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“Swear I’m not gonna shit weird if I eat this?” Johnny asked, once the waitresses were clear and it was just him and Kenner with the naked lady laying flat on the table between them.
Kenner already had a bite-sized piece in his mouth. He talked around it, saying, “Eighty-twenty,” with a noncommittal shrug of his giant shoulders.
Johnny, reasonably and unsurprisingly, to his thinking, was not convinced by this. He hovered his chopsticks over the spread indecisively, the implements poised awkwardly akimbo in his clenched fist. It would’ve been easier to fight with the damn things than to eat with them.
“Try the tempura,” Kenner offered, when he’d swallowed, and Johnny still hadn’t made a move.
“Which one’s that?”
Motioning at the naked lady’s finely sculpted upper torso, Kenner took a swig of his beer. With a bead of condensation catching on his upper lip, he clarified, “They cook that one.”
Caught up in admiring the goods beneath the sushi, Johnny said, a little dubiously and a lot dreamily, “Gosh, I hope not.”
Kenner spat beer over his hand trying to spare the girl and their waiting meal. Johnny grinned widely, too joyful in the mischief of causing some small bit of havoc to his partner to remember his reservations about the sushi. He popped the nearest seaweed-wrapped chunk into his mouth, and as nice as it would’ve been to touch the lady’s thigh, he was extra careful not to even graze her with his fingers. She had nice legs. She had nice everything. It didn’t lend to making him a hundred percent on the whole raw fish thing, and this experience would’ve been much pleasanter in general if it hadn’t been sushi, but here they were. It was his goddamn idea, even, and now the stuff was in his mouth. It really was bite-sized, too, this wad of fish and rice and seaweed.
He hadn’t tried chewing it since putting it in his mouth. He also hadn’t stopped smiling, but he could feel it beginning to droop on his face.
Opposite him, Kenner planted his elbow on the table and his cheek in his hand. There was still a sheen of beer spittle down his chin, and he was doing that thing with his face he didn’t always seem aware of as it was happening. Like every other part of Kenner that was impossible and impenetrable and unflappable, could never quite get the tough guy act to migrate up behind his eyes, where anyone that knew him, really knew him, would see who he was in an instant.
Since Johnny was looking right at those eyes when they started to crinkle at the edges, he couldn’t help the corners of his mouth ticking up and up, even around a mouthful of sushi. He had to cover his mouth so rice wouldn’t fly out when he laughed.
“You’re fuckin’ unreal, Johnny, you know that?” Kenner huffed, shaking his head.
Forced to either spit into a napkin or force down what was in his mouth, Johnny chose the higher path and began to methodically chew. It wasn’t so bad once the flavors started to come through. The clearness of the cucumber spears left a kind of openness for the rest of what he was tasting to shine, and while he didn’t know yellowtail from albacore, whatever fish it was had a real meaty, savory feel. With the upmost triumph and dignity, he swallowed and washed it down with a long drink of beer number three. The bottle left a cold stamp of sweat under his nose.
Clinking their bottles in a way that was simultaneously warming and patronizing, Kenner said, “Knew you had it in you.”
Johnny rubbed his hands together, eyeing up his options for second bite.
“Eel, too. On the first try.”
“Huh?”
“Unagi,” Kenner enunciated, expertly catching a piece of sushi with his chopsticks like it was a live fish he was catching out of the ocean. “That’s eel.”
“No way. It tasted like barbecue!”
“They do it up nice here,” Kenner allowed, shrugging again, as blandly and expansively as before. “Have some more.”
Narrowing his eyes at Kenner’s feigned indifference, he went for another piece. He tried to just not think about what it would mean for him later if he ate bad fish. At least he had his own toilet to retreat to at the end of the night if it came to that, and no paper walls for him at home either.
“Hey, Kenner,” he said, mouthing at a piece of dark, spicy sauce on the meat of his thumb.
“Hey, Johnny,” Kenner mused back, matching his exact cadence. Wry in that way of his, laughing all the time with his eyes.
“I wanna help you rebuild your house. Would that be okay?” When Kenner didn’t reply straight away and only stared, Johnny elaborated, carefully: “I mean, does your warrior code of ethics mean you have to do it alone for it to be yours?”
“No.”
Johnny began to nod, thinking Kenner was telling him, No, Johnny, fuck off, I’m a samurai-man, I don’t need anyone. Except then he looked up from where he had been trying to stare the sushi topped in bright orange mush into submission, and saw the look on Kenner’s face. He only realized then that the silence wasn’t a closed door. It was a held breath seeking the rest of the words. Those words, whatever they might have been, filled Kenner’s face for a just a second, and then they were gone.
But Johnny waited, feeling distinctly like he’d heard them all the same, and the split second in between Kenner opening his mouth and actually speaking, told Johnny that Kenner knew he’d heard.
“If you’re serious,” Kenner started to say.
“I am,” Johnny intoned. “As a heart attack.”
Kenner nodded, lips pressing together for a second like he was trying not to beam. Apparently he really didn’t know how often his eyes smiled for him. Big softie. “Okay, Johnny. Thanks.”
“No sweat, champ. Hey, what do you say we get another round?” He took a chance on the beaded orange slop roll and said around it, “I wanna take that karaoke machine for a spin.”
When the waitress came over, Kenner ordered shots.
“Should we toast to something?” Johnny asked, holding one of the little glasses aloft when they were delivered to the table, two on each side of the naked lady’s elbows. Did these girls have to take a class on how to be statue still for so long? Johnny didn’t think he could do it. All the fish would’ve slid off him by now.
“To brotherhood.”
“Here here.” Johnny slammed his shot, and, pointing at Kenner’s face to show he wasn’t kidding around, said, “We’re gonna do a duet.”
“We are not.”
“You’re smiling,” Johnny accused. “I win.”
“I’m smiling because you’ve got tobiko on your face, genius.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Johnny downed the rest of his beer and clapped his hands together. “Brotherhood means drunk karaoke. I don’t make the rules. Besides, you’re the one who’s always saying I gotta reconnect with my culture, right?” He stood up with the stage in his sights, but Kenner caught him with one arm around the waist as he rounded the table. Johnny swung around like a dog pulling on a lead and plopped airily into the seat next to Kenner. A sigh whooshed out of him, and he said, “Kenner, I’m drunk,” like it was a revelation to him.
“I figured you were drunk when we left the last place,” Kenner pointed out, a bookishness in his tone like he was on the verge of saying I told you so, but Johnny couldn’t figure why.
“I wasn’t!” Johnny folded his arms over his chest. “I had a nice buzz going, and the bar food wasn’t doing it for me.”
Kenner glanced at the many beer bottles littering the table. He glanced back at Johnny.
Johnny smiled, impish, and said, “Wanna arm wrestle?”
With an unforced, beatific tranquility that put Johnny at ease in the selfsame breath that it made his blood pump faster, Kenner replied, “I’d put you through the table, and you know it.”
Shoving his sleeve up his arm, Johnny laughed, and rejoined, “That’s not a no. Also? Not the disincentive you seem to think it is. C’mon, we can make a wager of it. You know you kind of wanna put me through the table,” he added, wagging his eyebrows in a way he hoped conveyed the depth of his sincerity since it ran pretty deep just now.
Shaking his head again, Kenner said, “I’m gonna need more booze if you’re gonna be like this,” without seeming aware of the big smile he was currently sporting.
With supreme care and deference, Johnny did not point it out to him.
Rather, he turned to the naked lady as soon as Kenner was out of earshot and said, “Excuse me, Miss? How’d you like to make twenty bucks?”
For the first time all night, she twitched, and looked right at him. Her immediate disgust told him what she thought he was asking for, and he held up his hands.
“Not what I meant! Honest!”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t kick him in the teeth at least. She also seemed to be listening to him as he explained, with more stops and starts than he’d intended, before he went and came across as a creep who propositioned ladies at work for sex. By the time Kenner came back to the table with two more beers and two more shots, Johnny didn’t actually know if he and the naked lady were in cahoots or not. He hoped they were, or he really would go through the table, and for nothing.
Not that he wouldn’t manage to have fun in that case, but still.
Johnny planted his elbow on the table, away from where the sushi and skin spread took up most of the tabletop, and flexed his hand. Kenner shrugged out of his jacket, not a hurry in the world. His skimpy tank top, stretched and faded from many wears and washes, hung loosely on his frame. He put his hand in Johnny’s, face relaxed and pleasant like he was about to fall asleep, and Johnny licked his lips, and said:
“What’s your beef with real shirts anyway, Kenner? You worried people won’t know you work out if they can’t see how tight your nipples are?”
Kenner’s entire face spasmed, and Johnny seized the opportunity to slam his hand to the table.
“You’re one to talk, Johnny boy,” Kenner said, once he’d recovered, though his face was still bright red.
“Whaddaya mean?”
Kenner patted Johnny’s stomach through his shirt, crooning, “Walking around in suits a couple sizes too big. You wanna bulk up, there’s better ways to do it.”
“So I can be big and slow like you, you mean,” Johnny shot back, chin jutting up high, doing everything to say nyah-nyah save saying it outright.
Replacing his elbow on the table and extending his fingers, Kenner said, “So you can beat me at arm wrestling fair and square.”
“Quickness is the essence of war,” he answered serenely, assuming the position.
“Yes, it is,” Kenner mused, and while Johnny put up a good fight and held fast for a few seconds, Kenner soon got the better of him and tapped Johnny’s hand down to the table. He was gracious about it, as expected. “I’m surprised you know the Art of War.”
“What, I gotta be half-Chinese to know Sun Tzu? Pretty sure that’s a little racist.”
“I’m not criticizing,” Kenner told him placidly, “I’m interested.”
“Best two out of three,” Johnny said, still unsure if the naked lady — Laura, that was her name — was going to help him out or not.
“Shots first.”
Johnny held his aloft when it was given to him. Without deferring to Kenner this time, he toasted: “To kindred spirits!”
Chuckling, Kenner echoed him: “To kindred spirits.”
They threw their shots back, and Johnny shook out his shoulders, cracking his neck in anticipation of this last round. He looked right at Kenner, braced himself, and said, “This is the one. Tiebreaker.”
“Like your chances, do you?” Kenner asked, good-naturedly. He took Johnny’s hand in his. “Well, okay.”
They heaved off at the same time, and Johnny held out longer this time before Kenner started to overtake him again just as he has before. Johnny braced, briefly considered pushing down on Kenner’s hand with both of his, and in a moment was resigned to his fate when the sound of glass scraping the table drew his attention. Kenner nearly pinned him in his distraction, but then a brief, highly audible burbling sound came, like a busted fountain, and the resistance Johnny was up against flinched. It was all he needed to topple Kenner’s arm down to the table, and then he saw what happened. One of the opened Sapporo bottles had spun out and dumped half of its contents into Kenner’s lap.
“Jesus Christ,” Kenner said, fumbling to catch the bottle.
Johnny laughed, hysterically at first and then in helpless fits he tried desperately to quell. He accidentally caught Laura’s eye while Kenner was mopping up the mess with a cloth napkin, and without emoting or reacting at all, she returned her gaze to the middle distance, silently drawing her foot back to where it had been. Their waitress came to the table then to ask if everything was okay, and Kenner answered for them since Johnny hadn’t yet been able to calm himself down. The waitress signaled to nearby staff to clear the rest of the sushi so Laura could get up.
She stopped by Johnny’s elbow and held her hand out. Kenner stopped in the middle of trying to sop up the unfortunate stain over his crotch to look between them. Johnny guiltily slapped a twenty into her palm, and off she went, naked as the day she was born, and holding her head higher than Johnny could manage with Kenner’s implacable ice blue stare.
“All warfare is based on deception?” he chirped, quoting Sun Tzu again.
After a few seconds more spent looking implacable, Kenner laughed under his breath and reached for the unspilled bottle. He drank deeply and dipped his fingertips in the puddle of spilled beer on the table.
“Y’know, there’s easier ways to get a guy’s dick wet, don’t you, Johnny?” He flicked his wet fingers at Johnny, beer droplets spattering on his chin. One landed precariously near to his mouth, and he could see Kenner track it with his eyes. Just now, Johnny had a ravenous sort of hankering to feel more of it on his lips. When he didn’t respond in any kind of intelligent way, apart from stare back at Kenner in a wash of feelings he felt too drunk to interrogate too closely, Kenner nodded easily, and said, “Think it’s time I got you home, pal.”
“Where’re you gonna be? Minako’s?”
“If she’ll have me,” he said, in that tone from before that pricked up Johnny’s ears, like there was more he wasn’t saying.
“Or…?” Johnny heard himself say.
“Or what?” Kenner asked, hauling Johnny up to stand when it became clear he wasn’t going to do it himself.
“Come over to mine.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Johnny insisted, throwing money on the table for the sushi and booze. “Otherwise you’ll slink away at the crack of dawn and start working on the house without me.”
“Okay, Johnny.” Kenner shrugged his jacket back on. “I wouldn’t, though.”
“You wouldn’t, what?” Johnny looked back at him as he held the door for Kenner to follow him outside.
“Take off on you,” Kenner said easily, pulling on the lapels of his jacket to seat it more comfortably around his shoulders. “I wouldn’t.”
Johnny felt his heart do something momentous in his chest, something like a somersault that he had to smile at. Kenner caught him, rooted to the spot as he was, and looped back for him, smiling from behind his eyes how he tended to when what he was feeling needed to be protected. Johnny could get a read on that type of thing from him now, especially when he was feeling it for himself.
“Brotherhood?” Johnny said, though he wasn’t sure, as much as he felt honored to fill that role if Kenner would have him.
Kenner tipped his head. “Kindred spirits,” he replied, and that seemed to do it. Seemed to leave room to contain the rest of that huge feeling unspooling in Johnny, and that he thought might have been unspooling in Kenner, too.
Johnny was so swept up in the current of his feelings, in the joy of them, that he didn’t duck out of the way of Kenner’s vigorous headlock in time.
“Mmpf!”
Sagely, strolling unhurriedly down the sidewalk with Johnny flailing under his arm, he said, “Attack is the secret of defense, and what is defense, Johnny boy? That’s right,” he carried on, when Johnny’s muffled response lodged itself securely in Kenner’s armpit. “The planning of attack.”
He spun Johnny out, almost as if they were partners in a dance, and Johnny, surely red-faced to match his ecstatic breathlessness, hollered a laugh into the bright, cool night.