Cheapskate in Love

chapter 4

For lunch that day, Bill met Stan, a friend and former coworker, at an inexpensive Chinese cafeteria in Midtown, which he had recently discovered when he walked on a different street around his office. It was a dingy-looking place from the outside that did not improve in appearance when one entered. A few blurry photos of China and faded Chinese prints decorated the walls. An assortment of used tables and chairs, too many for the space, crowded the dining area. The entire place looked as if it needed a gut renovation, or at least a thorough cleaning, but Bill was utterly delighted at first sight, because a large sign in the window advertised a five-dollar, hot buffet lunch. He smiled, transported with joy, at finding his new, favorite dining spot. The fact that the cafeteria had a mostly Chinese and Chinese-American clientele, which he could discern from outside, only added to his belief that he had found a real deal, a bargain from Beijing buried in the bowels of expensive Manhattan.

It was only a short walk for both Bill and Stan from their offices to the cafeteria. When they arrived, they shook hands outside the place. As they almost always did when they met, they started trading old barbs about how sick and near death the other looked. Joking and laughing, they hoped in turn that the other would be able to hang on a few more months, even though it didn’t seem likely. “Your tumor has metastasized too much,” they would tell each other. “You look terrible.” Or one of them might say with mock concern, “Buddy, I’m afraid there’s no miracle of medical science to help you now. Whatever your illness is, it’s a killer. It’s been good knowing you.” Their friendship was not of a sensitive, fawning nature.

Stan was a physically imposing man in his forties, tall and broad-chested, who carried his extra bit of weight well. An executive at a large company, he worked at a higher level than Bill had ever attained and looked as if he did. Although balding, he was well-groomed and well-dressed. He wore a superfine, summer-weight, dark wool suit, white shirt with cuff links, and a luxuriant silk tie. Externally, Stan did not appear to be the sort of man who would maintain a friendship with Bill, who was dressed in a final-sale polo shirt and chinos and toting his worn briefcase, which he thought safer than leaving it in the office. But Stan had come from modest roots and retained an open, generous personality. He enjoyed the frank, joke-filled talks he could have with Bill, although he thought Bill dense and inflexible at times. Stan actually lived near Bill on Long Island and would have liked to travel on the train with him to and from work, but Bill was a creature of habit and would not alter his earlier work routine to join Stan, even though Stan was his closest friend. Since Stan was married with two young children, his weekends were filled with family activities. Consequently, the two saw each other infrequently, usually only when they met for an occasional weekday lunch. Bill demanded that it always be an inexpensive lunch. Stan wasn’t so picky.

Inside the cafeteria, each picked up a tray and waited in line to be served. Stan did not have to insist much for Bill to go ahead of him. The thought of a five-dollar lunch filled Bill with excitement, and he was eager to get his food. When it was Bill’s turn to select from the buffet choices, he pointed to a pan of food on the steamer and asked the Chinese immigrant behind the counter serving, “What’s that?”

She replied with a heavy accent, dropping a syllable, “Shiken brokli.”

“What?” Bill asked louder, confusion taking over his face. He wasn’t prepared to comprehend someone who spoke poor English. His attention was focused on getting his money’s worth.

“Shiken brokli,” she repeated, in the exact same tone and volume.

“What did she say?” Bill asked Stan. “Do you understand her?”

“Chicken and broccoli,” Stan said, in the even voice of an executive accustomed to delivering news without any commentary or explanation. His face remained impassive as a corporate logo.

“Oh,” Bill said. Pointing at other pans on the steamer, he asked the server, “What’s that and that and that? Are they hot? MA LA TONGUE? I want MA LA TONGUE.” Linda had taught him the Chinese words for hot, spicy soup, when she was in a good mood one day, and he used the term mistakenly for any spicy food.

Ignoring his questions, the server put a portion of the three dishes he pointed at onto his place, next to a mound of rice. “Mala tang” she said, correcting his pronunciation. “Seese dallas.”

Bill understood the last part of what she said perfectly well. “Six dollars,” he nearly shouted. “The lunch special is five dollars. The sign outside says five dollars.” Bill gestured repeatedly toward the door and drew the shape of the sign with his two hands in the air. He then counted on his fingers for all to see. “One, two, three, four, five. Five dollars. Not six dollars.” He kept shaking his head no.

The server thought to herself that capitalists are just like communists, and people like Bill would be properly disposed of in jail if they were in China, but she only said, “All meat. Seese dallas.”

“No, no, no,” Bill said, raising his voice. “The sign says five dollars. Five dollars.”

Before East-West tensions could rise any higher, Stan intervened. “She’s right. Five dollars is for two vegetables and a meat dish, and you have three meat dishes. I can pay for you. It hardly costs anything.”

“No,” Bill said, still huffy that he was denied the special price. “I’ll buy my own. She never told me what they were. She never said they would cost more. All she said was ma la tongue.”

“Mala tang,” the server corrected him loudly, daring to show the glimmer of a smile. “Seese dallas pleese.”

Flustered, Bill searched for his wallet, which was in his briefcase.

“Do you want a drink?” Stan asked him.

“I brought a bottle of water in my briefcase,” Bill replied. Stan was surprised enough to raise his eyebrows. He knew Bill was a tightwad, but it was a slight shock to see that he might be becoming a miser, someone who wouldn’t even spend money on a drink. Bill finally found his wallet and grudgingly paid the server six dollars. To her cheery “Tank you,” he nodded his head in assent, although his face was dark and gloomy.

While Stan paid for his lunch special and drink, Bill waited with his tray, looking for an empty table.

“Let’s sit there,” he said to Stan, pointing to empty seats on the far side of the crowded dining area. On the way to the table, Bill accidentally hit a few customers with his briefcase, which was hanging over his shoulder, because of the lack of space in which to navigate. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” Bill left a path of discontent behind him, but as soon as he sat down, he began wolfing down his food, oblivious to anything that had happened since they had come in.

Without hesitation, Stan also began to eat, since he knew that Bill would finish his food quickly, even if he had a choking fit, as he sometimes did from shoveling food in his mouth too fast. Bill never let a choking fit stand in the way of a plate of food for long. Occasionally, Bill would relax and talk for a while after eating lunch, but usually he was impatient to go. Stan tried to accommodate Bill’s dining quirk as much as he could, but he was only a moderately quick eater.

It soon became apparent why Bill had chosen the seats they sat in. In between huge scoops of rice and mala meat dishes disappearing down his throat, he said to Stan, “Take a look over there.” Bill pointed toward a good-looking, young, Chinese woman sitting behind Stan. “I’d like to get my hands on that Asian dish,” he said.

Looking behind, Stan observed, “She’s the most attractive thing in this filthy hole. How did you find this place?”

“I walked by one day,” Bill replied.

“And thought it was the imperial palace, I bet,” Stan said.

“It seemed worth trying,” Bill responded. “Not everyone makes your salary.” Gazing at the Chinese lady, Bill’s eyes took on a dreamy expression, and his fork stopped moving for several seconds. “She would make me forget all about Linda. She’d be better than any herbal remedy or acupuncture treatment.”

“Have you ever had one of Linda’s treatments?” Stan asked.

“That stuff doesn’t work,” Bill scoffed. “There’s no scientific proof. I once showed her a study report on acupuncture in which the treatments had the same effect as placebo, and she started screaming, ‘Shut up or get out.’ She threw the pages back at me.”

“So you shut up,” Stan concluded.

“I don’t go to her for medical advice. What do I care what she thinks? She’s always giving me bottles of pills for sleeplessness or low energy or something that she thinks I have. But I never use them. I throw the bottles in a drawer at home. The drawer is full of bottles.”

“It’s the thought that counts. At least she cares for you,” Stan said.

“I’m not so sure of that,” Bill replied.

“Why? What is your Chinese dragon doing now?” Stan asked.

“We broke up again yesterday. I haven’t spoken to her yet. And I’m not going to. This time it’s really over. I’ve had enough. She’s crazy.”

Stan didn’t believe Bill for one second. Stan had heard him say that he wasn’t going to see Linda many times before, much more persuasively than now. When Bill had first started to see Linda over a year ago, and they began the chain of break-ups and make-ups, Stan really thought that Bill was ending his interest in her when he said so the first few times. He was visibly angry and calling her all sorts of things, none of which were complimentary. But Stan’s credulity had passed completely when it came to Bill and Linda. He was a hardened disbeliever. He didn’t believe what politicians said, and he believed Bill even less when the subject was Linda. He was certain that Bill was going to see her again, probably very soon. Probably they would be making plans that afternoon for a reunion. Bill and Linda, Stan thought, were obviously not made for each other, but they didn’t seem to be compatible with anyone else either. They seemed doomed to be together, since they couldn’t tolerate being alone. Stan knew of other relationships that were sustained by a mutual fear of singleness, but none had the amount of differences and dislike that Linda and Bill had for each other. As Stan often did, he donned the role of devil’s advocate and asked, “Why don’t you look for someone else?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Bill said, which was true; he sometimes was, but he didn’t do more than that.

Although Stan knew what the answer was going to be, because he had made the suggestion before, he ventured to say, “Why don’t you try online dating again?”

“That’s just a bunch of emails back and forth,” Bill grumbled with disdain, “that tapers off to nothing. Once I did meet someone through a dating site. But she didn’t look anything like her pictures. She must have been ten years older than her photos. At least ten years older. I didn’t recognize her at all in person.”

Stan had heard that story before. “I read that seventy-five percent of people over the age of forty-five find dates online,” he remarked.

“Don’t remind me of my age. You know I don’t like that. How’s your food?” Bill’s plate was picked clean of every rice grain, and he was acting restless.

“OK,” Stan replied. “It’s edible. It’s worth five dollars, maybe even six dollars.” Despite his effort to consume quickly, he had eaten only half of his lunch. He kept on eating. “I think you should try online dating again,” he said.

Bill didn’t like the idea. When he had tried it before, he had received no responses from most women he had emailed. This was probably because they had the most beautiful pictures he could find, and they were all much younger than him. But still the results had been very disappointing, and he wasn’t eager to be ignored by more women. The old computer he owned also made online dating very tiresome, because it operated so slowly and often froze. When that happened, his passion for finding someone was interrupted, and it didn’t always return after rebooting. However, Bill knew that Stan was trying to be helpful, and he had heard of happy couples, who had met online, so he replied without any enthusiasm, “Maybe I will. I know Linda is doing it. Her profile says she only wants to meet guys making at least twice what I do.”

“You’ll find someone before she will,” Stan assured him. “Just say you’ll be glad to hear from any woman, even someone earning nothing at all and loaded with debt. You’ll have women falling all over you.” Stan laughed loudly at his joke, while Bill grimaced. Bill then switched the conversation topic and inquired about Stan’s children. They talked about the kids and other less personal things, before returning to their offices for the afternoon.