He peers out, sheltered by the woven straw hat and the bar. Eyes barely brushing the laminate surface between a napkin dispenser and condiment bottles, he watches the strange world move around him. Is it trepidation or interest in his gaze? I’m not sure, but I am curious. We cross glances. He looks away. I am one of them.
I return my attention to the display over his head. I think of walking away, but my awareness of him won’t be shaken. He has become a pebble rippling through a bleary night. Now I’m completely fallen out of the crowd, no longer pretending I really belong.
The Brickhouse in Manchester, England is a hip club. The fanciest I’ve been in yet during this year abroad. People are dressed to the nines, drinking and dancing, drugging and loving. I am in on a visitor’s pass. There is no way I could fit in. I’m not the friend ou take to a party. I never have been. I’m the friend who hands you herbal tea when you call the next morning with dawn stabbing the back of your eyes.
But I like the music. I like my friends. So I’m doing what any foreigner attempts when living amidst an unfamiliar culture. I’m mimicking the moves and keeping my head down. Then I found him hiding under the snack option menu. He is just as out of place as I, except he just sees another white girl dancing with the rest, contemplating chips or fish and chips.
When I step forward, his nose rises above the bar. Bored, the eyes say bored to me.
“Egg foo young.”
His eyes blink rapidly and a chin entwined by silken grey whiskers falling to a pointed goatee appear as well. His eyes flash with a half smile.
“Really?”
I nod, smiling too. He wears traditional dress, a woven mauve shirt with short sleaves reaching to mid-thigh over loose pants. Unfettered by my unaccustomed request, he brandishes a wooden spoon with a flourish and gets to work.
I have no idea why I said egg foo young. I’ve never had it. But it wasn’t fish and chips. Maybe I knew that was the point. He spends ten minutes whipping eggs, chopping vegetables, stirring, frying, dancing about his miniscule kitchen where the most used appliance is the fryer.
I disappear briefly trying to convince my much more conventional friends to join me. No dice. They are dancing on the floor. It has springs under it, every step comes back with a frictionless push as they gyrate and heave with the rest. The similarities between my friends and I are only skin deep. Alone, I walk back to a man in the kitchen who is in the wrong country.
He waits dish in hand, standing high above the counter now. His smile spreads the fine whiskers wide. I wonder what it was like growing up in China. I wonder how he came to be here.
“How much?”
“No charge.”
It is my turn to say “Really?”
We both smile.