Waiter in the Belly

He came back on a Tuesday, which meant he had thought about it through a Monday.

Rook did not stand.

“Lost again?”

“On purpose.”

Tam-below snorted into the ladle.

The waiter—his name tag still said HIEN as if the belly needed branding—put down a bag of onions that were the good ones.

“I can’t ticket a vent,” he said. “I asked. They laughed. Then they gave me a form about odor amenity. I walked out.”

“Spireward disease,” Tam said.

Hien sat on the crate. The shoes were worse. The face was better.

Rook took the onions because refusing food was a kind of map.

They cooked. The two smokes married. Pair//Local’s crowd laughed above, paying for belonging.

Hien said, “I told a colleague there were people under the cumin. She said that’s a story to keep rents interesting.”

“Let her. If they believe we’re a story they don’t send inspectors.”

He washed bowls. He was good at it. Restaurants trained hands even when they failed at worlds.

A knock from Nia’s pipe: two. Window closed. Rook knocked soup-on.

Hien listened, delighted in a way that was almost insulting.

“That’s a language.”

“That’s plumbing.”

He left the onions, took no photograph, and on the stair remembered to wipe his shoes so upstairs would not follow the mud like a plot.

Tam said, “He’ll fall in love with us as texture.”

“Then we’ll be expensive.”

“We’ll be onions.”

The next week Hien brought napkins and did not stay for the lecture. He stayed for the bowl.

Rook allowed it.

A route is not a tour.

A bowl is not a secret if nobody ranks it.

Meridian, stacked, kept eating in two directions.