“I need-a help,” the old man said. “I have a cheese wheel, you see…”

I must have had a confused look on my face.

“A CHEESE WHEEL,” the bald man said, speaking slowly and with more volume than was obviously necessary.  Hey buddy, I thought, I’m not hard of hearing.  “I need you,” he said, “to lift a cheese wheel for me. You see… I can’t lift anything right-a now.” He frowned like a sad clown in an Italian opera. With both of his hands, the man grabbed onto – – and, my sincerest apologies if you’re eating while reading this – – an engorged protrusion that was extending straight from his potbelly.

He grabbed the protrusion violently, through his apron, as if he was attempting to wring its cursed, little neck. “I have-a hernia!” he explained. He held onto the protrusion, and began referring to it as THIS THING. “THIS THING means I can no longer lift even a little wheel of cheese anymore! GODDAMMN-A THIS THING.” He looked at his misshapen lump with disappointment in his eyes, as if THIS THING were not a misshapen lump at all but a prodigal son who had deeply disappointed him. He gritted his teeth and pretended to threaten THIS THING with the back of his hand.

Then he looked up at me again, as if remembering that I was still there. The old man’s eyes were a beautiful soft blue color. Like a robin’s egg. “I beg of you, lift this-a cheese wheel for me? You are young! You are strong! I know that can do it!”

Instead of waiting for me to respond, the man turned. Then he and THIS THING limped back through the open front door of the dusty confines of the Italian market.

I felt afraid. As any reasonable person should. Chinatown in Vancouver is no place for horseshit. The street lamps here are plastered with Xeroxed MISSING posters of people. These were people who came here, then were never seen again. Chinatown is filled with decades of loss and mystery.

But I also felt, well, curious. Maybe the city was offering me something here. Perhaps lifting an old man’s cheese wheel in the early hours of a sunny Tuesday afternoon was exactly what I needed that day. No, I was not young nor strong anymore – – the old man had been flattering me when he said those things. Yet I also knew that the city can sometimes offer up an experience that can prove meaningful to you when you needed it most.

And so I followed the blue-eyed, bare pated little man and his engorged hernia into the shadows. I trailed him through the store’s darkened aisles, all the way to what appeared to be a deli counter. There was a skylight overhead, opened in the ceiling. A thin ray of dingy sunshine fell to the floor. I spotted the old man standing next to a circular card table. He was pointing at something on the floor. “This is wheel,” he said.

I bent my knees, lowering my centre of gravity, and I gave it a shot. The wheel was covered with a stretch of butcher paper. “The wheel is-a PARMESAN!” the old man said. As if this was a useful bit of information somehow. He slapped his hand into the middle of the card table. “Now,” he said, “bring her HERE.”

The cheese wheel wasn’t as heavy as I’d expected. No, I didn’t lift it with ease. But I also didn’t quite struggle, either. Maybe the old man was right, I thought. Maybe I am young and strong still…

Then the old man began to shout at me. “HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE!” he said, slapping the edge of the circular table.

“The edge?” I asked.

“Easier for cutting!” he explained.

Once I was finished, the old man smiled at me, said thank you, then lost interest in me. He moved off, deeper into the store, further into the great expanse that I couldn’t see, but that I somehow knew was there.

Then I turned and made my way back to the front of the store. Back to the street. Back to the early afternoon sunlight of Main Street in Vancouver in early September. I felt a lightness in my step now. Something had changed in me. Something small, but significant. I had helped a strange old man who asked me for help. I had followed him into the high-ceilinged confines of that lost-in-time Italian market. To my surprise, my good feelings lasted for a fair chunk of the rest of the afternoon. And the next morning, when I was eating my breakfast cereal at the kitchen counter, I noticed a curious smell coming from my hands. It was parmesan, from the old man’s cheese wheel. Some of the wheel’s rind had gotten under my fingernails when I was lifting it. It was a beautiful smell, full of life and history. That smell persisted for a couple of days.

And then it was gone.

Also published on Medium.