The Ramen King and I (10 page)

I
set my alarm for six thirty to make sure I had enough time. I left my apartment and smelled the San Francisco spring air. It reminded me of summer camp.

My sixth letter to the inventor of instant ramen ended with me scribbling down an address, so I’ll fill in what happened after that. The address was on Dolores Street in the Mission District, and when I got there I was standing in front of a church. Except for its green spire, the church blended in neatly with the Victorian-style houses around it.

I parked my car and walked up three cement steps to a big white door. I turned around to see if anyone was watching. I felt self-conscious standing near a church, and by a weird coincidence this church was diagonally across the street from a bar in which Hadman was an investor. Amanda sometimes worked there as a guest bartender. It was early in the morning and therefore unlikely that anyone was in the bar, but I imagined that Amanda and Hadman were spying on me from inside it, laughing.

A sign to the left of the big white door said RING BELL over an arrow pointing to a button. I pressed the button, and a chime rang inside. I waited for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably five seconds. When the door opened, a woman’s face peeked out. She was around fifty-five years old, with short white hair and rosy cheeks.

“Come on in,” she said.

“Is this . . . ?”

“Yes.”

One of the things I’ve thought about more than anything is whether I should say the name of the group that met at the church. I’ve thought about it for months, maybe years. I’ve thought about it so much because I want to be truthful. But I’ve decided that it might be best if I don’t say the name, and I hope I can be forgiven for that. What I’ll say is that there were twelve people sitting on sofas and chairs in what looked like the church’s social room (a floor below the chapel), and that I sat on one of the sofas and listened. Some of the people spoke about an obsessive quality to their romantic lives. Some spoke about the guilt of cheating on their husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends, yet how they were powerless to stop. All of them spoke about the horror not only of betraying people they cared about, but of having lost a sense of who they were.

They spoke for nearly an hour about things I had thought were unspeakable.

When it was over, the woman who greeted me at the door said, “That’s all the time we have. Is anyone available to mentor newcomers?”

A man who looked in his early forties raised his hand.

“My name is Matt. If you’re looking for a mentor, come talk to me.”

People began rearranging the sofas into a neat square and stacking bridge chairs in the back of the room. I approached Matt, but I didn’t know what to say.

“You looking for a mentor?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“OK,” Matt said. “I’ll tell you what. Put away some chairs.”

Close up, Matt looked like a hardened version of Sean Penn, but his demeanor reminded me of Mr. Miyagi, the karate master played by Noriyuki “Pat” Morita in
The Karate Kid
. Put away chairs.
Wax on, wax off.
I put away some chairs and went back to Matt.

“What time do you have to be at work?” he asked.

It was Thursday, which meant I had to get to the magazine for Josh’s weekly story meeting.

“I have about half an hour.”

“Let’s grab coffee.”

I slung my laptop bag over my shoulder, and we left the church. Matt walked so quickly along Dolores Street that I had a hard time keeping up. There was a tightness about his face; his jaw muscles seemed perpetually engaged, even when he wasn’t talking. He was under six feet, like me, and he wore a gray sweatshirt, dark jeans, and off-brand sneakers. He led me across the street to a café, where we each ordered a coffee drink. We sat down on a worn-out brown sofa by the front window. Next to us, a girl with tattooed shoulders was typing on a laptop. Matt must have sensed I was afraid she would overhear us.

“Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She’s probably absorbed in her own problems.”

“OK.” I was still uncomfortable.

“So tell me why you’re here.”

I tried to summarize everything about Amanda and Kim and Maureen and Harue and how I felt so alone, but I didn’t think I was making much sense.

“I can relate to that,” Matt said.

“You can?”

“Listen, I was alone for most of my life. And I hurt a lot of people. I’m not proud of that.”

“How did you change?”

“We’re talking about you today. I’ll be your mentor. But you’ll have to do some things that I ask.”

A few nights earlier, I had watched a movie called
Samurai Trilogy I: Musashi Miyamoto
. I had never watched a samurai movie in my life, and the only reason I watched this one was that it had popped up in the “Movies You’ll ♥” list on my video rental store’s Web site. The main character is a young man named Takezo, played by Toshiro Mifune. He’s a fearsome but unruly warrior with little connection to those around him. His fellow villagers become convinced he’s a menace, so they hunt him in the forest, rounding up his relatives so he’ll turn himself in. But before the villagers find Takezo, a Buddhist priest builds a fire in the woods and cooks a hearty stew, luring Takezo with the aroma of a hot meal.