Dinner With Mr. Cole: Part III

Even though half a pitcher of Sake was probably more than Dormitan should have sucked down (hell, it was way way more) the fact was, there really hadn’t been that much else for him to do. Being as patient as he could, Dormitan had sat cross legged (uncrossing and re-crossing them every few minutes so that his legs didn’t cramp or fall or sleep and get that irritating pins and needles feeling people get when that happens) while liking random Facebook posts from Witty Hilarious and Ridiculously Funny as well as using FB Chat to go back and forth with some bi-sexual stripper in Baltimore who was apparently a constant frequenter of his blog (she had even gone as far as to offer him a free lap dance if he was ever in the Tri State Area) for more than forty-five minutes and Bryce still hadn’t turned up.
For a moment there Dormitan had considered asking Blondie Dread for a pair of chop sticks (he might as well use the time to try and learn himself something new he had reasoned) but had remembered that chop sticks were from China and not Japan just in the nick of time. He was pretty sure that Miss Blondie Dread, who’s real name he found out was Yuuka Hinata, which literally meant “Gentle flower facing the sun” (she had been wearing a name tag the entire time) would have stabbed him in the eye with the blunt end of a fork if he had been ignorant enough to ask her for them.
Uh-huh, yeah, gentle flower my foot, Dormitan had mumbled to himself and so instead he had drunk. And drunk. And drunk. And even though Dormitan never quite got to the point of actually getting drunk par se, he was, however, at a level of inebriation that quite facilitated the loosening of tongues as well as turning his limbs into curiously curious explorers making the fact that he was seated all by his lonesome a quite fortunate one indeed.
Pouring himself another cup of Sake (which was like an oriental version of a shot glass) Dormitan, toasting to no one in particular, sucked the stuff down, emptying his cup in one go. Smacking his lips Dormitan set the empty cup back down onto the table. Damn it was good.
This particular variety of Sake was sweet and creamy and still had unfiltered particles of rice in it. Dormitan loved it. So much so that even though he knew he had already had like three cups too many he decided to pour himself another. Before he could, however, there was a crash of china (or would it be Japan?), a woman’s yelp, some male shouting and grunting and the sound of a scuffle. Swiveling on his cushion Dormitan looked to see what all the commotion was about. From his vantage point (which wasn’t a very good one in any case) what Dormitan could make out was that two men were fighting and it seemed as if it was over some woman who was busy screaming and carrying on and trying to break them up.
Not really caring for it but still intrigued by the hullabaloo, Dormitan got to his feet to get a better look. There were two men going at it all right. Rolling around on the floor like a couple of school kids fighting over a few shillings at break time. They had disrupted the entire restaurant and now just about all of the patrons had stopped eating and most were standing, forming a wary circle around the two men, watching, like people at an underground fight club. Like a celestial mass being pulled in by the gravitational field of a much bigger, much meaner, totally inescapable one Dormitan found himself moving closer towards the uproar and the people who had gathered around them to watch. Finding it slightly amusing, slightly appalling that no one was trying to stop the fight. That no one felt enough to step in. Not that he would, he was a writer, a watcher, an observer…and this was some mighty good fodder for some material if he did think so himself.
While the two men continued to roll around (one was now straddling the other hammering Thor like blows down on the guy while the other held his arms in front of his face in an attempt to fend off the punches) the woman, pretty with a pretty black dress, was using her pretty black clutch to hit the straddler on the back demanding him to “Stop it! Stop it! You’re going to hurt him!”
But wait, wasn’t that the point? Dormitan mused to himself.
And then the cavalry arrived. Two mountain sized bouncers in black trousers and black muscle t-shirts with the word “Security” stenciled in white on the back. Like kids sweeping toys up off the ground, the one bouncer plucked the straddler off the other and the second bouncer plucked the other up off the ground. As the two combatants were placed on their feet Dormitan got a good look at them for the first time.
W…T…F...
Dormitan felt his breath catch in his throat. He couldn’t believe it. He really couldn’t.
Why?
Because one of them, one half of the pair of men who had been rolling around like a couple of juveniles was none other than D.C. Bryce. The D.C. Bryce. Literally idol, genius and prolific wordsmith. The very reason for Dormitan’s life long love affair with books and pages and words. And not only that, D.C. Bryce had in fact not been the walloper and not the wallopee. His face looked like the end of a Rocky movie.
What the hell had he done?
And although Dormitan’s mind was still reeling, as the bouncers forced the two men towards the entrance, Dormitan, making a snap decision, followed in their wake.