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Brooklyn
Memoir (46)
I became a little bit bored on the third day. When I was eating breakfast at the garden restaurant, I saw two oriental girls took seats at the next table. I heard them speaking Japanese. I was reading a local newspaper as usual, one of the girls talked to me in English. I answered her in English and was playing Asian American for half an hour or so. Meanwhile, I realized it foolish to play the game any more and I confessed my identity in Japanese. This funny beginning broke the ice very efficiently. They invited me to the private Maui tour by taxi reserved by those girls in the afternoon.
The taxi driver was a middle aged Japanese American woman. Oh boy,
there were so many women drivers in Maui! She spoke Japanese fluently. She explained about the whale watching in Maui in English and Japanese. In return, I made a lecture in English on the microwave communication among whales. To tell the truth, I watched this topic in TV recently. Anyway, the driver praised my English as correct and intelligent. I felt so happy about her comment and paid a big tip at the end of the tour. She might simply be smarter than I in buisiness.
Two Japanese girls and I had a dinner together at the hotel next to Sheraton,
because the restaurant faced to a beautiful garden. I ordered sweet sherry
for girls and dry Martini for myself as aperitif. “ A dry Martini with
olive, without ice. Make it very dry, please, and sweet sherry for girls.”
I ordered the aperitif just like a New Yorker. ( Steve, a psychiatry resident
at Downstate taught me everything about social life in NYC. He was a good
teacher and I was a good student. ) Two Japanese girls looked at me with
respect and admiration. We enjoyed the dinner in the perfect mood with
a friendly conversation.
I was served by the two girls just like a king from the next day. We played
the tennis together in the morning. During the lunch time I was told to
sit on the comfortable chair in the garden of their cottage and make myself
comfortable for a while. They brought a lunch plate with a glass of cold
beer in 10 minutes. They might have washed my body in the bath room, if
I asked to do so. ( I swear I didn’t. ) I spent unusual king’s life for
2 days.
Weeks later one of the girls sent me a letter with snap shots in Maui.
She was a daughter of a physician in private practice in western Japan.
I felt some nostalgia while reading her letter, but nothing more than
that.
This way, my memorable life in the United States of America ended.
E-mail:kidot@momo.so-net.ne.jp