2.(7-9) Away We Go/USA Ho

*Slim Novel 2 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


7. Brilliant Idea

Kimura comes away from the Hotel wanting more Ali. How to arrange it? He is aware of Ali’s being a camera girl so when he gets called to his chief’s office and the chief says “Kimura, I am sending you to cover the New York World’s Fair; you fly to U.S. next week,” he asks, “What about camera coverage?”

   “Our branch in New York will loan one.”

   Taking out his gold case, opening it with deft finger press, and offering a marijuana cigarette which he knows his chief likes, Kimura leans across a corner of desk and says to his beaming boss while flicking his lighter to flame, “Chief, hear my brilliant idea.”

8. German Bakery

They breakfast together at German Bakery. A Prussian army baker created it while interned in Japan during World War 1, the war Japan entered in 1914 to grab off Germany’s perfect port Tsingtao on Shantung Peninsula’s south coast. The Prussian baker was treating his captors so well with delicious German food that one who later would be called “venture capitalist” bankrolled him for German Bakery. It needed coffee and other food to go with it and this led to the popular breakfast shops.

   Kimura likes to refer to the Bakery’s German-peasant dressed waitresses as Maedchen (Girls) in Uniform an allusion to the sexy les-be friendly (lesbian) girls from the same-title German movie. Ali, sitting across from Kimura, eats the German-Bakery breakfast with gusto: Fresh-squeezed orange juice, assorted cheese slices, sausages, boiled eggs, sliced German rye bread, a basket of rolls with strawberry jam & butter, and they share a pot of powerful coffee.
   It is what Kimura calls a communist spread by which he means no individual servings; and one can imagine two diners, starting off facing and eating forward until both pairs of lips meet. Ali is dressed for April in Tokyo: a brown cloth coat over dark green flannel dress, long stockings and low heel shoes. Kimura has on a gray coat over brown corduroy jacket, with matching pants and blue shirt plus gray tie.

   He sits watching her eat, thinking, the test of honest character in a girl is a spontaneous joy of eating. The bad ones leave half the food on plate uneaten. Ali, not used to Kimura’s ways, looks up between mouthfuls.  “Wuzzamatter, Kim, an’t you hongry?”

   “No, Ali-san, I am just admiring your honest appetite. Like Miriam Hopkins in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 movie,Trouble in Paradise.”

   “Gee. You like her? Me too! Wa'n’t she terrific as Temple Drake?  (A 1933 movie of the novel, Sanctuary, by William Faulkner) But they shoulda shown Popeye screwin’ her with the corncob as Faulkner originally wrote.”

   Kimura starts eating. Their flight is 12:30 PM and checkin is 11:10 so no rush. Over coffee and German cookies: “Ali san! It is a chance to see America and get to know New York, the city of my dream. While at Harvard I visited New York several times. It was like coming home. Everyone thought me a Chinese laundryman.”

   She laughs. “Well, ma love, you’re fallin’ into a potta jam, name a Ali-kazam.”

   “What?”

   “Just this. I attend Hunter College in the Bronx. Y’know, as we natives say, ‘da Bronex!’ ”

   He takes off his glasses as is his wont when he gets professorial.

  “Well, yes. New York City has five boroughs and the north one is the Bronx. By the way, according to my Fowler, (A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler) one usually precedes it with the definite article capitalized.”

   “Fowler’s a howler! What’s he doin’ in da Bronex. But what you say interests me in a weird way. Say more, mighty Thor.”

   “The Bronx is named after Jonas Bronck, a Scandinavian who bought one square mile of farm in the southern part in 1641 from the Dutch East India Company. It used to be inhabited by Indians.”

The conversation wanes. He pays the check and gets a receipt. Outside he hails cab and they are off to Haneda Airport.

9. Haneda

is two Japanese words – 羽田 – meaning ‘Wing’ and ‘Field’, and so named when it opened for commercial flights in the 1920's on the southeast edge of Tokyo bordering the Bay, thirty minutes from the Ginza area by taxi.

   Flying from Tokyo to San Francisco begins with the 1900-mile, 13-hour hop to Manila to connect to China Clipper. The 2000-or-more-mile hops between refueling islands in the Pacific are too much for the 2-engine Nippon Airline's DC3, and, even could NAL have purchased a 4-engine clipper, the US government was not about to allow Jap pilots over-flying Pacific isles.

   The DC3 fits twenty passengers. Few people fly, and those that do – mostly business and diplomats – go top class like Ali and Kimura now in private compartment, seated across a cozy table. To sleep, the table folds-up into side panel, and the seats become adjoining beds. A stewardess in fancy kimono has just left after pouring green tea and serving pink jelly cubes of chilled sweet bean dessert on small white rectangular trays with a fragrant pink rose-blossom beside each.

   “Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy, Kim, Y’really know how ta travel!”

   “Ali-san, you are now on assignment for the number-one news service. It is expected we represent the Japanese nation so sit back, enjoy.”

   “OK, pal! I’ll relax and watch the blynkin’ lights.”

It is 1 PM as the DC3 lifts, and, with one hour's being subtracted in flying to Manila, the thirteen-hour flight computes to a 1 AM arrival.
To  read next, click 2.10 Aboard China Clipper