by Louise Penny
Harold looked up at Mr. Mo. The man’s face was flat and unreadable. His blue polo shirt stained with splotches of cooking grease, his slight potbelly and narrow limbs not really fitting into the shirt right. He could have been thirty or fifty. He only ever spoke English when he gave Harold a delivery.
He spoke English one other time, on Harold’s first night. Harold had sat down and pulled an electronic poker game up on his phone. Mr. Mo took the phone out of his hand, turned it off, and smacked it on the table. He placed a Chinese-language newspaper over the phone.
“No play,” he said. “Read.”
“But I can’t read Chinese,” Harold protested.
“Read,” Mr. Mo said, tapping his finger against the newsprint.
It had been three weeks, and Harold’s Chinese hadn’t gotten any better, so he looked at the pictures or dozed off until it was time to work.
Harold picked up the latest delivery and exited Happy Dumpling. The evening air was the kind of humid that made it hard to breathe. It was late, probably getting close to midnight, which meant this would, with any luck, be his last trip for the evening.
He hefted the bag, trying to guess at the contents. Then he pulled out his phone and punched in the address. It was close—just below Grand. He walked north, cut down Hester, and made a right. Found an apartment building with a nail salon on the first floor. The number 4 was circled on the receipt, so Harold hit 4 on the ancient buzzer.
After a few moments the door screamed at him and he pushed it open, climbed the narrow staircase to the fourth floor, where he found himself in front of a door painted glossy black, chipped in spots, gunmetal gray underneath. There was a peephole set at eye level.
The door was ajar, and it opened as soon as Harold stepped in front of it. A frail Chinese man in a wrinkled dress shirt and slacks, his white hair thinning, peered out from inside of the darkened apartment.
Harold opened the bag, first undoing the staple that held it closed, then reaching in for the white takeout container.
He hated this part. The anticipation.
Sometimes he had to bring something back to Mr. Mo. Sometimes he didn’t. He wasn’t always sure which. Mr. Mo wasn’t big on instructions. This was the first time he’d gotten an order for crispy-skin fish rolls and he wasn’t sure what that meant.
Harold placed the bag on the ground and opened up the takeout container, his hands shaking a little. Inside was a single pear. He looked at it for a moment, then took it out and offered it to the man, who breathed in sharply and put his hand to his mouth. Tears cut down his cheeks and he began to shake.
Harold pushed the pear forward into the space between them, but the man refused to take it. Instead he took a step back. Harold got the sense he wouldn’t be bringing anything back to Mr. Mo tonight, so he put the pear on the floor in front of the door and left.
As he climbed down the stairs, he thought he heard the man weeping.
“Pears are taboo in Chinese culture,” said Wen, putting his pint glass on the bar top, missing the coaster by a wide margin. He wiped the sleeve of his MTA-issue baby-blue dress shirt across his mouth. “The Chinese word for pear sounds like the Chinese word for parting. If I had to guess, it was a warning or threat. Mr. Mo is going to take something from him.”
“Not like . . . his life or something?” Harold asked, his voice low, glancing around the mostly empty bar to make sure no one else was listening. The only person even close to earshot was the bartender, a pretty college girl in a halter top and a cowboy hat. She was down at the other end of the bar and seemed more interested in the Yankees game playing on the television mounted in the corner.
“Probably not,” Wen said, undoing his ponytail, then doing it back up. After a moment he repeated himself. “Probably not.”
“Weird,” Harold said, taking a small pull of his beer. “Something is unlucky just because it sounds like something else that’s not good.”
“We’re a superstitious people,” Wen said. “In China the number four is sì. It sounds like sī, the word for death. So four is a very unlucky number. In buildings in China there’s no fourth floor, or fourteenth, or twenty-fourth.”
“Why so superstitious?” Harold asked. “I thought Chinese people were supposed to be like . . . smart?”
“First, that’s offensive,” Wen said. “There are plenty of superstitious people in the world. Race has nothing to do with it. Second, it’s just a cultural thing. But I’m second generation. I don’t actually understand any of this stuff. Mostly just what I remember from my grandparents.”
Harold exhaled. Contemplated his half-empty beer. It was already warm, but he couldn’t afford another. So he’d have to make this last a little while longer, because it felt good to be out. To pretend like Wen was a real friend and not just another sad sack he shared bar space with.
“At least I didn’t have to deliver anything more than fruit,” Harold said. “Just, you know, I was a little worried when I started this. The kind of stuff he might want me to do.”
“Mr. Mo doesn’t make his delivery boys do any real dirty work,” said Wen. “He has triad goons for the real hardcore stuff.”
“I can’t wait until this is over,” Harold said. “It’s hell on my nerves.”
The Yankees batter knocked in a home run, putting the team up by two. Wen pumped his fist. Probably had money on the game. “You made your bed,” he said. “Now it’s time to curl up and get some sleep.”
“You’re the one who got me wrapped up in this.”
Wen shook his head, threw Harold a side-eye glance. “I got you in the door. You lost big and ran a tab on the house. I told you that was a bad idea. That’s on you.”
As much as Harold wanted to protest, Wen was right.
He had no one to blame but himself.
As per usual.
Harold pushed through the door of Happy Dumpling. It was just before the dinner rush, but the restaurant still had more full tables than empty tables.
He walked to the back, and the man at the register didn’t acknowledge him as he ducked past the curtain separating the kitchen from the seating area. Harold’s glasses fogged up from steam coming off the dishwashing station. He took them off to rub dry on his shirt and waved to Bai, who was hunched over a wok, swirling something around with a large metal spatula.
Bai looked up, smiled, and nodded, sweat dripping down his bald head.
Harold was glad Bai was working. The line cook would occasionally come out and offer him plates of food. Dishes he recognized—beef chow fun or pork fried rice—but sometimes things he wasn’t used to, like crispy chicken feet, or a meat he couldn’t identify in a chili bean sauce. All of it absurdly delicious.
That, at least, was something to look forward to.
Harold cut a hard left, into a narrow stairwell. At the top of the stairs was a red door. He knocked and waited until an older woman wearing a green accountant’s visor opened it. She looked at him like he was a stray dog.
“Gweilo,” she said under her breath.
Which meant “white devil.”
They sure knew how to make him feel welcome.
Harold stepped into the main room, crowded with elderly Chinese immigrants, mostly from the Fuijan province. They were huddled around flimsy poker tables, playing pai gow and mahjong, the tiles clacking like insects. Nearly everyone was smoking, and with the windows boarded up, the smoke didn’t have much to do but collect into a heavy cloud that hung in the air.
Harold crossed the room, turning sideways to slide through the thin pathways between chairs, and stepped into the back room, where the blackjack and poker tables were empty. They wouldn’t fill up for another few hours at least.
Mr. Mo was sitting at the small desk in the corner, a cigarette dangling from his lip, counting out a thick stack of money. Harold looked at the stack and his breath caught in his chest. They were high-denomination bills. A lot of them. He ran the math in his head. Just a quick guess, based on the thickness and the s
peed at which Mr. Mo was counting. There had to be at least ten grand there, maybe more.
That was two months’ rent, his phone bill, and a few child-support payments.
It was enough to make the next few months of his life very comfortable.
He thought about how easy it would be to pick up something heavy, lay it hard over Mr. Mo’s head. The man was often surrounded by young guys with ornate tattoos and cement faces. The triad goons. None of them were here today. There was no one to defend him, just senior citizens who couldn’t be budged from their pai gow for anything short of a nuclear strike.
Mr. Mo stopped counting and looked up.
Did he know what Harold was considering? Harold felt dread bubbling in his stomach, threatening to escape his mouth and heave onto the floor.
After what seemed like a full minute Mr. Mo shrugged, as if to ask, What?
“I’m on tonight?” Harold asked.
Harold came in every day to ask, and Mr. Mo would tell him to work or not. Presumably one day he would tell him he was done, but Harold had no idea how long the terms of the assignment were for. With a debt to the house of $25,000, he didn’t expect it would be anytime soon.
Still, he held his breath. Prayed Mr. Mo would shoo him away, tell him never to return. Harold would give anything for that.
But Mr. Mo nodded. That meant Harold was on duty.
He crossed back through the smoke-filled room. Down the stairs and through the kitchen to the front of the restaurant, the smell of cigarettes clinging to his clothes. He sat at the small table in the corner by the register that no one else ever sat at, next to the fish tank filled with silver and orange fish floating through murky water. He opened the Chinese newspaper that was waiting and flipped through slowly, looking at the pictures.
“Clams in chicken soup,” Mr. Mo said, placing a bag down in front of Harold.
Clams in chicken soup. This one he remembered. It was a collection. The Chinese food container would be empty, and he would have to wait for something to be placed inside, then bring it back.
Usually the addresses he delivered to were within a ten-block radius of the restaurant, but this one was different. On Eighth Avenue, up in the twenties. It would take about forty minutes to walk there. That was too much. Though Harold was generally in favor of wasting time, he didn’t feel comfortable taking that long, so he headed for the F train, which would get him most of the way there.
He was happy to see there weren’t any cops down in the station. No one in the token booth either. He stood by the gate for five minutes before a mother pushing a stroller came through. He reached over to hold it for her as she maneuvered the stroller out, and he ducked in before it closed.
Seeing the stroller made his chest ache. Cindy was older now, six or seven by his best guess. He only ever remembered her as small enough to push around in a carriage. Back before Marguerite changed the locks and left a packed suitcase outside the apartment door for him to find one morning, when he finally mustered the courage to stumble home.
As he waited for the train, the ache in Harold’s chest grew bigger. He promised himself that when this gig with Mr. Mo was done, he would make the changes he needed to make.
Get treatment for his addiction.
Find a steady job.
Take those tiny little baby steps that, once accumulated, would maybe allow him to see his daughter again.
He knew things would never be the same, knew he could never make up for it entirely. But he was sure he could at least make things better than this.
Another narrow stairway, another red door. This one had a small security camera mounted to the ceiling above it. Harold looked into the bulbous eye before knocking on the sign that said RED SPA 22 on a white sign in red lettering.
Red was a color of good luck. This is also why Chinese takeout containers had red script on them, even though they were an American invention. More trivia, courtesy of Wen.
The door opened and a petite woman peeked out. She was barefoot, wearing a slinky black dress, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. Older, odd strands of hair gone gray, but she had the energy and smile of a young woman. She reached for Harold’s hand, pulled him inside.
There was a main room with a desk, and to Harold’s left a long hallway with six doors. The lighting was dim, and soft music played from hidden speakers. He was pretty sure it was Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” the delicate piano notes falling around them like raindrops. The woman smiled and snapped her fingers. Another door opened, this time to the right, and three girls came out. All of them much younger. All smiling and done up for a night on the town, also barefoot.
“You choose favorite,” the woman said.
Harold shook his head. “No, no. Delivery.”
He held up the bag, tried to hide how nervous he was, because the women were pretty and it had been a long time since he’d been around a pretty woman, let alone several.
“Mr. Mo,” he said.
The woman’s smile disappeared. She snapped her fingers again and the women disappeared too. She took the bag from Harold and walked to the desk. Took out the Chinese food container and filled it with rolled-up wads of cash.
When she was done she could barely close it, but she managed to get the flaps down and placed it back in the bag and handed it to Harold. She was robotic now, all business. She quickly moved around him and opened the door. Harold stepped into the hallway and she closed it. The deadbolt scratched as it slid into place.
Harold made it down to the sidewalk and stood under the awning of the fried chicken restaurant on the first floor of the building. It was starting to rain, fat drops smacking the pavement. He clutched the bag to his chest.
Thought about the money.
Not as much as Mr. Mo had earlier in the day, but still, it looked like a lot.
Maybe enough?
Harold took out his cell and dialed Wen. He’d never called Wen before, only texted, so when Wen answered, his “What’s up?” was weighted with surprise and concern.
“Just had a question I needed to run by you,” Harold said. “Some advice.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Mr. Mo. How dangerous is he, exactly?”
“Ah.” Wen laughed. “Let me guess. You’re running some money for him right now? And you’re thinking of taking off?”
“Can you blame me?”
Pause. “Listen, just do the job like you’re supposed to.”
“How would he even find me?”
“Jeez, Harold. You don’t want to mess with this guy. I know it’s tempting, but look, I know you’re trying to make good right now. This isn’t the way to do it. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has someone keeping an eye on you right now. So get the hell off the phone and get back to the restaurant.”
Harold’s heart skipped around in his chest. He surveyed the street. It was late, and most passersby were young people, stumbling home or headed to the next bar. But across the street was a man leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette, wearing a gray hoodie, the hood pulled up over his head so his face was cast in shadow.
He wasn’t looking at Harold, but he was looking in Harold’s direction.
“Okay,” Harold said. “Thanks, Wen.”
“You’ll be fine. Remember, I had to do this once too. It’ll all be over soon. Maybe I can talk to him. See if we can speed things along.”
Relief washed over Harold. “Thank you. I would really appreciate it.”
“Hey, what are friends for?” Wen asked.
Harold hung up. Looked across the street and saw the man was still there, still looking in his direction. Harold stepped to the curb and hailed a cab. He didn’t want to spend the money, but thought it would be better for his overall health to hurry back.
As soon as Harold walked in the door, Mr. Mo handed him another bag.
“Crispy-skin fish rolls,” he said.
Another pear then. A little depressing, but easy enough.
This addres
s was close. The rain had picked up on the cab ride over. Harold walked closer to the buildings, ducking under awnings to stay out of it, not doing a great job. By the time he got to the address he was nearly soaked.
There was a Chinese grocery on the first floor. It reeked of fish. An older couple sprayed down the empty display cases out front, foamy water running into the street.
Harold found the door propped open and climbed to the second floor, his shoes squeaking and squishing on the steps. He knocked on the green-painted metal door. It flung open and a young Chinese man with spiked hair and black plastic glasses looked at him with confusion and, upon seeing the bag, rolled his eyes.
The man tore the bag from Harold’s hands, opened it, and took out the container, letting the bag fall to the floor. He opened the container and took out the pear, took a deep breath, and threw it at Harold’s chest as he yelled something in Chinese.
The pear thumped hard enough to make Harold wince. He took a step back and put up his hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand . . .”
The man threw out his fist. Harold moved to the side and it glanced off his head, knocking his glasses to the floor. He stumbled over his own feet and fell to the ground as the man drove his foot into Harold’s head. Harold put his arms up, tried to protect himself as the man threw his foot into him again and again.
After a dozen or so kicks, the man spat and went inside the apartment, slamming the door. Harold searched for his glasses, and was happy to find they were still intact. Waves of pain pummeled his body and he was content to lie on the linoleum tile for a few minutes until the worst of it subsided, but he changed his mind when he saw a fat, shiny roach scuttling toward him.
Mr. Mo sat at his desk, cigarette dangling from his lip, as Harold told him what happened. After Harold finished, Mr. Mo continued to stare at him, like there was more story to tell. Harold shrugged and let his arms flop down to his sides.
Mr. Mo took the cigarette out of his mouth, tapped the end of it into the overflowing ashtray on the desk, and nodded. Harold wondered if Mr. Mo even understood half of what he said. It never seemed like he did.