The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  Little Miss Owyang Falls in Like

  It all began when he pissed her off at work. Lindsey had sent him a scathing e-mail about his inadequacy at keeping the common areas litter-free. She constantly found detritus from FedEx packages, crumpled Post-it notes, and Twix wrappers around the office, and she suspected they were his. Everything he touched seemed to turn into trash, and he left a trail around the office for her to clean up. And she had had it. And that’s what her e-mail said. Three little words: “I’ve had it.” She followed that sentence with a detailed description of his offenses and the usual plea to work as a team, blah blah blah.

  Michael Cartier was the magazine’s travel editor, and although Lindsey hadn’t had much contact with him, she did suspect that he was a closet meat-eater like herself. She had once overheard him getting berated in the lunchroom by Yvonne, the public relations planner, because he had destroyed the sanctity of a microwaved baked potato by sprinkling it with bacon bits.

  She tried to picture him now, conjuring basic details about his appearance, such as brown hair and eyes, perhaps around six feet tall with somewhat squarish shoulders. As she tried to remember any other details about him, she was unprepared for the reply that shot back to her screen. This guy had his own three-word e-mail as a response. When she clicked open the message, there it was. That sentence that packed the sucker punch, the phrase that girls waited for months to hear from their boyfriends, the phrase that was most definitely inappropriate at the moment, yet somehow thrilling:

  From: michaelcartier

  To: lindseyowyang

  I love you.

  She sat and stared at the eight letters, which looked so trite on heart-shaped Mylar balloons and Hallmark cards but which now seemed like the most original, refreshing combination of lines and circles she had ever seen. At first she scoffed, reacting with a “don’t get fresh with me, young man” attitude. She fumed at her desk for about ten seconds, but then she allowed herself to wonder, What does this mean? One doesn’t dash off those words to just anyone. No guy writes that sentence to someone he doesn’t like, even a little. For instance, even if it was a joke, she couldn’t imagine any guy writing those words to the old hippie accounting secretary with the chin hairs and stained polyester pantsuit.

  Could it be true? Could Michael, this non-cleaner of his own coffee mug, actually, you know, love her?

  She didn’t know it yet, but she totally fell for it.

  This was by far the most exciting thing she had experienced within these vegan-chili-splattered halls. This enigmatic e-mail distracted her from the monotonous duties of her workday: cleaning the mailroom with Simple Green, confirming an appointment with the catch-and-release exterminator, and ordering time sheets printed on acid-free paper for allergy-sensitive employees prone to eczema. Between phone calls, she changed the toner cartridge in the printer and restocked the vending machine with turkey-jerky and carob-flavored gluten krispies.

  An hour passed, and in that time she convinced herself that there was something about Michael that intrigued her. He reminded her of the days when she’d been annoyed by teasing high school boys but had secretly liked the attention. Ah, her stupid, lost youth.

  She told herself that she didn’t miss having dates with sexy but self-centered guys. Rather, she had gotten sick of them never being on time or calling her back or picking up the tab every now and then. She had become tired of being disappointed at parties, of always wanting to go home and cry and die, just like in songs by the Smiths. She had given up on her social life early on, and now, as a receptionist extraordinaire, she was hardly interested in spending weekday happy hours with her nine-to-five tormentors who ostracized her for eating chicken and, she suspected, held her personally responsible for the caged animals in Chinatown.

  Just because she spent most evenings at home with her grandmother didn’t mean she had lost her youth. She had chosen to get rid of it. Actually, she had left it in the garage to collect dust. But something about Michael made her want to drag that old youth thing out from behind the Oriental rugs.

  So she started flirting with him.

  I know you love me, Stud, but don’t think you’re going to sweet-talk your way out of cleaning up after yourself.

  There. That was sassy. She wasn’t turning to mush. Yet. Barely a minute passed before he replied:

  You’re quite cute when you’re irritated.

  Hmm. What was up with this person? She decided she had no choice but to be cool. She wouldn’t fall for it.

  I don’t understand people who claim to love me but have never even talked to me in the hall.

  It was true that Lindsey and Michael had hardly ever spoken in the year she’d been working at the magazine. Maybe once she had said something like, “Here’s your mail,” or “Lonely Planet is on line three.”

  Michael skulked through the office hallways without saying much. Now that she strained her mind for clues about him, she remembered that once in a staff meeting, she had noticed his voice was tinged with something south of the Mason-Dixon line. She regarded him now as quite a mysterious entity. She left for the day feeling flattered, intrigued, and also a little annoyed. She didn’t admit to herself that she felt a little gooey inside, too.

  The next day she wore her pink angora sweater to work. It was a subconscious sex message that she would be too embarrassed to admit, even to herself. She wore it for Michael, of course, and not for the accountant who passed her in the hall and accused her of wearing the processed pelt of a murdered rabbit. Lindsey shrugged it off. She was thinking more Playboy bunny than bunny killer.

  She scanned the office foyer for Michael but did not see him. When he finally did appear, exactly nine minutes later, she seemed to notice for the first time that he was quite handsome. He had a sullen, brooding kind of masculinity that reminded her of how hopelessly hetero she was. Despite two lesbian friends and some vaguely imagined scenarios that involved kissing girls, seeing Michael Cartier at this very moment made her fallopian tubes vibrate in a warm sort of way. She thought she felt her uterus move.

  Her vision zoomed in on his well-groomed hands and his calm, confident walk. As he stared at her with his chocolate brown eyes, she noticed a softness around his cheekbones that hinted at some kind of sensitive wounded puppy thing.

  She could tell that her pink sweater was working its furry, fuzzy magic. From experience she knew that pink and angora together cast a magical spell over the heterosexual human male. It was something primal; seeing her fluffiness would give him the Cro-Magnon urge to pounce on her, carry her back to his cave, and impregnate her.

  Then perhaps he would barbecue some meat (optional).

  “Good morning, Lindsey,” he said, enunciating her name slowly, but without stopping or breaking his stride.

  “Hello,” she replied, feeling a pure ray of energy exit her eyes and enter directly into his. Sensing the intensity of his gaze, she felt a surge of adrenaline and suddenly wanted to run away and hide.

  She watched him move around the corner and disappear into his office.

  END OF TAPE 1. PLEASE REWIND, LIKE,

  A THOUSAND TIMES IN YOUR HEAD.

  When Lindsey was nineteen she dated, hated, and berated many boys. She wanted them to love her, not just feel her up and then not pay for the movie. She vowed to stop letting boys get the better of her.

  So she became a bronze medalist in the mind-fuck Olympics. She flirted heavily with guys and then pulled back and ignored them. She wore barely-there dresses to class but made sure she could quote Descartes or Sartre more accurately than anyone else in her study group.

  She learned to keep guys in a constant state of aroused angst and developed a haughty attitude that she wore like a dainty pantyshield for daily protection against feeling “not so fresh.” Her invisible defense told boys, “I know you want me, but I regret that you’re just not museum-quality. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got way better grades than you.”

  Straight As got her through a lot of hear
tache. She told herself, “Yeah, he dumped me, but he’s gonna take six years to graduate with his crappy mass communications major, and I’m graduating summa cum laude in four years with a double major in English and French Literature.”

  She trained for hours in the gymnasium of her mind. She became adept at the double entendre, going out to dinner armed with impeccable table manners and a forked tongue. She savored the chase but never actually tasted the food. By the end of the dating marathon, she was always left with hunger pangs. Proficient as she was at mind manipulations, the pursuit of boys soon became like a video game requiring so many quarters to get to level 10 that she eventually ran out of coins. She began to realize that maybe there wasn’t any prize at all at the end of the game. Perhaps she would get her initials on a digital scoreboard, but that was it.

  Lindsey counted the times Michael walked by her desk that day. While she busied herself answering calls and filling out forms for office supplies, she counted seven times that he happened to breeze past. Even though she was situated near the coffee, watercooler, and mailroom, she convinced herself that her angora sweater was pulsing like a beacon in the night and he couldn’t help but be drawn to her. Three times she caught him looking at her, and when their eyes met he smiled, but she held back and didn’t smile. She wasn’t the type to doodle his last name as if she already dreamed of marriage, but she definitely started thinking about him in a different way. In that kissy kissy love way. How embarrassing.

  Bananas, Twinkies, and Eggs

  Occasionally Lindsey’s older brother, Kevin, treated her to dinner. He was the top salesman for a company that manufactured and sold microchips to Asian countries, and he pitied his sister’s lack of status as a worker drone. The fact that she had no Mercedes-Benz, no Palm Pilot, and no stock options really disturbed him. Her sad-sack salary was evidence that she desperately needed guidance.

  “You like quail egg, right?” he asked.

  “I guess I’ll try it,” Lindsey said, sipping her ice water as Kevin poured his Asahi into a frosted glass.

  “So what’s going on? How is it living with Pau Pau?”

  “It’s okay. Sometimes she wakes me up with her hacking cough and spitting.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a small price to pay for free rent.” He carefully rubbed his chopsticks together to rid them of their tiny balsawood splinters.

  She stewed a little over the “free rent” jab.

  “Hey, I vacuum and take out the garbage,” was all she could think to say in her own defense.

  “Well, if you got a job that paid any real money, you could move out.” He mixed his low-sodium soy sauce with a big chartreuse marble of wasabi.

  Lindsey squirmed. “The worst part is not being able to bring any friends over,” she said.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Well, Pau Pau doesn’t really say I can’t. It’s just that, well, the smell of all those Chinese herbs and medicines is terrible!”

  Kevin shrugged. “Just open a window.”

  “Are you kidding? She’d say, ‘I’ll catch “ammonia” and die.’ It’s no use, anyway. As soon as the air in the apartment dips below a level of 75% Chinese odors—like mothballs and soup—she’ll boil something stinky so that anyone who’s not Chinese will keep their distance.”

  The sunomono salad and hamachi arrived. Kevin removed the fish from the rice, dunked it in the soy sauce bath, turned it over a few times, and placed it back under a strip of seaweed.

  Lindsey crunched on some thin slivers of vinegared cucumber. “I don’t want to be disrespectful, either. She’d probably have a heart attack if I brought someone home.”

  “Well,” Kevin said, “you can have your girl friends over, but not, like, white guys, for Christ’s sake.”

  He balanced a piece of oshinko onto a mound of ginger. “And besides,” he added, “if you gotta date white guys, at least you could go out with an egg.”

  “What’s an egg?” Lindsey asked.

  “You know, like how you’re a Twinkie—yellow on the outside but a total white girl on the inside—”

  “You mean a banana?”

  “Yeah, that too. People who are white on the outside and yellow on the inside are eggs. Some guys are born white but deep down they wish they were Asian. You know, like Jim.”

  “You mean, like a Hoarder of All Things Asian?”

  She suddenly realized she had spoken those words too loudly, as a few other diners glanced over at her.

  “What’s that?” Kevin said, coughing from the strong ponzu marinade.

  She straightened up in her seat. “Jim is a typical Hoarder. He hangs around, pretending to be your friend, but all he wants from you guys is access to your sisters and girlfriends.”

  When Lindsey said “you guys,” she was referring to Kevin’s group of high school buddies who still formed his core group of friends. They were all various types of Asian, with similar slicked-back or spiky haircuts, clean-shaven faces, and designer golf gear. As teenagers, they all gave Lindsey the cold shoulder for “talking white” and going to that “white school,” meaning a college preparatory instead of a public school like Lowell. The fact that she studied French and actually enjoyed it was somehow proof of her having crossed an invisible enemy line.

  Kevin chewed and talked with his mouth full. “At least Jim appreciates Chinese culture and is clean-cut.”

  “You mean, circumcised?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Lindsey smirked. “Jim is one of those born-again types who was always trying to entice me to ice cream socials at Berkeley.”

  A crackle-glazed porcelain tray arrived with more nigiri-style sushi, followed by an order of natto. The fermented soybean paste smelled so vulgar that Lindsey covered her nose and mouth and checked the soles of her shoes to see if she had stepped in crap. Kevin jokingly tried to force-feed her a bite, but she refused.

  “Get that away from me,” she said. “I’m not eating something that smells like ass.”

  Kevin shrugged, chewed, and swallowed. After a few more bites he said, “Well, couldn’t you at least try to like Asian guys? What about one of my friends?”

  “Nah, I’ve known them all for so long. They’re practically relatives. Besides, I can’t help who I like. One thing’s for sure, I’m not going out with a traditional Asian guy who wants a subservient, house-cleaning concubine, and I’m definitely not going out with a nerdy egg-boy like Jim.”

  “Listen,” Kevin said, chewing a piece of unagi, “all guys, of any race, want their girlfriends to be subservient, kowtowing concubines—so you might as well marry someone who’ll provide a good future for you.”

  “I’ll provide my own good future,” Lindsey said.

  “Yeah right.”

  “I could,” she insisted.

  Her brother paused to eat a few bites. “Why don’t you go out with my new housemate, Ted Hamamoto? He’s got a great job in financial services.”

  “Hamamoto?” Lindsey accidentally knocked over a dish, sending a splatter of shoyu sauce across the table. “Pau Pau would crap the biggest brick ever if I went out with a Japanese guy. She’d go more insane than if I had a legion of crackers over.”

  “Why? What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, for one thing, the whole reason she came over here with Gung Gung was because the Japanese killed her family, Dummy.”

  “Oh, right,” he nodded, vaguely remembering that that was the story.

  She added, “Don’t even mention we ate at a Japanese restaurant.”

  The complimentary green tea ice cream arrived, and Lindsey ate a scoopful, letting the creamy, cold lump dissolve slowly on her tongue.

  After Kevin dropped her off at home, Lindsey opened the apartment door to a familiar sight: Pau Pau was half-asleep on the couch, watching Bonanza. She awakened drowsily and asked, “You eat yet?”

  “Yeah, already ate. I’m full. Go to sleep, okay?”

  The elderly woman nodded, then bobbed her head up just briefly
enough to squint at Lindsey’s black boots.

  “I told you no wear this thing,” she said crankily. “Look like man shoes.” Pau Pau shook her head in exasperation and went back to her half-lidded watching of Lorne Greene.

  Lindsey went into the kitchen and found a bitter-smelling concoction bubbling on the stove. She turned off the heat and tiptoed down the hall.

  Once inside her bedroom, she slipped her feet out of her boots and looked down at her socks. With legs slightly apart, she scrunched all her toes into the carpet and felt the pressure of nine of them as they matted down the short pile fibers.

  You see, she had a midget toe. On her left foot, the fourth digit was noticeably undersized. A stunted runt. A dwarf. The toe itself was not shriveled or mangled; it was just a miniature nub, fully formed with a teeny nail, yet nonetheless abnormal.

  When she was a toddler, the little thing looked right as rain. But as the rest of Lindsey’s body grew, the stubborn toe did not progress accordingly. It just remained at rest, as if too tired or petulant to keep up with the others.

  Her mother told her the toe would eventually catch up with the other nine little wigglers, and her father explained that it was the little piggie that had no roast beef so it was a bit malnourished. He had no expanation when Lindsey asked why the corresponding toe on her right foot had no such protein deficiencies.

  This midget toe made Lindsey very aware of the sandal-wearing population, and made her highly sensitive regarding footwear in general. She always noticed people’s shoes and envied girls who walked confidently with their painted toenails peeking from espadrilles, huaraches, or even flip-flops. She never dared to be so brazen with her own feet. She imagined that if she ever ventured to step outside in a pair of fashionable slides, with her midget toe exposed to the fresh air, mayhem was bound to follow. Surely Diane Arbus would leap out from behind a trash can and snap a photo of the deformed toe nub for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!