I’m a few days behind. Look for some extra stories until I get caught up!
Thanks to Colin for the suggestion!
There is nothing to her more serious than the Chinese Masters. Nothing more precise than their careful craft. They are from far away, and spoke a language she does not know. They lived long ago and did not know each other. They wrote moral and social codes, planted gardens and then painted them, waged war according to an exquisite plan, and built a land that has never died. Never. It is the precision and care in their art that sustained them.
She doesn’t consider herself to be particularly serious. There is nothing precise in the lines of the ball-point pen shamrock tattoo. It was a lack of care that led to the two children who are at home sleeping right now. The night grows long and fierce, and she laughs away as much of it as she can.
Still, she calls upon the Masters in the early hours of the morning, when they inspire her in the most perilous tasks. The restaurant is a coney island. A coney is a Koegel Vienna hot dog covered in a meat sauce, drenched with mustard, with onions piled on. They are meant to be served on a plate, not handed out through a cracked window at 4 AM, and across a huge space into the dark mouth of a waiting car. Every time there is a risk of accident, of slipping, of scattering, of ruination. But she has gotten good at this, calling upon her muses, and the serenity of a still hour.