Mandarin Plaid

by S. J. Rozan

  “Who?” she repeated with a wave of her hand. “I hope you don’t act this foolish around him. He’s very clever, you know. He has a good degree, an MBA.”

  As opposed to yours, Lydia: sociology with an emphasis on criminal justice. Useless, unless I wanted to be criminal, about which my mother by her own admission had suspicions, given the quality of the people I knew.

  But who did I know with an MBA?

  Suddenly a light dawned, though it was a strange light, an odd quality to it casting weird shadows. “Roland Lum?” I tried.

  “Of course. Who else would be calling you? You chased Paul Kao away; don’t make the same mistake again. I hope Roland Lum likes short haircuts. Now go call him back. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  Paul Kao was a friend of Andrew’s I had dated briefly a few months ago. My mother had high hopes for him: he was educated, cultured, handsome, and very polite to his elders, especially her. Like a lot of men who claim to be fascinated with my profession at the beginning, though, the reality of it—unpredictable hours and predictable trouble—got to him, and we called it quits in a friendly way. I missed him a little, then got over it.

  My mother hasn’t.

  The only way to avoid a replay of the Paul Kao argument, I could see, would be to go do what she was telling me to do. That, coupled with the fact that my own curiosity was killing me, made my choice clear, and I went and did it.

  My mother gave me both Roland’s home and factory numbers. It wasn’t very late, so I tried the factory first.

  The phone was answered on the second ring by a sort of pan-lingual, “Yah?”

  I asked, in English, for Roland. The phone clattered in my ear and I heard a shout. While I waited for something else to happen, I listened to whines and screeches and clanks just like the ones that had been part of my childhood, the sounds of the long hours and sometimes backbreaking, sometimes numbingly dull work it takes to put together a shirt or a skirt that will end up in the Goodwill bag a year later.

  “Hello!” It was Roland’s voice, the greeting not a question but an emphatic statement, delivered in a half-shout over the noises of the machinery.

  “Roland? It’s Lydia. My mom said you called?” It suddenly flashed into my mind that it was actually possible he hadn’t called; that it was within the bounds of believability that this was a sly matchmaking trick of my mother’s.

  But not so. “Lydia!” Roland yelled back. “I sure did. You home?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Can you meet me? I have—well, sort of a problem, and I thought, boy, Lydia’s the one I need! And I’ll bet she could use the work, too! What do you say? Can you?”

  “Meet you when? What sort of a problem?”

  “Anytime. How about now? I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

  “Well …” I glanced over at the clock. “I’m meeting someone at ten, and there was something I wanted to do before that—”

  “Great! You do that, and I’ll finish up here, and then I’ll buy you dinner. Eight o’clock, Tai Hong Lau? A buddy of mine’s a chef there. He’ll take good care of us.”

  From just beyond my bedroom door I heard the floorboards squeak as my mother shifted her position in the hallway. “Okay, Roland,” I said. “That sounds good. See you later.”

  “Terrific! See you.”

  We hung up. I went out to the hallway where my mother was straightening the pictures on the wall.

  “Why do you bother to eavesdrop?” I asked her. “We were speaking English.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she huffed, dusting the top of a picture frame. “Although it’s a shame that you children forget all your Chinese. Mrs. Chan says Roland Lum can’t even talk to the ladies in his shop now, except to give them orders. None of you children can even speak to your own relatives anymore.”

  “Roland’s ladies are probably all Fujianese by now, so even if his Cantonese were perfect, he wouldn’t be able to speak to them. And I’m speaking to you right now, Ma,” I said, although the obvious never scored any points with my mother. “Anyway, I won’t be home for dinner.”

  “Oh?” She was a study in lack of interest. “Do you have plans?”

  Might as well give her a sweep. “I’m having dinner with Roland Lum,” I told her. “And afterwards I’m going to have a drink with An Zhong.”

  I disappeared into the bathroom, leaving my mother in the hallway, dumbstruck at her incredible good fortune.

  I took a shower; then, wrapped in my yellow silk robe, I sat down on my bed with the laptop and Wayne Lewis’s disk. I went through things methodically, trying to be like Bill, or like he’d be if he had any clue how to use a computer. I opened directories and then files, scanned them, opened the next ones, and scanned them, too. It was a bust. Or, at least, if there was anything on it that was useful to me, I didn’t recognize it. Most of it was letters or lists: lists of models; of music organized by designer and year; of themes—the seaside, angels, ladies who lunch—also organized by designer and year. Probably so his clients wouldn’t repeat themselves, or each other. On the models list I found Andi Shechter’s name and number, which would have been useful this morning and which I wrote down in my address book, but the fact that she was there wasn’t necessarily surprising, and I didn’t find anybody else I recognized. I didn’t find Dawn Jing.

  The letters, as business letters tend to be, were dull. Let’s get together when you’re in New York; we’ll need forty more yards of green canvas; all the high-heeled sneakers were defective and not only is my client not going to pay for them, you’ll be lucky if we don’t sue you. They reminded me why I hate my own paperwork. I finally gave up. I tucked the laptop in its case and the disk in among my own disks, and got dressed for dinner.

  As I stared into my closet I was a little sorry Andrew hadn’t told me what kind of a club it was that Dawn Jing haunted. In New York there are as many acceptable looks as there are places to wear them, and it’s a large number. Not that I could cover all of those from my closet. Most people’s clothing, including mine, tends to stick within stylistic limits. People wear things they like and feel good in, things that identify them with the sub-tribe they want to be part of. You generally don’t find people with a closet full of Dior suits also owning a bureau packed with bulky Guatemalan sweaters. It’s all a matter of who you’re claiming to be.

  Because of my profession, though, my clothing vocabulary is larger than most people’s. It’s not really a question of disguise, more of acceptability, ease of movement from one world into others. If you look wrong you’re instantly noticed, and, quite properly, distrusted: you’re not a member of the tribe. In my job, getting past people is a major preoccupation. Dressing for Success means something specific to a P.I.

  So I took from my closet a midnight-blue silk vest and a pair of black silk pants tailored like jeans, with pockets and everything. I added a pair of black heels I’d paid a lot of money for because they look classy but I can walk in them. I stuck my little .22 in a holster in the back of my waistband. The vest would cover it there, and it wouldn’t show if I sat up straight. Maybe I should tell my mother that carrying a gun was good for my posture. I put on some gold bangles and a thin gold chain around my neck. I started to brush my hair and had to laugh at myself.

  I checked the mirror. Not bad. The silk jeans made the look slightly trashy, which was probably good for just about any place I’d find myself tonight.

  And Roland Lum would probably appreciate that, too.

  I wasn’t sure how to take Roland, or what to make of his calling me today. My first instinct was to go up in his face, subtly, of course, but in a way that would make sure he knew that Lydia Chin didn’t need his help, not his warnings about other clients being nuts or the work he thought I could use.

  On the other hand, it was possible that my annoyance with him was my problem, and Roland was just a brash, pushy old friend of the family.

  I collected keys and cash into a black silk handbag the size of
a postage stamp, and called Bill.

  “Oh?” he said, after I’d announced myself. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I was thinking about pushy men. Besides, I said I’d call.”

  “You said you’d call,” he echoed. “Hah. You said you’d buy me a drink. You said you loved me madly.”

  “Good try, but forget it. I’m having dinner with Roland Lum.”

  Bill was briefly silent. “How did that come about?”

  “My mother lit incense. Roland says he has a case for us.”

  “A case? What kind of case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “What? Taking another case in the middle of this one, or taking a case from Roland Lum?”

  “Both.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Gee,” he said, “there’s so much you don’t know. Maybe I could teach you. Maybe I could—”

  “Maybe you could meet me at Andrew’s at ten, looking cutting-edge.”

  “Maybe I could fly to the moon. What the hell do they wear on the cutting edge?”

  “Forget it. Just wear black. You know which one is black?”

  “Sure. The one you look so gorgeous in. Though come to think of it, that doesn’t narrow it down very far, does it?”

  “You’re getting on my nerves.”

  “I’ll take anything I can get on. Andrew’s, at ten. Black,” he said, and for the first time in recorded history, he hung up on me.

  I put on a black velvet hat, took my black-and-red silk baseball-style jacket from the hall closet, called good-bye to my mother, and slipped out the apartment door. That didn’t work; she poked her head out as soon as the door closed.

  “What are you wearing?” she asked suspiciously.

  I climbed back up the two stairs I’d made it down and posed for her on the landing.

  She pursed her lips at my outfit. “I’m glad to see you’re wearing a hat,” she said. “Even that one.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you should be wearing a skirt, not trousers.”

  “Pants are very in.”

  “In,” she scoffed. “What difference does ‘in’ make? ‘In’ doesn’t make you attractive. A skirt will make a man look at you.”

  “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Ma,” I said, although I got the uncomfortable feeling it didn’t sound nearly as convincing in Chinese.

  Certainly not convincing to my mother. Her look was incredulous. “What sort of nonsense is that? Is that something you heard from Crooked Face?” My mother steadfastly refuses to learn Bill’s name. “Some things are beautiful and some aren’t,” she snorted. “The same as right and wrong. Any man who thinks you look good that way …”

  She pulled her head in and shut the door, bringing the rest of the sentence with her. I gathered, though, that it had something to do with undesirable sons-in-law. As I headed down the stairs, I heard her decisively locking our first and third locks.

  Tai Hong Lau was a few blocks over, on Elizabeth Street. I walked there, through streets that were beginning to quiet down now, as the sidewalk vendors and vegetable sellers packed up and went home to eat their rice and catch a few hours sleep in rooms they shared with five or six other newly arrived men. Tomorrow morning they’d be up before dawn again, bringing out their merchandise, getting a jump on another day in the Beautiful Country.

  I reached Tai Hong Lau at five to eight. It’s one of Chinatown’s new, upscale restaurants: tables draped in white tablecloths and set with fine china, standing a discreet distance from each other in a plant-and-mirror lined, marble-floored room. The waiters wear crisp white shirts and black pants, and the cooks, who are called chefs at Tai Hong Lau, experiment with the use of shockingly foreign ingredients like mayonnaise. The price is high, for Chinatown, but dinner for two plus cappuccino afterward a few blocks north in Little Italy still costs less than dinner for one in a white-tablecloth restaurant uptown. That way a guy like Roland can impress his date without really putting a dent in his bankbook.

  Thinking that made me wonder, as I entered the restaurant, whether Roland thought of this as a date, or if my mother was the only one making that assumption.

  The business-suited manager smiled a professional smile when I gave him Roland’s name. He showed me to a table up a few steps in the back part of the restaurant, left two menus, and hurried back to his station at the front to smile professionally at someone else. A waiter came over and asked what I wanted to drink. I sipped the seltzer he brought me, watched the diners and waiters move sedately around the room, and waited for Roland.

  I grew up in Chinatown restaurants: my father was a cook, and though he died when I was thirteen, I remember at least five different places he worked in. Relatives of mine own, work in, or have worked at some time in probably half the eateries in the neighborhood. But they’re the old-style restaurants and noodle joints, the ones with Formica tables and stainless steel teapots, thick plates, and rushing, harried waiters. I didn’t know anyone at Tai Hong Lau.

  Roland, of course, was a little different. As far as Chinatown has a high society, he grew up in it; as far as there’s a right side of the tracks here, he was from it. There weren’t restaurants like Tai Hong Lau when Roland and I were growing up, but I wasn’t surprised that Roland had made friends with a chef in a place like this as soon as there was a place like this.

  And speaking of Roland, he was late. I sipped my soda and tried to keep my foot from bouncing impatiently up and down. I was curious about Roland’s problem, and why I was the person to solve it. And I don’t like to be kept waiting.

  Fifteen minutes later, when I was on my second seltzer, Roland pushed through the glass doors and cut easily to the front of the short waiting line that had formed since I came in. One hand in the pocket of a soft-fabric navy suit, he spoke some old-buddy words to the manager and was pointed in my direction. He grinned up at me; then he hustled through the restaurant, taking the steps in one bound, and came to a stop at my table.

  “God,” he said, still standing, his grin spreading. “You look fantastic. Your hair wasn’t like that this morning, was it?”

  “Hi, Roland,” I said. “Imagine meeting you here. Hey, why don’t you sit down?”

  If there was any irony in my voice, he missed it completely. Maybe I’d have to work on irony. He pulled out the opposite chair and sat, signaling the waiter.

  “I’ll have a Heineken,” Roland said, in Cantonese. “And bring the lady another of whatever she’s having. And tell Lee Yu Sing in the kitchen that Roland’s here. He knows what to do.”

  The waiter smiled and took our menus away. I gave Roland a quizzical look. “You ordered already?”

  “I called Yu Sing before and asked what’s good. He’s got some great fresh perch and some huge oysters, so I told him full speed ahead. That’s okay, isn’t it?” His face said that the idea that perch and oysters might not be okay with me was absolutely brand-new to him. “You like oysters?”

  “I love them,” I said truthfully. There had been a sizzling four-spice chicken dish on the menu that I’d been interested in, but I guessed I’d try that next time I came.

  “So.” Roland leaned back in his chair. “Sorry I was late. On the phone with my brother. He wants a loan.” Roland made a face. “I’m going to give it to him, but not as big as he says he needs. We had to talk, I had to cut him down. He was disgustingly grateful anyway. You don’t fawn on your brothers, I’ll bet.”

  “Never.”

  “Good. It’s really a drag, let me tell you. Hey, did I mention you look terrific? The haircut is great. You didn’t get it just for me, did you?”

  “Sorry. I got it before I even knew you called.”

  “Well, it’s great. Makes you look more feminine than this morning. You’re going out after this, right? Some hot date in a cool spot?”

  “I’m going to a club with my brother,” I told him. If that news either relieved or disappointed him, I
couldn’t tell.

  “Old Elliot?” he asked.

  “No, Andrew.”

  “Andrew. How is Andrew?” Roland’s voice took on a tone of knowledgeable insinuation. “Is he still … single?”

  “Just like me,” I answered.

  “Well, maybe not just like you,” Roland grinned.

  Luckily I didn’t have to say anything then, because the waiter came over with Roland’s beer. He started to pour it, but Roland’s face changed in an instant, flashing into anger. “Heineken!” he barked at the waiter, who looked in surprise at the bottle of Chinese beer in his hand. “Not this shit! Why don’t you listen? What the hell’s the matter with you?” The waiter’s face darkened, too, and he might have said something, but the manager was at our side, apologizing, steering the waiter away, assuring Roland everything was being taken care of.

  Roland watched them walk away. Then his face changed instantly again, from hard back to breezily cheerful. “God,” he grinned, shaking his head, switching back to English. “Some people, huh?”

  Yes, I thought, that’s true. Some people.

  A different waiter came over with the right beer, and another seltzer for me. Roland took the bottle from him and poured it himself, carefully down the side of the glass, to avoid making a head. Bill, I remembered, likes a head on his beer.

  Before Roland was finished pouring, the new waiter was back, presenting with a discreet flourish a platter of sizzling oysters in a garlic and scallion sauce. Well, at least I’d gotten something sizzling.

  “Hey, not bad for starters, huh?” Roland asked, beaming at the oysters as though he’d made them himself. He dished some out for me and then took some. I tasted them. They were wonderful, something bitter in the sauce setting off the richness of the oysters perfectly.

  “You know, I really can’t believe my luck,” Roland said, after he’d eaten half his plate of oysters and washed them down with beer. “I run into you this morning, I need some help this afternoon, and bam! you’re having dinner with me tonight. What a world.” He shook his head in delighted bafflement. “So what do you think? You picked up any new clients today, or can you take my case?”