by Ed Lin
“It isn’t really coming together,” she said. “I don’t have my lipstick on.”
“I didn’t even notice,” I said. “I think it’s going to pass just fine.”
Her eyes widened. “You don’t expect me to work at that betel-nut stand, do you?”
“I was thinking that you could. Get close to the lamei, gain her trust and find out what she knows about Julia. I would go right up to her myself, but she might know about me from the American and his buddies. She might shut the door right in my face.” Nancy bit her lip.
“It sounds a little dangerous,” she said.
“It’s not that dangerous. There’s no way another shooting is going to happen there. I’ve already talked it over with Dwayne. We’ll be checking in on you. Also, if you don’t feel safe at any point, just leave. It wouldn’t be worth it at all if you were scared for one second.”
“You really want to know what Julia’s message was.” Nancy looked into my eyes. “She meant so much to you.”
“It would help give me some closure,” I said, crossing my arms. Nancy looked up and wondered at the light fixture. She had a lovely throat.
“Well,” she said. “I wonder if I could pull off being a betel-nut beauty. Maybe it will be fun.” I was relieved to hear it.
“Thank you so much, Nancy. I owe you a major favor.”
“I’d be doing it for me, too. I’ve already played a tang-ki, and that was kind of exciting.” She wavered. “Nothing’s going to happen, right?”
I put my hands on her hips. “Everything’s going to be fine. Like I said, if there’s any danger at all, we’ll stop.”
“I’ll try. I’m tougher than you think, you know. Now I need to get out of this.” She made a move to go to the bathroom, but I stood in her way.
“Hey,” I said, “I was thinking we could take this into the bedroom. I wasn’t in the mood earlier, but things have changed.”
She giggled. “It’s the outfit, right?”
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of her panties through the mesh dress. “No, it’s you.”
I DROVE OUT TO the Forever Beauty stand by myself the next morning. It was the third stand in from the first highway exit. I went to the other side of the street and straddled my moped. I didn’t want to be too conspicuous. After all, most customers were truck drivers or taxi drivers. Even though I kept my helmet on, I never looked directly at the stand as I pretended to fix my rearview mirrors.
It looked like any other stand. In the light of the rising sun, the green neon and full-length windows made Forever Beauty look like a candy-sprinkled ice cube that encased two nearly naked teenage girls. Both were seated on bar stools. One was wrapping binlang. The other was doing her nails. She glanced at me and quickly looked away.
You can undress a Taiwanese teenaged girl and strip her of her modesty, but you’ll never take her shyness away. Teenaged boys are shy, too. I blame the Japanese. They did this to us.
A back door in the ice cube opened, and I saw a fully clothed woman come in with a food tray and two bowls. The “spicy sister,” as the boss is called, looked more like a sour sister. She was in her thirties and wore a dark blue blouse and slacks. After she set the tray down, she put one hand on each girl and spoke emphatically. Neither girl looked at the boss as they slurped up noodles. Sometimes they nodded in response to the lamei.
The boss turned and tapped something into the fish tank. Flashes of silver and gold swam up and collected near the surface.
I was glad the girls were fed before the fish.
The lamei stepped out and went down half a block to where a table on the sidewalk was set up with packs of joss sticks, an incense holder and bags of snacks for offerings. She lit up a stick, bowed three times with it and then planted it. She walked back into the stand, pausing to pick up some trash on the ground.
Her whole routine was carried out as casually as if she were walking a dog. I wasn’t sure if the ritual was for Ghost Month, a dead relative or the birthday of one of the myriad Taoist deities.
I rubbed my hands. There wasn’t much else I could do. I had confirmed that the place existed and that it was still open. I had also objectively determined that Nancy was a lot more attractive than the current staff. The spicy sister would have to hire her.
Almost everything from here depended on Nancy.
I started up my moped and left.
DWAYNE MET US AT Nancy’s apartment in the early afternoon. I asked Dwayne to look her over in the binlang xishi outfit. He gave her a cursory look and petted the stubble on his chin.
“Not bad,” he said. “That’s actually pretty close. I’ve been chewing binlang a long time, so I know. The only thing I would say is that your clothes look too …”
“Slutty?” asked Nancy.
“Ha, I was going to say too new! I’ve seen sluttier, believe me. You’re going with pretty safe choices here. This outfit would pass at a high school, honestly.”
“Dwayne, I know all about you and high-school girls,” I said. “But how should Nancy act?”
“These girls,” said Dwayne, “they’re in not-so-great economic circumstances. Whatever she offers you, just jump at it, even if it’s just a few hours at a time or a really late shift, or even if you have to start right away. The lamei may even want to dress you herself, but if she tries to make you pay for the outfit, then refuse. A reputable binlang-stand owner would never sell stuff to their own girls.”
I spoke up. “Nancy, if you ever feel for half a second that you’re in danger, get out of there,” I said.
“There’s always a little bit of danger,” said Dwayne. “But there’s no way another murder could happen there so soon, you know?” Nancy lifted her arms and scratched her just-shaved armpits. “I’ll try to be as low-key as possible and eavesdrop?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Who knows what you’ll find out.”
“Well,” she said, “the music probably won’t be as good as what we had at Bauhaus.”
“It’s going to pay a lot more,” said Dwayne.
“How much?” Nancy and I both asked.
“You get a regular shift, you can make fifty thousand NT a month.”
“Wow, maybe I’ll just do this job for the money!”
I touched her hand. “We both know you’re just doing this as a favor to me, Nancy. Even if I can’t find everything out in the end, I at least want to know more.”
“I want to know more, too,” said Nancy.
“Here we go, then,” said Dwayne. “Nancy, you should change back into regular street clothes. Is the sports car the only car you have?”
“Yes,” she said, her face reddening.
“That won’t do. You should take the bus to Hsinchu City.”
“Ugh,” she said.
“Jing-nan and I have to go to work. Just keep us posted with texts, all right?”
“Wish me luck, guys,” she said.
Dwayne cocked his head and watched Nancy’s ass as she walked away to change. Then he put me in a headlock and jabbed me alternately in the gut and the armpits.
“You’re a dirty bastard, you know that? What are you doing, sleeping with this girl, you little playboy!”
EARLY ON IN THE night, Nancy texted that she was at her binlang stand and that she was going to begin working immediately because someone hadn’t shown up. I said that Dwayne and I would swing by and check on her after midnight. The lamei was confiscating her phone for the shift, and she wouldn’t be able to stay in touch.
I couldn’t focus on work. Frankie nudged me when a loud, swaggering group of Australian men nearly walked by. “Hey, mates!” I called out. “Let me put some meat on the barbie for ya!” They all came over. Naturally, they had a lot of questions—the same ones all young men had. What time did the trains stop running? Where were the best clubs? Did I know any women?
“All the women I know are Buddhist nuns,” I said, not missing a beat in getting their food together. “They’ve already said their prayers an
d gone off to bed. They’re all virgins, too, so don’t think about sneaking in on them.” I had an answer for everything.
They laughed easily and ate a lot. I liked them. I wondered what it was like to be on vacation in another country, eating and drinking, having a good time.
Instead, I had my life. Here I was, skewering meats that I had lost the taste for long ago while Nancy was potentially putting her life on the line. She said she could pretend she was doing cosplay. For men, that meant donning helmets, full-body armor and swords, but for women it meant wearing lingerie-inspired battle gear.
I wondered if Nancy would be able to retrieve Julia’s secret message. She seemed to have a knack for getting things done.
Julia and I had planned out our entire lives together. We knew where we were going and how we were going to get there. I never planned anything at all with Nancy. I never knew what was going to happen the next day.
But I couldn’t imagine that next day without her.
Now I was using Nancy to chase a ghost from the past. In all honesty, that’s what Julia was. By the time she was murdered, I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in years. I didn’t know the person she had become. She wouldn’t have recognized me. The guy who grew up saying he would never be like his parents was now exactly them.
Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. All I really needed to know was that I wanted Nancy to be safe and to be with me.
“Stop slacking, Jing-nan!” yelled Dwayne. “I’ll stick a hot-pepper suppository up your ass if you keep daydreaming!”
“I’m not daydreaming if it’s nighttime, am I?” I muttered.
“Day or night, it doesn’t matter. You don’t know what’s going on, anyway!”
“I’m just thinking about stuff.”
“Stop thinking and start selling, already! Move that mouth!”
I tried to get back into the rhythm of things, but I was distracted. Every second I left Nancy at that binlang joint was another second that she was in danger. I was relieved when the crowds began to break up early. I turned over the last row of skewers, exposing the charred side of chicken hearts.
“Frankie,” I said, “we’re going to close on the early side tonight. As soon as we sell these, we’re done.” It was just after midnight. He frowned. It was a surprise and Frankie didn’t like surprises.
“See, Cat, this is how it starts,” said Dwayne. “Start packing up early today. In two weeks he’s going to let one of us go. A month later, the whole stand is gone.”
“You’re coming with me, aren’t you, Dwayne?” I said.
“Trying to get me to do work off the clock, huh?” he said, even as he folded up his apron.
Frankie stood up. “You two go. I’ll handle the shutdown.”
“Really, Frankie?” I asked. He nodded.
“The Cat was the first person your grandfather hired,” said Dwayne. “He still has that rock-solid work ethic.” I saw the light brown blob of his midsection shiver as he tore off his work shirt and pulled on a black polo. “It’s my lucky shirt,” he explained.
“We need luck?” I asked.
“You always need luck, little brother. See you tomorrow, Frankie.”
I fired up my moped, and Dwayne was kind enough to keep his motorcycle down to a speed that I could match. We turned onto the highway to Hsinchu City, and we didn’t stop once until we got to the turnoff and pulled in to Forever Beauty.
I saw Nancy’s eyes flash for a second after I pulled off my helmet. It was hard not to give her a full smile. Nancy stood up from her stool, but the other binlang xishi had already gotten the jump on her. A woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty swung open the door and sauntered over to me. Like Nancy she was wearing a short red skirt and a white top. I guessed that was the standard uniform here for the late shift. She had dark skin and beautiful, thick black eyebrows. Although she slouched too much, I’m sure the customers weren’t critical of her posture. The girl looked at my neck and asked me what I wanted. I told her one pack of binlang, and she turned back to the stand.
Dwayne remained seated but walked his bike next to me, so that my moped and I were between him and the stand. Nancy stood up and stepped out of the stand as my girl held the door open.
“Hello,” Nancy said to Dwayne. “What would you like?”
He pretended to be preoccupied with her body. He’d better have been pretending. “Hi there, sweetie,” he told her. “How about a date tonight? I can take you for a ride on my big motorcycle.”
“No, thank you. I only sell betel nut,” said Nancy.
“Well, in that case, just bring me a pack, little girl.”
She gave a tight smile and walked back to the booth.
I suddenly realized that my server was standing next to me, clutching a pack of twenty binlang chews. “You like that girl better, too, huh?” she asked. “What’s so great about her?”
“I was just looking,” I said.
The girl’s nostrils flared, and she threw down my pack. “It’s her first day, all right?” she said. “She’s an amateur! I’m the experienced one here!”
“Hey, little girl,” Dwayne cooed. “Come over here. I like you better than that other girl. You go tell her I want you to bring out my binlang, not her.”
The girl crossed her arms but headed back to the booth.
I bent down and picked up the pack and dusted it off. Twenty betel-leaf-wrapped nuggets were packed in a bag featuring an inkjet picture of a lingerie model.
The dark-skinned girl angry-walked from the stand to Dwayne. Nancy trailed her and then came toward me.
“Are you all right?” I asked her under my breath.
“Yes. Actually, this is kind of fun.”
“We’ll talk later.”
I looked over at Dwayne. He had a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and they were both laughing. I handed over a fifty NT bill to Nancy.
“No tip?” she asked aloud. I handed her another fifty NT bill. “Thank you.” She walked over to the other girl and handed her both bills. Nancy was about to reenter the cube when Dwayne called out.
“Hey, you girls want to see something funny? Watch my friend here try binlang for the first time!” He pointed at the bag in my hand. “C’mon, give it a shot. It’s not that bad.”
I pulled out a betel nut and popped it in my mouth. Not too bad. A vegetable smell and a hint of lime. It caved in when I bit it, and a foul liquid spilled over my tongue. It tasted like a dead frog had just spit into my mouth. I gagged. Everything came tumbling out onto the ground. Red juice dribbled from my chin into my crotch.
Dwayne, Nancy and the other girl all laughed as I wiped my face with my shirt.
“Girls!”
We all looked over to the stand. The lamei was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, looking sexy and furious. The two betel-nut girls instantly sobered up. The lamei observed that her message had been received, nodded once and disappeared. The dark-skinned girl took Nancy by the hand, and the two walked back.
When they got far enough away, Dwayne said, “That girl is from the mountain!”
“What mountain?”
“You idiot. I mean she’s aboriginal! I think she’s into me, too.”
“She was into you because you tipped her.”
“Hell, yes, I tipped her! Say, Jing-nan, are you all right?”
“My mouth tastes like shit, but I’m all right.”
“Now you know how our customers feel when they eat your cooking, ha ha. How about getting that crap off your chin?”
I wiped my face again. I really needed to wash up at home and soak my clothes to get the red out. “It’s fine, Dwayne.” I started up my moped.
“More importantly, is Nancy all right?”
I showed him the piece of paper I had found in the binlang pack. Nancy had scrawled “OK.” Dwayne looked at it, pursed his lips and nodded. We put on our helmets, and I stared at the stretched-out reflection of my face in his visor. I looked like I was in severe pain.
I SHOOK MYSELF AWAKE on the couch and wiped off my mouth. In my dream I had just bitten into a rotten apple. Mouthwash hadn’t helped to get the taste out.
“Whoa, calm down!” said Nancy, who towered over me. “That’s the last time I’ll kiss you while you’re sleeping.”
I swung into a sitting position and yawned, feeling my jaw crack. “What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s about five in the morning.”
I put my hands on her hips and felt her body heat through her jeans. “How did you get back?”
“I did what Dwayne said. I took a cab to some weizhang jianzhu area in the hills near Taipei 101. Then I got out and took another cab here, so nobody knows where I live.”
“That’s good, but Dwayne just said to go to some other district. Why did you go to a neighborhood full of illegal buildings? It was probably pretty scummy.”
Nancy screwed her face up. “My mother lives in a weizhang jianzhu, okay? I grew up in one … and so did you!”
I held her hands. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I just thought it was strange. I worry about you, and I want you to be safe.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“That’s why I love you.”
She grabbed my chin and kissed my lips. “That kiss went better,” she said.
“Tell me that everything went fine, Nancy.”
“As fine as could be. The spicy sister is a pain in the ass.”
“Did anything funny happen?”
Her eyes rolled to their upper left corners. “Hmm. No, nothing.”
“What were the customers like?”
“Truck drivers, cab drivers. A few military guys. They were all perfectly nice. Bauhaus had more weirdos.”
“Military guys? You mean soldiers?”
“No, higher-ups. Guys with soldiers as their drivers.”
“I see.” I gently pulled her down to my lap. “Did anybody try to touch you?”
“They all did.”
“What!”
Nancy made a snorting sound. “None of them touched me, silly. ‘This is a classy joint!’ like the lamei says. Other places you get to touch the girls’ nipples for one hundred NT. Not us. The other girl says she would do it, though.”