The Noodler

Forced to his knees, David Friday’s life flashes before his eyes as the goon standing over him jabs a pair of steel chopsticks into his jugular. His remaining patrons scurry out into Tokyo’s cold winter streets, now covered in a rare snowfall.

A man not troubled by geography, Friday originally came to Japan for the falafel. When the chick pea market crashed in summer of aught-nine, however, he’d purchased the saloon with hopes of being the next Rick Blaine (or Pluto Nash). But Kabukichō, didn’t need another nudie bar and things never quite took off. However, he’d soon turned the bar into a front for his more nefarious trade. You see, Friday had become a kingpin of the underground noodle market, run out of the back room of the wholesome, non-assuming Friday’s Family Eatery and Drinkery. Upfront he dealt in pitchers of American beer and skee-ball. In back, he sold low-priced, sticky noodles cut with farina. It was known one the street as Pastetini.

Now, he repents; repents all of it. Legume-based Ponzi schemes. Subverting honest noodle trade, hooking countless Japanese teens on cheap cereals sold on street corners. Most of all he regrets moving in on the territory of Tomi Tatsuo, the Kasha King of Tokyo’s red light district.

Blood leaks from Friday’s throat and dribbles on his shirt.  He repents it all from falafel to farina. Tatsuo’s tough jams the sticks into his neck and rips them out again in a spray of gore. Friday sputters and collapses on the tile floor as the yakuza douse everything with gasoline, most of which is immediately soaked up by the noodles.

Watching them helplessly trying to set his storeroom ablaze, a final thought passes through Friday’s mind as he expires: Poppy seeds, he burbles, Is there a market for those?

Microcosms 96