The Story of Sushi (23 page)

“Kate,” Marcos blurted out, “you should move in with me!”

Kate laughed. She suggested instead they eat lunch at her favorite Jewish deli. “We’d have to go downtown. You want to go?”

“Hell, yeah!” Marcos said.

Ten minutes later they were speeding down the freeway in the Mustang with the windows down. Kate switched on the stereo.

“I know Zoran wants me to cry,” she said over the music. “And I’m
not
going to.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. After a few minutes, she added, “My parents thought I was a chronic underachiever.”

“They couldn’t just call you lazy?” Marcos said. “They had to come up with some kind of medical condition?”

“Yeah!” Kate laughed. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “So what’s this catering thing tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Marcos said. “Toshi just said there’d be famous people there.” He imagined himself on a movie set. “You want some sushi? You’re going to have to give me your number,
Miss Jennifer Garner.
”

Kate laughed. “She’s already knocked up!”

“Oh, yeah.” He frowned, then bobbed his head to the music. He stared out the windshield. Somewhere out there in the haze were the hills of Hollywood. “I’ve never met a movie star before.”

T
hat evening, for the first time in weeks, Hama Hermosa was busy. The wait staff didn’t walk, they ran. Customers lined up in the foyer. Behind the front sushi bar, Zoran, Fie, and Tetsu—the head chef—fired sushi out into the dining room like machine gunners in a pillbox. Tetsu still resembled a bear, but not a sleepy one. He grabbed fish from the
neta
case like a grizzly hunting salmon in a river. Zoran worked head down, cranking out orders as fast as he could. Fie tried to keep up.

In the back room, Toshi looked happy and relaxed. He was holding court before an audience of ten customers at the back sushi bar. It was just like old times. The frenetic activity of the restaurant swirled around him. In the center of it all, Toshi was an island of cheerful calm. He took everything in, keeping watch over his customers, his waitresses, and his chefs. He constructed elaborate
omakase
courses and refilled sake glasses. His movements were full of flourish and he radiated stage presence. Every few minutes he laughed and toasted with his customers and bellowed out commands to his staff. Frank Sinatra crooned on the sound system.

A woman sauntered into the back room with her date.

“Toshi, how are you?” she squealed.

“Beautiful!” Toshi yelled. They sat down. Toshi screamed over his shoulder. “Filipé! Towel! Towel!”

The busboy materialized with hot hand wipes.

As Toshi prepared another
omakase
dish, a man sitting at the bar said, “Toshi, can we have something more upbeat?”

Toshi gyrated his hips behind the bar and screamed, “Sheila! Music!”

The hostess appeared, wearing a tight red tank top with gothic script across her breasts that said, “Fuck Off.” She strutted over to the stereo. The Sinatra was replaced by pounding hip-hop. The man at the bar nodded his head to the beat. Toshi refilled the man’s glass with sake. The man wagged a finger at Toshi and shouted, “Toshi, you’re bad, bad, bad!”

Toshi grinned and raised his own glass. “
Kanpai!
”

The customers shouted, laughed, hugged each other, and joked with Toshi. Toshi raised his arms high over the sushi bar and rolled together sushi hand rolls in the air. His customers gazed up, mesmerized. Toshi lifted a squeeze bottle aloft and squirted sauce onto the rolls, deepening the spell.

Two women sat down at the bar with a boy about 7 or 8 years old. Toshi leaned over the fish case. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You like sushi?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay!” Toshi said, and squeezed him out a
nigiri
. He painted it with
nikiri
sauce and handed it across the fish case. “This is tuna!”

Toshi turned back to his other customers and thrust the sake bottle toward them. The man held up his hands. “No more!”

“One more!” Toshi yelled, his face a theatrical scowl. The man accepted. They raised their glasses. “
Kanpai!
”

Toshi knocked back his glass, but the man dumped his cup of sake out onto his plate. He laughed so hard his face turned red. Toshi glared at him, pointed an accusing finger, then relaxed and laughed, too.

K
ate still needed intern hours to graduate. Zoran was teaching a half-day course for civilians on Saturday morning. She signed up to be his assistant.

The class went well. Zoran didn’t yell at her. The only downside was that after the class, Kate discovered she’d locked her keys in the car. While she was sitting on the back stairs, waiting for the AAA truck, Zoran rushed past and then stopped. He reminded her that Toshi would be away catering a movie set that night. There would be a station free at the back sushi bar. Did she want it?

Kate felt a shiver of excitement. Takumi was usually the only student allowed to serve customers behind the sushi bar during dinner, like one of the chefs. She nodded and said yes.

That evening Kate stood at her own cutting board behind the back bar, hands clasped behind her back, a nervous smile on her face, waiting for customers. The hostess seated the first few groups in front of the more experienced chefs. Then a couple in their fifties sat right in front of her. They ordered a California roll.

Suddenly Kate’s universe shrank to seaweed, rice, and fish. She built the inside-out roll, tucking it in tight. It held together. The couple seemed to like it, and they ordered another type of inside-out roll. She made that, too. Then they ordered salmon and yellowtail
nigiri
. She laid blocks of
neta
presentation-side down, as Zoran had
instructed her. She sliced the fish, laid the slices presentation-side up, then squeezed the
nigiri
together.

Zoran was far away, working at the front bar. Next to Kate, one of the Japanese chefs kept a kindly eye on her. He threw in an order of seared
toro
for her couple, on the house.

The woman got the sense that Kate was a student and chatted with her. She told Kate that their son was dating a female sushi chef from Japan! Kate started to have fun. They fell into conversation, and she made them more sushi.

In the parking lot out back, Toshi, Takumi, and Marcos hosed dirt off the van for the trip to the movie set. Marcos wiped the van dry and turned to Toshi.

“Toshi, man, let’s go pick up some ladies in Hollywood!”

Toshi scowled and strode back into the kitchen. Marcos helped Toshi and Takumi load equipment into the van. Soon they were hurtling down a six-lane boulevard toward the freeway. Toshi was driving. Takumi sat in the passenger seat and Marcos sprawled on the bench seat behind them. After ten minutes Toshi turned to Takumi.

“Did you bring the rice?”

Takumi nodded. “Yes.”

Toshi sighed. “Sometimes I forget to bring the rice.”

“What do you do then?”

“We say, ‘Today’s special: sashimi.’”

Takumi laughed, then went silent. “You’re making me nervous.” He craned his neck around and peered into the back for the rice.

The men were speaking in Japanese. Behind them, Marcos was lost in his own world. He was on his way to a Hollywood movie set, where he might meet a famous actress. This was too cool. Marcos yanked his cellphone from his pocket and started dialing. He uttered a long, drawn-out, surfer-dude “Heyyyyy, man” into the phone. His voice was big inside the small van. “Yeah, dude, I’m going to, like, Hollywood to make sushi!” He pronounced it “sooooshi.”

Toshi turned in his seat and shot Marcos a glance. He looked back at the road and imitated Marcos’s surfer-dude drawl, in English.

“Heyyyyy, man,” Toshi said. He switched to Japanese. “Give me a break.”

Takumi chuckled.

Marcos dialed another number.

“Heyyyyy!” His drawl was even louder. “Yeah, I got this catering gig in L.A., and we’re, like, going to Hollywood to make sushi!”

Toshi looked at Takumi. “He’s kind of annoying.”

Marcos kept talking. “Yeah, man, I could show you guys a fucking good time out here.” Pause. “You lazy stoners.” Pause. “I’ve got another call. Okay, peace.”

Toshi snorted.

Marcos made yet another call. When he hung up, Toshi peered into the rear-view mirror and switched to English. “Heyyyyy, Marcos, you gotta stop making phone calls.”

Marcos laughed. “I gotta talk, man!”

Toshi pondered this for a minute. “Marcos, are you still in high school?”

“Yeah.”

“So you used your summer vacation for sushi school?”

“Yeah.”

They were both silent, then Marcos spoke. “Heyyyyy, Toshi, it sucks that Zoran has to leave.”

“He doesn’t like you guys.”

Marcos was surprised. “He doesn’t?”

“Just kidding.”

In the gloom ahead, Toshi could make out big white trucks, bright lights, and swarms of people. He slowed and steered the van toward the center of the hubbub. Men with walkie-talkies stopped the van and told Toshi where to park. A helicopter circled overhead. LAPD motorcycle cops stood guard.

Marcos gaped. The whole street was closed off. Gleaming vintage cars were parked along the curb. Inside one sat two men, with bright lights shining all around them. Movie cameras pointed into the car from different directions and grips bristling with tools and equipment stood around holding curtains and poles. Marcos didn’t see anyone who looked like Jennifer Garner.

Marcos and Takumi lugged the portable sushi stand from the van into a small parking lot. They navigated around stacks of dollies, clusters of tripods and lights, battered black equipment cases, and heaps of cables.

They unpacked the 25-gallon ice chest and bottles of soy sauce. Toshi noticed that their chef’s jackets were hanging open. “Do those up,” he barked.

A man strode over to Toshi. “What are you doing?”

“Making sushi for you guys.”

“Oh.” The man relaxed. “Cool. Like, California rolls and all that?”

Toshi nodded.

Toshi surveyed the crowd of grips and technicians working in the lot, then turned to Takumi.

“Since you don’t speak English, they’re going to think this sushi is really authentic.”

They both laughed.

Three grips converged on the sushi chefs. One set up a 6-foot collapsible table. Another rigged a high-powered spotlight to illuminate it. A third lugged over an ice chest full of bottled water and deposited it on the pavement. He peered at Toshi and Takumi. “Sushi, huh?”

When they finished setting up, Takumi laid his knife case on the table and flicked it open. Marcos froze.

“Oh, man,” Marcos said. “I forgot to bring my knives.”

Toshi glared. “What a stupid
idiot
!
My
student, student of California Sushi Academy! You forgot to bring your knives to make sushi?!”

“Sorry, Toshi.”

Toshi growled. “
Sensei!
”

“Sorry, Sensei.”

The lot went quiet. Muted conversations simmered among the technicians. A single cricket chirped somewhere in the bushes. Another grip strode over to Toshi. “You ready?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be your first customer. A spicy tuna roll. Make me cry!”

“You got it,” Marcos said, reaching into the fish case. He assembled a cone-shaped hand roll, his movements tentative. A man with white hair approached.

“Wow, sushi. When are you going to be ready?”

“Now,” Toshi said. “What do you want?”

“Everything,” the man laughed. “This is
only
the third night in a row I’ve had sushi!” The man peered over the fish case at Marcos. “A blond guy making sushi?”

Suddenly the sushi stand was mobbed. Men and women of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities threw out orders for
nigiri
and hand rolls. Toshi and Marcos both worked furiously. As soon as Marcos had served one person, there was another waiting—a woman in shorts carrying a hammer, a man in slacks wearing a leather jacket, a black guy in a Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants, an Asian guy with an eye patch. They streamed in from all over the set.

Marcos was frantic. Soon he needed a break. He shot a glance at Takumi, who stood behind the table watching. “Hey, Takumi, you want to jump in here?”

Toshi intercepted the invitation. “No!” he told Marcos. “You keep going.”

Toshi made room for Takumi to squeeze in next to him.

Marcos’s hands trembled, but he worked as fast as he could, head down, his brow glistening with sweat under the spotlight. The movie people stared at him, hungry, waiting. They were an arm’s length away, watching everything. He screwed up an order.

“Pay attention!” Toshi hissed.

A cute girl with a ponytail stepped up in front of Marcos. “I have two orders,” she said.

Marcos barely looked up. “One at a time.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “One order of salmon.” She watched Marcos while he worked. “Are they teaching you?”

He laughed. “They’re trying.”

She told him her second order. He delivered it. She tried to catch his eye, but Marcos was staring down at his raw fish and seaweed, gauging what he needed next. She thanked him and turned away.

A man in line had a coiled wire running into his ear, like a Secret Service agent. He spoke into a miniature microphone attached to his lapel. “Let me know when the actors get here.”

Moments later a cluster of beautiful young women strode into view. The crowd cleared around them. The women were dressed in
clothes from the 1960s. At the center of the group was a 16-year-old girl with a familiar face. She was gorgeous and looked friendly. She stepped up to the sushi bar. She smiled sweetly and asked Marcos for a vegetarian roll. She watched him with interest.

Marcos had his head down in the raw fish and seaweed. He nodded, but he didn’t look up. He focused on the
nigiri
he was squeezing.

Next to him, Toshi’s hands flew. He handed the girl the roll she’d asked for. Marcos glanced over at Toshi in frustration. “You’re so much faster!”

“You’re too slow!” Toshi shot back.

Marcos still hadn’t looked up.

The girl was Alexa Vega, star of the
Spy Kids
movies. She gave Marcos one more look, smiled, then walked away. She popped a piece of sushi in her mouth. Marcos never even noticed.

Back at Hama Hermosa, after all the customers had left, Kate stayed and helped the chefs. She put away ingredients, wiped down the counters, and washed dishes. She hadn’t done that before. When she hopped in the Mustang to drive home, she was the happiest she’d been in a long time.