Amie Barrodale - You Are Having a Good Time

“Can you drink sake out of it?”

“Usually our sake cups are smaller, but of course, you are free to use that item for anything you like.”

I think maybe I smiled a little, a habit of mine when I become uneasy. I had been reminded by my phrasing of the off-color stories that I’ve heard about gays. For a moment, I worried that the client thought I was making an offensive joke, but of course, he was not aware of any of this thinking on my part.

“Is it real gold?” He indicated the inside of the bowl.

“It’s a glaze made with real gold, yes. Mr. Tatsusuke had a postdoctorate degree in chemistry, and he makes all his glaze himself.”

“It is safe to drink from it?”

“Mr. Tatsusuke is very particular his work is to be used, so I don’t think he made anything with real gold inside that would come off when you try to drink it.”

This is something that happens to me when I become nervous; my English begins to regress. While I have lived in America for forty years, I still have some of the irredeemable habits of a non-native speaker, particularly when I am shaken. I don’t know why I had become shaken. I had noticed by this time the client was producing a particular odor, but I can’t point to that and say, “This is how I was undone.” It was a collection of things, and I suppose that I have fragile nerves. I said, “I’ll go and check that price.”

I went to Mr. Ito’s computer. While I waited for the particular program to load, I glanced at the client. Alone with the bowl, he held it properly between his palms, and I had the impression that whatever he was imagining, it had led him to the decision that he would purchase the bowl, which was listed at $600.

It was a high price for a bowl, but Mr. Tatsusuke was enjoying a lot of success in Japan at that moment; he was in vogue. Actually, it was quite difficult to find his work, and we were able to stock it only because Mr. Tatsusuke had been a close personal friend of our company president, Mr. Seibu. In fact, he had even come to visit him in our store. A lovely man in his seventies, he arrived just wearing ordinary dungarees, and when he saw his pieces locked inside our jewelry cases, he got a little bit upset. He spent a lot of time with me personally, talking about the importance of touch. He said that a piece is beautified by being handled by all different sorts of hands, and he asked that I please place his work out, so people could touch it. He said, “I don’t make art. I make bowls and plates.”

I informed the client of the price, and he did not make any answer. He stood for a while admiring the bowl, picking it up and putting it down, and then he said he was going to think about it, and for a long time he wandered the store with his feelings painted all over his face. The other salespeople had grown accustomed to his appearance, and so for the most part, they were able to answer when he said, “What price is this?” regarding various store items, though I did hear Harry in menswear laughing.

What price is this, indeed.

* * *

It was half an hour later when I saw the client admiring the bowl again.

“Still thinking about that piece?” I asked.

He said something in a very soft voice. I couldn’t make it out, so I nodded. He continued in the same train of thought, and I realized a few moments later that he had said, “I want it for a gift for my guru.”

“This would make a very special gift,” I said.

He nodded. Then he looked down into the bowl for a long time, and I was quiet, in accordance with my sales training. When he spoke again, the client expressed his wish to purchase the Tatsusuke.

“Good choice,” I said. “Please come this way, sir.”

I was careful to wrap the bowl very nicely for the client, Mr. Thibideaux, and before he left, I gave him my personal card. I think … sometimes I imagine that my husband watches me in my ordinary day. My son said this is ordinary to do. My son is a professional, Western-style therapist, and he said it is ordinary as long as I understand that my husband has passed away. I understand this; he is gone, and he will never come back — so sometimes in moments like this, I think my husband smiles, to see how kind and elegant his wife can be. Sometimes it is my husband, but he looks like Mr. Tatsusuke.

* * *

A month later, Mr. Thibideaux requested my assistance on the floor. I was in a meeting with our payroll chief, Mr. Hanson, but informed that a client had requested me by name, Mr. Hanson encouraged me to go ahead and assist the client. I found Mr. Thibideaux bent over a jewelry display with his stomach pressed against the glass.

“Mr. Thibideaux,” I said, “how nice to see you again in our store.”

He looked up at me from where he was and pointed out a headdress inside the case. “What price is this?”

I unlocked the case and withdrew the ornament. After I read its price, which was unusually high, I put the elaborate headpiece into Mr. Thibideaux’s hands. He made a gesture, lifting the item up and down to indicate its weight. Then he asked if I would help him by trying it on.

“Excuse me? I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”

He explained that he wanted me to try the headdress on. Actually, I had my hair pulled into a chignon, and I had no wish to perform this service. At the same time, I didn’t wish to refuse Mr. Thibideaux impolitely. While I searched for words, Mr. Thibideaux began to ask me about the piece. It reminded him, he said, of Utagawa Hiroshige III’s Amerika .

I was undone, and so I nodded and smiled in an uncomfortable way, my eyes most likely beginning to look confused, and blank.

He went on to explain it was a portrait of a foreign woman from the year 1860, done during a time when only twenty Western women lived in Yokohama. He explained that women in the West didn’t wear plumed hats, but in portraits of Westerners painted in Japan, they were quite common. He asked if I would place the headdress on his head, explaining that it was really preferable to my wearing it, because “The proper way to judge a piece of jewelry is to feel it against your skin.”

Of course, I was embarrassed. Had he asked me at the outset to place a crown upon his head, it is likely that I would have demurred, but now, seeing his second request as a politic way to evade his first, I acquiesced.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Touch is very important.”

He bent forward, and I fastened the crown to his temples. It was elaborate, standing high above his head and adorned with feathers and semiprecious gems. It had two side panels that depended from the larger corona, and I righted those broad, beaded panels, laying them flat against his chest. Then I stepped back to allow him to look at himself.

The beauty of the piece transferred to Mr. Thibideaux. It bestowed an unusual quality to his form, which up until this moment had been quite ugly, almost obscene. Beneath the headpiece, Mr. Thibideaux’s ugliness, while not departed, was somehow changed, so that I noticed less his decay and his filth, his foul posture and his stink, and more the brilliance of his unusual form — and how curious it was to see such brilliance drawing such ugly and intricate shapes. Difficult to describe; it was as though the visual plane, the whole world — Mr. Thibideaux — were made of tiny points of light.

The two of us had a nice discussion. He just left the headpiece on, like it was his own, and talked to me about different things. He said he was taking a vacation, and I said good for you. He asked if I knew of a place where he could buy a certain Japanese delicacy, and I told him that I had never heard of that delicacy. He said it was mostly eaten in the country, and I told him that my family has been metropolitan for many centuries.