by Lillian Li
Johnny did what he did best. He studied his father’s restaurant and told a story he could be proud of. It turned out their homemade garlic sauce wasn’t a cheap way to use up ancient garlic but an old family recipe from his mother’s side. The relative quickness of Chinese cuisine wasn’t one that any rookie with a wok could create; half a second over high flame was the difference between meat and jerky. And the old waiters weren’t feeble and hard of hearing; they were storied professionals.
“You’ve got yourself a Duck House historian here,” he’d say to any new customer who raised his eyebrows at being served by a man with gray hair tufting out of his ears. “Ah-Sam has so many years of experience, he can wrap your duck in his sleep.”
Johnny’s aboveboard savvy elevated the restaurant in ways that his father’s methods never could. Using his wife’s trust fund, he made a few impressive donations and started a scholarship, all in the Duck House’s name, and soon invitations to charity events and black-tie galas poured in. He called up journalists and reviewers. He went to other restaurant openings and met the chefs. He invited the owners to a free meal at the Duck House. While Jimmy accused him of shirking his job to eat dinner and gab with the VIPs, Johnny saw himself as raising not just the restaurant but the Han name.
“This place needs some dignity,” he tried to explain to Jimmy. “We need some dignity.”
“We had dignity until you started whoring us out,” Jimmy said.
“Think what you like.” The real story would surface in time.
In all his excitement, as he made more connections, with generals and senators and actors, and as more photos were framed for the restaurant’s wall of fame, Johnny lost Annie. Or, as it might have seemed, he lost interest in her. He stopped dropping her off at school and picking her up from softball practice. He forgot the names of her teachers and her friends. He forgot to speak to her at all some days. But a stubborn part of him refused to bend down to the blame she placed on his shoulders. He was making something of his family, a family that included Annie. The very fact that this mission absorbed him contradicted all claims of lost interest. He had not done any of this for himself.
All he could hope for now was that Annie would grow to love him as he had grown to love his own father. Things would have been different if Annie had been a boy. A boy wouldn’t take his father’s distance so personally. A boy would one day come to understand his father, when he became a man himself.
His own father had spent most of his time at the Duck House while he and Jimmy were growing up. Johnny didn’t really meet his father, as a man or a parent, until he started working with him at the front of the house. He used to think his father did nothing besides terrorize and charm. He was always shaking hands with people who had selective power, in that sliding way that meant a small square of money had been tucked into the lines of a waiting palm. They never had to wait for a table at restaurants. A C− on Jimmy’s report card was changed to a B+. The one time his father attended one of Johnny’s track meets, the boy who placed first was mysteriously disqualified. Johnny, who was second, inherited the gold medal, smudged with the winner’s oily fingerprint.
But within the Duck House, the full story emerged. Johnny saw that rather than his father being the worm inside an apple, Bobby was the worm and the apple also. He raked in money, year after year, enough not only to afford a mansion in rich white Potomac but also the permission to live there. Yet he barely got to sleep inside the house for which he’d worked so hard.
The profits grew, multiplied, and were never enough; his father’s health slowly shattered. Johnny began to love if not his father then his father’s body, which would not quit even as it was. He disdained his father for always wanting more and better, but he loved his father too, because his body did not let him get away with his own greed. The worm, in devouring the apple, devoured itself.
Johnny had not wanted his father to die, especially not as he had, from stomach cancer, slowed down to its most painful pace by money. He hadn’t wanted the signs of stress to show so undeniably in and on his father’s body—in ulcers, in sores, in deep worry lines—and Johnny took no pleasure now that his little brother was deteriorating at the same implacable rate. He had beseeched both of them to slow down. Neither listened. But Johnny, for better or worse, needed the world to be fair. Even in the face of disaster, he felt a certain satisfaction that the world still turned in the same direction. He’d once been yanked from one culture and transplanted into another, his five-year-old roots too grown to fit into this new plot. When nothing had made sense for so many years, his faith in a just world sometimes felt like the only thing tethering him to this earth. To budge even an inch away from his perfected system was to lose his grip on everything.
*
Annie merged sharply onto the highway off-ramp. Her dad kept pretending to sleep against the window. Or he was actually asleep. When she was younger, Annie had been frightened by how her dad could fall asleep anywhere, disappearing into a realm she couldn’t disturb.
She supposed she was acting in character by rebuffing him. They were both used to her chilliness. To hug him hello after months of absence, to tell him how much she’d missed his voice, would have raised his suspicions. Her tears blurred the highway lanes. All she wanted was to reach over and hold his hand.
Why didn’t she tell him about the fire? It would be easy to blurt out the words. She knew he would act rationally, like he had when she’d been caught shoplifting last year. He’d get her lawyers; he’d make a plan; he’d act as if hired for the job instead of sentenced to it. But the secret had grown too big to squeeze out of her throat. What would she say when he asked her why? Asked her how?
Would she tell him that she and Pat had done a fair number on their bottles before she’d finally let Pat pour the rest of what they didn’t need out onto the wood-dusted grass? That she had been buzzed enough to exaggerate the unsteadiness in her legs, bobbing back and forth until Pat had thrown his backpack over her shoulders and hefted her onto his back, grabbing her thighs to shift her higher?
She’d wrapped her arms around his sweaty neck and whooped at him to giddyup. Her skirt had fallen back; she’d pressed herself into his spine.
He carried her past the apartments, past her car, and into the Duck House’s back lot, where he set her down. She reached out to steady herself against the open dumpster. When she glanced back, Pat was busying himself with their half-empty bottles. He poured what smelled like gasoline into each one until the liquid filled three-quarters of the container. If she breathed too deeply, the smell made her head swim.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, when Pat shucked off his T-shirt.
“I need to make wicks,” he said. He tore off the bottom third of his shirt with a loud rip that made Annie’s breath catch.
“Use mine too,” she said. “We’re partners.”
She pulled her shirt over her head and handed him the soft pink fabric, faded from washing. It ripped easily in his hands. He put his shirt back on, his exposed stomach tight and cut by the shadows. She was ashamed now, remembering how turned on she’d been. But at the time, she couldn’t take her eyes off Pat while he stuffed the fabric into the bottles’ necks.
“Where’d you learn to make those?” she asked.
“The Internet,” he said. “It’s pretty easy, but you can make dumb mistakes.” He grabbed a roll of duct tape from his backpack and taped the necks. One end of the fabric floated in the liquid, and the rest streamed out like a ponytail. He made sure the openings were well plugged.
“Almost done.” He had a bottle in each hand and curled them up and down.
“Wait!” Annie patted her skirt pockets. “Damn it, I forgot my phone in my car.”
“Just use mine.” Pat’s tone was impatient; he was getting skittish. He jutted a hip out at her and she pulled a slim flip phone from his pocket.
“Cool phone,” she couldn’t help saying.
“Sorry; my parents don’t own a restauran
t,” he said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Come on, take the picture.” He lifted the bottles to his shoulders, arms in a “W.”
“Okay, sexy boy,” she said, and snapped one. The flash blacked out his surroundings and nearly obscured the bottles in the picture, but as clear as a shadow on a bright day, there was Pat, hamming it up with his Molotov cocktails.
“Your turn.” He handed her the bottles.
Laughing, she put them up by her face and puckered her lips at the phone.
“Who’s the sexy one now?” He looked approvingly at the photo.
“I was always the sexy one.” She held the bottles away from her and pulled a face at the smell leaking out.
“Do you want the first firework?” He pulled a long-stemmed lighter out of his bag.
“I’ll watch and learn,” she said, pushing both bottles into his arms.
He grabbed her by the hand and took her a couple of yards away from the dumpster. He pressed the trigger on the lighter and a long flame shot out. His hands were shaking. The flame circled the cloth but refused to latch on.
“Hold this.” He dumped the bottle into her hands. “Don’t let go.” The bottle felt warm between her palms. The amber liquid looked oddly delicious.
The fabric finally lit up. The flame flared from the cloth and Annie shoved the bottle back into Pat’s hands. She expected him to tease her again, but his eyes were focused on the burning wick, which grew until his face turned a different shade in its light. Her face must have also become this dusky shade of red, sinister and unborn. Without warning, he whipped his arm back and shot the bottle at the dumpster.
“Fuck you!” He held out the words until the bottle smacked into its target.
The glass hit the broadside of the dumpster, the sound of its breaking drowned out by the metal clang, and a whoosh of flame briefly engulfed the front of the big green container. A puddle of fire continued to burn, but after a few seconds of holding her breath, Annie saw that it was harmless. The sight was surprisingly beautiful, and she told Pat so.
“I promised you fireworks.” He was panting softly from excitement.
“Don’t fuck up my dad’s restaurant,” she warned, but she ran a finger down his neck. “My turn!”
Pat fidgeted with the leftover bottle. “I think I know the problem with the wick.”
He took out the canister she’d seen before—it was gasoline—and doused her pink shirt. A bloom of fruity odor wrapped around her head and sent her staggering.
“Aim for inside the dumpster,” he said.
“Give it, give it.” Her hands grabbed at the air. She’d never been this nervous before, or this excited. The one time that had come close was when she’d shoved that bottle of perfume into her purse. She’d walked out of the store, feeling not just good but gorgeous, basking for once in her invisibility. Then she’d turned around and seen the mall cop behind her.
“Ready?” Pat clicked the lighter.
“So ready.”
Pat lit the wick, and before Annie could blink, the flame devoured half the length of the fabric. She bit back a scream, wheeled her throwing arm back, and let it rip.
They watched the bottle sail straight into the propped-open lid of the dumpster, where the glass broke and fell into its gaping mouth. The bark of fire was much louder this time. Flames rolled over the mounds of black and white plastic.
“Nice fucking throw,” he said.
“I played softball in high school.” Her heart was zipping around in her body, her chest as expansive as the sky. She pulled Pat’s arm over her shoulders and nestled her head into his neck, smelling the musky spot right behind his ear. Instead of kissing her, he stared ahead, taking in the fire.
“I wish I could let this burn forever,” he said softly.
“There’s enough garbage,” she said. “This dumpster could keep burning for centuries.” She pitched her voice low and spooky, but Pat gave only a small chuckle. His attention had slipped out of reach. She was about to knock his arm off her.
Out of nowhere, an explosion flashed out of the dumpster, spitting flaming embers into the air.
Annie screamed and clutched her ears. “What the fuck!” Pat stumbled back, nearly pulling her to the ground with him. Three more sharp explosions followed, and like a walking nightmare, the bits of fire that had sprung from the dumpster landed on the dock and multiplied, spreading to the back wall and snatching at the garbage bags that hadn’t fit into the dumpster. In one moment, the flames had become an uncontainable force.
“What did you do?” Annie pushed Pat in the chest again and again so that she didn’t have to look at the restaurant.
“I don’t fucking know!” His eyes were wide, terrified. A few more pops sounded out, and Annie screamed again.
“We have to go.” He pulled her arm. “We have to get out of here.”
Their eyes were watering and Annie started coughing too hard to say anything else. For whatever reason, they didn’t run from the fire but trotted back to the car, barely lifting their knees. She was crying and shaking so hard that at first she thought she was jostling Pat’s arm, which he’d draped over her shoulders. Then she heard his teeth chattering. His entire body shivered while the air grew hotter around them. The smell of burning wood and plastic filled her head.
She shoved her car into reverse and peeled out of the lot, scraping against the Jeep on her left. The white gash in the green paint job stood out brilliantly, like a flash of light. They drove away from the Duck House, neither of them looking into the rearview mirror. Annie took her phone out of the cup holder to call 911. Pat grabbed her by the back of her neck. She dropped the phone down the crack between her seat and the console.
“Let me go!” She tried to elbow him in the ribs without driving them off the highway ramp.
“The fire might not spread,” he said. “If you call, we’re going to get caught.”
“We?” she said. “I’m not part of this.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who threw the fucking bottle!” He let go of her neck and dropped his head into his hands. “Come on, don’t make this a big deal. No one is going to think it’s us.”
“You burned down my dad’s restaurant. My grandpa’s restaurant!”
“They probably have insurance,” he said, with almost enough confidence. “We did them a favor. If we just keep quiet, it’ll blow over.”
“This is too much.” Annie used her firmest voice, forcing her breaths to stay even. “I have to tell my dad.” When Pat didn’t respond, she counted the conversation over.
“Look, I have pictures,” he said, after a long stretch of highway. “Of the both of us. So don’t think I’m going down without you.”
She slammed on the brakes and stopped the car in the middle of the interstate. Cars and trucks swerved out of their lane and honks pierced the air.
“Get rid of those pictures,” she said.
“No.”
“I swear to God I’ll shove you out of the car,” she said.
Pat laughed without much enthusiasm. “You push me out? You’ll hurt yourself trying—”
She reared back her arm to punch him on the chin, but he leaned away in time. Her knuckles grazed his jaw. She pressed down on her horn and started screaming for help. Pat grabbed her again and held her against him.
“What are you afraid of?” he said into her ear. “Me?”
“No,” she said. She wanted to bite into the side of his neck.
“You afraid of getting caught?”
“No.”
“Admit it.” He loosened his grip. “You liked what we did. You had fun.”
“That’s what you want me to say,” she said. A bodiless semi whined past them, the driver leaning into his horn.
She was confused by her own adrenaline, so scared her groin pulsed with a persistency she could almost mistake for pleasure. Did she like it?
“You wanted to throw that bottle more than I did,” he said
.
She sank her teeth into his skin, but she stopped herself from closing the bite. His neck vibrated in her teeth. His arms released her.
She pressed on the gas and restarted the drive.
“Just wait, please,” he said, when their exit approached. “We can talk about it tomorrow morning.”
“I have to go to work,” she said automatically, and choked on the last, hard “k.”
She hated him with her entire body in the silence that followed, and she vowed that if he laughed, she would ram the car’s passenger side into the median divider. He covered her hand with his and together they squeezed the hard bulb of the gearshift.
“Restaurants burn down all the time,” he promised, pretending not to see her cry.
*
A tear slid an all-too-familiar path down her cheek. Annie wished she could undo the past. She hadn’t expected the intensity of the past two days. The terror felt like a sharp stabbing. Worse was the bitter dread that slipped down her chest and pooled in her belly. She’d slept all day to escape the feeling, but each moment of waking dragged her right back.
In his seat, her dad stirred, shifted his shoulders, then stilled. If he had opened his eyes, he would’ve seen no distress on her face. Annie had swiped the tear off her cheek, so fiercely that she’d scratched the skin a little with her nail. After years of wanting him to see her, what she wanted now was for him to keep looking past.
At the intersection, she braked for a red light. In front of her, four teenagers suddenly spilled out of their car. Tripping over their laughter, they raced one another around the idling vehicle, clinging on to the edges of their thrown-open doors to round the corners. Annie was transfixed by their game. The kids made one lap, then another. On the third round, one of them shouted something. The passengers dove back in the car, squirming into their seats. The four doors shut. Annie blinked. For all their gleeful running around, the teenagers had ended back in the same positions they’d started out in, as if they’d never left the car at all. How stupid they looked, laughing in their seats. The light turned green, and the driver, struggling with his seatbelt, didn’t notice. Annie slammed the heel of her hand against her horn until their car shot forward. The passengers looked behind them, confused.