Steel Beach

I watched them scramble out into the sunshine, then went around straightening the desks and erasing the blackboard and putting papers away in my desk. When it all looked tidy I got my straw hat from the rack and stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind me. Brenda was sitting there, her back against the wall, gri

"Good to see you, Brenda," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as always. Taking notes." She got up and dusted the seat of her pants. "I thought I might write a story about teachers corrupting youth. How's that sound?"

"You'll never sell it to Walter unless it has sex in it. As for the local paper, I don't think the editor would be interested." She was looking me up and down. She shook her head.

"They told me I'd find you here. They told me you were the schoolteacher. I told them they had to be lying. Hildy… what in the world?"

I twirled in front of her. She was gri

"You look… real good," I said, then touched the fringe and the lapels so she'd think I meant her clothes. The look in her eye told me she wasn't so easily fooled as she used to be.

"Are you happy, Hildy?" she asked.

"Yes. Believe it or not, I am."

We stood there awkwardly for a moment, hands on each other's shoulders, then I broke away and wiped the corner of one eye with a gloved fingertip.

"Well, have you had di

As we walked down Congress Street we talked of the inconsequential things people do after a separation: common friends, small events, minor ups and downs. I waved to most of the people on the street and all the owners of the shops we passed, stopping to chat with a few and introducing them to Brenda. We went by the butcher shop, the cobbler, the bakery, the laundry, and soon came to Foo's Celestial Peace Chinese Restaurant, where I pushed open the door to the sound of a tinkling bell. Foo came hurrying over, clad in the loose black pants and blue pyjama top traditional among Chinese of that era, his pigtail bobbing as he bowed repeatedly. I bowed back and introduced him to Brenda who, after a quick glance at me, bowed as well. He fussed us over to my usual table and held our chairs for us and soon we were pouring green tea into tiny cups.

If mankind ever reaches Alpha Centauri and lands on a habitable planet there, the first thing they'll see when they open the door of the ship is a Chinese restaurant. I knew of six of them in West Texas, a place not noted for dining out. In New Austin you could get a decent steak at the Alamo, passable barbecue at a smokehouse a quarter mile out of town, and Mrs. Riley at the boarding house produced a good bowl of chili-not the equal of mine, you understand, but okay. Those three, and Foo's were it as far as a sit-down meal in New Austin. And if you wanted tablecloths and quality cooking, you went to Foo's. I ate there almost every day.

"Try the Moo Goo Gai Pan," I said to Brenda, recalling her lack of experience at anything but traditional Lunarian food. "It's a sort of-"

"I've had it," she said. "I've learned a little since I saw you last. I've eaten Chinese, oh, half a dozen times."

"I'm impressed."

"Don't they have a menu?"

"Foo doesn't like them. He has a sort of psychological method of matching the food to the customer. He'll have you spotted for a greenhorn, and he won't bring you anything too challenging. I know how to handle him."

"You don't have to be so protective of me, Hildy."

I reached over and touched her hand.

"I can see you've grown, Brenda. It's in your face, and your bearing. But trust me on this one, hon. The Chinese eat some things you don't even want to know about."

Foo came back with bowls of rice and his famous hot-and-sour soup, and I dickered with him for a while, talking him out of Chow Mein for Brenda and convincing him I wanted the Hunan Beef again, even though I'd had it only three weeks ago. He bustled off to the kitchen, pausing to accept compliments from two of the other diners in the small room. There was a beautiful dragon embroidered on the back of his shirt.

"You go through this often?" Brenda asked.

"Every day. I like it, Brenda. Remember what you told me about having friends? I have friends here. I'm a part of the community."

She nodded, and decided not to talk about it anymore. She tasted the soup, loved it, and we talked about that, and then moved into phase two of the reunion minuet, reminiscences about the good old days. Not that the days were that long ago-it was still less than a year since I'd first met her-but to me it seemed like a past life. We laughed about the Grand Flack in his little shrine and I got her howling by telling her about Walter's buttons popping off his riverboat gambler vest, and she told me scandalous things about some of my former colleagues.

The food was set down before us and Brenda searched in vain for her fork. She saw me with the chopsticks, gamely picked hers up and promptly dropped a hunk of meat in her lap.

"Foo," I called. "We need a fork over here."

"No no no no," he said, shuffling over and shaking a finger at us. "Very sorry, Hildy, but this chinee restaurant. No have fork."

"I'm vely solly, too," I said, putting my napkin on the table. "But no forkee, no eatee." I started to get up.

He scowled at us, gestured for me to sit down, and hurried away.

"You didn't have to do that," Brenda whispered, leaning over the table. I shushed her, and we waited until Foo returned, elaborately polishing a silver fork, placing it carefully beside her plate.

"And Foo," I said. "you can knock off the number-one-son bit. Brenda is a tourist, but she's my friend, too."

He looked sour for a moment, then smiled and relaxed.

"Okay, Hildy," he said. "Watch that beef, now. I've got the fire department on red alert. Nice meeting you, Brenda." She watched him into the kitchen, then picked up her fork and spoke around a mouthful of food.

"What I can't understand is why people want to live that way."

"What way it that?"

"You know. Acting silly. He could run a restaurant on the outside and not have to talk fu

"He doesn't have to talk fu

"I guess I just don't get it."

"Think of it as a twenty-four-hour-a-day costume party."

"I still don't… I mean, what would drive someone to come live here? I get the feeding most of 'em couldn't make it on…" She stopped, and turned red. "Sorry, Hildy."

"No need to be. You're not really wrong. A lot of people live in here because they couldn't make it outside. Call them losers, if you want. Walking wounded, a lot of them. I like them. There's not so much pressure in here. Others, they were doing okay outside, but they didn't like it. They come and go, too; it's not a life sentence. I know some people, they live here for a year or two to recharge their batteries. Sometimes it's between careers."

"Is that why you're here?"

"One thing you don't do in here, Brenda, is ask people why they came. They volunteer it if they want."

"I keep sticking my foot in my mouth."

"Don't worry about it, with me. I just thought I'd tell you, so you don't ask anybody else. To answer your question… I don't know. I thought that at first. Now… I don't know."