Bookshelf Battle

Pop Culture Mystery Question – When gas is passed, who is the culprit?  Is it, “he who smelt it, dealt it?” or “he who denied it, supplied it?”

Another dinner shift over.  Ms. Tsang’s employees cleared dishes and wiped down tables as my landlady took a seat in a corner booth and made with the typey type on her laptop beep boop machine.

I sauntered over with a bowl full of pork fried rice I pilfered from the kitchen.

“Pardon me ma’am, is this seat taken?”  I asked.

Ms. Tsang looked up at me through a pair of glasses.  She only used them for reading.

“Yes.”

I shrugged my shoulders and sat down anyway.  My host noticed my eats.

“I should start running a tab,” she said as she returned her focus to the computer.

Susan Tsang, Hatcher’s Niece/Unpaid Landlady

On the wall, there was an extensive, elaborate painting of a Chinese dragon.  He was green with a red belly, long like a snake and had a set of dagger like teeth.  His face was angry and menacing, as if he was just itching to leap off the wall and attack the patrons.

“Your mother,” I said as I pointed at the dragon with my chopstick, “Hated that dragon.  Absolutely hated it.  She wanted to run a paint roller over the entire thing.  Said the customers couldn’t enjoy themselves when there was a beast on the wall that looked like it wanted to eat them.”

“Uh huh,”  Ms. Tsang said.  Whatever was on her screen, she was more interested in it than me.

“Your father wouldn’t budge though,”  I said.  “Your Great Uncle, the man who gave him his club in Hong Kong, had a dragon on the wall of his joint just like that one and Joe hired an artist to recreate it from a photo.  He said it brought him luck.”

“Yeah,” Ms. Tsang said.  “Well, if that ugly thing is lucky then I’m still waiting.”

I knew that was a reference to me but I didn’t say anything.  I didn’t blame her.  I wouldn’t want to take care of someone for decades the way she did for me.

“Can you explain this?”

Ms. Tsang turned around her laptop to show me what her peepers had been perusing.  It was none other than the Bookshelf Battle Blog, the official stomping grounds for my client, Mr. Bookshelf Q. Battler.

“Don’t stay on there too long,”  I said.  “If Battler gets another reader it’ll go to his head.”

That comment didn’t go over well.  Ms. Tsang was miffed.

“I love you, Jake.”

“Back at ya’ kiddo.”

“But I don’t think you have any idea what it was like to have a grown man sleeping upstairs for fifty-nine years.”

“I have a hunch.”

“Do you?”  Ms. Tsang asked.

I kicked back and enjoyed my free dinner as my niece/landlady enlightened me.

“While I was a kid it was kind of funny,” Ms. Tsang said.  “I’d go up to your office and poke you with a stick, sing songs to you, try to wake you up.”

“Surprised I didn’t wake up,” I said.  “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket as I recall.”

“Mom and Dad took care of you.  I remember they used to shave you.  Clip your fingernails.  They’d lay you out on your couch, strip you, give you a sponge bath, then dress you back up and put you in your desk chair.”

“Wowza,”  I said.  “Did they really?  Yikes, poor Joe and Evelyn staring at my man parts all those years.”

“Until they passed on,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “Then it all fell on me.”

My heart sunk.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

“Are you really?  Do you really think running this place is what I wanted to do with my life?”

“Why not?”  I asked.  “You do it so well.”

“I do a lot of things well,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “But running this place wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

“I know what you wanted to do,”  I said.  “I remember the little girl in the ballerina tutu.  You had moves, Susie, I’ll give you that.”

“I kept the restaurant going because I had no place else to put you.”

“You could have left me on the curb with the trash for all I care, sweetheart.  Sorry I was asleep.  I’d of told you that.”

“And it wasn’t like I could ever tell anyone,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “How do you explain to a boyfriend that there’s a stereotypical 1950’s hardboiled film noir style private detective complete with a trench coat and fedora sleeping permanently in your place of business, never aging at all?”

“Very awkwardly, I assume.”

“Or not at all,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “Dad told me about that man you made an enemy of in World War II.  He told me things could get very bad for you if anyone were to find out that you were in a defenseless state.”

“An accurate assessment,”  I said between bites of rice.

“So, I have a question.”

“I might have an answer.”

Ms. Tsang pointed to the screen, where BQB had posted his latest nonsense.  Something about being the best friend of a little green space man.  The guy was nuttier than a bag of cashews.

“Why are you flushing everything I did for you all those years down the drain?”

“Come again?”

“This blog,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “These stories you write for this Bookshelf Q. Battler idiot.  I hide you for decades and you turn around and announce to the entire world that you’re back?”

“‘The entire world’ is a bit of a stretch,”  I said.  “That site will get more than 3.5 readers when hell freezes over and the devil sponsors a snow man making contest.  I’m pretty sure I’m safe.”

“But you wrote about…”

Ms. Tsang looked around.  The floor was empty.  She leaned in over the table and whispered, “Operation Fuhrerpunschen.”

“So what?”

“Dad said you were sworn to secrecy!  I spent my entire life taking care of a sleepy gumshoe and now you’re daring the government to come haul you away!”

“Please,’  I said.  “Anyone involved in that mission is long gone.  Pushing up daisies and serving as an all you can eat buffet for earth worms.”

“What about the drinking?”

“What about it?”  I asked.

“You’d think six decades would have flushed that demon out of your system,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “But you’re half in the bag now more than ever.”

“What’s it to you?”

“What’s it to me?”  Ms. Tsang asked.

She stood up and waved a finger in my face.

“Now you listen to me, Jacob R. Hatcher.  You will TAKE this second chance at life that NO ONE EVER gets and you will do something worthwhile with it so I don’t end up wishing I’d of just fed your carcass to a pack of wolves, or I will NEVER speak to you again.”

I thought about it.

“Can I still drink?”

“Ugh!’

Ms. Tsang closed her laptop and stormed off.  She got halfway across the restaurant’s spacious dining room when Alan, her goofy looking busboy met her.

Allan died his hair dark black and wore eyeshadow.  Nose with more metal than a scrapyard.  I think he was one of those, what do you people call them?  Goths?

All I know is he was the most depressing kid I ever saw.

“Ms. Tsang” he said in a drab monotone, “This lady asked to come in but I told her we’re closed.”

The lady?

My colleague in the Pop Culture Mystery game, Ms. Delilah K. Donnelly, of course.

And she was dressed as snappily as I’d ever seen her.  A full length evening gown.  Blood red and lipstick to match.

“It’s ok Allan,”  Ms. Tsang said.  “Go punch out.”

Copyright Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Image courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.