One California, one Spider, and one Dragon

I lost such a great friend over 3 rolls of sushi. No…it was more than the sushi I ate off her plate when I took her to lunch. Even though she offered the sushi to me, I shouldn’t have eaten it because she had done me a big favor and that’s why I had taken her to lunch in the first place, and she wanted to put the extra sushi in a box and have it later or maybe let her fiancé taste it. But I was trying to be vegan because I thought it would be good for my health and ordered a bowl of vegetables instead of a meal and that’s what got me eyeing her sushi. But it was more than that. She had owed me money and I took it. I should have said, “Oh, no, you keep it,” but I had a surprise in mind that I didn’t tell her and I should have. I really should have. She’s getting married and I was saving up to give her money toward her wedding dress. Why hadn’t I said, “This is toward your wedding dress” before I pocketed it? Because I was too busy eating her sushi and because I had wanted it to be a grand surprise when she began shopping for her wedding dress. <>

<>There is more if you can bear it. She drove me all the way into Manhattan to pick up the jacket I am going to be wearing to my son’s wedding, and even though I paid for parking and tolls, I didn’t pay for gas. Why? Because my big thought was that I am saving up money toward her wedding dress as a surprise. We couldn’t find her the lot where her car was parked and the ticket had no address on it. What kind of a garage gives a ticket without an address on it? A scam garage, that’s what kind. The guys who took her car weren’t in the parking lot. They were outside it, on the curb, just waiting for two rubes to hand them the keys. And they weren’t just her car keys, a whole ring of keys for her apartment. I felt so guilty that her car was stolen from doing me a favor. How am I going to give her money toward her wedding dress if I owe her a car?<>

<> We dashed through the streets like Henny and Penny who thought that the sky was falling, the dressy jacket in its white zippered bag flapping, a sail in wind. I was ready to call the police when she found the lot where the car was waiting. But that wasn’t all. Before I ate up her sushi, I told her that her white coat was pilly and she needed a new one. But that wasn’t all either. When she came back to my house after I had eaten up her sushi, I flaunted the pricey pendant my husband bought me to match the pricey jacket. All this flaunting with her sushi in my belly and her gas burnt up in service of me! The pendant was my birthday, anniversary, and Chanukah present from my husband, possibly all the presents for the rest of my life, but there I was, her sushi in my stomach, her gas tank down a half, and I never told her, “I’m paying something toward your wedding dress because you’ve been such a great friend all the years.” No, I was waiting to surprise her. But since I ate her sushi, siphoned her gas, besmirched her white coat with my words, and flaunted that pendant, the only surprise is that I lost a friendship with a dear friend.<>

<>In The Prophet, Khalil Gibran said that talk was half-murdered thought, but thoughts that are kept back as a surprise over sushi can murder friendships.