by Lillian Li
“Thankful?” Jimmy cooled the heat in his voice. His nose throbbed.
“I don’t let many people try to screw me more than once.”
“Thank you.” Jimmy’s mind was whirring. What did Uncle Pang want? Jimmy bowed his head as if facing an angry customer. “You’re a generous man.”
“Don’t disrespect me with your dog-shit words.” Uncle Pang looked down at him with lazy disdain, like a cat batting at a half-dead mouse.
The bike tire flexed beneath Jimmy’s grip. “I’ve learned my lesson, I promise,” he said.
“Then listen carefully.” Uncle Pang patted down the greasy shell of his hair. “I’m going to tell you who set your restaurant on fire.”
The cityscape around Jimmy expanded and shrank. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m always serious.” Uncle Pang smiled stiffly. “Everything depends on how serious you are. I have the evidence to put them away, but I’m only giving you the name. What you choose to do next is up to you.”
Jimmy stood up and brushed the mud off his hand. “Who burned down the restaurant?” he asked, expecting a riddle back. Uncle Pang would draw the news out.
Instead, a strange look crossed the man’s face. “A boy named Pat,” he said, after a pause. “Your girl Nan’s son.”
“Pat?” Jimmy’s heart felt like it was stuttering. Sweat squeezed out of the bottoms of his feet. “He’s right behind those doors, working, right under my fucking nose.”
“That’s the thing about young boys.” Uncle Pang scratched the side of his jaw with one finger. “They’ll sell their souls for a couple thousand dollars. Don’t feel too bad. I picked Pat weeks ago.”
“Why him?” The borders of Jimmy’s face felt fuzzy. He thought he could hear a distant car alarm.
“You never thought to ask Nan why her boy was expelled.” Uncle Pang looked dismayed, then delighted, by Jimmy’s mistake. “You’ve always had this problem. You think you’re too good to listen to the people underneath you.”
“How could he have burned down an entire restaurant?”
“I helped things along,” Uncle Pang said. “Once I got you out of the restaurant. A little gasoline on the walls. Some toggling with your sprinkler system. Aerosol cans in the garbage. What Pat did was childish vandalism. He might have gotten your back wall ashy.” His eyes sharpened. “Of course, if you mention my name to the police, you will regret that decision. Pat knows better than to link me to the fire.”
Jimmy made a foolish zipping motion in front of his mouth.
“It’s nice to be back on pleasant terms,” Uncle Pang said. He turned toward his car, then swung back. “One more thing. I assume you’re going to be using Janine as your real estate agent to sell your mother’s house. But have you ever wondered why Janine invited you to her place that night?” He offered his hand for a shake.
Jimmy gripped Uncle Pang’s hand before he fully absorbed the words.
“I’m the one who called her.” Jimmy took his hand back and pressed it hard against his leg.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Uncle Pang said. “Although you must have realized how … ambitious that woman is. She was eager to help.”
“She told me she hated working for you,” Jimmy said. “She said she would do anything to get rid of you.”
“For a suspicious son of a bitch, you’ll trust any woman who gets into bed with you,” Uncle Pang said. “She didn’t tell me that, by the way.”
Despite the ebbing heat of the evening, Uncle Pang pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. The ring finger of the right one was lopped off and sewn shut. He caught Jimmy staring.
“Do you want to know how I lost this finger?” He held up his right hand and wiggled the stump. His tone was unreadable, but there was that strange look again. Pity.
Ever since he’d first felt that callused stub press against his palm as a child, Jimmy had imagined the most violent scenarios.
“Tell me,” he said.
Uncle Pang examined his hand, expression blank. He seemed caught in a memory.
“Lost it to an infection,” he finally said. He pulled on his gloves. “Swam in a river with an open cut, and it was gone the next week.”
“Unlucky,” Jimmy managed.
“What did I tell you about young boys,” Uncle Pang said. “Old boys, at least, know better.” He got into his car, signaled something to the driver, and pulled the door closed. Jimmy watched the BMW enter the flow of traffic. Around him, brake lights lit up, red and angry. Past the intersection, he lost sight of the car.
18
Either Ah-Jack’s memory was slipping or someone had taken his blazer while he was in the stall. He liked to hang it on the restroom coat rack—a finicky habit—but today when he reached for it, his hands swiped air. He checked under the sinks and the other stalls. Had someone been in the restroom with him? The classical music taunted him, playing overhead.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath. Why couldn’t he have waited to take a shit until after dinner service?
At the Duck House, Jimmy might have yelled at him for entering the dining room without his uniform, but at the Glory? His position was already a charity. Who had ever heard of a staff translator? His hands were too shaky for duck carving, and he was good for nothing else. He might as well be suspended over a cliff, with Jimmy holding on to his fingertips.
Someone approached the bathroom from outside. Ah-Jack slipped into a stall. He peered through the space between the door. To his mixed relief, Pat walked in. The boy stopped to check his reflection in the mirror.
“Pat,” Ah-Jack whispered through the stall.
“What is it?” The boy didn’t even jump.
“It’s Uncle Jack. I misplaced my blazer. Can you find it? Or a spare? I can’t leave here without one.”
“Where do you think you lost it?”
Ah-Jack grasped his hair. “Maybe the waiter station? Or behind the bar?”
“I’ll try,” Pat said, continuing to preen. Then he was out the door. The entire time he’d looked only at his mirrored self.
Ah-Jack sat down on the toilet and palpated his lower back, which didn’t know whether to be thankful for the seat or to continue grousing.
“Don’t you feel better?” He addressed his body as if it were a sulking friend. There was no point panicking. He rested his elbows on his knees, propped up his head, and closed his eyes.
Some time passed before the door thumped open again. The bang startled Ah-Jack out of his short nap. Pat’s shoes appeared under the stall door.
“Here,” Pat said. A blazer shot over the door and landed on Ah-Jack’s head.
The smell of vinegar pierced his nose before the damp fabric hit his face. Pulling the blazer off, he checked and found his name tag.
“Someone must’ve thought it was a rag,” Pat said, as if he could see Ah-Jack’s face through the closed door.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No problem.” Pat’s shoes retreated. The door closed behind him.
Ah-Jack struggled to his feet and shook out the blazer. It had been doused in black vinegar. Who would mistake a blazer for a rag? He tugged it on and exited the stall. The mirror reflected back a limp and wrinkled version of himself. He didn’t even have his nice leather work shoes, which he’d forgotten at home. He’d had to buy a discount pair of black tennis shoes at the Payless near Nan’s. In all his years working, he’d never looked so defeated.
Nan was re-pinning her duck carver’s hat when he found her in the kitchen.
“Dear God!” She pinched her nose while she circled him. “What’d you get into, old man?”
“Someone used my blazer as a mop.” He waved his arms to dry the cloth. “It’s not that noticeable, is it?” A waiter squeezing past them coughed into his elbow.
“Go grab a new one from Jimmy. But tell him a customer spilled on you. Otherwise he’ll use you as a mop.” She pulled on his hair, then tucked the strands back behind his ear, the thoughtless, tender
act startling them both. They took a step back from each other.
“He’ll say I should’ve watched where I was going.”
Nan raised herself to full height and lifted her chin. “After decades of Jimmy yelling at you, you’re not prepared to take a little more?”
Ah-Jack plucked at the lapels of his sodden blazer. “He’s always been a little tyrant, but he’s been worse lately, torturing an old man like me.”
“Your mind’s scrambled,” Nan said. “It’s the same medicine. Now go take your medicine before Jimmy shoves it down your throat.”
*
Jimmy was nowhere to be found at first, but a second hard look around the dining room revealed him. The little boss was hanging around by the entrance, chatting with customers eating at the bar. Something was off about his greetings; they carried a hard edge, like artificial sweetener, and he left each person he talked to looking unsettled. Before Ah-Jack could hide himself, Jimmy was upon him. The little boss flared his nostrils, sniffing the air, before hustling Ah-Jack into the coat room.
“What is the matter with you?” Jimmy’s face was so close to his that Ah-Jack felt Jimmy’s breath on his neck. The small space smelled like mothballs and carpet cleaner.
“Vinegar spill on me.” Ah-Jack shrugged out of the blazer.
“We can’t get you a new one,” Jimmy said. “You’ll stain it.”
“I keeping wearing mine?”
“Are you insane?” Jimmy stroked his brow, strangely distracted even as he glared at Ah-Jack. His anger should have been a straight line, but it seemed bent at an unexpected angle. Like a knife half submerged in water. “You know what you can wear? The duck carver’s uniform. You’re not a waiter anyways. It’s confusing. People keep trying to ask you for extra drinks—”
“I got them drink,” Ah-Jack tried to cut in.
“That’s not your job,” Jimmy said. “It gunks up the system. Put an apron on.”
“Shirt have stain too.”
“No one will notice.” Jimmy turned to organize the coat rack. “You owe me fifty dollars for that blazer.” He dismissed Ah-Jack with his back.
*
On his way back to the kitchen, Ah-Jack ran into Pat. He’d been running into Pat a lot lately. The tray of drinks Pat was carrying barely tipped, but all of a sudden the front of Ah-Jack’s shirt was drenched with Coke.
“Aw shit, Uncle Jack.” Pat toed the fallen cup. “Will you clean this up? I’m behind.”
“Okay, fine.” Ah-Jack bent down to grab the cup. He shivered when a shard of ice slid its way down his chest.
In the kitchen, Nan had finished putting on her hat. She was sharpening her carving knife while she waited for her duck to come through the kitchen.
“Another accident?” The worry she tried to hide on her face tugged forward fiercely, like a dog on a leash.
“Just a clumsy idiot here,” Ah-Jack said. “Baby manager wants me to wear an apron. Food stains and all.”
Nan reached up to grab at a stack from above the jumbo rice cookers. The thick yellowed fabric, damp from rice steam, covered Ah-Jack’s entire front, down to his ankles, like a butcher’s apron.
“Looks like I’m here to slaughter the ducks.” He fumbled to tie the strings behind his back. Nan came around and batted his fingers away.
“I knew your vanity would ruin you one day,” she said.
“If I dress like a beaten man, that’s what I become,” he said.
She spun him around to straighten out the front. She started rolling up his sleeves.
“At least you get the little hat,” he said.
“It’s so I look better in the pictures they take.”
“Where can I get my hands on those pictures?” He gripped her playfully by the forearms, sliding his grip up and down.
“The Internet,” she replied, smiling. “Where you get all your pictures.”
“Can I get by?” Pat barreled through their arms. He tossed four soup bowls onto his tray. Ah-Jack hurried over to the cut garnishes and grabbed a handful of green onions. He began sprinkling them into each bowl while Pat ladled hot broth out of the steam table. The boy’s movements were clumsy, and broth spurted out of the bowl.
“Careful,” Ah-Jack warned.
“My bad,” Pat murmured, without changing a thing. The last ladleful spilled out of the bowl and cascaded over Ah-Jack’s thumb. He let out a hiss.
“What happened?” Nan rushed over.
“My fault.” Ah-Jack shook out his hand. Pat had already set off with his order.
“You never burn yourself,” she said. “Did Pat hurt you?”
“No!” The air between mother and son was polluted enough without him adding his own suspicions. “Look how hard Pat is working. You should be proud.”
“He’s like a different person,” Nan admitted. “But it’s early. Maybe he’s only learned how to be trickier.”
Ah-Jack picked at something yellow and crusted on his apron string. “Good crowd tonight. The Hans have the magic touch.”
“They’re our old customers,” Nan said.
Ah-Jack sucked his teeth. “Of all days to wear a stained apron!”
Nan touched her paper hat lightly. “Yes.”
Ah-Jack slapped himself on the cheek. “Forgive a foolish, brain-dead old man.”
“You forgot vain,” she said.
“Yes, of course. Incredibly vain.”
The kitchen had been filling with waiters, calling out orders and smacking together soup and rice bowls. The noise and people didn’t bother Nan and Ah-Jack, who were accustomed to switching their attention on and off. Even so, Ah-Jack noticed that the kitchen was more chaotic than usual, or, rather, that this chaos lacked logic. Waiters kept breaking into his and Nan’s idle conversation to clarify which plate of brown slurry was theirs. For some reason, Jimmy had changed the menu in the middle of service and the American staff needed Ah-Jack to tell them the difference between Mongolian steak and pepper steak, curry chicken and kung pao chicken. The cooks, who could not read English, shouted at him to translate the waiters’ orders through the commotion of metal and flame. But restaurant work was heavy in his blood. He needed no extra thought to organize the orders and the servers. Nan, whose position was the only one overstaffed, helped guide the waiters as well. Finally her turn came back up, and she scooted a duck, pinwheeling in its own grease, onto her silver platter. He sent her out of the kitchen with a pat on her rear.
Not long after, Pat came in, though he’d only called out an order a few minutes before. He was killing time, striding around on his long legs, like Ah-Jack used to do when he was that age and found hard work more boring than exhausting.
“Did someone take my shrimp in lobster sauce?” Pat peered at the cooks through the stainless-steel divider.
“Not ready yet,” Ah-Jack said. Against his will, his body stiffened, remembering the small attacks upon it since he’d moved in with Nan two weeks ago. A toilet flushed while he was in the shower. An accidental elbow in the hallway. The chair he’d been sitting in moved back an inch while he fixed a snack in the kitchen. He could forget—he was a star at forgetting—but his body would not.
“You mixed the orders up, didn’t you?” Pat said.
“Of course not.”
“If you weren’t so busy talking, you wouldn’t have screwed up my order.” Pat came closer to Ah-Jack. What was the boy doing?
“I can talk and watch at the same time,” Ah-Jack said.
Just then Pat’s plate, brimming with cloudy-white gravy, spun out onto the divider. Ah-Jack reached out at the same time as Pat; they grabbed the plate together. Ah-Jack knew, before his fingers touched the plate, that it was steaming hot, the fresh gravy heating the cheap china with every second. But before Ah-Jack could call out a warning, Pat had yanked his hand off the plate. Unbalanced, the plate tipped up and the lobster sauce spilled onto Ah-Jack’s bare arm. He dropped the dish with a shout.
“Shit, that’s hot.” Pat was shaking out his fingers.
Ah-Jack, trembling but calm, wiped the burning sauce off his skin. His forearm was bright red, tender, and swelling in front of his eyes. He would need to soak a towel in soy sauce. Otherwise his skin would blister and split like a hot tomato.
“Oh shit!” Pat had noticed the fallen plate. “You’re fine, right? Shit, I needed that.” Ah-Jack looked down as well, and his chest tightened. The plate had landed right on top of his cheap cloth shoes.
“Tell the chef to rush your order,” Ah-Jack said. He couldn’t feel anything, and his fear came out as impatience. “Five minutes if he rushes. Maybe three. It’s all the same quick garbage.” Ah-Jack caught a cook’s attention and shouted, “You saw what happened. Make the boy another number four before he shits himself.”
“All right, all right!” The cook started cleaning out his wok.
“What did you say to him?” Pat asked. “Did you tell him it was your fault?”
“What are you yelling at Uncle Jack for?” Nan said, pulling off her plastic gloves as she entered the kitchen. She tossed her dirty tray to a dishwasher and came between them. Suddenly she was on the ground, her voice thin with panic.
“Your feet! Get your shoes off now!” She scooped the food off Ah-Jack’s feet and into her apron.
“He dropped the dish on himself.” Pat widened his eyes over his mother’s head.
“Yes,” Ah-Jack said. If his feet didn’t hurt, then they couldn’t be burned. “Get up. I barely feel anything.”
“You don’t feel this?” Nan waved her hands at the steam rising from the gravy. “Are you crazy?” She finished scooping and threw the full apron at her son.
“What am I supposed to do?” He held the apron as if it were a used diaper.
“Tell Jimmy I’m taking Ah-Jack to the hospital.” She stood up and handed Pat the ruined cloth shoes as well.
“I don’t need the hospital,” Ah-Jack said.
“You can’t leave,” Pat insisted.
“Don’t be selfish,” Nan snapped. She tugged on Ah-Jack’s unburned arm.
Looking into Nan’s eyes, a sense of calm came over Ah-Jack. The world around him narrowed into pinpricks, framing the fretting woman in front of him.