by Rhys Ford
She was lying, of course. Not about her family being pissed off—because apparently the enormous Chinatown apartment should have gone to one of the old woman’s sons instead of her German Chinese granddaughter—but rather that Lilith would set up anything sketchy in her grandmother’s place. She loved the old woman who’d watched her in the afternoons when she was little and insisted on attending every single one of Lilith’s art shows, including the performance pieces where everyone was nude except for their papier-mâché chess-piece helmets. He’d sat next to Ma-Ma during that one and spent the night trying not to laugh at her running commentary about how one of the dancer’s dicks bounced about as he sproinged across the stage.
The old woman died a month and a half ago, leaving everything to the granddaughter who made her laugh.
Rob put his shoulder to the couch, grunted dramatically at Lilith’s extra weight, and kicked the door closed behind him. Collapsing facedown on the sofa, he landed on her thighs with a sweaty plop and made certain he rubbed his wet T-shirt all over her bare legs.
“Oh God, it’s like you’re smearing sashimi all over me,” Lilith gasped. “Get off of me. Get off so I can show you the best part about this apartment.”
“I thought the low rent was the best part.” He grunted again and rolled over to let her out from under him. “That and the endless hot water. Oh, and it’s closer to the shop, so I don’t have to get up two hours before my shift to make it in on time. Okay, why the fuck didn’t I move in here before?”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot, Robbie.” Lilith kicked at his shoulder playfully and got off the couch. She stepped around his boxes and motioned toward the bank of windows that faced the main street. “But you haven’t cornered the market on being stupid. All of this time Ma-Ma lived here, and I never once noticed the view. And most of the time, there’s nothing to see because everything’s all closed up, but dude, when they roll up those doors, it’s showtime. Just like right now.”
“What view? You’ve seen one Chinatown street and you’ve seen them all,” Rob grumbled after her as he reluctantly got off the couch. “What is so special about—”
Lilith was right… again. She was a fucking idiot. Her grandmother lived in the place for decades. She came over from Hong Kong to marry and then raised three boys and one girl while her husband worked himself to death. By the time Lilith came along, the apartment had seen the family expand well beyond its walls, but Chinatown probably hadn’t changed much. So it would’ve been impossible to not notice the fire station across the street.
A fire station that apparently pulled its trucks out in front and made its fire crew wash them down.
Traffic was definitely slowing, more because the streets were cramped and cars had to move around the fire truck’s front end that jutted into the road. But Rob also imagined it had something to do with the four muscular men dressed in tight T-shirts and hip-hugging pants having a water fight with a couple of garden hoses.
“I used to wonder why she had these chairs here,” Lilith said as she dropped into one of the two soft-bodied wing chairs set in front of the window. A small round wooden table with water rings on it sat between them, while a small jade rat kept a plastic cream-and-sugar set company on the windowsill. “I’m kinda mad at her for not sharing this with me. I like to think of it as her last gift to me—an apartment with air-conditioning and a view that can make you sweat.”
There was something familiar about one of the men soaping up the side of the truck, and Rob blindly searched for the chair’s seat with his hand as he sat down. He knew those shoulders, those thighs, and even from three stories up, he could almost make out the cocky sneer on the man’s gorgeous mouth when the bubbly sponge he threw found its target and struck a familiar Latino firefighter in the face.
“Fucking hell, that’s the asshole.” Rob leaned forward as though somehow those extra few inches would change his mind. “The one I’ve been telling you about.”
“I thought you said the asshole was the owner of the shop?” Lilith gave him a side-eye from her sprawl over the chair. “He tattoos, and he’s a fireman on the side?”
“No tattooing, but he does own the place. Or at least… some of it. There’s five of them. They’re brothers,” he groaned and rubbed his sweat-and-grime-covered face. “Only three of them work the shop. The asshole—Mace—he’s that one over there getting hosed down. He’s at the shop all the damned time. So’s his goofy friend Rey, the one Gus is hooked up with. Haven’t you been listening to me bitch about them the past few—” Rob clamped his mouth shut before he did any more damage and shook his head with remorse as he leaned across to rub at Lilith’s hand. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Lil. I know it’s been shitty these past few weeks. Listening to me bitch about the guys in the shop is literally the last thing you want to be dealing with.”
“No, it’s all good.” She returned his squeeze and gave him a crooked smile when she let go of his hand. “It kept my mind off of things. Trust me, hearing you talk about hot guys and ink was a godsend. I just didn’t catch the part about the asshole being… that fucking hot. How’s he feel about girls? Anything at all? Or is it a lost cause all the way around?”
“Gay.” Rob laughed when Lilith threw her hand over her temple and sighed. “Mace is one hundred percent, ‘checks guys out of the front window’ gay. All the brothers are. Three tattoo artists, a fireman, and whatever the hell Luke does. Something with disadvantaged kids. I’m not sure. And okay, I think Ivo might be bi, but God knows with him.”
“I’m not going to say I’d like to change Mace’s mind, because we both know that’s not how it works.” She pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. Her dark eyes turned crafty, and Lilith studied him. “Does he check you out? Was that little emotional land mine a freak thing?”
“I don’t know.” Rob couldn’t take his eyes off of the gleaming red truck and the man crouching next to one of its wheels, vigorously scrubbing at its enormous rim. “No. Maybe. Most of the time, he strolls in and just gets on his brothers’ nerves. It was all really fucking… odd.”
“Sure doesn’t look bothered now,” she commented softly.
“No, but….” He paused, caught in the memory of Mace’s face draped in the shadows he’d brought in with him. “Last night was… the first time he seemed… human, you know? It was like last night he’d come into the shop thinking no one was there, and he left his… person suit outside the door. And for a second—a really short second—it felt like I was seeing him for the first time. Then it was gone, and he was that asshole again.”
“Well, just be careful, Robbie,” Lilith cautioned, wrinkling her nose at him. “Remember what Ma-Ma used to say—sometimes people only show you the parts of themselves they want you to see, even when you think you’ve surprised them.”
“Babe, I met your Ma-Ma, and every single time, she pinched some guy’s ass. There’s no way in hell she’d have said that. First time she met me, she told me to only date guys with big dicks,” he shot back. “Pretty sure your grandma got more action in one month than both of us in our entire lives.”
“Okay, yeah. So she never said that. But she would have if she hadn’t been such a broad.” She shrugged off his snort. “Or spent most of her Saturday nights playing mah-jongg and drinking everyone under the table. Still, she’d have told you to be careful. Ma-Ma was good that way. She didn’t care who you hooked up with, so long as you watched your back and your heart. And kicked him to the curb once you were done with him.”
“Yeah. See, I think that’s the problem.” He turned back to the window and watched Mace hold the water hose over his head to rinse soap out of his slicked-back hair. “The guy I saw last night? The one inside of the asshole? He’d been kicked more than a few times, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to let anyone else near him again.”
Three
AS MUCH as Mace didn’t want to admit it, Rey had been right. He was tired, soaking wet, and a little chilled, but he felt a little b
etter about… last night, or he was okay until his mind drifted back over to the soot-stained memories lying in wait for him.
Guilt grabbed hold of him again, dug its fingers into his chest, and squeezed the air out of his lungs. The little girl was nothing but smoke and death when he worked to get her breathing again. It didn’t matter how much coffee or water he drank, he couldn’t get the taste of the fire out of his mouth. When Rey suggested he come down to help wash the truck, Mace said no, but his best friend was persuasive.
“You can’t just sit in a box and only come out when it’s time to live your life, Mace,” Rey scolded him lightly over the phone. “Just get down here and help. You’ll feel better.”
And he had, until he reached his apartment building. Then he remembered the silence waiting for him inside.
There were times when he regretted living so far away from the family, and with Rey pretty much moved in with Gus at the house, he came home to an empty apartment for days on end. Most people wouldn’t have liked the place, but there was a busy alleyway beneath his balcony, and a few doors down the street was a tiny bar that served ika and arare for snacks while people drank and held karaoke contests every Thursday night. The selection ran to old American love songs, Chinese ballads, and K-pop tunes—a far cry from the metal and blues Mace preferred—but from the laughter and clapping he heard, everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Anything to break the silence.
He’d gotten a great deal on the place, mostly because he did most of the renovations himself with the help of his brothers, and it was only a few blocks away from the station. The extra expense of living in Chinatown was defrayed by not having to drive in for every shift. The structure was older. It dated back to the sixties but definitely wasn’t as ancient as some of the buildings around the station. There were parts of Chinatown that barely survived the Great Earthquake. He’d done a clandestine tour of the district’s buried remains when he was younger, but the quiet pressed in too tightly on him, and he’d been a shaking, sweaty mess by the time it was over.
There hadn’t been much to see, but the echoes of the old Chinatown hadn’t seemed too much different from where he lived now.
The late-afternoon sun chased him down the street and was heating up the building’s vestibule by the time he made it past its heavy metal security door. From the smells and sounds coming down the front hall, someone was frying fish and watching Chinese opera. Mace dug for his keys to grab his mail from the bank of boxes next to the stairs when the door to 1A opened and Mrs. Hwang popped her head out.
It wasn’t the first time the old Chinese lady had lain in wait for him, but as tired as he was, Mace had a smile for her.
The old woman hovered somewhere between eighty and eternal, four feet some inches tall, with stooped shoulders and a mop of gray-shot black hair. Her face was as wrinkled as a handful of li hing mui plums, and her grin was always broad and sweet when she spotted him. Like many of the Chinatown factory workers, she’d once smoked like a chimney—harsh cigarettes that burnished her teeth and permanently yellowed the skin between her fingers—but she’d sworn off of them when her husband died of cancer decades before. Dressed in a thin pink housecoat over a pair of magenta leggings, she shuffled out of her apartment, her steps making the flowers on top of her plastic house slippers bob in time with the rise and fall of her feet.
She was one of Mace’s favorite people.
“Hǔzǐ, can you help me?” Her fingers shook as she pointed back toward the open door. “I need the big pot.”
“’Course. Not a problem.” The mail would have to wait, and he held out his arm for her to lean on. “Are you sure you don’t want me to put shelves in your pantry against that one wall? It would give you more storage.”
“I do not want to bother you, but if it means you wouldn’t have to help me anymore, then yes,” she rumbled at him in her raspy voice. “I don’t use it all the time, but it only fits on top of the refrigerator.”
He knew what she was saying. There was a delicate dance of culture and societal norms they’d done since the moment he moved in. As the only non-Chinese in the building, Mace had to learn very quickly what was meant by certain phrases and how to respond to gifts and questions. He was by no means fluent in the culture or the language, but he knew enough to get by, and he certainly understood the shaky ground he stood on now.
“I will build you the shelves and put the pot on the top one so you still have to come get me if you want it down.” Mace kept his tone teasingly light and slowed his pace to match hers. “Mostly, it’s so you’ll have space on your refrigerator for more lemon jars. That way, you’ll need me to help get those down, and I will be right there to eat some when they’re ready.”
He got the laugh he wanted.
“I can’t believe you like sour lemon,” she scolded him, falling into Cantonese. “Not even my grandchildren like it.”
“That just means more for me,” he replied back, not minding her grimace at his accent. “I am trying, Grandmother. I don’t think my tongue was built the right way.”
“At least you try,” Mrs. Hwang agreed and patted his hand. “You get me the pot, and I will make us some tea. The boy brought egg tarts today, so we can have some.”
“I’m soaking wet,” Mace pointed out. “I don’t want to get your—”
“I do not mind. Besides, there is plastic on the couch.” She patted him on the back and shuffled past him toward the kitchen. “Close the front door.”
Her place was smaller than his—a kitchenette and the dining area to the left of the short front hall and a long shotgun-style living room that faced the street to the right. A small bedroom and bathroom were at the end of the foyer, and the narrow walk’s walls were covered with framed photos.
It was like looking into the Chinatown he’d hoped to find underground—faces and lives caught on film and silvered paper. Many were of Mrs. Hwang and her husband in their twenties and thirties, and a progression of children joined them and then aged on trips to Disneyland or at local places Mace was familiar with. He got the pot down from on top of the refrigerator and, with a tape measure he’d left in her junk drawer, measured the back wall of the pantry again just to make sure he had the numbers right.
“I brought you a towel,” she said as she shuffled back into the kitchen. “But you are probably dried by now.”
“I can sit on it while we have tea,” Mace replied and jotted the measurements down on a Post-it note. Then he did what he always did when visiting Mrs. Hwang. He walked to the front hall and took down one of the photos—an image of her laughing in front of a carousel. When he returned to the kitchen, he held it up for her to see while she measured out loose-leaf tea into a porcelain pot. He asked, “Why don’t you tell me about what you were doing here? It looks like you’re having a lot of fun.”
“SHIT, FORGOT the goddamned mail,” Mace swore an hour and a half later as he juggled Tupperware containers while he tried to get his front door open. His key turned too easily in the lock, meeting no resistance, and Mace was displeased to discover the stereo he had left playing classic rock was now silent.
Unlike Mrs. Hwang’s place, his apartment had been gutted by its previous owner, who tore down its space-consuming front hall. The renovation transformed the once chopped-up area into a single large room with only a marble-topped island with cabinets to separate the kitchen from the living and dining spaces.
So it was easy for Mace to find the source of the turned-off stereo—his youngest brother, Ivo, sprawled over his couch.
Among all of his found siblings, Ivo was both the most perplexing and the one who understood him the best, even more than Bear did. When Ivo came into the house as a deadly quiet, headstrong boy, there’d been friction about everything that surrounded him. The first six months had been the worst of Mace’s life outside of the system. He’d butted heads with Bear more times than he could count and pushed his older brother to hold Ivo accountable for his chores and schoolwork.
&
nbsp; They all agreed on certain things, and one of them was to raise Ivo into a respectable, independent-thinking adult, but at the time, Mace felt like he was doing more damage than good, especially when Bear countermanded every single thing Mace asked Ivo to do. They fought horribly and had long stretches of silence punched with hot, cutting words. Then Mace threw his hands up and refused to go any further.
He’d been packing his things to leave when Ivo came into his room.
The sullen disregard Ivo wore on his face was gone, replaced by a bone-shaking fear. His eyes were as crystal blue as ever, but they glittered behind a wall of tears Ivo fought to hold back. He’d been wearing one of Mace’s T-shirts, something he’d gotten at a concert long before Bear made them a home. It was one of the few things Mace had been able to hold on to during the moves from one foster home to the next, one of the few things he’d been able to call his own at a time in his life when he had nothing but what he could shove into a trash bag to take to the next place he’d sleep for a few months, like a transient ghost visiting families scattered around San Francisco.
It was the shirt theft that drove Mace over the edge, and there Ivo stood, wearing the evidence on his skinny, boyish frame with enough tears in his eyes to fuel a summer rain.
“Don’t go,” the young boy said, his voice breaking in the echoing emptiness of Mace’s spartan room. “Who else is going to be like me if you go?”
They were nothing alike, so Ivo’s words jerked Mace’s head up, and he stopped packing to stare incredulously at the kid. Clearing his throat gave him time to search through his confused thoughts, but he came up with nothing. Mace cocked his head and asked, “What the hell you talking about?”
“Who else is going to read with me?” Ivo pointed to the bookshelves running under the windows of Mace’s room. “It’s just you and me. Who else is going to read?”