What is the Double Dragon Inn?
Open daily from 11:30 AM to 10:00 PM, even during the off-season, making it a reliable choice for locals and visitors alike
What are some of the signature things on the menu?
Savor favorites like the Scorpion Bowl, Chicken Fingers, Beef Teriyaki, Chicken Lo Mein, and Hon Sue Duck with Pan-Fried Noodles
What’s the Atmosphere at Double Dragon Inn?
Step into a cozy, dimly lit space with a chipped formica bar top and decor that reflects the restaurant’s rich history
How long has the Double Dragon Inn around?
A cherished Orleans institution where locals and seasonal visitors come together to enjoy great food and a welcoming environment
Double Dragon Inn, Off-Season Hours: Open Daily: 1130a-10p
On the Table Tonight:
- Scorpion Bowl
- Chicken Fingers
- Beef Teriyaki
- Chicken Lo Mein
- Hon Sue Duck w Pan Fried Noodles
He assumed his same stool at the bar. This is the fourth night in a row the man had been there waiting. He knew that because as Jeopardy started the tv was on loud enough for him to hear that it was “Wednesday, February 19th.” The call had come in on Sunday at about 430 that afternoon - he’d just gotten up. Thinking back on it, he couldn’t tell if he felt like the call came in yesterday or back in October but the arbitrary marker of some worthless number of days ago somehow disappointed him.
He pulled his drink in close; a Scorpion Bowl for two, sweating in its porcelain vehicle, a drink designed for the camaraderie or, at least, partnership of another somebody but here reduced to a solitary act of defiance. Indulgence. Punishment. He never touched the little straw cluster meant for sharing. Just tilted the bowl, slow and steady, eyes buried under his brows, trained on the entrance and gulped.
Double Dragon was the kind of place that held onto its history, especially at the bar. The endearing worm hole you fall into crossing the beaded threshold was, without a doubt, the most revelatory experience he’d had in a bar in all of Massachusetts. The bartop, the stools, the wallpaper, the dim lighting had all, hopefully, seen decades of elbows propped up in weary surrender and hands gliding along the walls. Maybe testing for texture, maybe for leverage on a stagger to the bathroom. The formica, chipped in places, was evidence of time and hands gripping too tight and drinks spilled and wiped away without a thought. A cloth caught on a stray plastic edge and torn free. The air carried the scent of hot oil and caramelized soy sauce, punctuated by the comings and goings of a bartender dressed so stylishly our hero envied him his lean build to carry off a shirt cut as it was.
Tonight, the first appetizer arrived quickly, as it should, and like it had each of the previous nights. Chicken fingers, golden and crisp, stacked like discarded excuses on a silver tray. The dish was both absurd and perfect in its simplicity. He nudged one with his finger but didn’t eat. Three orders in four days. There really is no regard for money when you’re spending someone else’s. He’d expense it all.
The beef teriyaki followed close behind, skewered and slick with a glaze so rich it could only threaten to drip onto the tabletop. He couldn’t resist, it was a flavor bomb that brought him back to the Imperial Villa, where’d he’d eaten with his friends when he was young. Where his girlfriend came clean and told him she’d slept with his friend. His former friend. His ex-girlfriend. He ate one. It went down easy and he picked his teeth with the free skewer. It was a dish that was best to eat when you were hungry but hard to touch when you had too much on your mind.
And the man had plenty on his mind.
He was here four nights running because supposed to witness … something. That was the arrangement. He picked up the call mid-afternoon on a dark, nauseous Sunday and was told, Get there at 6:30. Stay until close if you have to. You’ll know it when you see it.’ But he hadn’t seen a damn thing. Just a usual-type of crowd—a couple of off-duty fishermen nursing Mai Tais, a pair of young guys from the auto shop demolishing plates of General Tso’s, a woman at the bar with a glass of white wine, twirling the stem between her fingers like she was waiting for someone to ask her why she was there and if she was waiting for someone. No one did. No one did anything that night. So he returned the next night. And the next. That’s how this works. Professional witness to … summons being served, staged altercations, robberies. He’d done it all. Which was why he no idea what to expect.
When nothing had happened by mid-Monday night, he’d start taking guesses - as he did again now, sucking teriyaki from his toothpick. Maybe it was the old man who came in, apparently only on weeknights, for a single egg roll and a pot of tea. He carefully applied hot mustard and scanned the room between bites. At first this looked suspicious but after last night he knew the guy was just savoring his bites. The old man only had a couple left. Maybe only a couple less than he did, himself. All the more reason to order another Scorpion Bowl.
Tonight he was guessing maybe it was the bartender. There’s a guy who moved with the compact efficiency of someone who’d seen every kind of magic or trouble walk through the door. He would always watch someone for a little too long after they’d sat down, he was a too attentive to their body language. But he was a bartender, wasn’t he - that may be the trade. But even that would make him the perfect mark, wouldn’t it? Maybe the bartender was what to wait for. Maybe the bartender was nothing at all. Maybe the call had been a mistake.
He was halfway through his hearty chicken lo mein when he saw them.
A couple—early forties, maybe—talking to the host just outside the bar. The woman did her best to disguise her darting eyes. What was she expecting? She had the kind of polished look that suggested she had better places to be - probably in Chatham - but the way her fingers dug into the man’s sleeve said she wasn’t in control of the situation. The man, broad-shouldered and stiff, scanned the room the way people do when they’re not sure who they’re looking for. Or maybe he was looking for a place to sit.
The witness put down his chopsticks. Maybe this was it.
His Hon Sue Duck arrived—crispy-skinned, fragrant, the piece-du-resistance, with the pan-fried noodles on a twin tray presented like a golden net. This was the meal he’d set as the reward for killing another lazy, empty day. But now that he knew what he was waiting for, he couldn’t touch it. For that alone, he resented them both.
The couple slid into a table behind him, he could clock them in the mirror.. The man spoke first, low and sharp, punctuated by the quick movements of his hands. The woman barely said anything, just nodded, her eyes fixed on the tabletop like she was reading something no one else could see. Witnessing this was washing with warm water and sandpaper. The man leaned in and his face contorted as he snarled something else. She closed her eyes like she was about to be punched. He inadvertently snapped the teriyaki twig in his hand.
The man sat back for a second and looked for the bartender, who was retrieving another dish from the kitchen. He impatiently rose, ignoring the woman’s eyes, and left the bar. The witness tracked him and then returned his glance to the woman. She was no longer looking down at the table or weak; she met his gaze, eye to eye. Her head was still, her chin off her chest-plate for the first time since she’d sat. What were her eyes telling him? He looked down at his food, moved something from a tray to the plate and looked back - she was still looking. Was that a plea?
The cascading beads chimed and parted again. The broad man returned with another younger, leaner man dressed in something too casual for the weather. The two men rejoined the woman and the woman’s eyes rejoined the table top.
The witness caught the moment things changed—the way the woman straightened, the way the man’s jaw clenched, the way the bartender’s gaze, he’d come back now, his notebook in hand ready to play his role but lingered a second too long. A beat of silence, then the new arrival, the younger man reached into his coat pocket.
This was the moment.
The witness found his eyes intent on the mirror, his hands grabbed for anything on the bar, heart ticked faster. In a rush the four nights swept through him, the twenty drinks, the way the Scorpion Bowl burned at the back of his throat. He thought about how he was supposed to watch and how clearly he needed to remember … whatever was coming now.
Then he did something he hadn’t planned.
He stood up, raking the feet of the stool across the floor.
The commotion was loud enough that the threesome looked his way. The younger man hesitated, hand still in his pocket, eyes narrowing at the interruption. The bartender, creeping to the table, stopped and turned around curiously.
The witness had a choice.
He could sit back down, let it unfold the way it was meant to.
Or he could deny the moment its witness. (Was she pleading?)
He turned and walked toward the restroom, slow and deliberate, feeling the weight of all those nights pressing against his back. He walked past their table and stopped, bent down. When he stook up again to his full height he was holding a wrapped fortune cookie.
He extended it to the woman, “Is this yours?”
Her lips were trembling a little, the edges of her mouth, to this point turned downward, found their way into a smirk, the only smile she could muster. Then she shook her head, “Nope.”
He looked to both of the men, holding each set of eyes with his own, neither betrayed anything to him.
Tucking the cookie in his shirt pocket, he walked to the restroom.
Behind him, the conversation picked up again. Off key, too loud. The moment passed.
By the time he came back, the table was empty. The bartender had wrapped his meal to go and packed it neatly into brown paper bags, the tops folded and staples. His bill in plain view.
The witness picked up the slip of paper, dug out his wallet and dropped cash onto the thin paper, weighing it down onto the plastic tray. He looked to the bartender, who was now leaning back against the door he’d take to the kitchen. He looked at the witness and was not pleased. It had been the bartender.
The witness smiled, pulled the fortune cookie out of his pocket, unwrapped, cracked, and ate it before reading the fortune.
“Prosperity indeed,” he said out loud and smiled for the first time this week.
He stepped out into the cold and turned his collar up against the wind, fishing for his keys. Behind him, past the dumpsters, the Escalade idled, its interior lights revealing only the shapes of men and the brief glow of a match.
•••••
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