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Morning Glory and the Chai House
Chapter 1 @a1-shroom-spores/morning-glory-and-the-chai-house-chapter-1
Chapter 2 @a1-shroom-spores/morning-glory-and-the-chai-house-chapter-2
Chapter 3
Dana and I had a huge secret. We would play baseball together.
We would give each other this secret look and then make up some excuse about getting cigarettes. Dana always parked his blue truck in front of the Tereiaki Resturant illegally. "You know they tow cars out of that driveway." We just left the Chai House and were crossing the busy street. A taxi honked at a bike rider.
"It's okay Miles," Dana said smiling. "I eat there all the time." Somehow I doubted that. "I've seen them tow people out of here all the time Dana." He opened the door of his blue pickup truck. You could tell Dana washed his truck all the time. It was immaculately clean like he just bought it off the car lot.
"We can go in there right now if you want. The owner knows me." Dana slammed the truck door shut and turned around. We walked into the small Tereiaki resturant behind a tall wooden fence that was freshly stained. The resturant had large neon Japanese characters above the front entrance. I opened the door and a little bell rang.
"No free restrooms!," yelled the resturant owner. He had a mop in his hand and he was cleaning the floor. There was no one else in the resturant.
"Ohh hi Dana." The resturant owner smiled. "Is this your friend?" He placed the dirty mop into a bucket and pushed it into a closet. He begain to wash his hands and forearm carefully in a sink behind the counter. "What can I make for you Dana. Do you want Chicken or Beef today? "This man keeps this place going," he said laughing.
We both had chicken tereiaki with rice and greens with white sauce and of course we added lots of red pepper sauce and soy sauce. The owner gave us free coke cans and talked to us from behind the counter. People would come into the resturant to recieve carry out orders that the old man was cooking up. That's why he loved Dana; he came into the resturant to eat. Everyone else ordered out.
After we ate: We hopped into the truck and started driving around the Ballard neighborhood. We would drive around and find public lawns or empty lots to throw an old baseball around. We would joke about how our coffee shop friends would never accept our love of sports.
"So did you ever steal second base?"
Just then this homeless looking man started to walk up to us. He was leaning on a giant wooden stick as he walked slowly. He was wearing a knit cap and a sweater. He looked like an elf from Middle Earth who was drunk in the woods. "Hey Miles." He leaned forward on his "staff" with both hands and was swaying back and forth on the spot. He had red wine stained all over his face.
"I have a dentist appointment," said Dana as he quickly spun around. Before you could say "free tereyaki" the door of his van slammed and the engine was revving up. Todd had that effect on people. He was very drunk and he smelled horribly. And I was stuck with the bastard.
Tood lived in the low income appartment complex across the street from The Chai House. There was a rumour that the appartment complex was built on top of an old graveyard site. There was a point in Seattle history when there might have been some ... flimzy record keeping when it came to historic burial plots. Some graveyard plots seemed to magically disappear according to the legend and were replaced by appartment complexes, banks and other commmercial ventures.
Speaking of hauntings; the residents of "SSI row" certainly acted ghostly. There were many residents of the complex that I never saw and I was there constantly. My old friend Anothony from elementary: Who lived on my block: Sold grass out of his appartment room. Todd lived on the top floor.
It was a beautiful view of the Ballard neighboorhood from Todd's balcony.
You could see all of the historic Ballard neighborhood from above. You cold see the Ballard bridge and the canal area by the water. You could see the Queen Anne hill peaking up towards the sky with all the houses and radio towers. If you leaned over the rail; you could see the front entrance of the Chai House from above. I would yell somone's name and then dip down behind the metal railings and watch them look around confused.
I was sitting down on the wooden floorboards of the balcony and staring out into the horizon. I heard a weird noise behind me and tunred around. Todd was bear hugging all these framed paintings in his arms and walking slowly towards me. "What the fuck are you doing Todd?!" He leaned over me with all the painting and then dropped them off the balcony. I heard the wood hit the ground with a loud THUMP!
"Todd what in the fuck do you think you are doing? You need to pick that shit up before the landlord comes out."
I could see this point todd was bomb out of his skull on booze. His eyes kept closing and opening like a sleepy owl. He was rocking back and forth. "They are kicking me out. I can't pay the rent anymore." Todd grabbed a fistfull of silverware out of the kitchen shelf. Beautiful sterling silver sets of forks, knives and spoons. "Todd you can't fucking throw that. It's dangerous."
I ran down to the sidewalk under the appartments where there was a big green industrial metal garbage bin. Todd's painting and silverware was scattered everywhere. People talked a lot about "the landlord" and he sounded like the guy you hoped never to meet. I wanted to save Todd from being part of the next graveyard on the site. I started picking up all the splintered pieces of wood.
WHAM! All of a sudden a huge mason jar shattered into a million pieces right next to me. "TODD what the fuck!" I started to sweep up the glass with a broken piece of wood. WHAM another glass shattered all over my shoes. A plastic tupperware hit me on the head. "You stupid fuck!," I yelled up at todd.