by Vanessa Hua
Too late, she realized the IV had been the cause, not the cure, of her present condition. Sepsis was seeping through her, decaying from the inside, and if she closed her eyes she might never open them again. Fumbling with her phone, she dialed the only one who might save her.
Chapter 19
Scarlett pulled out damp bunches of scallions, handfuls of plums, ginger, and garlic from the walk-in cooler, and listened to the kitchen gossip: since New Year’s Day, a customer had lingered at every meal at the Pearl Pavilion, drinking pot after pot of tea.
The waitress complained that she wanted to close out his bill so she could go on break. The cook promised he’d prepare a special dish for the man’s dinner. “So many chilies, he’ll have trouble sitting down tomorrow.”
For two days in a row, this customer had eaten alone and tipped cheaply, rounding up to the nearest dollar.
“His eyes don’t blink!” The waitress shuddered. “Like a lizard.”
“I know where he’d like to flick his tongue.” Smirking, the cook leaned on the counter. Jowly, with bulging eyes and a wide mouth, he had the look of a toad king. The waitress squealed in protest.
“If they’re not sleeping together, they soon will be,” Scarlett murmured to Manager Kwok. He laughed. He’d stopped in to check supplies in the pantry. Each afternoon, she left him a plate of hanbaobao. He’d set aside space for her in the walk-in, and he didn’t charge rent for using the kitchen or the van. He’d never tried to grope her in the walk-in cooler or flirt in any way. Perhaps because she crackled like a downed wire—don’t touch, and perhaps because he respected her entrepreneurial spirit, unlike his attitude toward his workers, whom he clearly considered lazy and witless without his guidance. If he didn’t have a wife and teenage sons stashed south of San Francisco, she might have asked him to marry her. He seemed game for an off-the-books business proposition. Manager Kwok could suggest other candidates, but men who would marry for financial gain had to be unsavory. Shrimp Boy? She didn’t want her legal status hitched to his arrest record. She couldn’t imagine living with any man, even Old Wu, for two years, as a condition of marrying for a green card. He was still in China. Since the raid, a pall had settled over Chinatown. Its permanent residents and U.S. citizens didn’t appreciate authorities riffling through the neighborhood’s private matters, and they had loathed media reports that portrayed Chinatown as less than upstanding.
Lawyer Loo remained in jail for asylum fraud, held without bail because authorities believed he would flee to China, given the chance. Fatty Pan had turned himself in, and it was rumored that he’d spilled the lawyer’s secrets in exchange for immunity. Though she’d avoided the policemen’s snare, Scarlett didn’t have much in savings. She didn’t know how or if she could fix her papers before her visa expired, and she felt hollow, helpless each time she considered her future.
But she had to get through each day. She fell into the rhythm of her preparations: chopping, stirring, pouring. As the cook dished up fried rice for the staff meal, she heard a commotion in the alley. Scuffling, the slam of a door, the thump of metal, and a pair of busboys dragged a man into the kitchen. They’d caught him inside the delivery van, they shouted.
The van she’d stolen from Perfume Bay. She dropped the knife and dove into the walk-in cooler, stumbling through the tangle of thick plastic curtains. Heart pounding, she left the door cracked open so she could see a sliver of the kitchen. The man was stocky, in a blue nylon jacket and slacks that gave him the look of a stadium security guard. Those unblinking eyes—was he the troublesome customer the waitresses despised? She strained to hear what he was saying.
He wasn’t stealing the van, he said. He wanted to buy it.
“Tell that to the police!” the cook said, and barked at the busboy to fetch Manager Kwok.
Though the stranger’s interest could have been commercial, she suspected he was a private detective. Why else would he care about a junky old van? He might have been nosing around the Pearl Pavilion for days. And how did he track her here? Scarlett never ventured into the dining room and didn’t work in the kitchen during meal service. Boss Yeung or Mama Fang might have guessed, or maybe they’d found an informant. Snooping in the alley, the detective must have discovered the van, back from the repair shop today.
Her breath steamed in the cold air, illuminated by a single dim bulb. She flicked off the lights. She should have darted into the pantry, hunkered under sacks of rice flour, hidden behind a wall of canned water chestnuts and bags of dried shrimp. She had to get to Liberty. To protect her, to cover her with her body as she might against a collapsing roof.
When Manager Kwok entered the kitchen, the detective insisted that he was scouting for a Hong Kong movie studio. For a comedy, and the hero of the film was a surfer who lived in his van. He’d been looking for months, and filming was about to start. “That van, you can see every kilometer on it. It’s more than a van—it’s a supporting character.”
Her fingers were going numb, her body livid with goose pimples. Couldn’t Manager Kwok tell the man was lying?
“Who’s in it? Anybody I’d know?” Manager Kwok asked, his curiosity piqued.
“I’ll come back with a cashier’s check in an hour.” The detective’s tone was silky, though he might never have dealt with anyone who drove as hard a bargain as Manager Kwok.
“You haven’t taken it for a test drive!”
“I can pay up to ten thousand dollars.”
More than four times what Manager Kwok had paid Scarlett. He snorted. “You’ll run off, thief.”
“Come with me,” the detective said. “Hand me the keys and the bill of sale, and I’ll drive it away today.”
The paperwork. No such documentation existed; the man must be trying to confirm the van had been stolen. He might have been searching it for clues that linked it to Mama Fang and to Scarlett and her baby.
“It’s not for sale,” Manager Kwok said, his tone impassive.
“Everything has a price,” the detective said. “And you know a good deal when you see it.” Scarlett glimpsed their legs. They were standing by three cases of cognac, probably stolen, that Shrimp Boy had delivered earlier that day. A coincidence, or was the detective implying he knew all about the illicit dealings at the Pearl Pavilion?
He ushered Manager Kwok off to the side, closer to the walk-in. She shrank back behind a rolling rack. “You know your way around. A place like this, you see hundreds of people a day.” His tone turned conspiratorial. “You see things. You ever come across a woman named Scarlett Chen? Pregnant or with a baby? She might be with a teenager, Daisy Yuan?”
Her heart moved with the frantic wing beats of a bird caught in a trap. He sounded like he was about to bribe Manager Kwok for information. What a blessing that the manager didn’t know her by that name—no one in Chinatown did except for Daisy—but he must suspect it was her. Although she never told him what brought her to Chinatown, he might have guessed that a pregnant single woman did not have a charmed past.
“You got a picture?” Manager Kwok asked
The detective showed him something on his phone.
“A sketch?” Manager Kwok asked in disbelief. It wouldn’t show the change to her hairstyle. If the detective had only a rough idea of what she looked like and didn’t know what name she went by in her new life, she might be able to maintain her cover—but only if Manager Kwok kept her secret.
The men coughed and then she smelled it, too: the plum sauce simmering at the stove, now burning in a thick black cloud. Shouting, shuffling, then the clatter of a lid to suffocate the fire, and the scrape of the pot pushed off the gas burner. They stood with their backs to her. If only Manager Kwok would lead him out of the kitchen, she could try to slip out the exit.
Manager Kwok berated the cook, who protested that the mess wasn’t his, it was—
She had to stop him from mentioning he
r to the detective, who would be very interested in a newcomer to this kitchen. She slid an empty tray off a rolling rack, making it clatter onto the floor.
“What’s that?” the detective asked.
Though the noise had distracted the men, she’d also drawn their attention to the walk-in. Stupid, stupid. Her fingers scrambled on her phone. Scrolling down her log, to when she’d called Manager Kwok a few days ago to arrange for a pickup of the hanbaobao cart. She hit the button. The sound of a text pinging on his phone might draw the private investigator’s attention away from the walk-in. Her fingers had gone stiff from the cold. Typing as quickly as she could, she told him she was hiding in the walk-in and begged him to get the stranger out of the kitchen. The text didn’t go through—no signal, the walls too thick. Her palms went slick with sweat and the phone nearly slipped out of her hand. No escape, no way out.
She hid behind the rack as Manager Kwok peered inside the walk-in and spotted her. She stared back, her eyes pleading.
A second set of footsteps approached—probably the detective, who would peek over Manager Kwok’s shoulder or force his way into the walk-in. She closed her eyes, holding still, trying to shrink herself.
“Someone in there?” the detective asked.
Manager Kwok whirled around. His body filled the doorway, blocking the detective. “Who are you working for?” he roared. “The Golden Dragon? Hunan Gardens?”
“A producer. From Hong Kong.”
“You trying to steal our recipes? You with the health department?”
No, no, the detective protested.
“If you wanted the van, why did you snoop around the alley? You a spy—or a thief?”
The detective backed off. “Let’s speak in your office.”
Manager Kwok called out to the cook. “It’s a mess in here! Everything’s about to fall. Get your kitchen in order.” Then he slammed the walk-in’s door.
* * *
—
Daisy and the babies weren’t at the apartment, or at the library. Scarlett doubled back to Portsmouth Square and searched the playground. School had let out, flooding the sidewalks with students wearing oversized backpacks, clutching the hands of their grandparents, gawky teenagers in tracksuits, and tourists, beefy men in baseball caps and flushed women in cable car sweatshirts and fanny packs, stopping every few meters on the sidewalk to check the tourist map and snap photos of the curved eaves, undergarments hanging to dry in the windows, and other foreign attractions.
Daisy couldn’t have gone far, and Scarlett wanted to get all four of them off the streets before Manager Kwok finished his meeting with the detective. She had an hour at most. She was on edge, ready to duck into a shop if she spotted him, and kept turning to check if he was tailing her. She hurried past the jewelry shop, the glittering display case with buttery gold necklaces catching her eye, and past a boba tea shop thumping with techno music.
She rounded the corner and discovered Daisy cross-legged on a tarp, relaxed, chatting, and sharing snacks with the disciples of the Celestial Goddess. The babies napped in a nest of blankets in a nearby patch of shade. Scarlett pulled Daisy to her feet while the women around her clucked. She scooped up Liberty, who screwed up her mouth in protest before settling into Scarlett’s arms, reaching her tiny hand to graze her mother’s chin. Scarlett exhaled. Her daughter was safe—for now.
Daisy glanced at her son. “Didi’s sleeping.”
“Now.”
“I’m not finished eating.” Daisy reached down for her plate and took another bite.
“Come,” the woman said. Sister Fan, the local group’s leader. She gestured at the unappetizing platter of beige meat substitutes. “There’s plenty.”
Scarlett remembered the CD of tinkly music, the new clothes, the baby formula, the exercises and poses—gifts from the followers of the Celestial Goddess? Daisy fetched her son, who stirred awake but kept his eyes squeezed so tightly shut they looked gouged into his face.
“You don’t believe this nonsense,” Scarlett said.
“They’re the only ones protesting the science exhibit,” Daisy ventured. “Remember those corpses from China?”
She had forgotten her boyfriend and thrown in her lot with fools. “This isn’t your fight,” Scarlett said. Daisy must have been hungering for a cause and a community. Scarlett couldn’t help thinking that their life had been simpler when Daisy had been miserable and fixated on finding her boyfriend.
In the park, children shrieked in the swings, a group of men squatted around a card game, and a pair of grannies chatted on the bench. No detective could be seen, not yet, but maybe he’d already been by, asking questions and offering a reward.
“You think anyone cares what these women think?” Scarlett asked. Pedestrians all around them gave the believers a wide berth. Sister Fan rose to her feet from the blanket and walked toward them.
“I’m writing the complaint on their behalf,” Daisy said. All those hours at the library. “The city will shut it down.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We will.” Daisy had the same defiant expression as the night she’d shot off fireballs at the Churro Lady. What if she was plotting to do the same at the exhibit? It was all flash and smoke, but authorities wouldn’t know that. They’d arrest her and Scarlett, too, and take away their children. Muddle-headed girl! Scarlett wanted to slap her, to feel the purifying sting of skin on bone against skin on bone.
The devotees of the Celestial Goddess might not know what Daisy had in mind. Scarlett had to get her away before the teenager’s willfulness and aptitude for chemistry and their zealotry combusted.
Scarlett tugged on Daisy’s arm. “Let’s go home.”
Daisy’s expression hardened, obstinate as a donkey’s. She didn’t accept orders, not from her parents, not from Scarlett.
Sister Fan stood beside them. “You live together?” Her eyes were appraising. “Your babies seem close in age—very close.” The back of Scarlett’s neck prickled. She didn’t like Sister Fan hovering, questioning.
She kept searching Portsmouth Square for the detective. She wanted to curl her body around Liberty, curl up and disappear. She rubbed her daughter’s back, comforted by the sound and the feel of cotton swishing under her fingertips.
“We’ll finish the letter. Then I’ll go,” Daisy said.
Forever talking back! For once, couldn’t the teenager stop fighting? Couldn’t she listen? They’d been raising their children together long enough for her to know that Scarlett must have an emergency. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Daisy snapped.
Scarlett had to end any future contact between Daisy and this group.
“Too bad about Lawyer Loo,” Scarlett said, turning to Sister Fan. She was calculating that the devotees of the Celestial Goddess had been meeting with the immigration consultant, too. Maybe not for a kickback like the church, but to count the ballooning number of asylum cases as proof of the Communist Party’s evil. “I wonder if there’s a reward. For helping the police,” Scarlett said.
Sister Fan looked away, uneasy. The police must have questioned her about her involvement with Lawyer Loo, and it seemed she did not want to undergo another interrogation.
“You are brave, very brave, to call attention to yourself,” Scarlett told Sister Fan. “Most people want nothing to do with the police. They don’t want to get blacklisted.”
Daisy interrupted. “This is America. Not China.”
That emboldened Sister Fan, reminded her that she was the local emissary of the Celestial Goddess. “We’re the largest gathering outside of Asia,” Sister Fan said. “The vibrations are strong here.”
Ridiculous. Scarlett caught Daisy’s eye, but the teenager still wasn’t leaving. “Maybe you can cure her,” Scarlett told Sister Fan. “She’s a slippery one. She once attacke
d an old woman with fireballs.”
She took no pleasure in insulting Daisy, but the teenager didn’t understand the danger they were in.
Daisy reddened. “She’s lying!” She turned toward Scarlett. “I—I was defending you.”
Sister Fan was already backing away. She didn’t know who to believe, but she didn’t want to get caught in the cross fire of their grievances. A child’s shrill scream pierced the air. A little girl in pigtails, getting chased on the playground, desperate to outstrip her pursuers. A ball thumped, a band of teenagers dribbling their way through Portsmouth Square. A bus groaned down the hill. Scarlett sagged, the adrenaline that fueled her flight—and fight—gone out of her. In a hush, she said, “There’s a detective.”
“A detective? You hired one?”
Scarlett shook her head.
“William did?”
As soon as Scarlett said yes, she regretted it, but nothing else would hustle Daisy through Chinatown. Excitement and apprehension rippled over the teenager’s face. All of a sudden self-conscious, she ran her hand over her hair and straightened her rumpled sweater. She must think he was waiting for them at Evergreen Gardens, and the next five minutes were probably the longest in Daisy’s life. They pushed past aunties jostling for bargains, and a pack of teenage girls, the tips of their hair dyed blond, giggling and huddled around a phone. They were watching a video, singing the chorus of that silly song together, “I Love You Hot.” There seemed no end of people on the sidewalk, as if she and Daisy were struggling up a down escalator.
Didi was inconsolable, his mouth a dark black circle of misery, gasping, hiccupping to catch his breath. He kept turning his head away from the bottle, away from the pacifier that Daisy offered him. Always quick to laugh and quick to cry, he was sensitive as a seismograph to the emotional tremors around him.
Liberty studied him with curiosity and concern.