Lily put her eye to the viewer and squinted, twisting the scope until the rocks came into focus. She saw a few seals lying on the rocks, their glossy brown bodies displayed on the steep-sided island. One of them raised its head, and Lily saw its catlike whiskers as it swung around before diving sleekly back into the water. Beyond the Seal Rocks, the Pacific stretched out wide and gray, flecked with whitecaps, until it disappeared into the cloudy horizon. It felt as if they had come to the edge of the world—or at least as far from Chinatown as possible without leaving San Francisco—and those lounging seals were entirely unconcerned with petty human dramas.
A family came clattering loudly onto the Marine Deck, and Lily glimpsed the boys out of the corner of her eye. She thought they might be the same ones from the Mrs. Ito display. Beside her, Shirley was slinging her lunch bag over her shoulder and buttoning up her coat. “I’m hungry. Do you want to go eat lunch?”
“All right.” Lily stepped away from the telescope and the two of them left the Marine Deck, purposely ignoring the family. Lily felt their eyes on her back all the way to the exit.
* * *
—
They decided to take their lunch up to Sutro Heights Park, which overlooked the ocean. Lily bought two bottles of Coke from a vendor on the way. At the top of Point Lobos Avenue, the main gate to the park was flanked by two giant stone lions; inside, the road was lined with palm trees that waved their fronds in the wind.
Though Lily saw a few people wandering down the paths, the park was mostly deserted. She glimpsed the remains of concrete statues half-hidden in the shrubs. There was a fallen deer, its antlers broken, and the curve of a stone woman’s breasts, one plump arm extended. She and Shirley walked all the way to the old parapet that circled the site of Adolf Sutro’s Victorian mansion and found a bench facing the chain-link fence at the edge, right above Cliff House. A few tourists were taking photographs, but they weren’t prepared for the chilly day, and after they left, shivering, Lily and Shirley had the view of the ocean to themselves.
Lily opened their Cokes while Shirley opened the takeout box. Lily selected one of the chue yuk paau and took a bite. The steamed bread was a pleasingly light contrast to the salty, savory minced pork filling.
“I don’t know why you’d want to be Caucasian,” Lily said. “You’d have to eat American food all the time.”
“They can eat this food,” Shirley said as she picked up a bun for herself. “We sell it to them!”
“You don’t sell them these—they only eat the ch’a shiu* ones. Normally they eat—what do they eat?—creamed corn or something? Or tuna casserole!”
Shirley hid her mouth behind her hand while she laughed. “Meat loaf!”
“Liverwurst sandwiches!” Lily made a face.
“Chicken à la king! What is that, anyway?”
“Some kind of chicken dish, with a cream sauce? I think I ate it at the school cafeteria once.”
“Once they had creamed spinach, do you remember? It was this slimy dark stuff swimming in milk.” Shirley made a sound of disgust.
“Why do they always put their vegetables in cream?”
“Well, I do like ice cream.”
“That’s not the same.” Lily took the last bite of her chue yuk paau and wished she had some ginger ice cream to finish things off. “Do you want to split that other baau?”
“Sure. Don’t forget there’s also faat ko.”
“Oh, yum.” Lily reached into the box and broke off a spongey piece of sweet steamed cake.
“I wish I’d brought some taan t’aat,”* Shirley said.
“Mmm. Or tau sha paau.”*
“You like those. They’re not my favorite. I like the lin yung paau.”*
Lily took another sip of her soda, the sweet bubbles fizzing on her tongue. She was full and content, and when the wind wasn’t blowing, it was almost pleasant here. She watched the changeable gray of the ocean as it swelled and sank; the white lacelike foam that swirled on top like cream; the pummeling waves that crashed against the iron-colored rocks. It was constantly changing, yet always the same.
Shirley passed her a fortune cookie, and she cracked it open to pull out the white slip of paper. She popped a piece of the cookie into her mouth, chewed, and then read the fortune aloud: “‘Perseverance brings good fortune.’”
Shirley opened hers and read: “‘To know when you have enough is to be rich. Lao Tzu.’”
Lily crunched on the rest of her cookie and thought about the two messages. “They contradict each other. Don’t they? Mine says to keep going, and yours says to know when to stop. Or maybe they work together?”
“They’re just for tourists. They don’t make sense.” Shirley let her fortune go, and they watched the small piece of paper flutter into the air. It was caught by a wind current that lifted it over the chain-link fence before shooting it down toward the Pacific.
Impulsively, Lily got up to toss her fortune over the fence after Shirley’s, as if the vast ocean were a wishing well. She leaned against the cold metal railing to watch the slip of paper twirl on a long draft down toward Cliff House until it vanished from view, too small to see. Something was under construction near the south end of the building. Trucks and winches had been left there, along with giant bales of thick wire. A Caucasian boy, perhaps five years old, was standing outside the construction zone, holding on to the hand of his mother, who was holding on to her hat.
“Lily.”
She turned around. “What?”
“I’m going to enter the Miss Chinatown contest.” The wind plucked at the edge of Shirley’s scarf and tugged it loose from her hair, and she reached up to tuck it back in place. She seemed very calm, as if she hadn’t announced an extraordinary thing.
Lily came back to the bench and sat down. “Why? This morning you said you wanted to get away from Chinatown. This is . . . the opposite.”
Shirley dropped her eyes to her lap, where she had balanced the takeout box. “I didn’t mean it—what I said this morning. Not really.”
“Only partly.”
Shirley closed the box and set it on the bench beside herself. “I just hate the Chinatown gossip, that’s all. And I decided that if they’re going to gossip, why not give them something to talk about?”
Lily studied her friend; Shirley crossed her arms defensively and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“What gossip?” Lily asked.