Funland

I stole her away, I did.
I stole her away.
I went into her restaurant
And stole her away.

She has a Chinese restaurant
She ran it with her husband.
I fell in love with her
The first time I ordered steamed vegetable dumplings.

Of course, I couldn’t do anything.
Since she was married.
But I think
One time
When I ordered extra rice
Our eyes met
They did!
Our eyes met. I melted.
She… She turned toward the back
And yelled, “Jah Fahn”, or “More rice” in Chinese.
Then she turned back toward me and said
“It’ll be right here, sir.”
“Sir”. She called me “Sir”. With tenderness and kindness
And reassurance that
My rice would come
The next day, I came back
She smiled, with eyes so soft, asking me
“Steamed vegetable dumplings?”
I knew then that we would be together
From that point on
I came back
Every Tuesday
For weeks.
Sometimes it was an extra fortune cookie
Or extra rice on the house
Sometimes, her fingertips gently
Caressed my hand as she gave me my change

One day, she told me
How she felt about me
Not directly of course
But through a tofu and vegetable entrée
She didn’t charge me for
When I finished the last piece of tofu and the last piece of vegetable
I opened up my fortune cookie
There was a note inside
“You’ll meet a Chinese woman
Who left her husband months ago
The guy in the back is my brother.”

Staring at the note
My mouth agape
I managed to stand and hold myself up.
I walked slowly to the counter
Where she stood taking orders over the phone
And where it had all started.
I looked into her eyes
“Put down the phone”, I said.
And I took her hand
And stole her away.

David Fallick lives in Rockville, Maryland. “Funland” is his first published creative writing in English. Previous published creative writing is in Yiddish.

Image: Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons