Martoons

Cast of characters

Coffee Lady

Dame

Red Face – Coffee Lady’s client

*

“Why don’t you clean up this table you wench? It’s not like you’ve got a lot to do,” said Coffee Lady’s client.

He looked around the room. “There’s no one in here…”

He then half-noticed the wide-eyed customer sitting several booths down but didn’t make anything of it and resumed his haranguing.

“My three buddies have already left and it’s only me. I’m your most regular customer. You should be breaking your back for me.

Now get me another coffee and a pack of smokes. Ayeesh! Hurry up!”

He then backhanded the ashtray of butts right off the table. Damion was shocked and had to hold himself back from reacting.

“Aigo!” Coffee Lady said, seething with anger at the mess. “I think you better go. We don’t serve children in here and it’s past your bedtime. You’d better go home to mommy.”

* How will the man respond to that?! *

She slipped out of the booth but the drunk grabbed her arm. She shrieked, struggled and freed herself, then picked up the empty coffee cups and retreated behind her counter.

Red Face frumped himself back down.

“Psst! Hey buddy!” Dame said to him calmly.

The drunk looked over tentatively and saw the wide-eyed guy pointing to the clock on the wall.

“Your time – over,” Wide Eyes was saying. “Ten o’clock – my appointment start time. You must go out.”

Red Face, obviously suffering from an acute case of double vision, looked up at Wide Eyes and tried to focus.

He wasn’t sure but he seemed to recall that queer-looking countenance from some previous occasion.

* Have they met before? *

He couldn’t nail it down but something told him it hadn’t been good. He held-off answering.

“You must go out…” Wide-Eyes’ voice echoed.

Red Face’s memory kept spewing forth fragments. Broken soju bottles. Fists flying. Something about himself being nailed by a scooter and sent flying.

(Dame, for his part, had absolutely no recall of the incident several weeks back outside this very same café.)

(He’d been trying to schmooze with Coffee Lady down in the street; Red Face suddenly became aggressive with a soju bottle shard; the suddenly-frightened Coffee Lady rammed into the inebriated idiot with her scooter.)

Presently, Red Face recalled it all particularly the racist remarks he’d hurled at Wide Eyes, and a flash of horror shot through him.

“You must go out,” Dame said again now, but Red Face was lost in thought. So he turned up the volume. “You you! Out out out! Now now now now!”

Instantly it all clicked and Red Face’s fight or flight instinct switched to FLIGHT. He instantly rose to his feet and saluted Wide Eyes.

“Yes sir, understood sir!” and he commenced staggering toward the exit.

As he passed Wide Eyes’ booth he stopped.

Dame instinctively clenched his fists below the table and could feel sweat in his palms, but remained frozen. “You,” Red Face said in a low, curious tone, “U.S. Army?”

The atmosphere instantly lightened but to keep Red Face moving toward the door, Dame got out of his booth and put his arm around the man.

“Army? Thanks for the compliment. Army? Yes, but U.S. Army? Never.

“They wouldn’t think of having me. I’m a one man army.” Dame body-languaged puffing a butt. “You and me – smoking – okay?”

“Smoking?” Red Face asked rhetorically. “Okay!”

* Will Dame get Red Face out the door without any more problems? *

Dame guided him out the door to the landing at the stair-top, and then offered Red Face a half-filled pack of smokes from his jacket pocket.

“Enjoy. Happy New Year buddy. But you leave now, okay? Go straight home – your mommy’s waiting.”

Red Face took the tobacco offering as Wide Eyes closed the café door and clicked the lock shut – and flipped the landing lights off!

By himself in the now-darkened landing, Red Face sensed he’d just been given the bum’s rush. “Hey!”

* Do you think Red Face will try and get back in? *

But he then felt the pack of free smokes in his hot little hand and, coupled with more stirred-up memories of the previous street confrontation, decided to drop the issue.

Despite severe shakes, he managed to fire up a cigarette. That also gave him enough light to find his way down the staircase into the Chinju darkness.

“Ayeesh!” he growled into the dimly lit street. “Fucking Americans. Think they own this place. Zero respect for the people of our Korea. Ayeesh!!”

Off he wandered into the night.

*

Tomorrow: Dame helps out Coffee Lady.