Gary Kissick
Excerpt from Winter in Volcano
Friday evening they dined at Doong Kong Lau, a
restaurant “certificated to be hygiened.” They’d agreed to order nothing on the menu that wasn't misspelled. They bypassed "Chick in Grave" and "Fish Lips with Four Kind Meats" to feast instead on "Foul Delight" and "Sauted Beef Book Trips with Sealions." When the management made an unauthorized substitution of scallions for sealions, Cullen refused to make a scene as Felicia fervidly urged. They drove early to Cinerama Theatre, where he purchased tickets for Seven Beauties, then slipped into that nameless crackseed shop advertising BREAKFAST-LUNCH-SUNDRIES-SEEDS FOR ALL OCCASIONS. The shop was simply a niche
in the block---a mouse-hole with no door to shut out
King Street traffic---but crackseed was everywhere: in
display cases, on wire racks, on crude wooden shelves
that rose almost to the ceiling. As in a biological supply
house, each variety either hung naked in a cellophane bag or squatted obscenely in a large glass jar. He surveyed the possibilities alongside Felicia, glad to have no voice in her decision. While attracted to Soft Wet
Salty See Mui, he could ill deny the equal allure of
Sweet Sour Salty Apricot. But he was not so
egocentric as to be unaware that one with a different
upbringing might favor simply Wet See Mui or Salty
Apricot or Sour See Mui or Sweet Apricot. But
wouldn't one then wonder what joys had been missed by
shunning Sweet Salty Apricot, and how would that
compare with Seedless Olive Cake or Dried Mango with
Rock Salt? It was not a task for the uninitiated.
Felicia had once explained to him that all crackseed was
plum unless otherwise specified, that Kum Chow and
Football and Bulldog merely referred to modes of
preservation, though she couldn't elaborate
on what those modes might be. When her hand slid past
Hot Soft Legs and Tasty Red Legs enroute to Sweet Li
Hing Mui, Cullen felt lust for cuttlefish.
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Gary Kissick's comic novel Winter in Volcano was published by Hutchinson (Random House, London) in 1999 (and by Arrow in 2000).
