2.2 Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial/Trucker's Saturday Night

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2. Trucker’s Saturday Night

Friday: Kimura sits in his office thinking. He is not used to a woman smarter than he; he likes it and wants more. But she is too young, too White, and too upper class for a pass by the 4-eyed Jap he sees himself as. 

   Telephone rings. The squeaky voice is unmistakable. “Hi Kim! So nice to have your direct line and know it’s you without askin’. Hey! I’m waitin’ for you t’call for another date. Startin’ t’feel like that gal in the Listerine ad.”

   For an instant he worries his heart will run him to ground. “Ali-san! Just when I am thanking Atheist Goddess it is Friday, you call! Can you meet me sevenish in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel lobby?”

   The voice at the other end replies: “I’ll meet you anyish, Kim. See you then!”

Wright supposedly modeled the Imperial on Aztec King Montezuma’s palace. Kimura has no idea what that looked like but the Imperial is a solid rust color rectangle and its cube stones of 1-meter squares must have been imported. Four floors weighing down on an art-deco lobby which has the best bar in Tokyo, if you judge a bar by its vodka stingers.

Kimura is sitting in a high-back hotel chair facing the shiny chrome doors that are injecting guests into the snobby lobby. He wears a brown corduroy sports jacket, gray slacks with thin cuffs below his ankles over the latest black oxfords from England, and a white shirt with black bow tie – not clip-on but one he’d tied himself, as his latest copy of The New Yorker says every man should do in 1939. He looks to his left wrist at the expensive Swiss timepiece. Not only does it tell hour, minute and second time but it also has a calendar that can be set to tell name of weekday for calendar date to year 2000, which he hopes to experience, but not too soon.

He spots her: his American dream in white blouse, its thin linen showing off her small breasts. He also notes a white-belted, latest fashion, short green skirt giving glimpse of knees; black platform shoes; and the smooth, slim, curved, bare lower legs. A tasteful pearl collarette matches her blouse. Her blonde hair is well conditioned to nestle on her shoulder with inward curve at both ends. Her lips are lightly tinted red and her facial skin shows no cosmetic and impresses with its youth and health. Walking briskly right up to his chair, she leans over him, imparting her fragrance and says “Hi Mr Man! Mah oh mah oh mah! An’t thou the fashion plate?”

The Imperial Hotel has a tea room in one corner and they go there. As is her wont on sitting, Ali crosses right thigh over left, with skirt hem above right knee. Ordering, he sees she prefers tea to coffee and Earl Grey over Lipton, and she plows into the strawberry shortcake as if she had not eaten all day.

“Ah usually fast, Fridays; 'at’s how I keep this swell svelte figure.” She makes motions with both hands, “But mah rule, when invited, is to break fast. Your treat, an’ it?”

   “As you desire,” he says. “What will you like to talk about?”

   “I wanna hear your t’oughts on what’s wrong wit da woild, Bustah!” she says, putting on her Bronx accent, then switching to standard American. “Last time I was the Great Gabbo.; now your turn.”

   He downs his American coffee and orders lemon ices. “It is easy to say what is wrong with the world but nothing will get done about it for precisely the reason that what is wrong prevents righting.”

   “Hm, now y’got me in suspense, Kim?  Explain.”

   “Our educational system – and when I say ‘our’ I mean a modern country's – turns out liberal artists – graduates who major in literature, history, music, business, political science – by the boxcar full; but only a handful get an adequate science and mathematics education.”

   “Well, m’love,” Ali smiles and leans towards him, her small cleavage hard to ignore. “Are you suggesting we oughta be turning out Einysteins rather’n Rockyfellehs?”

   “We’d be lucky to, but more than one Einstein is highly improbable and potential Rockefellers are common. No, I mean every one should be literate in mathematics and science; should understand calculus and analytic geometry, and be familiar with exponents, number roots and scientific number notation. And in science, everybody, no matter their major, whether in college, high school or grammar school, should understand the Scientific Method, be able to discuss Einstein's relativity and Planck's quantum theory, the periodic table of the elements and subatomic structure in chemistry; also understand Darwin and the origin of life.”

   Ali leans over and gives Kimura a right-hand pat on the back of his left hand. “You tell ‘em big boy.” Then she sits back. “Seriously, Kim, continue.”

 He does: “We live in a world where ninety-nine percent of people including the leaders are science illiterate but we also live by the laws of science. For precisely these reasons, the decisions needing to be made in a democracy require science literacy; otherwise we are doomed. Today, the leaders pray for the answers and the fact that they pray is the reason why the world is on the verge of the worst war ever. The weapons invented for it will destroy millions.
   He makes a dismissive motion with his right hand. "Oh, what use! You ask what I think the problem is, and I tell. But not very coherently, I admit.”

   Ali reaches out and puts her right hand over the back of his left hand. "Hon, I know what you’re tryin’ to say. We live among oafs and philistines and they gotta be educated. And they’re the majority. At Harvard I sat-in on seminar chalk-talks by Professor Harlow Shapley, and once we had a visit by Einstein hisself.  What I got is that the most we advanced types can do is strive to attain our own personal excellence to achieve success in this bad society and then get together and smash it to smithereens. We’re powerless now, like the few Cro-Magnon in the world of Neanderthal. And if we reveal ourselves by talking the way you talk, Hon – too loudly – we’ll be snuffed out the moment the cavemen sense our threat. Whadaya imagine Cro-Magnon thought looking at Neanderthal? 'Kill the ugly bastard!’' Lucky for us the Neand was too dumb to figure out what the Cro-Mag had in mind for it. So we lie low, save our dough, and get the masses to depend on us. Then, when the morons have made such a mess and are starving, and when the government’s being replaced by anarchy, we’ll force things our way and the world’ll go sane."

   “A world gone sane,” repeats Kimura as if in trance.

   Ali throws back her head, laughs and says. “But let’s relax now. First, even assuming what I say is gonna happen, it an’t gonna be till after we’re dead and maybe our grandchildren will have need to deal with the worst of it. Meanwhile we do what we can but we also have fun. Intelligent persons enjoying each other! I’ll drink to that.”

   She raises her glass, Kimura too, and they clink. Then she looks deeply into his eyes. “Kim, let’s get a room and stay the night.”

   He asks for the check then excuses himself to go to front desk, bidding her to stay seated. She does insist on one point: They should split the hotel room cost. She does not want this to have, she says, the aspect of a trucker’s Saturday night;, a phrase, he guesses, she had got from reading too much John O’Hara.
To read next, click 2.(3-4) Imperial Suite/A Kitchen Philosophy