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Lime Green Buddha

Justin W. Price
This story was originally published in the February 2012 edition of efiction magazine. It has also appeared in the December 2012 edition of the Rusty Nail and will be featured in an upcoming anthology of Portland, Oregon based authors.

1.
    There’s a little Asian goods store across the street from my apartment. I walk by the shop every day on my way to work and every day I see this lime green Buddha ash tray happily smiling at me through the store front windows. I’m drawn by the rotund belly and jovial face of the Buddha.
    This afternoon after work, I go into the store. A little bell on the door announces my arrival. I’ve never been in here before yet it seems familiar to me. Wood carvings of the Yin and the Yang, posters of dragons, posters of dogs, Chinese cookbooks, Japanese cookbooks. The lime green Buddha.
    “Can I help you?” I turn and see a very pretty girl. She’s Asian and has long black hair, fleckless brown skin, small lips, a button nose. She’s very petite. Her name is Lilly, so says her name badge.
    “Huh?” I stammer.
    “Can I help you? With something. Are you looking for something?” She smiles. She’s beautiful. There is warmth in her smile.
    “Huh? Uh, yeah. I wanna buy this Buddha here.”
    She grabs it gently from its window display, brushing my hand with her hips as she does. She takes the rotund green figure and walks him to the checkout counter. “Anything else?” She asks.
    “No, I don’t think so?”
    “No, nothing else.” She rings me up, wraps the Buddha up neatly in newsprint then picks up the pen from the counter and writes something on my receipt before she shoves it all in the bag and hands it to me. “Have a nice day. See you again!”
    I walk out the door, a little bell on the door announcing my departure.

2.
    I couldn’t tell you why I bought it. I don’t smoke and I’m not drawn particularly to Buddhism or to Asian art in general, yet, here I am, walking up three flights of stairs to my apartment, holding a plastic bag which contains a lime green Buddha ash tray. I enter my apartment, kick off my black and white Chucks, toss my jacket on the tattered red patent leather love seat and take the Buddha out of the bag. I carefully unwrap it and set it on the center of my glass coffee table. The table is littered with finger print smudges and food stains.
    Inside the bag is a receipt for the Buddha. It cost me $20. On the back of the receipt is a phone number for Lilly. I know it’s her number because beneath the seven-digit number is the name ‘Lilly’. I’m glad to see her number and I decide to give her a call.
    The phone rings four times and then her voice mail comes on. “Uh, hi, Lilly, this is uh, James. You, uh, put your number on my receipt. I’m the guy that bought the lime green Buddha ash tray from you. At the store you work at. Anyway, I’m calling because I assume you want me too because you gave me your number, so, uh, call me back if you want too,” and I give her my number and hang up.

3.
    It’s six in the evening. I called Lilly about an hour ago and now I’m in the kitchen making dinner. I can’t cook in a messy kitchen. The kitchen is the only room in the apartment where nothing is out of order. I’m making wild trout stuffed with corn bread and wrapped in bacon with a side of cheesy Brussels sprouts. I’ve just decapitated the trout, gutted it and split it open. Now I’m rolling it in dried corn bread batter and also stuffing it with the batter, with white onions, with lemon wedges, with garlic, with chives. I do this to a second trout and I lay them both in a frying pan greased with peanut oil, where I then wrap them with bacon strips on either end, sear them in a pan for a minute on each side and then place into a baking pan, greased with shortening and olive oil and then shove into the oven and bake at a low temperature. I am just starting to prepare to steam the Brussels sprouts when my phone rings.
    “Uh, hello,” I say.
    “Hi.”
    “Who is this?” I have the phone resting between my neck and shoulder blade.
    “This is Lilly. From the store. You called me.”
    “Oh, yes. Yeah, I called you. You wrote your number on my receipt.”
    “I did?”
    “Yeah. You did. You don’t remember?”
    “Not really. Sorta.”
    “Sorta? Do you do this sort of thing often?”
    “No. Not really. That was my first time.”
    “Okay,” I shrug. “So, why did you want me to call you?’
    “Do you think I’m pretty?”
    “Do I think you’re pretty?”
    “Yes. Do you think I’m pretty?”
    “Yeah. I do. I do think you’re pretty. What are you doing?” I throw the sprouts into the steamer and walk over to my apartment window. I live in an 800 square foot studio on the 3rd floor of the Drake, which has a manual elevator, oak staircase, skinny hallways and low ceilings. It was built in 1908. I often stand at the window and admire the view. I can see the whole city from here. Two of the seven bridges of Portland. The Portland Building. Mt Hood. The Columbia River. I look down and I can see white oak trees. Maples. A traffic jam. A pot dealer. Lilly. Standing outside the Asian store at the bus stop.
    “I’m waiting for the bus,” she says.
    “Do you like fish?”
    “Do I like fish?”
    “Yes. Do you like fish? I’m cooking fish for dinner. And Brussels Sprouts. Would you like some fish?”
    “Are you asking me to have dinner with you? Fish?”
    “Yes. My girlfriend is out of town and I’m lonely.”
    “I have to go. My bus is coming.”
    I look out the window and see that the bus is not coming. “That doesn’t answer my question,” I say.
    “Fish isn’t my favorite. Why did you call me if you have a girlfriend?”
    “The fish is really fresh. I caught it this morning, actually,” I lie. It was actually purchased yesterday from the fish market across the street from my work. It was probably alive three days ago.
    “Where do you live?”
    “I live across the street. In the Drake. If you look up you can see me. I’m on the third floor. I’m waving,” I wave and she looks up but I don’t think she sees me. “I thought you said your bus was coming?”
    “Not my bus. I was wrong.”
    “Do you want some fish?”
    “I thought you said you had a girlfriend,” She pauses and I hear her sigh. “Which apartment is yours?”
    “I’ll buzz you in.”

4.
    Lilly likes fish now. She said my trout was amazing and the Brussels sprouts were “pretty okay.” After I steamed them, I cut them in half, poured melted unsalted butter on them, sprinkled them with organic Swiss cheese, which I let melt before serving.
    I show her around my apartment, which doesn’t take long. She likes the art-deco style of decoration we— my girlfriend and I— have. The posters of Audrey Hepburn, of James Dean, of skinny Elvis. My bookshelf with In Cold Blood, with Oliver Twist, with Fight Club, with The Odyssey, with poetry books by Whitman, by Plath, by Poe, by Shakespeare, with the Kama Sutra.
    “Not mine,” I say. “It’s my girlfriend’s.”
    She nods.
    “Have you read it?”
    She nods again and says, “No.”
    She seems very impressed that I’ve read all the books. I tell her I’m an English major and I work in a food cart on 4^th and Main that sells sandwiches stuffed with French fries and your choice of meat with a ‘secret sauce’ that’s actually just Thousand Island salad dressing and she says that’s “pretty okay.”
    We’re sitting on my couch now and we’ve been talking for an hour. She’s a first generation American. Both her parents were born in Hanoi. She was born in Baltimore and moved here six years ago. She had two uncles killed by American G.I.’s during the War when they were just children. We talk about how we’re both pacifists and how Vietnam and the War in Iraq were both “terrible tragedies.” She’s 24 years old and she goes to Portland State, majoring in music therapy, which she tries to explain to me but is beyond my realm of understanding.
    “It’s basically therapy but instead of using a couch and words, you use music,” She explains to me.
    “You can go to school for that?”
    “Yes. I’m going to open a private practice.”
    “Why don’t you just major in music?”
    “Because I’m a flute player.”
    “So?” I say. I know nothing about music.
    “So there’s not a big market for flute players.”
    I think she’s beautiful and before I know it, my lips are on hers and then on her neck. My hands are on her small breasts and she is moaning a little. She leans into me. I feel her hips arch into mine. I feel our hearts beating together. Her skin feels soft and healthy.
    We don’t even move to the bed before we are both naked and making love ferociously on the couch. We are both skilled lovers and she is letting me know that she approves of my performance. By the time we’re finished, we’re both in the shower and she tells me that this is her first time showering with a man. I don’t believe her. I let her wash me and I wash her. We collapse into bed, still a little damp and fall asleep.

5.
    I wake up in my bed, alone and still naked. I sigh and get up and take a quick look around the apartment to confirm that Lilly is indeed gone. I shave and make a pot of coffee. There’s a note from Lilly on the counter:

    Had a lot of fun last night. Let’s do it again soon,

    and she again leaves her number.
    I want to fry some eggs. I put some unsalted butter in the pan, crack open two Cage-free eggs and cook them sunny side up. They cook quickly, spitting and popping at me from the pan. I peel and chop an onion and throw a quarter of it into the pan with the eggs and brown them. I wrap the remaining onion in red saran wrap and put it in my crisper in the fridge. I throw some rye bread (which I will add Marionberry jam too) in the toaster and pan fry some ham steak. When it’s all done, I put in on my plate and eat it slowly while sipping my coffee.
    I’m tired of this game we play. Of the lies we tell. I put my plate and coffee mug in the dishwasher and hand wash all the pans I cooked with and head to the shower. I look at the picture on the wall of Lilly and I last summer at Multnomah Falls and feel myself smile. That was back before we had to pretend to be strangers in order to connect with one another; in order to be intimate. Back before we had to pretend to be liars.
    It had been the best day of our young relationship. She’d never been to the Falls and we found a rare sunny Saturday in October. She was wearing her PSU Vikings grey and green hoodie and jeans with Nordic tennis shoes. She had on a Nike baseball cap and she’d pulled her long pony tail through the hole in the back. As we climbed to the top of the Falls, we held hands and smiled. When we reached the summit, we kissed and she giggled. We found a tourist to take our picture.
    “Cute couple,” I heard the man’s wife say as they walked away.
    She was right. We were cute together.
    The game was her idea and we’ve been playing it for six months now. She’d presented it to me just a few short weeks after that trip. She told me she couldn’t feel close to someone she knew. She told me she couldn’t love me unless we pretended not to care about each other. She told me she needed to keep getting to know me in order to be with me.
    I stand in the shower and let the hot water cascade down my body. The shower is mine. Her shampoos. Her conditioners. Her razors. All gone. This place is now devoid of her. There’s some black mold growing on the ceiling which I still need to call the apartment manager about.
    I get out of the shower and slowly dry myself with the same mildewed towel I’ve been using all week. When I’m mostly dry I drop it on the floor. I brush my teeth and when I spit I don’t clean it up. My mirror has spit stains. I leave the towel on the floor and put on my ratty boxer shorts and non-matching socks. I step out into the main room of our— my— studio and look for some clean pants, which I find underneath some t shirts that I forgot to dry and which are beginning to mildew. The apartment used to be so immaculate.
    I walk back to the kitchen table and grab the note from Lilly and reread several times before crumpling it up. I walk to the coffee table, uncrumple it and read it again. I recrumple it and place the piece of paper on the Buddha ash tray and I light it on fire. I watch it burn while I drink the rest of my coffee, which has turned cold.

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