by Dave Lowry
“You’re assuming I’m not just a Wally Reed, coursing the highways of the country, looking for exotic Asian babes, and hoping to impress them with my language and culinary prowess?”
“It’s still a reasonable assumption,” she said. “I was willing, though, to go way out on a limb in hoping there was a little more to your story than that.”
“Everybody’s got a story,” I said. “How many of them have you heard that are even vaguely interesting?”
“Not many.”
“Then mine would be in the majority category,” I said. “Not all that interesting but way, way too long.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“You sure?”
“No,” she said, “but I’m willing to bet it will sound better than what’s on the radio.”
“My grandfather was in China right after the Second World War,” I said. “It was some kind of secret spy-type stuff. He was with an organization like the CIA. He never talked about it that much. He did talk a lot about China. He really liked it. He liked the food. When I was just a kid, still in grade school, he started taking me to Chinese restaurants in Boston. Not to the ones that catered to non-Chinese. He knew about the ones that had authentic dishes, the stuff they wouldn’t put on the menus. You had to know to ask for it.”
“So you were a grade school connoisseur of Chinese cuisine.”
“Not quite,” I said. “Starting in second grade, I met a guy, Langston Wu. We got to be friends about fourth grade or so. His uncle owned a Szechuan restaurant in Andover. We started working weekends there, washing dishes, doing odd jobs. By the time we were in high school, we were both cooking there. All through high school, I did what the French call commis. It’s sort of apprenticing, at different Chinese places around Boston. So you could say I grew up in a Chinese restaurant kitchen.”
“You liked it?”
“Still do,” I said. “It’s really all I ever wanted to do.”
We kept driving. Corinne seemed to be thinking it over. Or maybe she was just bored. Finally, she said, “A da bi zi whose dream is to become a master Chinese chef.”
Da bi zi—literally “big nose”—was a fairly common derogatory term in Mandarin for a non-Chinese.
“I resent the racist appellation,” I said. “But, yeah, that’s my story.”
“Well,” she said, “I’ve heard stranger ones.” After a long pause she added, “But not many.”
We made it to Buffalo. Which, I thought, could be considered either a destination or a consequence of some poor decisions. Corinne explained that she had a friend living there. She had to call twice to get directions to the friend’s apartment. It turned out to be a loft in a neighborhood near the University at Buffalo. We got there after dark, parked the Toyota on the street, and climbed the stairs and rang the buzzer. Corinne’s friend had a bleached white streak down one side of her hair and a very tiny nose ring. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved one that read, “Sarcasm is just one service I offer.” She grabbed Corinne by both elbows as soon as she opened the door. Her eyes were shiny with excitement, and I could tell they were friends, even though Corinne didn’t show much emotion. She did smile. I hadn’t seen that before. There’d been a few smirks. But no full-on smiles. The smile looked good on her. Corinne introduced her friend as Ariadna Liu. Ariadna said hello to me, then lapsed into Mandarin to speak to Corinne. I caught the word “handsome” and the question “your boyfriend?” before Corinne interrupted to tell her I spoke Mandarin.
“How well?” Ariadna asked me in Mandarin.
“I’m mostly shuashuai,” I said. It meant I was basically just a poser, someone who thought he was cooler than he was.
Ariadna laughed. I hauled Corinne’s bag from the car back up to the apartment. Then I sat around and listened to them talk. They lapsed back and forth from English to Mandarin. I learned more about Corinne in a couple of hours than I’d found out in the three days we’d spent together. She and Ariadna met at a gemological school they’d attended together in Toronto. After they graduated, Corinne had worked for a jeweler in Montreal, sorting diamonds. If there was a subject I knew less about than diamonds, I would have been hard-pressed to name it. Corinne and Ariadna explained to me how the business works.
“Diamonds come out of the ground,” Corinne said. “You know that much?”
“Check,” I said.
“They only come out of the ground a few places in the world,” Ariadna said. “Mostly in Africa. And only a few companies control it all. The diamond trade, that is. They take the rough diamonds to, again, just a few very tightly controlled other places, where the gem-quality stones are processed, cut, or ground into shape.”
“And those places add a little to the cost of the diamond?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Corinne said. “That’s one reason—probably the major reason—diamonds cost as much as they do. They go though all kinds of steps and pass through lots of different hands. You’ve got the guys who grind or cut the raw stones, guys who polish them, companies that buy them in bulk and then distribute them to retail markets. And everyone along the way gets a piece of the diamond.”
“They end up in an exchange, called a bourse,” Ariadna said. “Of which there are fewer than thirty in the whole world. Bourses sell to wholesale and retail diamond businesses. So a big diamond store or a wholesaler will get a bunch of loose stones we call a ‘lot.’”
“That’s where people like us come in,” Corinne said. “We look at the diamonds while they’re still loose stones and evaluate them for their retail value.”
“So you decide how much of his annual income some poor schmuck’s going to devote to a ring meant for the finger of Miss Mary Lou Marrying-for-Money?”
“Romantic way to put it,” Corinne said. “But not exactly accurate.”
“We tell the owner of the jewelry shop or diamond store or wherever it is we’re working,” Ariadna said, “how much the stone is worth. How much they charge the schmuck is up to them.”
“And you learned to do that at the gemological school?” I asked.
“In Toronto,” Corinne said, nodding.
“After we graduated, I got a job here through a friend,” Ariadna said.
Corinne said she got hers the same way in Montreal. It turned out that Corinne was a U.S. citizen, working for a Canadian diamond wholesaler; Ariadna was a Canadian working for a U.S. business.
“So how come you’re in Buffalo now,” I asked Corinne, “instead of back in Montreal sorting diamonds?”
“I’m taking some time off,” Corinne said. I studied her face when she said it. She didn’t make eye contact with Ariadna. Ariadna developed a sudden interest in her feet. It sounded like one of those conversational comments that are tossed off casually. I didn’t know much about Corinne. I did know she didn’t indulge in a lot of casual comments.
Later that night, in fact, stretched out in my sleeping bag on the floor of Ariadna’s living room, I made a checklist of everything I knew about Corinne Chang.
I knew she wore black underwear.
I knew she didn’t talk a lot, but she listened better than most people I had been around.
I knew some guy was looking for her and didn’t seem like he was very happy about it. And that she’d had to leave town quickly—which is never a good sign.
I knew she made little puffy, airy noises when she was asleep.
I knew—I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew—that when she said she was “taking some time off” from the diamond-sorting business, Corinne Chang was lying.
10
Rule #8: Hitting people is often bad, but if it’s necessary, it’s necessary to hit first—always.
I spent two days in Buffalo. The Toyota had been getting harder and harder to start, so I drove it to a shop a couple of blocks from Ariadna’s apartment. It took them a day and a half to decide I needed a new battery. Oh, and that it looked like it was using a lot of oil.
“They’re thorough, aren�
��t they?” Ariadna said. Fortunately, she’d showed me a map of the University Heights District, where she lived, that highlighted local bookstores. While I waited for the car, I wandered around Main Street there and spent a lot of time at the Talking Leaves Books, which was one of the better used bookstores I’d ever visited. They didn’t seem to mind if you sat around in one of the chairs and read, which I did. I read a book about the ins and outs of cruising under sail, which was something I’d never done but which sounded kind of nice and gave me some ideas about the life my parents were leading right about then. I looked at some Chinese cookbooks and made a few notes on substitute ingredients they suggested. I read a book about the diamond trade.
The day I left Buffalo, Corinne and Ariadna were going downtown so that Ariadna could introduce Corinne to some of the other people at the diamond place where she worked. Ariadna told me to feel free to sleep in and just to be sure the door was locked when I left. It was a little awkward saying goodbye the night before. Ariadna told me to come back any time I was in Buffalo again. Which, aside from going back to that bookstore, I couldn’t see as a very distinct possibility.
Corinne said, “Thanks for the ride.”
I nodded.
“And for the dongpo pork,” she said.
I nodded again.
“And for the visit to the Shaker place.”
“You bet,” I said, because I was tired of nodding.
“And for not being a troubled loner when you picked me up back in New Hampshire.”
“Any time,” I said.
“You mean that?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Any time you find yourself stranded at a highway rest stop and need a big, sensitive, but manly American guy to rescue you, I’ll be there.”
We looked at one another. When I’d first seen her, I’d thought she was pretty, though not in the conventional sense. She still wasn’t, I thought, looking at her there in Ariadna’s apartment in Buffalo. But she did look something. I hunted around for the word. I couldn’t find it. The best I could come up with was that she was intriguing. Especially when she smiled. She looked even better, I noticed, though, when she wasn’t smiling, when she was sober and serious. Like she was now. Then she went into the bedroom she was sharing with Ariadna. I shook out my sleeping bag, then turned out the light and got in it.
The next morning I was awake, curled in my bag, when they left. I pretended to be asleep. Mostly I just didn’t know what I’d say to Corinne if I let her know I was awake. I got up leisurely and packed, which consisted primarily of rolling up my sleeping bag. On my way out, I made sure the door locked behind me, checking a third time that I had the car keys, then I went downstairs and tossed my stuff in the car. It was cloudy, with a quick, hard breeze. The cold felt damp. I didn’t know how far we were from Lake Erie, but the musty smell of lake water was in the air, faintly.
“Hey,” a guy said from across the street. He was almost as tall as me. He was wearing a dark green nylon warm-up suit. The shiny kind that made that slick-slick sound when you’re walking. Which he was doing. Walking. What he was also doing was being Chinese. About my age, maybe a couple of years older. He’d shaved his head so smooth it glistened, even in the cloudy light. He was walking, not too fast, but fast enough to show he meant business, that he had something that needed to be done and quickly.
“Hey back,” I said.
“You a friend of Wenqian’s, yeah?” he said. He was only about ten feet away now. He bounced lightly and came up over the curb onto the sidewalk just a few steps away. He had a quick, jerky way of speaking. That, and the way he chopped up his words, made him sound, even speaking English, like he might have come from Hong Kong.
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, nodding. “You a ass-smart too, yeah?”
“It’s ‘smart-ass,’” I said. “Not ‘ass-smart.’”
“Yeah?” He seemed excited. His eyes had a feverish shininess. It was like he was trying to pump himself up. I had a feeling, suddenly, that whatever that something might be, it was probably not in my best interest.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m just a semi-smart-ass.” I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. I knew he was closing the distance as he talked, still smiling. He kept his hands in his pockets. He probably thought I was going to be cautious. Maybe I was supposed to think he might have a weapon in one of them. The way he was talking, he was either mentally screwed up some way, or he was trying to fluster me. My guess was the latter. My father spent some time with me when I was in high school, talking about the way you can get into trouble on the street.
“Bad guys aren’t as stupid as most people would like to think,” my father said. “They are good, very good in some cases, about picking a target or a victim. They size up their targets, look for any weaknesses, and they try to get as close as possible if they are going to attack. It cuts down on the intended victim’s chance to run away.” He explained bad-guy strategy in these situations. When they start to speak to you, so low you can’t hear them, you tend to automatically lean forward or even take a few steps closer to try to hear them. Every step they can get closer to you, the target—like every step a lion can manage to sneak in on an antelope—narrows any chances you have to make a getaway.
The Bald Warm-up Suit was expecting me to play the part of the antelope. Or at least to be caught off-guard and confused. I wasn’t. I didn’t say anything. I came closer, walking directly at him. But I came a lot faster than he expected. The lion was still in the middle stages of his stalking, and the antelope was suddenly coming on, suddenly right on top of him. The lion wasn’t prepared for that. I stepped in close. He stopped. I didn’t. I kept my forearm parallel to the ground, my fist vertical, and I moved my body with the motion of my arm. He whipped his hand out of his pocket to try to intercept it. He was too late. Didn’t matter. My forearm was going to slide over his arm no matter what he did to try to stop it. I hit him right in the solar plexus, squarely. Not hard. Hard enough, though.
Just like getting robbed or assaulted in real life usually isn’t like it is in the movies, hitting someone isn’t usually like it is in the movies. Most of the time if you try to hit someone, unless you’ve done it a lot before, either the bones or the ligaments or the tendons in your hands are going to give. Maybe even break. Or your wrist is going to collapse. I’d done it a lot, though. I’d hit a big heavy swinging bag so long and so often that my wrists weren’t going to give. Unless I got unlucky and hit a hard spot, a bony place, or unless Baldy was wearing a suit of armor under that warm-up jacket, nothing on me was going to break either.
He staggered back. He doubled over at the waist, trying to raise his hands up to his midsection. He was trying to get his breath, with even less success, making soft breathy noises. In a combination of sitting and falling, his butt landed on the pavement.
“Hurts more than you’d think it would, doesn’t it?” I said in Mandarin. “Try to straighten up.” I switched to English since I didn’t know the word for ‘diaphragm’ in Chinese. And if he was a Hongkie, chances were good that he might not understand Mandarin anyway. Most people from Hong Kong speak Cantonese. “Your diaphragm is spasming,” I said. “You have to straighten up to stretch and relax it.”
He looked up at me, still bent over. His eyes were a little gauzy. His lips were chalky.
“In a little bit, after you get your breath back,” I said, “you’re going to feel a real deep need to go to the bathroom.”
“Huhhh?” It wasn’t so much a statement as a groan. Even so, it sounded more coherent than the whooshing noise he’d been making.
“I don’t know why,” I said. “I don’t know what the exact physiology is. But trust me, you will. Probably ought to get going to try to find one.”
He looked up at me, still stunned. Whatever he’d planned, he hadn’t planned for it to go this way. But he wasn’t giving up.
“You shit-dumb,” he said.
“Dumbshit,” I said
. He didn’t seem to hear me. Or maybe he didn’t appreciate my impromptu lessons on proper English usage of the vulgar vernacular. He straightened a bit more. But he was still breathing gingerly, from high in his chest—I could see him heaving under his warm-up suit—and his voice was wavering.
“Shit-dumb,” he repeated. “You think this all going away? You think she going to get away with this? We just forget about it? We not go easy now. Somebody die? We no care! You die, shit-dumb? We no care.”
He suddenly put his hand on his abdomen. I could see his face flush.
“Like I said, you’re going to need a toilet.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was such a shit-dumb I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.
Down the street, a corner a couple of blocks away, I saw a patrol car slowly make the turn and head toward us, cruising leisurely along.
“Those cops will probably know where the nearest restroom is,” I said. I pushed my chin in the direction behind him. “Why don’t you hang around here a minute and ask them?”
He glanced up at the car, still a block off, then back at me. He was as confused as I was. I still didn’t have a clue why he’d been coming at me. The difference was that his stomach hurt a lot more than mine did. He started walking away, as quickly as it looked like he could—still a little stiffly and still a little bent over—and disappeared around the corner behind me.
It wasn’t the first time I’d hit someone. It was the first time I’d hit someone and wasn’t exactly sure why. Some guy asking me if I was a friend of Wenqian’s. Which is a Chinese girl’s name. A guy who was coming toward me with some intent that wasn’t in my best physical interest, I was pretty sure. Sure enough to have jacked him first. And then all the stuff about “her” not “get away with it,” about not giving up, about “not go easy now.” And especially the part about somebody dying—and more specifically “you” dying. Which was directed at me. It was the first time I’d had that experience.