Number One Chinese Restaurant

by Lillian Li

  “Jimmy, what are you doing here?” Pat yelled over the music. His eyes blurred when Jimmy came closer and took the stool next to his.

  “This is my favorite bar,” Jimmy deadpanned. “What are you doing here?”

  “Osman took me.” Pat offered his half-drunk Corona to Jimmy, who politely refused. “I didn’t know you guys had the same favorite bar.” He was slurring but coherent.

  “Are you drunk or stupid?”

  “Bit of both.” Pat nodded sagely. “You’re not so scary when you’re out of the restaurant. Cool earring.” He’d noticed Jimmy fiddling with his cartilage ring and leaned in to take a closer look.

  Jimmy said, “I came to talk to you, but you’re not in any state.”

  “Why would you want to talk to little ol’ me?” Pat ordered another beer and clinked bottles with everyone within arm’s reach.

  “You remind me of me,” Jimmy said, not because it was true but because he didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t want to stay, but he had to figure out what to do with Nan’s son. He cursed Uncle Pang and ordered a tequila and seltzer.

  “No offense, but you’ve only known me a month,” Pat said.

  “I’ve known your mother for most of my life.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” Pat stuffed his lime into his mouth and grinned at Jimmy, a grotesque green-gummed smile that made him want to punch the wedge down the boy’s throat. Jimmy’s anger only seemed to bead up and roll off Pat, like water on wax.

  “She’s too good for you.” Jimmy made to stand up. His decision was set.

  “Yeah, I know.” Pat surprised him into sitting back down. “Of course I know. She’s probably never fucked up.”

  “She married that dad of yours.” Jimmy regretted the comment, even after Pat started to laugh. It had been Jimmy who’d fired Ah-Ray twelve years ago.

  “He’s not so bad.” Pat wiped his sweaty forehead. “Or, he could be a lot worse.”

  “You see him much?”

  “Sometimes he calls. I guess I’ll be seeing more of him soon.”

  If Ah-Ray was moving back East, maybe Jimmy could get him a job at the Glory. The fabric around his armpits kept sticking to his skin.

  “You’re young,” Jimmy said. “You can get over anything.”

  “Nothing can touch me!” Pat boasted. “You know, don’t you? You’re the fucking boss.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Damn right.” Pat nodded heavily.

  “You’ve probably got all sorts of plans for the future.” Jimmy hoped for the opposite. “Now that you’re out of school, what’s next?”

  “You know, I would’ve said I was going to have fun for a while,” Pat said, “if you’d asked me a few weeks ago. But I need to grow up and—”

  “What’s wrong with taking things easy?” Jimmy grabbed at his drink, nearly putting his hand in it in his hurry to keep Pat from talking. He didn’t want to hear about Pat straightening out his life. “Sounds perfect for a guy your age. I should’ve had all my fun in my twenties. But I kept going until my thirties, when I had much more to lose.”

  “I think I’m done.” Pat stripped the label off his beer and tore it into small pieces. “You’re right about my mom. She doesn’t deserve more shit. I’m going to try college. I looked up the ones in Cali. I think I can do it.”

  “California’s good.” Jimmy’s stomach started to hurt. “My brother went to Berkeley. But the University of Maryland is just as good.”

  “No, man,” Pat said. “Why would I come all the way back to Maryland for school?”

  “All the way back?”

  “I’m going to be in California, with my dad,” he said. “You know, new start. Or else my mom just wanted to get rid of me.”

  “Nan’s sending you to California?” Jimmy’s mind struggled to find a grip on this information. Already his thoughts were spinning out of control, gathering so much speed that when they finally collided into a realization, the power of the impact shattered all doubt. Nan had found out about Pat. She was doing everything she could to save him. The tequila crawled its way back up his throat, painting Jimmy’s tongue bitter. “When?”

  “When did she decide, or when am I going?”

  Jimmy waved his hand sharply, clipping his fingernail against Pat’s bottle. “Whichever. Both.”

  “I don’t know when she decided. Maybe when I got in trouble at school. But she told me a few weeks ago.”

  “Was it at the Duck House? When you were working there?”

  “Actually, it was a couple days after—” Pat gulped the words back down, a strange hiccup bubbling out instead.

  “After what?” Jimmy leaned back in his stool to hide his impatience. His arm scrabbled for a hold on the counter to keep himself from tipping over. A waitress put her hand on his shoulder, but he brushed it away.

  “When…” Pat’s eyes darted around, over-blinking. “When I got caught with Annie in the storage closet.”

  “My niece? That Annie?” Jimmy had to laugh at the confession, which had Pat cringing in his seat yet also undeniably proud. “Isn’t she older than you?”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Pat scratched his chest, right above his left nipple, as if clutching at his heart. “She’s a super-sweet girl. I don’t think she likes me very much right now. I’m an asshole.”

  “Apologize to her.” Jimmy cleared his throat. “Girls get over shit.”

  “Maybe,” Pat said. “Anyways, I’m leaving in a few weeks. I just wish she knew I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t mean any of it.”

  Jimmy had stopped listening. Pat had reminded him of the urgency of his visit, and his body reacted as if attacked. He wanted to run. He had to act. The two impulses ran amok inside him. Gravity pulled him into his seat; everything was sinking downward. If he did not move now, the weight of his panic would drop over his head.

  “Everything will work out.” He threw a few bills on the counter and knocked back the rest of his tequila. “You’re young.” He didn’t know if he was trying to reassure the boy or apologize to him.

  “Hey!” Pat called after him. “Can I get a ride?”

  Jimmy rounded back and slipped a wad of cash into Pat’s hand.

  “Call a cab,” he said. Then he leaned in until his mouth was by the boy’s ear. “I know what you did,” he whispered, the air whistling past his teeth. “But I forgive you. I hope you forgive me too.”

  At the front of the restaurant, Osman hit a high note. His friends whooped and clapped their hands against the bar.

  Pat’s sodden brain was already erasing Jimmy’s words. The chili-pepper lights dangling over the bar reflected in the boy’s hazy eyes. Soon the entire evening would be a blacked-out smudge sitting in his head. But the transcript of the world had recorded Jimmy’s apology. This would have to be enough.

  *

  Jimmy hated his brother’s house. Cruising up the long driveway, Jimmy had no idea why he’d decided to come here. Johnny’s place was pretentious, uncomfortable, smug, and, thanks to Christine’s trust fund, quite a bit more expensive than the house Jimmy had once owned with his ex-wife. The tall Colonial pillars out front appraised him like Greek-statues-turned-doormen.

  So of course, when Johnny opened his front door, Jimmy told him immediately, and not for the first time, how awful everything looked.

  “Looks like someone hasn’t eaten,” Johnny said. “Christine can make you a plate.”

  “I can’t stand that health-food crap,” Jimmy said.

  “Did you drive here?” Johnny let him in.

  “I’ve only had one drink.” Jimmy looked around the foyer. His brother’s double spiral staircase loomed at him like an illusion. “Is your cigar room ready?”

  “Finished a few weeks ago,” Johnny said. “But I’ve been too busy with the insurance company.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  He followed Johnny downstairs to the basement. In the cigar room, a walk-in wood-and-glass-paned humidor sat again
st the back wall, the color of pale honey. When Jimmy stepped into the contraption, the smell of cedar hit his nose and he sneezed twice.

  “I don’t have much of a collection yet.” Johnny traced his finger along the shelves. “But I have a nice Montecristo.”

  “Sure.” Jimmy was already pushing his way out of the humidor. “Your choice.”

  While Johnny selected their cigars and sawed off the ends, Jimmy settled into a slick black leather chair. He propped an elbow on the arm and rested his head, studying the framed diplomas Johnny had hung up on the wall. Ever since Uncle Pang had told him about Pat, he’d been trying to find a loophole. Even he was not so cold that he could throw a kid into prison, arsonist or not. Why was everyone—his own mother!—insisting that Jimmy turn him in? Why was this the fire in which he had to be forged? His questions laced around a subterranean suspicion and pulled it from the earth: Uncle Pang had no intention of forgiving him. Jimmy had been the one to hire Pat just a month before the fire. To turn in the boy might implicate himself. Why trust that snake now? Jimmy couldn’t even trust his own family.

  “Here you are,” Johnny said, shutting the humidor. Jimmy took his Montecristo and the butane lighter that Johnny swore was the only way to light a cigar. The toasted, spicy smoke coated the lining of his mouth with a tingling sensation.

  “Not bad,” he said, after a few puffs. His voice felt wobbly and he was worried his brother had noticed. But Johnny only lit his own cigar, before filling Jimmy in on the insurance proceedings. He listed off facts that Jimmy barely registered as important before they evaporated from his head. Everything was turning into white noise.

  Suddenly, Janine’s name sliced through the wall of sound. “I said, ‘How’s Janine?’” Johnny repeated. Jimmy was paying attention now.

  “I might have fired her.” The cigar smoke had made his mouth taste like soot. He wished he had thought to ask for a glass of water.

  “That’s too bad. I was thinking of contacting her to put Ma’s house on the market.”

  “You can do whatever you want.” Jimmy looked around for an ashtray.

  “Well, if you fired her, she couldn’t have been very good.” Johnny placed a bronze ashtray, ugly as sin, on Jimmy’s knee.

  “She’s fine. I just didn’t trust her. She’s sneaky.”

  “I didn’t get that sense of her when we met.”

  “You only met her for a minute.” Jimmy had a sudden vision of Johnny calling up Janine. The two of them laughing on the phone, then Johnny in her Mercedes. The image alone was enough to make him want to put his cigar out on his brother’s cheek.

  “It’s a moot point if the police don’t catch the fire setter,” Johnny said. “When’re they finally going to find a suspect?”

  Jimmy tapped his ash into the tray, if only to cover up some of that hideous bronze. Smoke had filled his head; he was floating, barely tethered to his problems anymore. A familiar sensation.

  “What if I found out who did it?” he said.

  “Yeah?” Johnny leaned in, uncrossing his legs.

  “It might have been Nan’s son—you remember him?”

  “You’re kidding.” Johnny took his cigar out of his mouth. A sprinkle of ash dotted the leg of his khaki shorts. “How’d you find out?”

  “I can’t reveal my source,” he said. “But I have evidence.”

  “Enough to go to the police?”

  “I don’t know what to fucking do.” Jimmy lowered his head. Suddenly, all the soft spots on his body felt open to attack.

  “Who knows what the right thing to do is in these situations?”

  “You do.” Jimmy glanced at those gleaming diplomas again. His words sounded like an accusation.

  “Why would he do it?” Johnny demanded. “We’ve been nothing but kind to him and Nan. This doesn’t make sense.”

  Should he tell his brother about Uncle Pang? Johnny understood the man’s seedy influence on the family. But, kept safe at the front of the house, he’d never been dragged under by the riptide of Uncle Pang’s anger. Johnny might try to go after the man himself.

  “The kid’s disturbed,” Jimmy said. “He almost set his school on fire—that’s why he was expelled.”

  “I have heard of people who set fires compulsively.” Johnny reached up to smooth the wrinkles on his forehead.

  “He’s still working at my restaurant,” Jimmy said.

  “They’ll think you paid him off,” Johnny filled in.

  “I just found out he was a firebug,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t know.”

  “And you were planning on burning the restaurant down anyways.”

  “I’m fucking screwed.” Jimmy took a long pull of his cigar.

  Johnny also puffed on his. Jimmy was reminded of when their father was alive. The few times all three Han men had shared their small office, they would work in this sort of silence, which was not so much comfortable as tolerant. Every so often, their father would let out a loud, sputtering fart, which the boys were not permitted to laugh at. But once, Jimmy had caught his brother’s eye and Johnny had wrinkled his nose in response.

  “You want me to turn him in for you, don’t you?” Johnny said, cutting through Jimmy’s thoughts.

  Jimmy blinked hard. Against his will, his body squirmed, as if he were a child again, caught sneaking into their shared bedroom, which Johnny used to lock to keep Jimmy from touching and breaking his things.

  “What do you mean?” Was that why he’d come to Johnny’s house?

  “I mean you’ve always been this way,” Johnny said. “After every fight you had with Dad or Ma, you’d slam your door, then wait for me to calm them down. At the restaurant, when a waiter or customer got on your nerves, I was there to apologize for your behavior. Now I’m the one dealing with the insurance company, the fire investigator, the police.”

  “I never wanted you to step in.” Jimmy bit the end of his cigar. So these were the stories Johnny told about him. “You inserted yourself.”

  “You know, I’m happy to be the older brother and apologize for you,” Johnny said. “That’s my responsibility. But what always got to me, what honestly pissed me off, was that you’ve never had the respect to ask for my help.”

  After forty years of confusion, Jimmy finally understood exactly what his brother was saying. He’d read between Johnny’s mild lines. His brother wasn’t worried about being connected to the arson or even about Pat. All Johnny wanted was to hear Jimmy say that he needed him. As if Jimmy hadn’t spent his entire life defined by this need. As if he hadn’t tried to clean up his own messes in the past, only to buckle as soon as Johnny stuck his nose in. The cycle had spun uninterrupted since childhood—Jimmy fucking up, Johnny saving the day. Rescue had become a habit so ingrained that Jimmy no longer thought to fight it. Wasn’t his constant submission enough for his brother? Did Jimmy really have to speak it aloud?

  He spread his fingers out in front of him, cracking them with his thumbs. After so much prostration, what was one more small humiliation? He stared down at his hands. Johnny was going to win this ancient war between them.

  “All right, fine.” He didn’t need to fake, at least, his reluctance. “I’m a huge fucking mess. I’m selfish, I’m impulsive, and I’ve hurt our entire family.” He couldn’t keep his words from sounding sarcastic. His brother remained unmoved.

  Barely believing himself, Jimmy lifted the ashtray off his leg and placed it on the ground. Slowly, he slid off his chair and onto his knees. He hung his head, his face so hot that he almost felt the shame he was pretending at.

  “Please.” His voice was a whisper. “I need your help.”

  In a blink, Johnny was right there, pulling him up by the armpits. His brother’s face was radiant. He looked like he might try to hug him. Jimmy stiffened even as Johnny sat back down.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Johnny said. Jimmy could have spat in his lying face. “I’m your family. Of course I’ll help. All you had to do was ask.”

  “You wi
ll?” Jimmy’s anger transfigured so quickly into joy that his voice cracked.

  “It’ll be tough,” Johnny mused. “It’s often hard, doing the right thing.”

  The two of them breathed in the haze of smoke filling the room. Jimmy’s plug burned down; his exhilaration also lifted into the air, draining out of his body through the top of his head. He was left with tired, heavy limbs. He missed Janine, in a grudging, reluctant way; he had been since Johnny brought her up. Maybe he’d moved too hastily. He missed her loud laugh, the reason he’d fallen for her in the first place. He missed her quicksilver face and biting comments and the two cell phones she could text on simultaneously. If he left now, he knew he would drive right back to her house, and he couldn’t let himself do that. Not out of any pride or sense of principle, but because he didn’t want to set himself up for certain failure.

  “Is your guest room under construction?” He scratched a thin white line on the inside of his chair.

  “No,” his brother said. “We’re working on the outdoor pool, so we’re leaving the guest room alone. Why? Do you need to stay the night?”

  The word “need” raised Jimmy’s blood pressure again. But he was tired, and lonely, and out of ideas.

  “I need to stay,” he said. “I’m not feeling well.”

  “I’ll let Christine know,” Johnny said. “She can whip you up the best green smoothie. You’re under a lot of pressure. You need to watch your health.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t know if he was being honest or still playing the part. “You’re a good brother.”

  Johnny looked taken aback. For the first time, he was agitated out of his calm, and he shifted around in his seat.

  “You would do the same for me.” He studied the end of his cigar. “Even if you refuse to admit it.”

  The brothers looked past each other at the wall. Jimmy felt looser, the melancholy leaving him. He was like a wind chime, blown by gusts of emotions that made him sound out wildly, whipping about, only to round back to a hollow silence.