she said.
I set vegetable laden bags on the stainless steel kitchen table and waited for an explanation.
She hooked a bag & swung it to the counter with a
shining samurai sword
she kept in the kitchen.
She'd bought it at a flea market in San Francisco in 1978, and would regale friends and strangers over sake with stories of her heroic grandfather, dying for the Land of the Rising Sun in a kamikaze attack during the war.
She suspected nobody believed her. Why should they? The only Tokyo she knew was a greasy sushi joint near the wharf where she'd washed dishes for six months after ditching the foster home to hitch-hike out from New York. She guessed she was Korean, but she felt like Japan had a more romantic ring.
It's the little white lies that get you through to the end of the day.
"Kando ni uttaerua — appeal to the emotions," she said, extracting cucumbers from the bag. "If you want me to vacation with you in Hawaii, you'll have to do better than dinner and a bottle of wine." She spoke and chopped, her knife a blur like a propeller.
"Any guy can do dinner and candles."
That's when I pulled a tattered, rolled up scroll out of my bag. She loosened the red ribbon, opened it, scanned it.
The emperor... in recognition of bravery... forever indebted...
her eyes widened as she read her imaginary grandfather's name. She was good with a sword, but I was a Photoshop ninja.
Our eyes met.
"I'll come," she said, "but if you want to share a room with me, I want a piece of the old man's plane to hang on the wall."
"Kando Ni Uttaeru", I'll show you how >