by Maurene Goo
Monosyllabic and Sullen Hamlet was unnerving. “I guess there’s a lot of good Chinese food, though.” No duh, Clara. The San Gabriel Valley had a big Asian population.
His expression basically relayed the same thing.
“We could use better Chinese food in Echo Park.” The desperation was palpable. “Also Korean food. Actually, that’s kind of my dad’s dream—opening up a good Korean place in our neighborhood. Although, yeah, we’re so close to K-Town that it seems ridiculous. But, it’ll be like the KoBra, Korean with Brazilian influences.” I found myself unable to stop speaking, wanting to fix the jerkiness of my behavior. Again, something I didn’t usually care about, but suddenly did with Hamlet nearby.
My rambling worked.
“That sounds like a really good idea,” Hamlet said, a little cautiously. “Your dad’s a great cook; he could do it.”
And while I knew my dad was good at what he did, hearing Hamlet say it out loud warmed me up from the inside. “Thanks,” I said. Then flushed. “I mean, not that you were complimenting me, but you know what I mean…”
Hamlet laughed. “I love how you always have to point out awkward moments.”
Jeez. “Wow, and you like to point out stuff in general.”
“Yeah, I do!”
I couldn’t help laughing, and he looked over at me with the biggest, most genuine grin I have ever seen on another human. Sheesh, this guy. We got to the restaurant and were greeted by the hottest woman I have ever seen in my life. I am a straight girl, and my jaw dropped as she led us to our table, her long black hair swishing above a tiny leather miniskirt. I glanced at Hamlet, expecting a drop of drool to be hanging from his mouth, but he was looking around the restaurant, oblivious to the supermodel in front of us.
Point one.
Hot Hostess sat us down at a tiny marble table, like one you’d find in a Parisian café or something. Our knees were touching. Hamlet made a few not-so-subtle attempts to space us out a bit more, but he hit the back of his chair on the one behind him—which was unfortunate because the woman in it was wearing a giant hat, which toppled off.
“Sorry!” he said, reaching down to pick it up. She yanked it out of his hands and turned around with a terse little “God!”
Hamlet flushed.
Yeah, I don’t think so. The nervousness of this date melted away when faced with an opportunity to annoy someone who deserved it. I pulled a little leaf off the succulent on our table and tossed it over Hamlet’s head so it landed on the brim of the woman’s hat. Hamlet’s eyes widened. I grabbed a small handful of leaves off the plant (sorry, guy, but you’re tough, you’ll recover) and tossed them one by one onto her hat. It was dark enough in there that neither she nor her friends noticed.
“Can I take your drink order?” A server popped up next to us, and I tucked my handful of leaves under the table. Hamlet let out a snort of laughter, and the server was unamused.
Hamlet fumbled for the menu. “Oh, let me see if…”
“I’m assuming no alcohol?” Unamused Server interrupted.
“Actually, lots of it,” I said with a wink.
Still unamused. “Do you have an ID?”
“Yes, I do. I am a citizen of the United States.”
Hamlet stammered, “Ah, ha-ha. Um, we’ll start with water, thank you.”
The server shot me a dirty look before leaving our table.
When I looked over at Hamlet, his head was dropped into his hands. I cleared my throat. “Sorry, this is what I’m like in public.”
But when he looked up, I was surprised to see he was smiling. “You’re so funny.”
Again, just … announcing thoughts here. I reached for the menu so that I didn’t have to respond. As I strained my eyes to read in the dimly lit room (a tiny tea candle was the only light at our table), Hamlet’s phone rang.
He glanced down at it and looked up at me apologetically. “One sec, it’s my grandmother.”
Oh, a casual grandma call during a date. No biggie. He talked in a low voice, but I caught snippets of worried conversation.
I glanced back down at the menu. Everything was kind of expensive. I checked out the appetizers to see if they were any cheaper. Hm, the citrus salad or literally anything else for dinner? Choices, choices.
“Hey.”
I glanced up to see Hamlet with an actual frown on his face. “What’s up?” I asked uneasily.
“Sorry, but would you mind changing the date to … dinner at my grandparents’?”
Would I mind doing what? My face must have said it all, because he looked down. “Ah, never mind. Sorry, I think we’ll have to do this another time. I’ve gotta get over there right now.”
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
He sighed. “Probably. I don’t know. My grandpa’s grumpy because he’s been sick a few days and insists on going out when he shouldn’t. My grandma wants me home to distract him.”
And I don’t know whether it was the little smile or the worry in his eyes at odds with that smile that made me say, “Sure. Let’s go there, then.”
He gaped at me. “Really?”
“Yeah. This place gives me hives, anyway.”
He laughed and scooted his chair out so quickly that he bonked into the lady again. Before she could say anything, he tucked his chair back in and said, “Sorry. Nice hat.”
We rushed out of there, laughing.
CHAPTER 18
When we pulled up to Hamlet’s grandparents’ house, I took in the suburban-ness of it all. The street was wide, clean, and flanked by uniform Aleppo pines and streetlamps. Everything glowed a bit pink and orange as the sun set, light bouncing off the dramatic range of mountains behind the neatly lined tract homes.
The San Gabriel Valley was almost as far east of LA as you could get. Everywhere in this valley you saw the San Gabriel Mountains, and it was probably the prettiest view in this otherwise concrete landscape.
Hamlet parked in the wide driveway. The yard and house were tidy, the lawn brown and dead like every other lawn by July. How had I even ended up here, at Hamlet’s grandparents’ house? I didn’t know what I was expecting on a first date with Hamlet, but it sure wasn’t this.
As we headed toward the front door, Hamlet stopped to check the mail. Then he used his own set of keys to let us in. I looked at him curiously as we took off our shoes in the foyer. “You have the keys to your grandparents’ place?”
He slipped off his Nikes. “Yeah, because I live with them?”
Oh.
“Hamlet! Hamlet, is that you?” A woman’s voice echoed through the house, which smelled delicious. I sniffed the air. Sichuan peppers and sesame oil. And lamb?
“Yeah, I’m here!” he shouted back, then glanced at me. “I brought my friend!”
“Dinner’s almost ready. Come over here!” Her voice came from around the corner and when we followed it, we landed right in the kitchen. His grandmother was at the stove, sautéing food in a large, nearly flat frying pan. She looked anywhere from fifty to seventy years old (Asian genes always hiding your true age!), small and sturdy with black hair tied in a low ponytail. She wore maroon track pants and a loose T-shirt that said STOP DRUNK DRIVING with an illustration of a cracked rearview mirror.
“Give me a small bowl,” she said with her left arm extended, not even looking up at us.
Hamlet opened a cupboard and handed her a porcelain bowl. “Nainai, this is Clara.”
She used the bowl as a ladle, scooping up some food in the pan and sniffing it. “This is probably perfect.” She looked at me. “Clara, try it and tell me if it’s perfect.”
Her English was precise, and her eyes shrewd as she watched me take the bowl. I glanced inside to see little pieces of meat with green onions and peppers. “Toothpick lamb?” I asked.
She looked impressed. “Yes, good job.” She looked me up and down. “But you’re not Chinese. Korean?”
I nodded before picking up a piece of perfectly charred lamb and popping it into my
mouth. The taste of cumin and peppers instantly hit. Mmmm. After I finished chewing, I said, “Yes, I am. Well, my grandparents are from there. My parents grew up in Brazil.”
She waved her hand in the air. “That’s nice. How’s the lamb?”
“So good!” I gave her a thumbs-up. “And I’ve had the lamb at Sichuan Dreams.”
“Pft. That place sucks.”
I choked. Hamlet ran across the kitchen to grab me a glass of water. I gulped it gratefully. “Sichuan Dreams doesn’t suck!” I gasped. “Beloved food critic Stephen Fitch loves it, and everyone says it’s the most authentic Sichuan in the city.”
“Are those people from the Sichuan province? Because guess what, my family is!” She put her hands on her little hips and glared at me.
I frowned. “Well, it’s still good.”
“Clara, did your Brazilian parents not teach you to respect your elders?”
Hamlet swiveled toward her. “Oh my God. Nainai.”
She waved her hand at him dismissively. “This one’s tough, she doesn’t care.”
I shrugged. “It’s true. But also, my dad taught me to stick up for what I believe in. And I believe in Sichuan Dreams.”
Hamlet’s grandma rolled her eyes dramatically, turning back toward the stove. “Give me a break, that’s the problem with you American kids. You think all your opinions matter. So annoying.”
I laughed. “We are annoying.” When I glanced over at Hamlet to see if he agreed, he was staring at me. A small smile hovering over his lips, eyes focused on me and only me.
Was it just me, or was this kitchen getting a bit too warm?
He glanced over at his grandmother then. “Whatever, Nainai. You’re American, too. She was born here,” he said to me.
“You think being born here seventy years ago is the same as being born here sixteen years ago, child? Stop bothering me and go check on Yeye. He wants to clean out the rain gutters with that back and those knees. Rain gutters in July!” She poked Hamlet with a long-handled wooden spoon. “Anyway, go tell him a story or something. He needs to rest if it kills him.”
I was still giggling when I followed Hamlet upstairs. His grandfather was lying down in a spacious bedroom with high ceilings and sliding doors leading to a balcony. It was sparsely furnished, with a luxurious Persian rug and two large Chinese landscape paintings.
He was playing video games in bed when we walked in. On a huge TV that could be seen from space.
“Hi, Yeye.” Hamlet bounded into the room and flopped down on the bed, making his grandfather groan and pause his game with a little beep-boop sound. “I brought my friend Clara to hang out.”
His grandfather looked up at me with a smile. “Hi, Clara. Fun first date, huh?” Unlike Hamlet’s grandma, his English was slightly accented. “Sorry you were forced to come here unnecessarily. I know Hamlet was looking forward to this.”
Hamlet kept his eyes on his grandpa, his face a mask of keep cool. “Anyway. Why are you insisting on cleaning rain gutters? Nainai’s about to put a tracker on you.”
“You know I like to drive her crazy,” he said with a wink.
Were Hamlet’s grandparents me?
He continued, sitting up straighter. “It’s not like I’m dying. Our rain gutters are packed. What if we have a summer rain?”
There was a second of silence before we all cracked up. Summer rain was simply not a thing here.
Hamlet and I chatted with his grandfather for a bit, then got pulled into playing a really creepy video game. It was so scary that I eventually crawled onto the bed next to Hamlet, making for some tight quarters. My knee brushed against his, and we sprang apart.
At one point Hamlet’s grandma hollered at us to come down for dinner. The table was laid out with a platter of that yummy toothpick lamb (given that name because each little piece had a toothpick poked into it for easy eating), bowls of rice, a dark red soup with dumplings, and a pile of steamed pea shoots.
Needless to say, I ate a lot. His grandparents were hilarious—bickering nonstop while placing food on each other’s plates. His grandpa even brushed a strand of hair out of his grandmother’s face, gently and with such love, before launching into a complaint about the dumplings in the soup being too cold.
I sat next to Hamlet, but barely talked to him as I shoveled seconds, then thirds, into my mouth.
“I’m impressed by your appetite!” Hamlet’s grandmother exclaimed at the end of the meal, nodding toward my absolutely pristine plate.
I looked down, a little sheepish. “I love to eat.”
“Good,” she said, getting up to clear our dishes. Her approval pleased me.
Hamlet jumped up from the table to take them from her. “Here, we’ll do that. You guys go watch a show and relax.”
“Thank you so much, everything was delicious. I’ll have to share your lamb recipe with my dad,” I said as I carried the dishes over to the sink.
“She never shares her recipes! Greedy,” Hamlet’s grandpa said with a belch.
Hamlet froze next to me at the sink so I whispered, “My dad and I have burp contests.”
The chair scraped loudly against the linoleum floor when his grandpa stood up. “You’re going to make your date do dishes?”
I held up a hand, already soapy. “He also said I’d have to do your laundry tonight, so…”
Both his grandparents cackled all the way to the family room. “She’s funny,” Hamlet’s grandpa declared, and I flushed with pleasure. The words to my heart.
Hamlet and I stood side by side washing the dishes, me scrubbing and Hamlet rinsing then drying.
“So, we have a dishwasher, but we never use it,” he said at one point, gesturing toward it.
I nodded. “Let me guess, you use it as a dish rack?”
“Yes! I thought it was a Chinese thing?”
“It is very much a non-American thing. My dad still inspects every dish afterward, like he’s trying to ‘catch it’ not working right.”
He laughed. “Your dad’s the best.”
“I guess,” I said, handing him a glass. “Your grandparents are pretty cool, too.”
“You’re probably wondering why I live with them.”
I scratched my face with a soapy hand. “Oh, um, yeah, that did occur to me.”
“My parents moved back to Beijing because their business was growing so much. That was a couple years ago. So now I live with these guys.” He lifted his chin toward the living room. “Who aren’t my real grandparents.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, they’re my parents’ friends’ parents. So, family friends, essentially.”
Hm. I turned the water on a little more forcefully. “Oh, okay.”
“I know that sounds weird to you. But my parents wanted me to stay here for my schooling.”
“Oh, okay.” It made me a little sad then, how he was working an entire summer tossing a sign up into the air, separated from his family. Driving a Lexus because his parents thought maybe that made up for the fact that they lived in separate countries.
With the last dish washed, I shut the water off. My hands were wet, but I couldn’t find a dry towel.
“Here.” Hamlet took one of my hands and then pulled up the bottom of his shirt to wipe it off. Then he took the other and dried that one, too.
What an incredibly sexy thing to do for a dork.
“Thank you,” I muttered as I looked around at anywhere but his abs.
“You’re welcome.” Shirt was properly placed back in its usual position, and I felt a sharp sense of loss. RIP view of abs. “My grandparents are super cool, though. They’re both retired NASA scientists and have lived here forever!”
I raised my eyebrows. “Wow, really? They do seem Americanized.”
“Well, Nainai’s from San Francisco. You know, her family’s been here since like the gold-rush days.”
“What!” I glanced at her small figure, hunched over as she cut pears in the living room. “T
hat’s so cool.”
“Yup,” he said. “And she met Yeye at Berkeley. He was there from China studying physics. After Yeye became a US citizen they moved here to work at JPL together.”
JPL was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “Wow, nerd love. That’s pretty sweet,” I said. I watched his grandparents sit back in their matching recliners as they started Law & Order.
“Yeah, it is,” he said with a little smile. “Hey! Speaking of sweet, do you want to get the best shaved ice ever?”
I smiled. His enthusiasm was so contagious. “Sure.”
We said bye to his grandparents, who sent me home with Tupperware containers full of leftovers. I was excited for my dad to taste the toothpick lamb. They waved us off from the front door.
“So, what would you pick for music, then?” Hamlet asked as we started driving.
I picked up my phone. “May I?”
He nodded, and I connected to his Bluetooth speakers. I scrolled through my music until I found what I was looking for. Some dreamy guitar and mellow electronic beats—it was a perfect match for the warm summer air whipping through the car.
I asked, “So, what’s this shaved ice we’re getting? Patbingsoo?” It was my favorite—Korean shaved ice topped with red beans and fruit.
“No, the Taiwanese kind, there’s that new place … from Taipei?”
“I know that one. I’ve always wanted to try it!” I said with my hand out the window, feeling the wind hit my palm. Hamlet’s enthusiasm was contagious, but also Asian desserts were my weakness.
We drove through the practically empty, wide streets of San Gabriel, zooming by old 1960s diners-turned-Hanoi-chicken-spots and endless strip malls designed in faux Mediterranean style, landscaped with spindly palm trees. Hamlet pulled into one of the strip-mall parking lots, and we walked up to a small shop with neon lights that spelled out SNOW DAZE. There were people out the door for it.
“Whoa, busy,” I said, looking around. “I didn’t know the SGV had a nightlife.”
He tucked his hands into his shorts pockets and puffed out his chest. “Well, a lot of us are Asian, and you know we stay up late.”
I grinned. “True.” People trekked here from all over LA to get the most authentic Chinese food because of the growing Chinese population in the area. There were so many regional specialties here that you couldn’t get anywhere else outside of China—from northern Chinese Islamic dishes to brain-numbing Sichuan to Taiwanese desserts.