Returning to our table at Shogun, I see Andy snickering and shielding his mouth behind his hand as he whispers, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Max?”
“What? Who’s Max?” I ask.
“What are the odds?” he asks in return.
“Who is Max??” I repeat.
“The kid who cut his finger off,” he says with a grin.
I turn around and look at the table behind us. A college-age kid sits before his sushi, a finger on his left hand bandaged in white. I look back at Andy, recalling that neither of us has ever seen the guy who lost part of his finger on a saw in our garage.
“Go ask him!” I exclaim. He shakes his head.
I hop off my chair and approach the table.
“Can I ask you how you hurt your finger?” I say, interrupting his conversation with a young woman.
“Oh, I cut it on a saw…”
“In someone’s garage?” I cut in.
He looks at me quizzically and says yes.
“That was our garage,” I explain, and by that time Andy is already over shaking his hand. And apologizing.
The odds of running into the guy who just cut his finger off while working on your construction project have got to be pretty low, but there we were, shaking hands – the good hand, at least – with that very man. We made some small talk – it turns out everyone knows someone who’s lost a finger – and then left them to their meal.
At the end of it, we bought Max and his date their dinner, figuring it was the least we could do. Hopefully the gods of kitchen karma have been somewhat mollified, and there will be no disembodied fingers haunting the garage.
(PS – Andy made me take the picture – and good-sport Max was game.)
