Stuff I wrote down at work.

There are at least five languages at the restaurant, maybe more.
There is English, Thai, Spanish, some sort of Burmese dialect, and the one that we all use which requires hands, numbers of fingers, and gratuitous English thank yous and universal smiles.
Thai is sounds from the throat. English is shapes through the mouth.
Ni says English words the same way she says Thai words and it sounds like off-key music and I cannot understand it, so I often ask her to repeat things.

Each morning we feed Buddha and his compadres. On a shelf behind the counter of each restaurant sits several effigies. There is a bird that gets brown rice, a house that gets rum, and everyone gets food, which is placed in little cups. Jejie held me by the elbow one day and said one tofu, one vegetable, one chicken, one noodle, each cup.
After the offering is made Jejie prays. If business is slow, Jejie compulsively stops in front of Buddha throughout the day and claps her hands together over her head and mutters a short prayer. I once heard a woman whisper to her husband wow, look at that.
Part of the Buddha offerings is given to a small wooden house that sits on the shelf of each restaurant. It is the only one that gets rum.
I asked Ni who lives in the house. She asked why you need to know?
I said because it’s interesting, so she told me about the ancestors who owned the land and how we borrowed it from them for a while.
It was just a girl coworker and I opening the restaurant in Mesa. Jejie wasn’t there yet, so after we finished placing the offerings I clapped my hands together over my head and said thank you Buddha. I said it with a smile but I kind of meant it and the way the girl looked at me let me know that she knew.

While reading a book behind the counter of the to-go place I hear a crash from outside. I look up but do not see anything. It is not until I am returning from the bathroom that I notice our American flag, knocked over by the wind. It is prostrate and spread out across the sidewalk and I know that you are supposed to burn it now. I imagine myself outside with a book of matches in one hand and a fist full of flag in the other. People stop their cars to yell at me, but I just yell back it’s okay, it fell down.

On my way to work I saw a silver Lexus SUV and a cop car stopped in the road. There was a man standing next to the open drivers door of the Lexus. A young blond woman stood behind him. She had on big sunglasses but I could tell from her scrunched up face that she was crying. I couldn’t understand why she was crying. Everyone seemed okay, there was no damage to the car, and then I pulled forward a bit. A homeless man was lying facedown in the grass just off the road. He was alone so I assumed that he was dead. I hope that he was dead.