A Good Fall

by Ha Jin

  The brothel had no name. I had once come across a newspaper ad in our kitchen that read: “Angels of Your Dream—Asian Girls from Various Countries with Gorgeous Figures and Tender Hearts.” It gave no contact information other than a phone number, which was the one shared by the women. I almost laughed out loud at the ad, because the three of them were all Chinese. Of course, Huong could pass for Vietnamese, speaking the language as her native tongue, and Nana could pretend to be a Malaysian or Singaporean, since she came from Hong Kong and spoke accented Mandarin. But Lili, a tall college student from Shanghai, looked Chinese through and through, even though she spoke English well. She was the one who handled the phone calls. I guessed Lili would return to school when the summer was over, and then Mrs. Chen might hire another twentysomething who was fluent in English. I wasn’t sure if my landlady was the real boss, however. The women often mentioned someone called the Croc. I had never met the man, but I learned from them that he owned some shady businesses in the area and was a coyote.

  I liked having dinner with my housemates. We usually ate quite late, around eight p.m., but that was fine with me, since most days I didn’t leave the factory until seven. Often I was not the only man dining with them; they offered free dinner to their clients as well. The meals were homely fare—plain rice and two or three dishes, one of which was meat while the others were vegetables. Occasionally the women would prepare a bowl of seafood in place of a vegetable dish. There would also be a soup, usually made of spinach or watercress or bamboo shoots mixed with dried shrimp, tofu or egg drops, or even rice crust. The women would take turns cooking, one person each day, unless that person was occupied with a john and another had to step in for her in the kitchen. Some of their clients enjoyed the atmosphere at the table and stayed for hours chatting.

  Whenever there was another man at dinner, I would remain quiet. I’d finish eating quickly and return to my room, where I would watch TV or play solitaire or leaf through a magazine. But when I was the only man I’d stay as long as I could. The women seemed to like having me around and would even tease me. Huong was not only the prettiest but also the best cook, depending less on sauces, whereas Lili used too much sugar and Nana deep-fried almost everything. One day Huong braised a large pomfret and stir-fried slivers of potato and celery, both favorites of mine, though I hadn’t told her so. None of them had a client that evening, so dinner started at seven thirty and we ate slowly.

  Nana told us, “I had a guy this afternoon who said his girlfriend had just jilted him. He cried in my room—it was awful. I didn’t know how to comfort him. I just said, ‘You have to let it go.’”

  “Did he pay you?” Lili asked.

  “Uh-huh. He gave me eighty dollars without doing anything with me.”

  “Well, I wonder why he came here,” I said.

  “Maybe just to have someone to talk to,” Huong said.

  “I don’t know,” Lili pitched in. “Maybe to find out if he could still do it with another girl. Men are weak creatures and cannot survive without having a woman around.”

  I had never liked Lili, who would speak to me with her eyes half closed as if reluctant to pay me more mind. I said, “There’re a lot of bachelors out there. Most of them are getting on all right.”

  “Like yourself,” Nana broke in, giggling.

  “I’m single because I’m too poor to get married,” I confessed.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Huong asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “So would you go with me if I wasn’t a sex worker?” Nana asked, her oval face expressionless.

  “Your taste is too expensive for me,” I said, laughing, though it was only partly a joke.

  They all laughed. Nana continued, “Come on, I’ll give you a big discount.”

  “I can’t take advantage of you like that,” I said.

  That cracked them up again. I meant what I said, though. If I slept with one of them, I might have to do the same with the other two, spending a fortune. Then it would be hard to keep a balanced relationship with all of them. Besides, I wasn’t sure if they were all clean and healthy. Even if they were, I disliked Lili. It was better to remain unattached.

  Then the phone rang, and Lili picked it up. “Hello, honey, how may I help you?” she intoned in a sugary voice.

  I resumed eating as if uninterested, but listened carefully. Lili told the caller, “We have many Asian girls here. What kind of a girl are you interested in, sir? … Yes, we do…. Of course pretty, every one of them is pretty…. At least one-twenty … Well, that’ll be between you and the girl, sir…. Wait, let me write it down.” She grabbed a pen and began jotting down the address. Meanwhile, Huong and Nana finished their dinner, knowing that one of them would have business to take care of.

  Lili said into the phone, “Got it. She’ll be there within half an hour…. Absolutely, sir. Thank you, bye-bye.”

  Hanging up, Lili turned around and said, “Huong, you should go. The man’s name is Mr. Han. He wants a Thai girl.”

  “I can’t speak Thai!”

  “Speak some Vietnamese to show him that you’re not from China. He can’t tell the difference anyway, as long as you know how to charm him.”

  Huong went back into her room to brush her teeth and put on some makeup, and Lili handed me the scrap of paper with our destination—a room in the Double Luck Hotel. I knew how to get there, having driven the women several times. I clapped on my brown duckbill cap, which kept my eyes hidden.

  A few minutes later Huong came out, ready to go. “Wow, you’re beautiful!” I said, quite amazed.

  “Am I?” She lifted her arms while turning a little to let me view her from the side. Her waist was concave at the small of her back.

  “Like a little fox,” I said.

  She slapped me on the arm. She wore a beige miniskirt and had applied lipstick, but she seemed more like a teenager who had messed up her makeup, so that her face appeared older than her petite body, which was curvaceous but tight. As she walked with her denim purse hanging from her thin shoulder, her legs and hips swayed a little as if she were about to leap. Together we went down to the garage.

  The hotel was on a busy street, and two large buses stood at its front entrance, one still puffing exhaust out of its rear. Flocks of tourists were collecting their baggage, while a guide shouted to gather them for check-in. I found a quiet spot around the corner and let Huong out. “Call if you need me to come up,” I told her. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”

  “Thanks.” She closed the door and strolled away, her gait as casual as if she were a guest at the hotel.

  My heart sagged as I lay back in the seat to take a nap. She was young and beautiful and shouldn’t be selling herself like that. For sure she had to send her parents money regularly, but there were other ways of making a living. She wasn’t stupid, and she could have learned a respectable trade. She had finished high school in Vietnam and could speak some English by now. But from what I had gathered at the dining table, she was an illegal alien, whereas Nana had a Canadian green card and Lili held a student visa. They could make some money, definitely, but nothing like what the newspaper ads promised for the “massage” profession—“more than $20,000 a month.” Usually, the women charged a john one hundred at the house, but they had to give Mrs. Chen forty of that. Sometimes a client would give them a tip, between twenty and sixty dollars. Nana was rawboned and on the homely side, with a slightly cavernous mouth, so her price for incalls was eighty dollars, unless the men were older and had more cash to throw around. On a good day, they could each make more than two hundred after paying our landlady. Now and then an obnoxious client would not only refuse to tip them but also walk off with their belongings. Lili had once lost a pair of silver bracelets, stolen by a man who claimed to be from Shanghai, like her.

  I had asked Huong about visiting hotels and private homes. She said she could make thirty or forty dollars more per client than at the house, though there were more risks. One night I had driv
en her to see a john at the International Inn, but on arrival she had found two men in the suite. They dragged her in before she could back out, and worked her so hard that she felt as if her legs no longer belonged to her. She had to take off her high heels to walk back to the car. She wept all the way home. She was sick the next day but wouldn’t go to a clinic, as she had no health insurance. I suggested she see Dr. Liang at Sun Garden Herbs. She paid ten dollars for a diagnosis fee. The old man put his fingers on her wrists to feel her pulse and said her kidneys were weak. Also, there was too much angry fire in her liver. He prescribed a bunch of herbs, which helped her recover. After that, I offered to accompany her into hotels and wait in the hallway, but she wouldn’t let me, saying it would be too conspicuous.

  I couldn’t drift off to sleep in the car, thinking about Huong. What kind of man was she in there with? Was she all right? Did she like it if the john was young and handsome? Was she acting like a slut? Sometimes at night I couldn’t sleep and would fantasize about her, but when I was fully awake I’d keep my distance. I knew I was just a presser in a sweatshop, gangly and nondescript, and might never be able to date a nice girl, but it would be shameful to have an easy woman as a girlfriend. At most, I could be a good friend to Huong.

  Tonight she returned in less than fifty minutes, which was unusual. I was pleased to see her back all right, though her eyes were watery and shed a hard light. She slid into the passenger seat, and I pulled away from the curb. “How was it? No trouble?” I asked, afraid that the client might have discovered she wasn’t Thai.

  “Rotten luck again,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “The man’s an official from Beijing. He wanted me to write him a receipt like I’d sold him medicines or something. Where could I get a receipt for him? Nuts!”

  “Did he haggle with you?”

  “No, but he bit my nipple so hard it must be bleeding. I’ll have to put iodine on it once we’re home. My clients will think I’m diseased now.”

  I sighed, not knowing how to respond. As we were crossing Thirty-seventh Avenue, I said, “Can’t you do something less dangerous for a living?”

  “You find a me a job and I’ll take it.”

  That silenced me. She slipped a ten into my hand, which was the unspoken rule worked out by the women—every time I drove them, they tipped the same amount. Actually, only Huong and Nana did that, because Lili didn’t take outcalls.

  I thanked Huong and put the money into my shirt pocket.

  The three women often compared notes. The best clients, they all agreed, were old men. Older johns were usually less aggressive and easier to entertain. Many of them couldn’t get hard and spent more time cracking dirty jokes than doing real business. Those old goats could be more generous, having more spare cash in their “little coffers,” unbeknownst to their wives. The older ones seldom ate dinner at the house. Some of them were friends of Mrs. Chen’s, in which case the women would treat them like special guests, and even give them Viagra. I was surprised when I heard that.

  “Viagra?” I asked Lili about Mr. Tong, a bent man in his mid-sixties. “Aren’t you afraid he might have a heart attack?”

  “Only half a pill, no big deal. Mrs. Chen said he always needs extra help.”

  “He pays you well besides,” Nana said. “Lili, did he give you two hundred today?”

  “One eighty,” Lili replied.

  “Doesn’t he have a wife?” I asked.

  “Not anymore. She died long ago,” Huong said, cracking a spiced peanut.

  “Why wouldn’t he marry again?” I went on. “At least he should find someone who can take care of him.”

  Nana let out a sigh. “Money’s the root of the trouble. He’s so rich he can’t find a trustworthy wife.”

  Huong added, “I’ve heard he owns a couple of restaurants.”

  “Also your sweatshop, Wanping.” Nana looked me straight in the face, as if forcing down a laugh.

  “No, he doesn’t,” I shot back. “My factory is owned by a girl from Hong Kong named Nini.”

  That had them in stitches. Actually, the owner of my garment shop was a Taiwanese man who taught college before coming to America.

  Many of the johns were married men. They were reluctant to spend time and money on a mistress for fear of complications that might destroy their marriage. So they tried to keep up appearances while indulging in a sensuous life on the sly. But there were always exceptions. One day, Huong said a middle-aged client had told her that he hadn’t had sex for almost two years because his wife was too ill. Huong had advised him to come more often, at least twice a month, so that he could recover his sex life. As he was now, he was totally inadequate. “He’s a good man,” Huong told us. “He couldn’t do anything with me at all, saying he felt guilty about his wife, but he paid me anyway.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have come to a whorehouse in the first place,” Lili said.

  I could tell that Huong and Nana didn’t really like Lili either. She often bitched about misplaced things, and once accused Nana of using her cell phone to call someone in San Francisco. They had a row and didn’t speak to each other for days afterward.

  The story about the man with a bedridden wife made me think a lot. If I were a policeman, knowing about his family situation, would I have arrested him for visiting a prostitute? Probably not. I used to believe that all johns were bad and loose men, but now I could see that some of them were nothing but wrecks with personal problems that they didn’t know how to handle. They came here hoping that a prostitute might help.

  I was in bed one night when a cry rose from Nana’s room. At first I thought it was just an orgasmic groan she had faked to please a client. Sometimes I was unsettled by the noises the women and the men made, noises that kept me awake and fantasizing. Then Nana screamed, “Get out of here!”

  I pulled on my pants and ran out of my room. The door of Nana’s room was ajar, and through the gap I saw a paunchy man of around sixty standing by the bed and madly gesticulating at Nana. This was the first time I had seen an older john make trouble. I moved closer but didn’t go in. Mrs. Chen had told me to give the women a hand whenever they needed it. She hadn’t made it explicit, but I’d guessed that she wanted me to provide some protection for them.

  “I paid you, so I’m staying,” the man barked, and flung up his hand.

  “You can’t make a night of it. Please go away,” Nana said, her face stamped with annoyance.

  I went in and asked him, “What’s your problem? Didn’t you already get your time with her?”

  He lifted his eyes to squint at me. His face, red like a monkey’s ass, showed he was drunk. In fact, the entire room reeked of alcohol. “Who are you?” he grunted. “This is none of your business. I wanna stay here tonight, and nobody can make me change my mind.”

  I could tell that he thought this was like China, where it’s commonplace for a john to spend a night with a girl if he pays enough. “I am just a tenant,” I said. “You’ve been kicking up such a racket that I can’t sleep.”

  “So? Deal with it. I want my money’s worth.”

  As he was speaking, I glanced at Nana’s bed. Two wet spots stained a pink sheet, and a pair of pillows had been cast aside. On the floor was an overturned cane chair. By now both Huong and Lili were up too, but they stayed outside the door, watching. I told the man, “It’s the rule here: you fire your gun and you leave. No girl is supposed to be your bed warmer.”

  “I paid her for what I want.”

  “All right, this is not my problem. I’m going to call the police. We simply cannot sleep while you’re rocking the house.”

  “Oh yeah? Call the cops and see who they’ll haul away first.” He seemed more awake now, his eyes glittering.

  I pressed on. “All the tenants here will say that you broke in to assault this woman.” I was surprised by what I said, and I saw Huong and Lili avert their eyes.

  “Cut that shit out! I paid this ho.” He pointed at Nana.
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br />   “She’s not a whore. Nana, you didn’t invite him here, did you?”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head.

  I told him, “See, we’re all her witnesses. You’d better get out of here, now.”

  “I can’t believe this. There’s no good faith in this world anymore—it’s worse than China.” He grabbed his walking stick and lumbered out of the room.

  The three women laughed and told me that the old goat was a first-time visitor and that they felt lucky to have me living on the same floor. We were in the kitchen now, all wide awake. Nana put on a kettle to boil some water for an herbal tea called Sweet Dreams.

  I wasn’t pleased by what I had done. “I acted like a pimp, didn’t I?”

  “No, you did well,” Huong replied.

  “Thank God we have a man among us,” Lili added.

  Lili’s words made me uneasy. I’m not one of you, I thought. But afterward, I felt they were more friendly than before, and even Lili started speaking to me more often and with her eyes fully open. They’d ask me what I would like for dinner, and cooked fish three or four times a week because I was fond of seafood. My factory provided steamed rice for its workers at lunch, so I just needed to bring something to go with it. Whenever it was Huong’s turn to cook, she would set aside the leftovers in a plastic container for me to take to work the next day. Nana and Lili often joked that Huong treated me as if I were her boyfriend. At first, I felt embarrassed, but little by little I got used to their teasing.

  One morning in late July, I woke up feeling as if my lungs were on fire. I must have caught the flu, but I had to go to the factory, where a stack of cut pieces was waiting to be ironed. Unlike the sewing women, I couldn’t sit down at the ironing table. The shop provided tea in a samovar, which tasted a little fishy, but I drank one mug after another to soothe my throat and keep my eyes open. As a result, I went to the bathroom more frequently. Some of the floorboards were crooked, and I had to be careful when walking around. By midafternoon I was sweating all over and my pulse was racing, so I decided to rest on a long bench by the wall, but I tripped and fell before I could reach it. The moment I picked myself up, my foreman, Jimmy Choi, a broad-shouldered fellow of about forty-five, came over and said, “Are you all right, Wanping?”