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Benjamin comes home from sixth grade today with an orange smashed between the pages of his Ecosystems textbook. Danny, his older brother by seven years, tries to clean it for him. The pages are wavy, sticky, stiff.

“Who did this?” Danny asks him.

“My classmates,” Benjamin says. “Do you want to play Mario Kart?”

Danny uses a sponge on the pages. They only wrinkle worse.

Their Aunt Jan comes home an hour later and asks where her ashtray went. Then she makes them stop playing Nintendo so she can watch TV.

In their bedroom Benjamin draws a map of an imaginary island. The shoreline is concentric rings of waves.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Benjamin asks Danny.

“What happened to silent study time?” Danny says. He adjusts the Y-axis on his graphing calculator. He still can’t find the mean.

“When you die, do you think you come back as someone else?”

“Benji, study. Stop asking stupid questions.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“It’s not your homework, is it?”

“Well,” says Benjamin, “If we’re just reincarnated, I probably already learned this stuff anyway.”

“So why aren’t you getting straight A’s then?” asks Danny.

“Cause my true self doesn’t care about Algernon.”

“Your true self is going to have to do afterschool study hall.”

Benjamin considers this. “Have you ever kissed a girl, Danny?”

“Yes. Duh.”

“No but really.”

“Yes!”

“Where?”

“At Josh’s house.”

“No I mean on her neck? Or lips? Or where?”

“All three.”

“Ew. Who was it?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Was it like kissing mom?”

Danny slams his calculator down. He is relieved to see he didn’t break it. Benjamin draws one last tree then scrutinizes his island.

“Danny, it’s okay if you didn’t really kiss her.” Benjamin holds up the drawing and says, “I’ve been to this island before, look.” Danny recognizes an almost perfect map of Angel Island, the big state park in the middle of the bay. “In a past life I lived here,” says Benjamin.

“Benji, that’s Angel Island. You went there on a field trip last year.”

“No, nobody’s ever seen this island.”

Danny closes his statistics textbook. Next year he will leave for college. Benjamin will be on his own. “Let’s go get some dinner, Benji. I don’t think Aunt Jan is making anything.”

“Can we go to the comic book place?”

“Okay, sure.”

“Danny, who do you think you’ll be in your next life? That’s what’s hard to think about.”

On The Bridge

1581 Webster Street

Suite 205

(415) 922-7765

www.sfonthebridge.com

We all met at this old Mediterranean restaurant about as intact as the Acropolis and twice as crowded.  I’d never been there before, but apparently it was Ben’s favorite, and he was the reason we had rallied together since his apartment building had burned down that afternoon.

Ben was the last to arrive.  We all hugged him, then sat back down.

“Well,” I said, “No visible charring!”

“Hey,” Kacey said, glaring at me, “Easy.”

“Ha, it’s fine,” Ben said.  “You should’ve seen it.  Orange, like fake orange, and the flames made this whooshing noise like a wind turbine.  I’m on the fourth floor, you know?  And it started on the first, so it got hot really fast.”

“Well what did you take with you?”  Kacey asked.  “Where’s all your stuff?”

Ben said, “You know, it was pretty cool, like that career thing they make you do in highschool, only real.  There I am, about to say goodbye to everything I own, and I had this moment of intense clarity.  It was easy.”

“So did you take anything?” I asked.

“Yeah.  One thing,” he said, and fished it from his pocket.

“That’s my harmonica!” Nick said.

“What about your stuff?” asked Kacey.

“Photos?  Art?” asked Alison.

“Your computer?” I asked.

“No, like I said, it was easy.  I don’t need that stuff.  The harmonica though, it’s not mine.  You can burn it, Nick, if you want, but I can’t do it for you.  Everything else?  It’s underbrush.  Clear it out!”

Nick examined the harmonica.  Then he held it to his lips.  I’d never heard him play, and I was surprised when he laid out a mean blues riff.  He kept playing, gaining confidence, building intensity, and then Alison started stomping her feet and pounding the table in time, making the salt and pepper shakers rattle and the silverware jump, and then we all joined in, until pretty soon the whole crowded restaurant was staring at us.  Then a guy at another table started clapping the rhythm as well, and then everyone was doing it, even the waitress and the cooks.

When Nick stopped playing, the whole restaurant cheered.  I looked at Ben.  He had his eyes closed, and I’d never seen real serenity until that moment, after everything he owned had burned down and he’d managed to save the one thing that really mattered to him, which wasn’t even his to begin with.

Old Jerusalem Restaurant

2976 Mission Street (b/t 25th & 26th)

San Francisco

(415) 642-5958

www.oldjerusalemsf.com

On his rainy walk to the restaurant he passes a man going the other way leading a crippled dog. The dog’s hind legs are slung in a wheeled cradle. Why keep such a nuisance alive?

The dog pulls itself along, walking with his front paws, like an acrobat on his hands. The dog’s owner has a plastic bag hanging out of his back pocket to collect any messes.

After passing the dog and its owner, he notices in the dry patches under awnings parallel wheel tracks from the dog’s wet wheels, and haphazard prints from its two functional paws.

When he gets to the restaurant a woman is kneeling on the floor and playing Koto. The music doesn’t make any sense. The notes land like wary mosquitoes; they are tuned to a foreign scale. The rhythm spits and flutters. She could be a clumsy beginner or a revered expert, he doesn’t know.

Rain smears the window glass and the rivulets warp the view outside, bending trees, making cars appear to rush, then slow, squashing pedestrian’s faces and elongating their legs.

The tea burns his tongue. Now he will taste less of his meal. That dog should have been put down. Why care for something so hopeless?

Everything on his plate is ordered so perfectly. Momentarily he will eat it. With the first bite he will destroy the order. This, he thinks, is living. Taking and breaking.

He eats all of the sushi on his plate as quickly as possible. The woman is still playing. On the sidewalk outside the man and the crippled dog appear. Through the rain-glazed window it looks like the dog is whole. His head dodges up and down, his tongue hangs pink, he wears a canine smile.

The dog’s owner stops at the restaurant’s door, opens it. The drum skin sound of rain mixes with the Koto. The waitress greets the man by name.

The Koto player stops. She is smiling. She is opening her arms. The dog does a fumbling two-legged gallop to reach her. She embraces the wet animal; it licks her cheek.

His burnt tongue is numb. He closes his eyes. He hears laughter and a jingling from the dog’s collar, from its walking apparatus. Finally the Koto begins again, and though he cannot anticipate a single note, he understands each one. They follow one after another, making a track through the air like wet impressions of wheels and footprints on a dry surface.

Amasia Hide’s Sushi Bar

149 Noe St (at Henry)

San Francisco

(415) 861-7000

www.amasiahidesushi.com