Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

31 December 2006 | Cooperation

An awkward scene in the co-op. The cashier is someone I had a date with two years ago, just before meeting K. We had soup at a Japanese restaurant and she complained about being chilly—she hadn’t worn socks—so I lent her the thick wool sock I use to store my digital camera. Every five minutes or so she would switch the sock from one foot to the other. It was a scene out of a romantic comedy, and I liked her plenty besides—she was smart, beautiful, and unpretentious—but then we got to talking about the co-op, of which we were both members, and I made the mistake of making up the plot of a film, set in the co-op, in which a character based on her gets a crush on a character based on me. I forget the details, but I believe her character switches her shift to be on same shift as my character, only their hippy fascist squad leader keeps sending her to other parts of the store to do jobs she doesn’t know how to do. Each time she complains about this, the squad leader says, “Co-op means cooperation.” I thought this would make her laugh but instead it made her uncomfortable. The problem, I think now, was that her character gets a crush on my character, and not vice versa, which I believe she found too flirtatious or presumptuous or god knows what. If I had it to do over, I would reverse the roles.

The next day I wrote to say what I nice time I’d had. I didn’t mention the film. She responded, simply and coldly, with the question of why I would write and not call, since I now had her number. If I had this to do over, I would call and not write, but really, if mistakes like these are what matter, there’s no point in trying. I knew this at the time, but just to be certain, I called. She never responded, and then a few weeks later I met K.

Today she was my cashier. Thankfully I remembered her name.

“Hi, Virginia. I’m Michael.”

“I know who you are.”

Her tone was the same as her email. She meant to indicate I’d made another mistake.

I ignored this—what difference does it make now?—and asked if she was cooperating.

26 December 2006 | Sauce

I had lunch with a friend at my favorite Japanese restaurant, Yamato, on Seventh Avenue. I ordered what I always order: the teriyaki salmon lunch box. It comes with miso soup, salad with carrot dressing, two deep-fried dumplings, rice, a California roll, and a little medley of pan-fried vegetables. Everything is first-rate. I particularly like the carrot dressing, although the dumpling sauce is yummy too, as is the teriyaki sauce. Even the rice is a cut above, fluffier and less sticky than elsewhere.

Also (and this is the point, really), I had nothing to say. I’ve had nothing to say for some time.

Related: I recently began a piece that begins:

All writing is positive. Even Beckett (perhaps Beckett most of all) is positive. His characters are compelled to speak, if only to speak of the pointlessness of it.

I wanted to connect this to Camus’s idea of suicide as the only serious philosophical question, but I ran out of steam.

About Yamato, I often have lunch there on Fridays. It’s a reward, a little treat, for a hard week of work. I bring the New York Times and sit at one of the tables near the big window that looks out on Seventh Avenue.

The waiter there knows me: he asks if I’d like the usual and I say yes. It feels nice to be known.