Soup’s here,” Judd finally said after we watched each other for a few minutes. As I sipped the broth, Judd pretended to ignore me. I knew he wasn’t really watching television. His face was too perfectly stoic like he was working hard to make himself seem cold. “Do you want the rest?” I asked. Judd frowned at me. “If I wanted soup, I’d have ordered myself some. I’m not a dog begging for scraps.” Scowling at his ridiculous anger, I shrugged. “I don’t want to waste the rest. Can we put it in the mini fridge and I’ll eat it in the morning?” Judd’s frown eased. “Fuck it. I’ll eat it.” “No, it’s mine,” I said, standing up. “I offered and you got grumpy. Now, you can’t have it.” “I’ll just eat it after you go to sleep.” “I respect your honesty,” I said, setting the bowl into the little fridge next to the expensive treats. “It’s a rare quality in a thief.” Judd grinned.
Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.
Mrs Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first finger-bowl.The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms. Mrs Guinea never said anything, and it was only much later, when I told a debutant I knew at college about dinner, that I learned what I had done.
There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn't even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing - or giving up - its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.