Natasha, “can you spare a few dollars? We’re looking for a bite to eat?”
Natasha hated saying she had no money, because it was a lie, and of course she wasn’t going to give the guy in the nice leather jacket anything, so she walked on by.
“Cunt” is what she heard as she walked on by.
And then a fat woman with ugly teeth and a grotesque face wearing a jump suit began to walk by her side. She was probably in more need than the other guy.
“Oh. I’m having a bad day. My man and I haven’t had anything to eat tonight, and he’s diabetic and when he doesn’t have anything to eat he gets really angry. There’s this place down the road and for five fifty I can get a plate with rice and vegetables, and that’s what we need. That sure would be good. Do you have anything?”
Natasha gave her a quarter. It was the only coin she had, and she did not want to give up a dollar. The ugly woman said thank you irritably and changed took a sharp left at the next intersection.
Natasha thought and thought about that night and about Mitchell. She was going to give him a chance to apologize and if he did she decided to forget the whole incident, at least until their next fight. She turned on Mitchell’s street. He said he’d be studying for midterms all night, so he’s be there and surprised upon her arrival.
She knocked on his door. He didn’t answer. She knocked louder. He didn’t answer. She pounded and he didn’t answer. Finally, his roommate, Charlie opened the door. He looked like he had just been asleep for a month. He said, “what?”
“Where’s Mitchell?”
“I don’t know.”
She decided to walk to a bar and get drunk, and then see what would happen.
She walked by Terry’s, a tavern that was about a dollar cheaper per drink than the Green Dragon, but they didn’t serve as interesting a selection. Terry’s and the Green Dragon had a long-time feud, and in some circles, it would be considered bery controversial if she walked inside.
She walked inside, and saw the ugly lady asking people for money. She didn’t want to buy anything in front of the lady; it would make her feel guilty.
Then she saw that the ugly lady was holding a beer.
Natasha left the bar, not having gotten anything for several reasons and no reason. She continued walking down University Avenue, only blocks away from her place when she saw a second beggar. He looked about fifty. He looked American Indian, or something like that. She couldn’t tell.
And he wasn’t dirty.
“Can you spare some change? I need a new leg.”
She looked down and saw for the first time in her life a genuine wooden leg being used as such. It looked worn down, and partly eaten by termites.
“What’s your name?” asked Natasha.
“My legal name don’t matter. My friends call me Gremlin.”
“Did you say ‘Gremlin’ or Kremlin?”
“Gremlin.”
“Oh.”
She gave him a dollar and he said “god bless you” and she said she didn’t believe in God, and he said:
“Oh. Sorry. Did I offend you?”
“No, Gremlin. Did I offend you?”
“No. What’s your name?”
“Natasha.”
“You didn’t offend me Natasha.”
“That’s good. I think I’m going home now.”
“Good night, Natasha.”
“Good night, Gremlin.”
Natasha walked to the gate of her apartment building and saw Mitchell there waiting for her with flowers. This didn’t surprise her at all.
“Do you think we’ll be together in two weeks, Mitchell?”
“Of course.”
“How about on Flag Day?”
“When’s that?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“Good. Come upstairs. I want to talk some things over. You want some coffee?”
“When have I ever said no to that?”
Natasha took the flowers in her right hand and his right hand in her left, then led him somewhat awkwardly and quite beautifully up to her room, smiling to herself.