Height Adjustment: A Short Story
By Jamwall
It was a star-speckled black tie evening at Frommade de Jajoo, the gothic sprawling mansion that peered into the watery black distance. The ears providing the only sight of the horizon stimulated by the crashing mysterious waves.
I walked through the front entrance of Jajoo tightly bound in my tuxedo carefully tailored around my semi-flat, but slightly protruding stomach which, five years to the present, now threatened to breach that carefully designed fabric levy.
But a rare invitation to Jajoo would have me wearing plywood underwear complete with rusty nails protruding at my privates if I were so inclined. Comfort wasn't the point. Meeting the father of Jajoo was a rare event.
Jajoo's father rose amongst the richest with astonishing speed, buying up fisheries all across the Alaskan coast, all the way down to Monterrey Bay. Before too long, he consolidated all companies into a great white shark swallowing up the giants. Soon, the Gorton's fisherman was replaced by this kindly, but powerful son of a Japanese halibut fisherman.
As for how Mr. Fuji amassed the money to make such audacious investments was a mystery. On opposite ends of the gossip ping-pong match were stories of a man who bet on the stock market and won, others suggested sinister partnerships with the dark Japan underworld.
As I walked in, those ugly thoughts of Fuji enveloped in blood money melted away the moment I glanced upon his round chubby face. The sides of his mouth pushing his fat little cheeks across his widening face. His teeth shining so white and his eyes squinting with warmth.
"I was afraid you'd never come!," he said, shaking my hand vigorously. "Welcome to Jajoo, its my home and therefore, yours as well. How is your family?"
"Fantastic," I said. "They send their warmest regards. I know its rare to see you in person, so I want to say that my dad can finally have faith in the fish sticks."
Fuji jiggled with laughter. His head raising to the ceiling and shimmying like a bobble head as each convulsing muscle reverberated through his body as though he was imitating the adjacent Jello mold.
"Wonderful wonderful! You are a DEElight!, especially your father, very clever chap! Please let us pour you a drink! Jajoo and I welcome you!"
Frommade de Jajoo's father was like everyone's father, he saw to it that his extended family were treated well.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to play the room and greet the others. Gotta be a good host." Fuji sprung into the crowd and marched from person to person drawing screams of laughter and love for every square foot of that reception room.
Cradling my Zima martini, I watched Fuji surgically negotiate the room as I sidled up to belt-high cocktail table and started striking up stories with other strangers who, like me, regarded the kindly old pudge as a mysterious, but lovable father figure. Fuji was the star of the evening. A gargantuan resting in a 5' 4" pudgy but compact little package.
I studied Fuji's black tuxedo jacket as it skillfully floated passed beer kegs and eschewed empty bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade that were peppered through the reception hall.
I smiled as I lifted my cocktail to my lips peering inside my drink where two dark lanky blurry figures appeared to take residence at the bottom of my transparent plastic cup, standing to the left of the giant floating pimento-stuffed olive in an ocean of bubbly clear beverage liquid.
I lowered my cup in perfect sync with the universal gasp that erupted around the room.
Then dead silence.
Standing before us were two lanky black figures dressed in black ninja outfits also known as "shinobi shozoku." This was definitely something straight out of the Kabuki theater. But unlike ninja folklore, our guests never darted out of thin air, but walked plainly through the front door brandishing the most spectacular polished long-handled silver hatchets. I was mesmerized by the spectacular beauty of such a deadly instrument that I could see my open-mouthed entranced reflection in one of their arching crescent blades. Who figured such gentle craftsmanship could create such a deadly razor-sharp lopping tool.
My hand quivered as I raised the pizza roll to my gaping maw. My brain, not knowing what I was seeing, had to remind my mouth to close and start chewing so it can properly digest the delicate Totino's product into digestible food matter.
The tallest of the two dark figures spoke in a sharp authoritative Asian accent before the shocked crowd of onlookers.
"Do not be alarmed!," the masked man bellowed. "Our business associates are like the Federal Reserve. They can only create so much money before people start getting greedy and growing too large before they need a what we call height adjustment. In other words, Mr. Fuji can only pay us back two ways, by giving us his left foot and his right foot."
My eyes darted to Fuji who stood shivering violently with terror in the back corner of the room. His little feet shuffling in circles looking for a nearby window or a room in which to escape, sadly the dapper little gent had picked the back corner of two solid walls in which to mingle. Bad timing.
The crowed frantically scurried and parted ways like the Red Sea for the evil hatcheted goons as they slowly approached the shivering stark white Mr. Fuji. The fracas converged on the waiters who danced in an accidental Cirque du Soleil performance desperately balancing heavy hors de overs trays of cheese sticks, shrimp poppers, animal crackers and "SpaghettiOs on the half-can."
As I popped the final pizza roll from my paper plate into my mouth, I turned to my new acquaintances of whom I have enjoyed sharing ripping yarns about the soon to be footless Mr. Fuji and proposed a new location.
"Hey, I don't know about you folks, but I didn't come here to watch two ninjas chop off Mr. Fuji's feet. Shall we continue our conversation outside on the veranda?"
"Fabulous!," said Deidre, one of the charming new friends and heiress to the Funyons fortune.
"Yes, lets!" exclaimed Trevor, heir to the Chicken of the Sea empire.
Slowly we meandered through the crowd and out the door, the cries of "no!!! no!!!!" fading into the sound of the crashing ocean below the veranda. We settled amongst the comfortable aluminum lawn chairs and shared hilarity and charming stories of the growth of this mountain known as Mr. Fuji. Time sped by with the smiles and warmth that came with good company.
Before too long, two hours had passed since the arrival of the hooded hatcheted guests.
"Hey, I wonder what happened with that Mr. Fuji thing?" inquired Trevor as he nursed his beer bong with infantesque aggression.
"I don't know, I sort of forgot about it," I said. "Maybe we should go back up there and check it out."
With extreme caution we ascended to the French doors of the reception facade of Jajoo, not sure of what we would see.
Will we see a Japanese man laying motionless on the floor following his foot-ectomy? Will there be pools and streaks of blood everywhere? Will the dark hooded hatcheted lords still be there?
All thoughts rippled into our minds as we slowly opened the door and gazed into the hall.
"Its completely empty and clean as a whistle," whispered Trevor.
Our heads darted inside the doorway as we looked across the lapse of the hall across the spotless linoleum floors.
"Yep, clean as a whistle. It doesn't even look like there was even a cocktail party here," exclaimed Deidre. "We must have been talking a long long time."
Years later Deidre, Trevor and I would become close friends as we recounted the incident known as "the ninja height adjustment." Many details have since surfaced of the mysterious little emperor. But, that night, our calculated guesses of Mr. Fuji's adjusted height buzzed through the salt water air of the evening sky.
"Is he 5' feet tall?"
"4' 11"?"
"4' 10"?"
We would never know...
Labels: Lopping, Shrimp poopers and extreme fajitas, the agony of defeet, While Jim Fowler orders some McNuggets I'm going to mayo my armpits
