A Death in the Neighborhood

There was a death in my neighborhood this week. It happened on Sunday.

I knew it was coming. I heard her telling some one at the next table. 

Gatip, the Lombard Street restaurant, was on its last legs. Closing in a week, the thirtieth or the twenty-ninth. She said she had a job lined up, three days a week waiting at a coffee shop on Chestnut.

I was not surprised but quite saddened. Retail establishments in the neighborhood come and go but Gatip had been here a long time. It couldn’t, shouldn’t happen to Gatip. The owners worked so hard, made such a good product, got me hooked on Thai food.

Gatip: Fine Thai Cuisine the sign said in green letters on graying background above the entrance on Divisadero.

I had become a once-a-week customer at Gatip because of the spicy cuisine with steaming fresh vegetables, long, thin rice noodles, and chewy fried chicken that came together in a large bowl of soup. There was the additional benefit I valued: the restaurant’s informal quietude, so different from the boisterousness found in the other neighborhood eateries at lunchtime. It was a place to eat alone, to pause as life roared by on the street outside the window.

Gatip featured plastic placemats with pictures of elephants. 

Maximum seating, thirty four, I counted. 

Family owned and operated every day in every way.

Mother occasionally venturing out of the kitchen, brow wrinkled, eyes scanning on the lookout for how people treated their meal; which dishes they finished, which they didn’t. Father chatting up the few customers, seemed everywhere, scurrying around like an expectant father in a maternity ward. Two daughters, in their thirties I guessed, cursed now with the American stigmata, obesity. Smiling through it though, at your table with a jug of ice water before you could unfold the set paper napkin.

I had been there enough that the sisters knew what I liked. Ordered the same soup every time. Seven dollars and ninety nine cents total with tax, including all the ice water I could drink.

I would have paid more if they asked. 

Would that have saved Gatip?

* * *

The mother and father were Asian thin.

I thought about the girls becoming Americanized right out of their Orient garb. 

I was troubled by a recent article about Asians taking more places in our best universities, deservedly so. My worry was the statement by a male Korean sophomore at Stanford saying his Caucasian classmates made fun of him because he “studied too much.” He now wanted to be a “regular guy.” Forget the four point plus.

What good would Asians be if they became us?

I liked the picture of the King and Queen dominating the wall opposite the entrance. The King born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pictured above in full parade military dress, shoulder-strapped white jacket heavily populated with medals, ribbons and laurels. The Queen, movie-star beautiful, adorned in padded shoulder jacket, orange and green, the happy colors of Thailand. She was wearing a gold necklace, allowing a practiced benevolent smile. 

At my first lunch at Gatip, having recently returned from Bangkok, I asked a sister if her family liked the King and Queen. She smiled shyly and said, “They are very popular.” Gatip was not a political salon, didn’t claim to be. Political discussions of minor import were welcomed at the pizza place, not here.

The other sister, seemingly the more reticent one, had responded to my question, during my first visit, of Gatip’s history by saying the restaurant had been in business for thirty-two years. Same family ownership, grandfather and grandmother to mother and father. She hesitated for just a moment, just long enough for me to see the look of pride that had appeared upon her face. 

Ironic that sometime this past year a small sign appeared in the window. It read, if you were on foot and looked hard and saw it, “Free WiFi.” The letters in forgotten colors straining to be six inches high, reticent, speaking to few if anyone. 

I never saw a diner with a mobile device or PC at Gatip.

* * *

On New Year’s Eve around noon, walking to the pizza place, I saw Gatip ahead. I had forgotten it was closing. 

I stopped at the window and looked in. There were maybe fifty people mulling around, drinking, talking. They looked serious. It was Gatip’s wake, a gathering of goodbye.

I felt sad.

I revved up my nerve and opened the front door.

Three Thai men, long-time customers, I assumed, were crunched up against other. One nearest, looked at me, apparently wondering what I was doing here. I mumbled, “last day?” More of a question. He nodded and turned back to his companions who belonged here. I didn’t. 

Even had I wanted to go in, find the Mr. and Mrs. and speak my condolences, say goodbye to the girls and wish them well, I could not advance through the burgeoning Asian Americans paying their respects. 

I belonged at Gatip’s but only as a customer and they were closed for business.

I walked back home. I wasn’t in the mood for lunch. 

* * *

The next night after watching a movie on Chestnut I began walking home. Not a car on Lombard. Not a late night walker. Above, a quarter moon fixed high among fleeting clouds. There was Gatip, coming up. 

I looked squintingly in the window. Beyond where the tables were, through the opening that led into last week’s kitchen there was a single twenty watt lit bulb with a shoelace string hanging down from the once counter.

The tables and chairs had been removed. On the floor were unplugged wires, a fading Yellow Pages directory, scattered menus, a number of plastic utensils, the take-out kind, 

a bottle of industrial cleaning fluid and other once utilitarian items now spelling debris. 

No surprise but a feeing of accentuated loss: the King and Queen were gone too. I hoped they’d find a happy home.

I turned away, took a few slow steps. My mind was busy. A police car sauntered by. The cop in the passenger seat gave me an inquiring look. I imagined I would have looked sad, and maybe a little guilty. 

Gatip was dead.