Tokyo Happy Hour
“Hey.”
Someone was fucking shaking me.
“Mark, wake up. Wake up, man.”
Jamie was fucking shaking me. Goddammit. I struggled up onto one elbow and fixed him with a poisonous eye.
“What the fuck, Jamie.” I cracked my other eye and checked the clock. “Jesus. It’s 3:30, Jamie. Why.” I wasn’t awake enough to form questions.
“Tokyo Happy Hour,” he said.
“Is that all?” I asked. I could fucking kill him. This clearly hadn’t occurred to him, since he shook his head and pulled back my comforter.
“Tokyo Happy Hour, buddy. Get up.” He shoved a glass at me, and I had to accept it or have it spilled all over my bed. I groggily took a swig and almost spat it out all over my fucking two hundred thread-count bed set.
“Holy…! Jamie-“
“Yeah, I know, the thread-count, holy shit. Get out of bed, you beast. And drink more of your whiskey.”
“Whiskey? Why?” I looked into the glass he’d handed me. Huh. I took another sip and made a face. Whiskey.
“Are you coming or what? Pull yourself together, guy,” he said, calling from the hallway. I sat up and took another sip. He was standing in the hallway in a long Japanese bathrobe or something, cigarette dangling from his lips, illuminated from behind like some stupid god of merriment.
“I’ve got Mongolian barbeque out in the living room, come on.”
I swung my legs off the bed and staggered upright. Three-thirty in the morning. Tuesday morning. There was some weird Asian music playing in the living room. I rubbed my face, scratched my crotch for a second, and then threw back the rest of the whiskey. I could smell meat cooking. Mongolian barbeque?
Jamie was sitting in the middle of the room bent over some grill contraption sizzling on the coffee table, his greasy hair hanging over his face making him look like a madman. More like a madman.
“Jesus, Jamie. What the hell are you doing? Seriously, what the hell?”
“I thought I’d explained myself. Tokyo Happy Hour. In Tokyo right now it is…” He checked his watch. Actually, he checked one of his watches; he was wearing one on each arm. “Five thirty-seven in the evening. Kanpai.”
He filled two shot glasses from a carafe next to the grill and handed one to me. He downed his, indicating that I should do the same.
“Why’s it hot?”
“It’s sake. Drink up, it’s good for your chi.” He put a plate in front of me and started serving strips of meat and peppers from the barbeque.
“Chi? I don’t even like chi.”
He stopped and looked at me, the first time he seemed to really consider anything I’d said since he violated my sleep.
“What are you talking about? How can you dislike chi?” He chewed on a piece of meat for a moment, then waved his chopsticks at me and continued with a mouthful of spicy beef. “You’ve got it bad, dude. Taoism explains that chi is a part of everything. You can’t dislike chi unless you’re some kind of fucking nihilist.” He swallowed. “Are you a nihilist, Mark?”
“What? No! I’m not a nihilist.”
“Good. I can’t abide nihilists. More sake?” He refilled our glasses, and we downed them at the same time. I ate some of the beef, which was actually pretty good.
“So I guess you’re probably not going to explain yourself,” I said. He was filling our sake glasses again. Somehow a fresh cigarette had materialized in his mouth, and it seemed in constant danger of falling off the edge of his lips and into the grill.
“When are you going to Tokyo, Mark?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m probably not.”
“Exactly. But right now there are thousands of Japanese businessmen populating a hundred bars in Tokyo, sweating up their only suit and drinking Kirin beer and sake together because it’s the end of another day sitting in some desperate gray cubicle and they’re still too young not to celebrate that. Kanpai.” We threw back another glass of sake, which was starting to cool off a little.
“And?”
“And we’re joining them right now, so don’t be rude about it. That’s the worst thing you could do in a situation like this.”
We finished the sake and the beef and went to bed around six in the morning. I woke up at eight, called in to work, then slept until one in the afternoon, just in time for Reykjavik Happy Hour.