Sushi for Beginners
Page 102

‘Some of your best friends are fish,’ Lisa said wearily.
‘How many times do I have to tell you that there are never any fish in the van when I’m in it!’
‘Here, I’ve drawn you a little map,’ Lisa said. ‘Just ask for a bento box.’
‘A bento box? Are you making that up?’ Trix snarled, terrified of being made a fool of.
‘No, that’s how takeaway sushi is packaged. They’ll know in the shop what you’re talking about.’
‘A bento box,’ Trix repeated suspiciously.
‘Who’s getting a bento box?’ Jack had appeared in the office.
‘She is,’ Trix whined, at the same time as Lisa said, ‘I am.’
Trix launched into a noisy condemnation of Lisa, how she was forcing her to buy and transport disgusting raw fish across the city, how the very thought made her feel like vomiting…
‘Someone else can do the lunch run if you’d prefer,’ Jack suggested mildly.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Trix said sulkily – but speedily.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Jack said, ‘Here, get me one too.’
Open-mouthed, Lisa watched him root around in his trouser pocket for money, his shoulder against his chin as his hand rummaged. For some reason she’d pegged Jack for a meat-n’-two-veg man, the kind of person who’d say, ‘If I can’t pronounce it, I won’t eat it.’ But he had lived in the States…
Jack’s hand emerged with a car-park ticket and he looked at it sadly. ‘That won’t do.’ He recommenced the search, this time locating a fiver that had seen better days and handing it to Trix.
‘They mightn’t take this,’ Trix complained. ‘What’ve you done to it? It looks like it’s been on a tour-of-duty in some war.’
‘That must be the one that got washed,’ Jack said. ‘I left it in my shirt pocket.’
Trix was disgusted. How could anyone forget that money had been left in a pocket? She knew exactly how much cash she had at any given time, to the nearest ten pence. It was too precious to leave in a shirt pocket.
Jack returned to his office, and Kelvin arrived, in for the first time that day. He’d been at a press do.
‘Guess what?’ he gasped.
‘What?’
‘It’s all off with Jack and Mai.’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Trix’s scorn was corrosive.
‘No, I mean it. Really, really off. Not Who’s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf off. Proper over, no more fighting, haven’t-seen-each-other-in-more-than-a-week off’
‘How do you know?’
‘I, er, met Mai at the weekend. At the Globe. Believe me,’ he nodded with heavy emphasis around the office, ‘it’s off’
‘God, you’re pathetic,’ Trix scoffed. ‘Trying to pretend you slept with her.’
‘No, I – Oh, OK, I am. But it’s still all off.’
‘Why?’ Ashling asked.
Kelvin shrugged. ‘It just ran its course.’
Lisa was amazed at the transformation this news effected on her. Things didn’t seem so bleak all of a sudden. Jack was available and she knew she was in with a chance. He’d always liked the look of her, but something had changed on the day last week when she’d cried in his office. Her vulnerability and his tenderness had edged them closer.
And she realized something else. She liked him. Not the way she had when she’d first arrived in Dublin, in that hard, aggressive, I-always-get-what-I-want manner. Back then she’d liked his looks and his job and pursuing him had just been a project to take her mind off her misery.
When he came out to use the photocopier, she sidled up to him and said, her eyes dancing, ‘I’d never have thought it.’
‘Thought what?’
‘You. A sushi socialist,’ she teased, swinging her hair.
His pupils dilated, instantly turning his eyes almost black, and a look sparked between them.
Fifty minutes later, Trix clumped back into the office, dangling the handle of the sushi bag on her little finger, holding it as far away from her body as she could manage.
‘What happened to you today?’ Jack asked. ‘Taken hostage in a bank raid? Kidnapped by aliens?’
‘No,’ Trix complained. ‘I had to stop off at O’Neill’s for a good puke. Here.’ She just about threw the bag at Lisa, then put as much distance as possible between it and herself. ‘Ugh,’ she shuddered elaborately.
Lisa hoped that Jack would suggest that they ate the sushi behind closed doors in his office. She had ambitious visions of them feeding each other, sharing more than just raw fish. Instead, he pulled up a chair to Lisa’s desk and she watched his big, sure hands remove chopsticks, napkins and plastic boxes from the depths of the paper bag. Placing a bento box before Lisa, he popped the crackling plastic lid, presenting the rows of pretty sushi with a flourish. ‘Madam’s lunch,’ he said, high-spiritedly. ‘Mind you don’t puke!’
She couldn’t exactly identify the emotions generated by his actions, they shot away when she tried to put names on them. But they were good ones: she felt safe, special, in a circle of belonging. Watched by the rest of the office. Lisa and Jack ate their sushi, like grown-ups.
Ashling, in particular, was appalled, but couldn’t keep away. She kept sneaking looks at them, the way you would at a terrible road accident, then wincing as she saw something she wished she hadn’t.
From what she could see, it wasn’t just raw fish. There were tiny parcels of rice with the raw fish in the middle, accompanied by an elaborate ritual. A green paste was dissolved into what must be soy sauce, into which the underside of the sushi was dipped. Ashling watched fascinated as, with his chopsticks, Jack delicately lifted a pink see-through sliver and laid it expertly along the shiny rice-and-fish package.
The words were out before she could stop herself. ‘What’s that?’
‘Pickled ginger.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s nice.’
Ashling watched for a few more intrigued seconds, before blurting out, ‘What’s it like? All of it?’
‘Delicious. You have the piquancy of the ginger, the heat of the wasabi – that’s the green stuff – and the sweetness of the fish,’ Jack explained. ‘It’s a taste like no other, but it’s addictive.’