by Lillian Li
Johnny murmured something into the senior officer’s ear. The man nodded and jerked his head at his partner. They pulled Pat toward the back exit, away from the crowd. Somewhere, a fire whooshed around a wok. Without meaning to, Pat kicked over a chair, and the policeman holding on to his wrists shoved him hard.
“Don’t touch him!” Nan said. The officer’s hand went to his hip holster.
“Ma’am,” the officer started to say, but Pat interrupted, speaking in Chinese so ragged that Nan had to listen with all her concentration.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “Look in my phone. I’m sorry.”
A sob seized Nan by the throat and bent her in two. She pressed her hands against her thighs. When they disappeared into the kitchen, the sound of their departing footsteps too quiet for her to hear, the crowd released a communal breath and chatter filled the vacuum.
“I’ll take you home,” Jimmy was saying into her ear.
“What did he do?” she asked. Jimmy’s left cheek was red and she remembered that she’d hit him only moments before, but she glimpsed no anger in his face, only a muddy blend of shame and unease.
“He burned down the Duck House,” he said. Nan pulled off her apron and Jimmy waved his hand in front of his face, as if to deter another slap. “Please, let me take you home.”
“Not home!” Nan went to the employees’ closet to grab her purse. She saw her shopping bag from earlier. How could she have let her son be taken away with holes in his shoes? She grabbed the bag, hooking her wrist through the thin plastic handles. Remembering the cell phone in her apron, she dove back to wrestle the phone from the folds of fabric.
“Where are you going?” Jimmy shouted after her.
“They took my son.” She struggled to keep her purse on her shoulder. Giving up, she let it swing freely, dangerously, while she whipped around, looking for some sign of where to go. Which police station did they take him to? How would she find her way there? The heat of everyone’s eyes hovered over her while they pretended to look somewhere else. She wanted to tell them that her son was innocent, but there was no strength in such an obvious lie. So she fell on the phrase she’d heard in the crime movies she used to watch with Pat.
“My son was set up!” she called out from the front door. Then she was outside, where no one knew who she was or why she was having trouble standing upright.
*
Annie did not know how long she’d been in this alley. She’d gotten only a few yards from the restaurant before her legs had started shaking so badly that she’d had to lean against the closest wall. Squatting in her ripped hostess uniform, she burrowed her face deeper into her arms, breathing in the musky odor of her knees. How much longer until she should try to stand?
Suddenly, gravel crunched in front of her. Something touched her shoulder. Annie jumped back and her face shot up. Pat’s mother! Annie palmed the ground with her right hand. Without knowing why, she’d wanted to grab the first thing in her way and throw it at Nan’s head.
“What do you want?” Annie spat. There was snot in her mouth; she wiped it away with the back of her arm. “It’s all your son’s fault.”
Nan squatted beside her, grunting slightly from the effort. They were not quite looking at each other. “Did he do something to you?”
“I’m going to jail.” Annie started crying again. “He ruined my life.” She wanted to push herself into Nan’s body, to burrow through her soft chest and hide there.
Nan rubbed Annie’s back until her hiccups subsided. Nan’s hand was almost as big as a man’s. Her strokes were strong but gentle. Annie’s father used to rub her back like this, to get her to fall asleep at night. Annie wished she could fall asleep right here and wake up in her own bed.
“Let me take you home.” Nan lifted Annie up by the crook of her elbow. Her Chinese was sweet, almost dreamy, like the way Annie’s mother spoke. “You’ll feel better after a hot shower. You’ll get in pajamas, eat some food, and you’ll see, the world will get brighter.”
“You can’t take me home,” Annie said. She wiped away the crud beneath her eyes. “I can’t be around my parents right now.”
“Come back to my place,” Nan said. “We can have wine. Try to settle down.”
Annie stopped inspecting the grime on her thumbs. “How are you so okay?”
“I’m going to be having a little wine too,” Nan said, and then, softly, “I don’t want to be alone right now, do you?”
Annie reached out her hand and Nan pulled her up. Annie struggled to stand, stumbling when the blood rushed back into her dead feet. But Nan kept tugging her forward, like a child with a kite string.
“Don’t tell my parents,” Annie said.
“Let’s go,” Nan said. “Who knows what traffic is like?”
23
After Nan shouted at his customers, a sly part of Jimmy reared up in anger. The night would never return to normal. But a different, larger force inside him squeezed the life out of his pettiness. He’d witnessed a tremendous kind of violence, and he couldn’t convince himself that what had happened was okay. Would he feel this sick if he’d called the police himself?
Johnny had already left to make sure Pat was treated right at the station. At least that was what he’d announced to Jimmy and the rest of the restaurant staff.
Jimmy went behind the bar and poured himself a tall glass of bourbon. He’d been drinking, steadily, secretly, since the morning. These constant nips—more like full drinks if he was being honest—had padded his head, made him pleasantly fuzzy, but they were no longer enough to block the rising panic. Like weak deodorant, his buzz masked nothing; it only amplified the stench of his actions. What if he drank more? The sweet heat of the liquor made the glassful go down easy. He choked once, then the drink was gone. His body hummed pleasantly. But the pit of his stomach remained ice cold. He poured another. He estimated fifteen or twenty minutes before all the alcohol converged in his system. He should try to drive home now.
“Tom, take over,” he said to the nearest waiter.
“After that?” the kid had the guts to say.
“Yes.” Jimmy finished his drink, the ice wetting his nose. Through the glass, he saw the kid widen his eyes at another waiter. Jimmy would get rid of them all soon.
He tucked the bottle of bourbon inside his jacket, though the boxy bulge fooled no one. He secured a nice long straw.
“Enjoy your meal,” he said to the table nearest the front door, bending slightly toward the nervous couple. He almost stumbled; the liquor was moving fast. “This lovely table needs some complimentary desserts,” he shouted.
The woman whispered a thank-you. The man stared steely-eyed at his plate.
“You have a great night.” Jimmy tipped an invisible hat. They would not be back. Would any of them? He took a contemplative sip from his straw and sneezed. When he got to his car, he remembered the tranquilizers his doctor had prescribed him after the fire. He scarfed down a handful with the help of some bourbon. He was getting tired of the taste, and on a whim, he smashed the bottle down on the pavement, kicking up a small geyser of liquid and glass and catching every eye on the street. Someone, maybe an officer, turned around and strode toward him. He hurried into his car and peeled out of the tight parallel space. He hit both cars, but what were bumpers for? He was tired of apologizing for what was clearly his fault.
He didn’t usually drink and drive while the sun was out, though the glowing orb was on its way down, floating mistily above the trees that lined Rock Creek Parkway. He rounded the tight corners with little whoops escaping his mouth. It was like controlling his own roller coaster, feeling safe because he kept forgetting the presence of danger. He didn’t know where he was headed. The night was rife with people he could visit. He bent his head down toward his jacket, only to remember he’d chucked the bourbon. Feeling around in his glove compartment, he let out a crow when he palmed the container of scotch Uncle Pang had gifted him earlier that summer. True wonder that he’d forgotten
the half-drunk bottle. He clenched it between his thighs and flicked the cap into the backseat. The car swerved, upsetting the rumble tracks that lined the highway lane. Jimmy spilled a glug of scotch on his jacket. He sucked at his shirtsleeve. A voice came into his head, unbidden.
“A glass of scotch is the perfect male accessory.”
Had Janine actually said those words? Or was he so well versed in the cadence of her voice, the pitch and degree of her teasing humor, that he had become a generator of Janine-isms? Only a day and he’d missed her enough to turn her into a ghost. But this wouldn’t stop him from drinking the scotch. Not when he was this thirsty.
He kept his eyes on the road and lifted the bottle to his lips, and again she spoke: “All great men drink scotch, and so do all other men.” If he weren’t on the highway, he would have thrown the bottle out the window. She was a poisonous woman, with long-lasting venom. He fooled around with the GPS on his phone.
Finally, a new voice in his head—the gentle, dulcet tones of his GPS navigator leading him toward a cramped neighborhood in Takoma Park. He eased his seat forward, cramming the steering wheel into his chest. The vibrations of the car calmed him, scattering his vicious thoughts. Whenever he thought he might doze off, he took another sip. At some point, it all went black.
*
Jimmy woke up to the sounds of buzzing, clanking, and distant conversation. A terrible smell hit his nose: a musty combination of sweaty feet, piss, spilled beer, and unwashed human bodies. His eyes felt glued together. A terrible pulsing headache scrambled his brains. He could smell his own breath, even with his mouth closed, and his teeth were somehow looser in their gums. He couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered, he was headed toward Janine’s. Had he crashed? He wiggled his fingers and toes and ruled out a car accident.
He kept guessing because he couldn’t handle knowing for sure yet. Maybe he was at the bottom of a bar, forgotten by the cleanup crew sweeping up around him. That would explain the noise and the smell, as well as what he was lying on. He felt drunk, despite the headache. What time was it?
Curiosity and the growing pressure in his bladder finally forced his eyes open. He was in a jail cell, lying on the cement floor. He had no idea what he’d done to end up here. They’d taken his watch. The clock on the wall told him it was barely nine p.m.; his mouth told him he’d definitely vomited once already that night. A tarnished, seat-less toilet was available in the cell, but Jimmy’s bladder would get no relief. He struggled to sit up, leaning his back against the metal bars of the cell. The pads of his fingers were dark, but he couldn’t remember getting his prints taken, or his mug shot, or even a ghostly sense memory of the back of a police car.
He was not alone, though it took him a moment to realize this. A skinny white man was curled up beneath the metal bench, nearly hidden inside a large gray T-shirt. Only from the way the shirt lifted and fell could Jimmy tell the man was alive. He had a terrible feeling that, this being Friday night, the tiny cell would be crammed within the next two hours. Few of these gentlemen would be the docile type. He’d been in a cell almost identical to this one years ago, when he’d been picked up for possession, but within the first five minutes he’d gotten into a fight with an Englishman who wouldn’t stop screaming. The other men in the cell—there’d been so many people that they had to take turns sitting down—had ignored the wild-eyed man. Only Jimmy, wounded from his father’s decision to hire Johnny as a manager, had screamed back. They had both been impossible to cow. The fight ended with Jimmy kicking the screamer in the gut after the man spat in his face. They’d placed him in a single cell after that.
He no longer recognized the man he’d been before, a human animal who changed the chemistry of the room just by walking in. He’d started pacing the small confines of the holding cell right after he was placed inside, not to intimidate the others but because he had to move to displace the energy coming off him. It had been almost a decade since that incident, but being back in a holding cell made him wonder if he had retained some trace of that animal. Why else had he shaken Uncle Pang’s hand a year ago? He must have known, like everyone claimed he did, what that hateful man’s plan would be—and so he must have wanted to see the Duck House destroyed. Jimmy never saw himself as holding a grudge, but he could admit, in this woozy, translucent state, that his pride still smarted at the thought that his father had not trusted him with the restaurant.
Perhaps his father had been right.
His pattern of behavior had not traveled far. Rather than being hopped up on an army of uppers, he was swimming in tranquilizers, which were barely cottoning his head from his hangover. His body was leaden, and the effort to move his arm was like asking a stranger to do it. He shivered at the thought of having to defend himself when he couldn’t even rise to his feet. He shot another look at the man in the T-shirt, furious that the other man had taken the best hiding spot. His hands on the bars, Jimmy finally managed to pull himself up, and though he was unsteady and panting from the effort, he felt stronger. An officer passed; Jimmy flagged him down with slow, frantic gestures.
“You can use the phone,” he told Jimmy. He turned out to be one of the arresting officers, and he spoke down to Jimmy as if he were a spoiled child who’d finished his tantrum. “You’re in the Takoma Park police station. We picked you up for drunk and disorderly. Also trespassing. Your lady friend says she won’t be pressing charges.”
“Why not?”
“She says you’ve had a tough couple of weeks and she doesn’t blame you. I wouldn’t have been so nice. Especially if you’d busted up my windows and scared my son like that. You’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
“Can I call her to apologize?” Jimmy expected at any moment to be plunged back into his waterlogged memories. But his mind stayed blank. Blessedly.
“You leave her alone. She didn’t seem that forgiving.”
Jimmy called his brother instead. While he waited for Johnny to pick up, he allowed himself to grow hopeful. Janine could have pressed charges. Or had the officers rough him up a bit. He picked at an old piece of gum stuck to the painted cement wall. She’d been good to him, and for no reason he could think of. Did that mean he had a chance? Would she take him back? The phone kept ringing, and he realized he’d been stewing over Janine for too long. His brother never waited more than three rings to answer his phone, not even when he was sleeping.
The phone line finally clicked open, but Jimmy’s heart sank when a female automaton informed him that John Han was unavailable. Why wasn’t he back at the restaurant? He couldn’t still be with Pat. Hours had passed since the arrest. Even Johnny had his limits. The woman suggested that he leave a message after the beep, and Jimmy’s stomach cinched itself one notch tighter. He wished the robotic voice would continue forever, but with the beep came the dreaded silence. His frightened voice echoed off the walls.
“Hey, Johnny, I’m at the Takoma Park police station. Come get me. Don’t tell Mom.”
He stayed breathing on the line for a few seconds longer. He had nothing else to say, but he wasn’t ready to be alone. He couldn’t call his mother. He couldn’t call Janine. Who else did he have in his life? He’d felt such gratitude when the officer told him that the one-phone-call rule only happened in the movies, but he wished now that he could just hang up the phone and go back to his cell. Instead, he held on to the plastic receiver, which was growing wet from the sweat of his hand. He stared at the number pad, as if that might make a ten-digit sequence appear.
An impulse from childhood crept in; Jimmy began to slip into character. He was a secret agent, faced with breaking the code that would connect him to a real voice. A heavy calm went through his body. He was in the police station but not in the police station, because he was now a code breaker, nameless and faceless, a man defined solely by his task at hand. His finger almost went back to the number pad, he was so transported by the dreamy feeling. A loud buzz in the next room pulled him back o
ut.
He’d existed in this fugue state for most of his early years in America, when he’d had to make his own kind of sense. But the world was no longer that breed of unfamiliar, and the only thing that was unintelligible was how he’d gotten himself here. Even this, in the end, was translatable. He only had to follow his own tracks.
What a mess he’d made, all by himself.
24
Johnny had no idea why his daughter was at Nan’s house, but he was grateful all the same. He’d been apprehensive when he’d stepped out of the police station and seen Nan waiting by his car. Neither of them had been able to get to Pat. He’d expected tears, remonstrations, all deserved. Instead, she calmly informed him that, in case he was looking for his daughter, she was found.
He hadn’t been looking for his daughter. She was nineteen. She had her own life. But on his drive over to Nan’s, he had to admit that Annie had been acting strangely since he’d gotten back from Hong Kong. She’d been sleeping a lot lately, even more than she usually did. He hadn’t been hard enough on her when she was a child, her sleeping face too beautiful to disturb. It was a rare day if Annie didn’t sleep past noon. Though she’d never gone past three or into the evening. He hadn’t thought much of the hours she was keeping, but that was because he’d been busy. He rubbed his eyes, partly from the sun, sinking down the sky, and partly because this refrain—busy, busy—was too familiar. He caught the patterns of an excuse in its repetition. So she’d been sleeping irregularly, that was one piece. And there had been, coming back from the airport, her puffy eyes. He’d assumed a recent heartbreak, and she had quickly corrected him. Only later had he figured out the boyfriend was Nan’s son.
The puzzle piece snapped loudly into place, shocking him with the obvious picture it made. Of course she would be upset. Her boyfriend had set fire to the family restaurant! And if they were still dating, then he must have told her, which meant that his daughter had kept this terrible secret for weeks. Johnny slapped the sun visor down, blocking the rays from his tired eyes.