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Just before lunch, Zachariah cut himself. What looked to be a mile long from an ant’s point of view, was a nine-inch cut down his arm. His tattoos will never be the same.

Hirotaka is also found in bento. He is a two-time cancer survivor, golfer, and extremely pissedoff-all-the-time guy. The brain cancer transformed and clogged the shape of his left ear: scrunched and baby-size. I was afraid to talk to him when I got hired.

Takahashi will always be a mystery to me. He is the “manager” of the fish corner. He never speaks unless he needs to; no small talk, no conversations about enjoyment. Strictly business, strictly fish. I’ve seen him smile three times since I’ve been employed.

Around this time of day, I would be washing dishes and hating every dish of it. But today I was put in the fish corner. Learning new skills, sushi bar preparations, and scraping the tuna. I keep everything I need to know written on the back of a menu so I don’t look dumb.

Gucchi talks about Takahashi behind his back, even when his back is close enough to overhear what’s being said. He says how useless Takahashi is, and how terrible of a worker he is. I feel bad for Takahashi. The man sits by himself every lunch, reads the newspaper, and keeps his head down.

Almost never making eye contact. Black hair tries to escape his ear canals, but gets stuck.

I’ve heard of scraping the tuna before, everyone hates it. I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I was just excited to not be washing dishes. Takahashi brings me a metallic-gray tray, covered in saranwrap, with slabs of red tuna on it that aren’t sushi-grade cuts. He grabs a spoon nearby. Takes a piece of tuna, and starts to de-meat the fish. As the silver spoon digs into red velvet flesh, the meat follows the shape of the tiny, concave shovel. “Scrape The Tuna, don’t get any of the fatty tissue.” mutters Takahashi. One piece of tuna can take anywhere from one to ten minutes. There are usually three trays to do. Each tray can have up to ten pieces on it. It is one of the most asinine, monotonous, lifesucking jobs there. When scraping the tuna, you can go at your own pace. Peter likes to scrape the tuna. I don’t.

In a break between scraping the tuna slabs, I inject my iPod into Zachariah’s stereo: he is the other “fish corner guy.” I run through my music alphabetically: A, B, C, D, EFGHIJKLMNOPQR Stevie Wonder: Uptight. I look over at Takahashi who is cutting some type of fish of a pale white color.

Yellowtail? Probably.

To the right of fish corner is the register and its entourage: Emi, Suzuki, Johnna, Lisa, Rebecca, and sometimes Kumiko. Today, Emi, Suzuki, and Lisa are running the front. Emi is a large lady of whale-sized proportions. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but she’s a heavy-set woman: very nice and always laughing at my jokes and complaints. Suzuki is the come-in-hungover, mid-30s Japanese woman. We all believe her to be a whore from her drinking. Lisa is Chinese, 20 years old, and doesn’t know how to walk properly. Maybe her feet were bound as a child. She skips and frolics from place to place, arms flailing and feet clocking the ground. She wears black, rectangular glasses.

Still scraping, various songs come on with me singing as much of the lyrics as my brain will recall: “Sir Duke,” “Higher Ground,” “A Place in the Sun.” If I don’t know a part of the song’s lyrics, I just hum along and play it off cool. Takahashi is now gone; he disappears from time to time helping customers, or grabbing fish from the walk-in which is down the alley of the back door, across from the coat racks. I feel it’s time to gently tear some leg muscles and head to the back, grab some miso and dick-around with Leon, Steve, and the other Nick.

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