If one still existed, someone was bound to throw it out, or trade it in, not knowing what that dusty old recording meant to avid collectors like Henry. After all, Oscar who?
Bud turned the music down a bit. "You ain't been around here, 'cause I'd have seen you if you were around here." Something modern was playing, Overton Berry, Henry guessed, from the deep melancholy of the piano.
Henry thought about his absence. He'd been a regular for most of his adult life, and part of his youth. "My turntable was broken." And it had been, so it wasn't a lie.
Besides, how do I tell him my wife died six months ago--no sense in turning Bud's Jazz Records into Bud's Blues Records.
"You hear about the Panama Hotel?" the old dealer asked.
Henry nodded, still thumbing through the rack, his nose itchy from the dust that always settled in the basement record shop. "I was standing right there when they started bringing all that stuff up."
"You don't say?" Bud rubbed his bald black pate. "I know what you're always in here looking for. Oh, I gave up looking for Oscar myself. But it sure makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean they board up that whole building, what, around 1950? And then that new owner buys it, goes inspecting, and finds all that stuff sealed up all those years.
Newspaper says there ain't much of value in there. No gold bars or nothing. But it makes you wonder ..."
Henry had wondered nonstop since he'd watched them bring up that first steamer trunk. Since the owner had spun that Japanese parasol.
Henry fished out an LP by the Seattle jazz drummer Webb Coleman and set it on the counter. "I guess this'll do it."
Bud slipped the old record in a used Uwajimaya grocery bag and handed it right
back. "This one's on me, Henry--I'm sorry about your wife." Bud's eyes looked like they'd seen plenty of suffering in his own time. "Ethel was a fine woman. I know you did right by her."
Henry found a weak smile and thanked him. Some people read the obituaries every day even in a sprawling place like the Emerald City-- but the International District was just a small town. People know everything about everyone. And just as in other small towns, when someone leaves, they never come back.
Dim Sum
(1986)
When the weekend rolled around, Henry headed past the old Nippon Kan Theater, or what was left of it--his feet crunching bits of broken glass and shattered lightbulbs. The colorful marquee that had once lit up the dark streets now was riddled with empty sockets and broken fixtures--the once warm glow, a reflection of how much hope Henry had had as a young boy, sat covered in decades of rust and neglect.
Restoration or demolition? Henry didn't know which made more sense. The Nippon Kan had been abandoned decades earlier, like the Panama Hotel. But, like the hotel, it had also been bought in recent years and was in the process of being remodeled. Last he'd heard, the once-beating cultural heart of Japantown would soon be a bus station.
All these years, he'd never been inside, and even though there had been a small reopening party, four decades later, he couldn't bring himself to go. Stopping to soak it in, he watched the construction workers throwing old lavender upholstered chairs out a second-story window into the dumpster below. Must be from the balcony, Henry thought.
Not much is left, might be my only time to step past the old ticket window and see that old Kabuki theater the way it was. So tempting. But he was almost late to meet Marty at the Sea Fortune Restaurant for lunch, and Henry hated to be late.
Henry regarded the musty old restaurant as the best in Chinatown. In fact, he'd been coming here for years, going all the way back to his childhood. Although, the first time he came here, it had been a Japanese noodle shop. Since then, it'd been through a merry-go-round of Chinese owners. Smart owners--they always kept the kitchen staff, which kept the food consistent. That was the true key to success in life, Henry thought--consistency.
Marty, on the other hand, wasn't crazy about the dim sum there. "Too traditional,"
he'd argue, "too bland." He much preferred the newer establishments, like House of Hong or Top Gun Seafood. Personally Henry didn't favor those trendy restaurants that broke with tradition and served dim sum to the yuppie bar crowd until way after midnight. Nor did he care for nouveau Eurasian cuisine--ingredients like smoked salmon or plantains had no place on a dim sum menu, according to Henry's taste buds anyway.
As father and son settled into the lumpy, cracked cushions of a bright red Naugahyde booth, Henry flipped open the teapot, sniffing its contents, as though he were sampling some vintage wine. It was old. Nothing but brown, tea-stained water with hardly any aroma. He pushed the whole pot, lid up, to the side and flagged down the ancient serving lady pushing a cart of steamed dumplings in their general direction.
Looking over the sampling of shrimp dumplings, egg tarts, and steamed buns called hum bau, Henry pointed and nodded, not even asking what Marty wanted--he knew all of Marty's favorites anyway.
"Why do I get the feeling that something new is bothering you?" Marty asked.
"The
tea?"
"No, that's just you thinking you're some kind of sommelier of dried leaves in a bag. You've been acting different lately. Something I should know about, Pops?"
Henry unwrapped his cheap wooden chopsticks, rolling them together to rub off any splinters. "My son is graduating, soma coma lode--"
"Summa cum laude," Marty corrected.
"That's what I said. My son is graduating with highest honor. " Henry popped a steaming hot shrimp shui mai dumpling into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. "What could be wrong?"
"Well, Mom's passed, for starters. And now you're pretty much retired. From your job. From taking care of her. I'm just worried about you. What are you doing to pass the time these days?"
Henry offered a pork bau to his son, who took it with his chopsticks and peeled the wax paper off the bottom before taking a large bite. "I just went back down to Bud's. I picked up a little something. I'm getting out," Henry said. To punctuate his statement, he held up the bag from the record store. See, conclusive evidence that I'm doing just fine.
Henry watched his son unwrap a lotus leaf and eat the glutinous sticky rice inside.
He could tell by the concern in his son's voice that Marty was unconvinced. "I'm heading over to the Panama Hotel. I thought I'd ask if they'd let me look around. They found a lot of old things in the basement. Things from the war years. "
Marty finished chewing. "Looking for some long-lost jazz record, perhaps?"
Henry ducked the question, not wanting to lie to his son, who knew he'd been interested in old jazz recordings from a very young age. But that was about all Marty knew of his father's childhood, though he did know that his father had had a hard time of it as a child. Why? He never asked, it somehow seemed sacred, and Henry rarely shared.