The Stars Were Right [Preview]

Three

The waiter set down a warm beer the color of piss. I looked out the dirty window of the small shop and absently ran the tips of my fingers over the butcher paper. Spills from previous diners stained the top in greasy splotches. Outside the rain continued to drip and wash down from the upper levels. I could see some of the lower races walking past: anur and their broods, cephels moving in that awkward gait on their powerful leg-arms. An occasional pitchfork addict stumbled past, scratching at scabs while hunting down his next fix.

I don't normally seek out restaurants this close to the Sunk, but I didn't come to Shuai Tan for the atmosphere.

The best places to eat in this city aren't the elevated, celebrity chef-run restaurants with a cover charge just to see the inside. I'm sure they are fine in their own right, with interiors richly filled with gilded columns and hanging tapestries, with ingredients sourced from the finest merchants, fishermen, and ranchers. In places like those, the cost of dining alone could pay a small family’s rent for months.

Not my style.

It's places like Shuai Tan where the true culinary treasures can be found. It’s in the grubby down-in-subs, hole-in-the-wall dives; that's where one finds the best Lovatine cuisine. In a city of ninety-three million souls with generations of families going back to the Aligning, some recipes have been perfected. Dishes that are prepared following traditions, hundreds even thousands of years old. Food made from the heart.

Shuai Tan only had two customers at the moment: me, and a fat old kresh with long face whiskers that passed as his beard. He spooned mouthfuls of fried rice into his face. His bulging, heart-shaped eyes were cloudy with cataracts; a walking stick leaned against his table. He breathed heavily when he wasn't smacking his lips. He was taciturn, eating and watching a monochrome that blazed gray and white light across the back wall of the small restaurant.

A lone waiter flittered between the two of us. Human. Probably a member of the family that ran Shuai Tan, a grandson in a long line of grandsons. Most of his muttering was drowned out over the hum of an ancient air cycler that clattered above us, small paper streamers fluttered from its grate.

Shuai Tan was small, thrust into a space built in another time and for some other purpose. Four small tables with room for nine customers occupied the dining area of the restaurant. An extra table sat outside, though the chairs that went along with it had been stolen years earlier, never to be replaced.

The exterior and interior brick walls had been painted a dingy aqua blue; the paint so thick it was impossible to see the pattern of the cinderblocks. A dirty awning lit by flickering sodium lights kept the rainwater off the necks of hungry customers.

A hand painted sign advertised "good food" for "cheap prices,” and above me, the ancient tube monochrome broadcasted, whipping through the day’s news in a language unknown to me. I had sat near the window intentionally. I preferred to keep my eyes off that image-filled box and focused on the more interesting stories that play out in the streets. The hustle and bustle of life itself.

Noises echoed from the kitchen, and I leaned back in my chair to drink it all in. This was my ritual, my first meal upon returning to Lovat. Before bed or even a shower, I had to first come to Shuai Tan and eat a mountain of bao yu.

"Can I take your order now, sir?" asked the waiter, fluttering next to my table and wringing his hands impatiently.

"I'll have some of that fried rice the fella over there has, and the bao yu in the sweet pepper sauce, with the ah...." I checked the menu. "...Ah, yes, the asparagus?"

"Ah," winced the waiter, his Strutten only slightly accented, "We're out of the asparagus, we could substitute..." he thought about it.” …mushrooms? Would mushrooms be all right, sir? Anything else?"