Number One Chinese Restaurant

by Lillian Li

  He ticked past his extensive to-do list while he navigated through traffic. He steered mindlessly, and on instinct he pulled off the Beltway many exits too early. But he didn’t turn the car around. He’d begun to wonder what his father’s restaurant would look like in the morning light. He was a block away when the smell of smoke wormed its way into his car through the air-conditioning vents. He held his breath when the strip mall next door came into view.

  Surprisingly, the bones of the restaurant were still intact, though the place was scooped out like a melon. Two of the remaining brick walls stood tall around the piles of iron and collapsed roofing. Caution tape held the small crowd back. Jimmy recognized many of the same faces from the middle of the night. Didn’t they have anything better to do? The waiters, who could have at least come to show their support, were nowhere to be seen. This was loyalty. No doubt they hadn’t even put down their phones before racing over to whatever nasty takeout joint would have them.

  Jimmy was working up a good head of anger when he glimpsed Ah-Jack, Nan, and Nan’s son in the crowd. They were not fair-weather employees; they had not run off for still-standing restaurants. A scheduling blip popped into Jimmy’s head. Ah-Jack was even here on his day off. A good thing he’d held off on firing the old waiter. He made a note to hire them all at his new place. He could pay back his gratitude and plug some of the remaining holes in his employee roster. He’d stick Nan and Ah-Jack in the back, maybe as duck carvers, but the kid could be at the front of the house, as a busboy or a runner. He could even be a waiter.

  Jimmy parked and went over to join the crowd. Feeling a surge of electric affection, he put his arms around Ah-Jack and Nan. Both jumped underneath his touch and jumped again when they turned to see him behind them.

  “Jimmy.” Nan was the first to speak. “I am so sorry. How awful.”

  “This a true crime.” Ah-Jack shook his head. His loose gray hair whirled around like a sheepdog’s.

  “I’m touched you all are here.” Jimmy released his employees. “Incredibly touched.” His knees wobbled. He nearly reached out again to steady himself.

  “We got feeling so sad,” Nan said. Forgetting herself and slipping into Chinese, she cried, “It’s like a death in the family. We saw you grow up behind these walls.”

  “At least my father did not live to see this day.” Jimmy’s Chinese was so awkward and reverential that he shut it off immediately. “There’s nothing we can do here. It’s in the fire department’s hands. I need to check in on my new restaurant. You three can follow my car.”

  “Your new restaurant?” Nan’s voice was tentative, unsure if she’d misheard or he’d misspoken.

  Jimmy had forgotten that the Glory was technically a secret, but like all good liars, he pretended he’d revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Yes, it’s going to be an Asian fusion restaurant.”

  “Where is it?” Nan asked.

  “In D.C. On the Georgetown Waterfront.”

  “Wow, so nice,” Ah-Jack said.

  Jimmy started to lead them away from the damage. In that moment, he believed that if he did not get them folded into his new restaurant, he would lose them forever. Their phones would ring on the hook, their houses sold or abandoned, and he might never see Nan or Ah-Jack again. Days earlier, he had sickened looking upon their faces, listening to their mincing English. But he’d never really imagined a world where Nan and Ah-Jack were not steadfastly, irritatingly present.

  “A woman, she asking us questions,” Nan mentioned, peering over her shoulder.

  “Yes, Laura, the fire investigator,” Jimmy said impatiently. “What did she want?”

  “We don’t know,” she said. “She talk to us each by ourself. Pat too, who only work one month. She talk to Pat longest.”

  “She try ask you on date?” Ah-Jack jostled Pat.

  “She just wanted to know what time I left the restaurant last night,” Pat said.

  “She say she want talk to you too,” Nan said to Jimmy. “You go find her.”

  “Another time.” Jimmy was in no mood to face the investigator and her clicking camera. He had to get his story straight. Maybe he could convince her to interview him another day. She’d given him her card last night. Surely she had other people to interrogate. The sun was already high in the sky. Cars on the road slowed as they passed; some pulled over for a better look.

  “Come with me,” he said. “We’re wasting daylight.” He strode off, the boss again. But a few steps later, his confidence flagged. He checked behind him. No one was there.

  He spotted them a few yards away, heading in a different direction altogether. “Where are you going?” he shouted, panic creeping in. He started to chase after them, arms flapping, but stopped himself just in time.

  The threesome was walking toward the back lot, curving around the caution-taped left wall of the restaurant. Even with the Duck House burned down, Nan and Ah-Jack had parked in the back, leaving the front parking spaces free for customers. Jimmy couldn’t believe they’d remembered his rules after all this madness. It was like finding the crosswalk signals flashing after the world’s end.

  “Pull around!” Jimmy cupped his hands around his mouth as they disappeared behind the building. His relief was unrelenting, almost painful in its power. “I’ll wait!”

  *

  At the Glory, Jimmy assigned a few of his tasks to his three employees. He had no idea what he was forgetting to do, whom he was neglecting to call. No one had taught him what to do if his restaurant burned down. What to do if he was the primary suspect. Johnny was the one built for moments like these. His older brother always acted like he had the instruction manual to life. Jimmy knew how stupid he was being, but he silenced his cell phone anyway and walked down the waterfront to meet Janine for lunch. She’d picked an Italian place called Antonio’s, texting him the plans the night before. He hadn’t thought of canceling.

  “I heard about the fire,” she said when she saw him. She stood up and held his hands in hers. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you’d show up.”

  “The fire’s already happened,” Jimmy said. “I’ve still got to eat lunch.” They sat down. Jimmy didn’t let go of Janine’s hands, and she didn’t pull away either. “Besides, I like to see something beautiful after something so ugly.”

  “You’re being brave,” she said, as a reprimand. But she squeezed his hands.

  “I’m being an asshole.” He let go when their waiter approached with the breadbasket.

  They ordered whatever the specials were, with appetizers that the waiter recommended, none of which entered Jimmy’s short-term memory. Each plate, shining and luxurious with olive oil, was a surprise. The food tasted expensive, its tenderness and fragrance created not by the chef’s mediocre skills but by material so good it only needed to survive the haphazard spice.

  “Where did you get this chicken?” he asked the manager, who was floating around.

  “Antonio has a farm in West Maryland.” The manager pointed to a photo on the opposite wall: A cluster of spotted chickens pecked around a field. “He oversees the raising and treatment of all the meat we serve, including the veal.”

  “Amazing.” Janine stabbed into her veal parmigiana. “That’s so committed.”

  “Antonio loves food,” the manager said. He whipped out a silver scraper and cleaned the crumbs off their table. A passing waiter refilled their crystal water glasses.

  “A fucking farm,” Jimmy said, after the manager left. “What a fucker.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not to quote Dad, but only an American would be so precious with his food.” Jimmy threw down his knife and fork and wiped his mouth.

  “What’s wrong with a farm?” Janine ate a triangle of veal. “And I think Antonio is Italian.”

  “What’s wrong with a food distributor?” Jimmy used his napkin to wipe his entire face. “What’s wrong with playing the game like everybody else?”

  “Oh God.” She rested her
chin against her hand. “I know you’re nervous, but you’re going to be a hit.”

  “Not with Farmer Antonio down the street.” He took a big drink of water and nearly choked. “I’m buying a farm. I’ll get authentic fucking seeds and grow my own fucking spring onions. I’ll raise the ducks too.”

  Janine signaled for the waiter with her credit card. Jimmy was too busy trying to control his breathing to steal the check from her. Soon they were out on the waterfront, shielding their eyes from the sun.

  She looped her arm through his and dragged him upright, forcing his lungs to expand. “You’re not okay right now,” she said. “You probably haven’t been okay in a while. But you’re going to survive this.”

  He couldn’t look at her. The sun was piercing holes into his eyes, and the milky blue of the sky was immense and suffocating. All around him were restaurants that were out of his league. The pizzeria boasting eight-hundred-degree ovens and ninety-second Neapolitan pies; the sushi restaurant owned by a Japanese chef with a show on Netflix; the French bistro with tasting menus starting at $145 a person. What would the Glory have? Peking duck carved tableside, like on a fucking Carnival cruise!

  Only Janine’s arm in his grounded him. Jimmy tilted his chin up and locked his knees. He wanted to launch himself into the atmosphere until the pressure and the cold popped him like a balloon.

  “Come on, I’ve got something that will help you breathe,” Janine said. She led him away from the water. Only after she’d pushed his head in did Jimmy realize that he was in her car. He closed his eyes. He hoped she was driving him somewhere promising.

  *

  The sex was startling. Not so much satisfying as it was natural, surprising in how unsurprised he was by the way Janine looked and felt naked. He couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes, and she didn’t make much noise, which he appreciated. It had felt honest between them.

  From the waterfront, they had gone back to her office in Bethesda, which was really a small apartment she was renting with a spare bedroom.

  “What’re you doing?” he’d asked, when she’d started to undress. But when she began to pull her zipper back up, he’d nearly torn his shirt off.

  They’d gotten into bed, on top of her covers, all without talking. She’d sucked in a great bubble of air the moment he pushed in, and he had inhaled sharply too, at the small miracle that his skin did not snag on hers, that she was wet enough to guide him through. She’d murmured into his ear and rubbed his back in long, slow strokes. The gentle rhythm of her sounds and stroking overwhelmed him. He finished on her stomach, while she caressed his forearm, bent by the side of her head.

  His mind was clear and buzzing. Janine had managed to yank him out of his downward spiral. His entire body was subdued, like a boat rocking on a lake, and while he listened to her shower, he flexed and stretched all his parts. He felt the blood rushing through his muscles as he looked around the room. The bedroom was sparsely decorated, and what few items it did hold looked out of place, too impersonal but also too private. A bird-shaped wrought-iron clock hung by the door. On the vanity, a silver picture frame, the photo inside just out of view.

  The shower stopped. Jimmy’s senses were so heightened that he swore he could hear her toweling off. He hoped she might come out with nothing on, or with just a short hand towel wrapped around. But Janine emerged from the bathroom swallowed up by a thick terrycloth robe. Water droplets dotted her chest, but above her collarbone, her skin was dry. Her makeup was untouched.

  “Quick shower,” he said.

  “Wanted to freshen up.” With her robe half on, she pulled on her earlier outfit. He caught a flash of her naked back, the shoulder blades pushing out coils of muscle, before she slipped into her silk blouse. He stayed naked, a corner of the sheet covering his lower half.

  “You’re in a hurry,” he said.

  “Some open houses.” Her voice was frosty. But then she twisted around and touched her cheek. “Lunch went a little later than planned.”

  “Kicking me out so soon?” he said. “No cuddling?”

  She laughed as she fastened her earrings.

  “That’s what happens when you get involved with a working girl,” she said. “We don’t exactly get to take breaks.”

  “Write this off as a business expense.”

  Janine came over and sat down next to him, slipping into her shoes. She cupped his face, and he leaned into her touch.

  “This is really weird,” he said. “But I can’t stop thinking about my dad.”

  “That’s not weird,” she said. “Well, a little. But I get it. You feel like he’s died all over again.”

  “Sure.” Jimmy didn’t like the way the words sounded out loud. “But also I can’t stop thinking about something he said once. He said, ‘If you go, you kill the Duck House. You kill me.’ I thought he was overreacting.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Janine said. “I think he would be proud of you.”

  Jimmy had forgotten that Janine had little context for his life, just as he knew few of the small, dramatic scenes built into her story. Had she ever considered what his family was like? Or what he was like within his family?

  “I did leave the Duck House for a few months when I was nineteen,” he said. “That’s why he said that to me. I tried to apprentice at another restaurant in D.C.”

  “But you came back,” she said. “Did you not like the other place?”

  Jimmy rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. How could he convey to her the beauty of Koi’s sunlit dining floor? Or the black magic of the fuming kitchen, hiding in the back? He would step through those double doors, and his heart would start pounding so loud he could almost hear it over the noise of the cooks working and sparring inside. Those swearing, sweating men had taught him how to wrap the most delicate spring rolls and pipe the smallest drops of wasabi cream. A month in that kitchen and Jimmy could plate a fillet of sea bass with the precision of a violinist drawing his bow. Two months and he could roll cigarettes better than Ronny. He could cover for Lew when his girlfriend called and even withstand the stench of Key’s farts, which he’d cup in his hands and release under the nearest unsuspecting nose. By month three he’d learned how to work on two hours of sleep, how to stop a nosebleed, how to cut his coke with baking soda from the kitchen pantry to hide his losses. His hands trembled too badly to wrap the spring rolls and pipe the cream. The sea bass fell apart on the spatula. But Ronny had promised that Jimmy would get a job on the line when his stage ended. He’d promised to get Chef Alfred to put Jimmy’s bulgogi burger on the menu. He’d promised he would pay Jimmy back—they all would—as soon as paychecks came out. Jimmy had believed him. He hadn’t given those promises a second thought, until the day Uncle Pang showed up at his door.

  “People have been complaining,” Uncle Pang had said, pulling off his gloves. “They say you’re selling them flour.” He’d riffled through the stack of bills Jimmy had handed him. The counting was an act; he could tell by weight alone. Jimmy was five thousand dollars short. A week late.

  “They’re full of shit,” Jimmy said, stone-faced.

  “You make some new friends?” Uncle Pang asked.

  Jimmy bristled at the change in subject. “I don’t have time for friends,” he said.

  “They have time for you.” The doublespeak tickled Jimmy’s brain like a spider’s web. “Time, but not money.”

  “They’re going to pay me back. It’s good business to front old clients.”

  “I suppose you’re telling me it would be good business to front you as well.” Uncle Pang dropped the stack on the table, where it made a small, light sound, barely audible over the noise from the street. Jimmy had thrown all of his windows open. His apartment stank from last night’s party.

  “You know I’m good for it.” Jimmy had half an hour before he was needed at Koi. “I’m going to see those guys now. If you’d let me know you were coming over, I would’ve been prepared.”

  A thin line app
eared between Uncle Pang’s eyebrows. Jimmy blinked and when he opened his eyes, he was on his back, laid out flat on the floor. His mouth filled with blood. His tongue probed the gap where his right canine used to be.

  “Blame me again, and I’ll take the rest of them.” The heel of Uncle Pang’s polished dress shoe crushed the tooth, which had landed near Jimmy’s head. “You’ve really disappointed me,” he added. He peered down at Jimmy like a dentist. With a vicious twist, he pinched Jimmy’s nose between his fingers. “I see the coke inside your nostrils, little piggy.”

  Jimmy wriggled out of the man’s grip. Warmth bloomed inside his nose.

  “You even bleed like a pig.” Uncle Pang headed toward the door. “Get the money to me by the end of the weekend, or we’ll get your father involved.”

  Jimmy was trying to find some hole to breathe through, trying to swallow, trying not to choke on his own blood, but those words made him bolt up and scramble on all fours. Uncle Pang let the door close right in his face.

  *

  When Jimmy showed up to work, Chef Alfred was waiting at the door. Jimmy touched his lip, which sagged in the space where his tooth had been. A wad of tissue hung out of his left nostril. The chef was pinker than he’d ever seen him.

  “You’re not coming in here.” His finger pointed at Jimmy’s chest. Behind him, the restaurant shone in the late-autumn light. “I take you in and you deal to my kitchen? You’re fucking fired.”

  Jimmy’s stomach lurched. He felt so defeated he didn’t think to deny Chef Alfred’s accusation. “Please don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t fire me for one small mistake.”