FICTION | Meiko Ko The Broken Nose

FICTION

The Broken Nose

By Meiko Ko

I am not sure how it began. It could be something I ate or drank. Nothing is recorded in my diary, and if I look through my receipts, they lead me here. There’s nothing unusual about the pub, any old ordinary place at the corner of a modest hotel, three stars and along a broad street, cars still full at this hour flashing red and green lights. Tonight’s bartender is new, I’m pretty sure I’ve not met her or I’d be hard pressed to forget her height, a man’s, her edgy hairstyle like a bird nest’s fern, dyed platinum. I’m quite sure she winked, when she slid the orange soda cocktail across the counter, that it mustn’t be an illusion that causes me the sensation of floating. I am flattered, surprised of my appeal, still intact, that I thought must have vanished with the man in 2021, the year Dominica came and left, taking along with her all the poultry in the fridge, with a cold note in the freezer compartment that read, “This is what you owe me.” Yes, I’d forbidden her to eat pork. I dislike the stench it left in her mouth, but not my own.

Now I must sound like a monster. It is idiosyncratic and unfair of me, I know, but I still make sure my dates are vegetarians or

otherwise have disavowed pork. At the bar counter, I consider putting forth the question, exclusively mine for so long, if the bartender loves pork chops, which she’ll only construe as an invitation for a date, a humorous pick-up line, since I only reveal this quirk slowly — if we pass the fifth dinner date, for instance, is the sign of maturity, friendliness soon crossing over the border into intimacy. Subtly, nonchalantly, I’ll reveal through small quips my detest for pig eaters (“The poor animal,” “Do you know why eating pork is prohibited in some countries?”), the aftermath which radiated trails of fatty scent, and there I’ll be, trying to kiss and not vomit at the same time, juggling both like a clown with two batons.

Strangely, my own pork-eating isn’t a problem. I could eat plenty — ham, sausage, bacon, trotters, pork pâté, braised pork, pork curries, Japanese tonkatsu — with no problems at all, no retching or the desire to, they go down with the usual satisfied burps after meal, lips smacking. I would think that something had gone wrong with my olfactory tract that detects it so keenly, like a radar, in another’s mouth, with full-blown withdrawal, but forgives readily my own chewing of the baby back ribs at restaurants, the bones I savored, gnawed and sucked tenderly clean. Add to that my snacking — pork rinds my all-time favorites, that mesmerizing crunching in front of the tv. That problematic nose tract is a puzzle, if I have no difficulty with the smell of anything else — beef, chicken, fish, none of the various perfume notes like lavender, sandalwood, or the Gucci Bloom Dominica liked to wear bothered me, or right now, the bubbly fragrance from the orange soda I’m drinking. It is pork, only pork, that gives me the exaggerated response of revulsion and repulsion, that push, my hands cruel, arms in horror extended against Dominica one day when I came home and she was

chewing a piece of pork jerky her friend sent in from Malaysia, eyes wide and enraptured, coming towards me saying try it, try it, praising it as an exquisite, spellbinding blend of spices and sweetness, a rare taste, the best of cured meat cuisines.

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong,” she asked, when she saw the horror on my pale face and my feet involuntarily backing away from her as though she were a monster. “Are you sick, Jimbo?” I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t pretend anymore that I didn’t mind, I raised my arm and said, “Don’t talk, please.” She did not heed, of course, we were on the upswing of our love story then, all sweet and doting, honey bunnies, and disregarding what I said she stepped right up to me with that pork piece in hand, thumb and forefinger clasping a corner. I backed up more, soon feeling the hard door behind me. “Don’t come any closer,” I said, and that was when I gave her the first push. That was what happened when people didn’t listen, when they think you didn’t mean what you say but I meant it in every sense of the word.

She stepped back then, alarmed, brows furrowed. “No need to do that,” she said, pouting, and she set down the piece of squarish meat on a plate and wiped her oily fingers with tissue paper. My eyes must have protruded like ping pong balls and she bade me to lie down on my convertible couch. All along, since our third date, since I really liked her, I’d been dropping hints about my plight like Gretel’s clever breadcrumbs, but she didn’t get it. Happily nibbled at pork buns whenever we went for dim sum on Sunday mornings, despite my admonitions to “Drink more tea, they’re good for your skin and health. The doctor said to avoid oily foods.” Or to distract her, “ Here, have an egg tart.” I should have come right out and said it, explained my predicament, that I would vomit if she kissed me, and it was nothing to do with her, I might be experiencing an allergy,

a malfunction of nose, I’d go see a doctor and so on; instead of keeping it a secret — or my subtle hints, setting the mouthwash in a conspicuous place each time we returned to my place after restaurants, hoping the bright blue liquid would attract her attention, induce her to wash out all the lingering pork malodor before our afternoon’s snuggles, which it did. She came out of the bathroom breath minty, and that solved my problem for the time being, kept our relationship warm and cozy.

Instead, Dominica made me grow a conscience. Since she loved eating pork, since I was aware of the double-standards, if were to confess to her, the only consequence would be her abstinence, her watching while I gaily ate my spam or snack rinds, and drooled. It wasn’t fair, no. It’d be tyrannical, the return of the hoarder, the despot and his appetite, the secret feedings and self-conscious kissing, no longer spontaneous. These considerations made me tolerate the oily aftermath of her pork ingested mouth, a mess the mouthwash managed to suppress except for the moments when they peeked out, like the glorious animals they were, in the middle of a kiss, and my tongue would freeze for a second, sensing the invasion like a soldier guardian of my nose. Once, she burped after eating meatball spaghetti. It was a tiny one, a small bubble that jumped over into my mouth like a migrating flea, and a dizzying cloud began to spread in my brain. I felt a somersaulting in my stomach, I had to break off from her instantly. Thankfully, she did not perceive it.

I’d gone to the pharmacy to ask for something stronger. Something that could desensitize or end once and for all my allergy to pork odors, only to meet the cold shoulder of the pharmacist, her sullen, uncommunicative countenance, until I blurted out, “Please, I really like my girlfriend.” That, to my surprise, touched the pharmacist, nametagged Angie, a girl

whose boredom exceeded her smile, some bronze substance highlighting the angles of her cheeks. She shuffled to the back and disappeared for a while. She returned and came out from behind the counter, and wordlessly, hands in her pharmacy coat, expected me to follow her, sauntering to the aisle of Oral Hygiene and pointed to a bottle of gleaming amber liquid. Then she said, “Good luck,” while I watched her white back view fade. She must have gotten the wrong idea, I wanted to say it wasn’t me, it was my nose, it was Dominica, but of course, I only stared dumbly. Women’s rights were stronger than ever, a brewing colony; my rare condition might sound like an excuse. I did not hesitate to stock my bathroom cabinets with her recommendation.

Two bottles, one liter each — that was how long we lasted. That day, after I broke down, after she set down on the pretty plate she gave me as a birthday present that fiery piece of dried pork that was the root of our separation, the beginning of our irreconcilable gustatory views, she took an ice pack from the freezer. I had no idea I looked red. That I needed ice, which she set tenderly on my forehead, hovering above me motherly and anxious, a frown creasing her forehead with an inch-long comma, her first wrinkle, she’d said. She loomed close, face five inches near my own, murmuring what happened, sweet Jimbo, was I ill, was it the heat, the weather, last night’s dinner, was it something she did, or didn’t do, at which point I opened my eyes and screamed. In her mouth, opening and closing, I saw the wine-colored shreds of chewed up pork, pieces stuck to the right side of her tongue, a few slivers caught between her last two molars.

More horrible was the smell. The terrible, pungent smell, nothing to do with Dominica, that’d haunted me night and day,

chased me to the edge of my dreams, gave me no rest. Often I’d stood before the mirror puzzled, asking it what was wrong, that engine of sneezing, breathing, smelling. Why pork, why not sardines or duck confit or some such food, but the pork that was so readily available and in our diet? And why not chicken, beef, cucumbers or spinach for that matter? Why now, just as things were going so well with Dominica? To all appearances, I must admit, it was a fine, even splendid, nose, a harbor for all my breaths and sorrow for thirty-one years, the tears I had to snort back whenever work at the office got chaotic, unfair, unrestful. The boss Terry who killed time off our overworked hands, chiseling to his delight a traumatic sculpture in the likeness of himself, that, considering my stress, I could not help but wonder if he was the origin of my predicament, my terrible situation with this malfunctioning nose.

Perhaps it all began that Tuesday when he came to my cubicle, my cubbyhole, and without warning slammed down the file I’d presented to him that morning, knocking the orange soda off my desk and soaking my shirt and trousers, and he said loudly, imperiously, “Did you actually graduate from college? Clean this up before you leave.” I felt childlike. I felt toyed. As though that weren’t enough, the snickering came. My humiliation was a theater. My nerve connecting the scent of pork in the office — it should be my colleague Annie’s Subway lunch — through the railways of my olfactory tract must have ruptured, derailed. When I left the office, it was ten p.m.

Perhaps it was all cheap psychology, connections I made anyhow just to explore the reasons that might be found in Dominica’s breath. How could I tell? Life, all rolled into one, without beginning or end, like a ball of loose thread. As I said, I’d had no quarrels with the overall look of my nose.

It sat agreeably at the center of my face, like a short king on his armchair, relaxed and in control as always, haughty and knowing everything would be provided for, the nostrils cleaned out of boogers, and the hairs, whenever they ventured out of their caves, did not survive long in the outside world without the prompt snipping from my pair of silver trimming scissors with the curved blades and rounded tips. In profile, the dorsum, while not as straight as I wished, was after all a valuable inheritance from my mother Helen, the poor but beautiful woman from up north, a legend she invented for me, I suspected, a tragedy she repeated at bedtimes ending her story with “That’s why I have my nose.” Indeed, it was a slender, handsome nose, good for all seasons, cold or hot air. The taint from my father George was apparent at my wings, which flared up easily whenever they misapprehended facts, such as Patricia Knatchbull was born under the zodiac sign of Virgo, corrected by a director during a conference dinner, which I doubt I’d ever forget.

Power and money explained themselves quite clearly. Or they needed none, they were gleaming in the knife I cleaned with a napkin and slotted into my tuxedo pocket and took home that night. Patricia Knatchbull had nothing to do with it. Patricia Knatchbull was born on Valentine’s Day. Dominica was sweet enough, laying me down on the couch to examine me like a nurse, though she was really a secretary at a law firm, but I could not help but give her a second push, a rough shove this time, pushing away her hovering maternity and that ice pack on to the ground. More alarmed, for I’d never showed her anything but gentility, opening the doors for her and pulling out the restaurant seats, which charmed her so to astonished thank-yous, the repeated mentions of, “I’ve never been treated like a lady,” she stumbled after me as I headed to the kitchen

and opened the cutlery drawer. The knife the director caused me to pickpocket just so happened to be there and fit my hand like a glove.

“Don’t come near me,” I yelled.

“What’s wrong, Jimbo?”

“Don’t talk!”

“Okay, okay. Easy does it. Hand me the knife,” she said.

She was more powerful than she looked. Or, she could be in times of urgency, even though not corpulent, not an ounce of fat even after all that ingested pork, with an elegant nape and tiny hands that made me fancy a one karat ring on her fourth finger. She wrestled the knife off and pinned me to the ground. After all, it was a knife with a blunt tip, nothing to worry about, a homicide would need the meat or bread knife. Distraught, her mouth still a threat, I escape to the bathroom while the conference knife was in her hand. I sat in the bathtub for a while.

Minutes later, she knocked. “You’re scaring me, Jimbo. Tell me what’s wrong, please.” I considered yelling at her to wash her mouth. After more time, when rationality, the doorman of my life, settled me down, I came out of the bathroom and said, “My nose has gone wrong.” I told her everything. When (most likely one hot June day) and what, I had no clue why, “No honey bunny, it’s not you. It’s me.” I said.

She left my apartment early. When she called me that night, from the safe distance of the cellphone, all plastic and no pork flavors, I reiterated my illness to her. “I see,” she said. She brought me to the doctor that week. After that, however, our magic broke. It wasn’t the same anymore even though she cleaned her mouth carefully each time before we kissed. This went on for a bottle of Listerine, the half-hearted, self-conscious

kisses, the look from her each time she watched me devour my dim sum pork buns and pork sausages. Once, we were invited to a garden barbeque where I had no second thoughts or consideration for her when I wolfed down a pulled pork burger, while she’d had to decline to the hosts, meekly and hungrily, “No thanks. I don’t eat pork.” I supposed it was too much for her, having to refrain from her favorites, unfree, unherself. I must have overdone it when I said too bad, it was such a good meal and belched right next to her face. She pushed me away.

Yes, it was a double-standard. I can and you can’t, love sundered by pork meat, an inequity that she had to bear. “This can’t go on forever, can it?” she said one day in my car. “How long can a love like this last?” I pretended not to hear her. What did she want me to say, no kisses for her then? A week later, when I opened the freezer compartment of my fridge, I found that note. It was written in red lipstick. I put it back where it was. I never saw Dominica again. At the bar now, yes I’m still here, by the counter all along, sipping my orange cocktail soda, reminiscing and pondering if I should finally get over Dominica, my love, and move on. The bartender is closing shop. Occasionally she glances at me, no doubt wondering when I’d get off my stool and head home. Her wink, while not an illusion, isn’t an invitation. And certainly, like the many drunkards she’d encountered, like a lonely hunter hungry for company, like the double standard I really am, I blurt out, “Do you love pork chops?”

She says, “Yes.”