“Is she right about that? Is it true?”
“Yeah, Snaggle. It’s true.”
Big Chao’s Blood
“What can I do to help with the party?” James asks, putting on his jacket.
Dagou fishes under the pile of invitations and pulls out a spiral notebook. James is skeptical; his brother almost never plans anything. He reads in Dagou’s big, jagged handwriting: As far as parties are concerned, there are many kinds of greatness. There is greatness of tone, of style; greatness of setting, of occasion, and of the guests. Most important, however, is the food. Dagou flips the page. James reads: A perfect, simple winter meal in honor of our closest friends.
“Let’s see,” Dagou says, poring over a list. “I’ve got it planned out. An awesome meal for Ma’s friends. I can get most of this myself tomorrow. But why don’t you take this list”—he rips out a sheet of paper—“to the Oriental Food Mart. Tell Alice to put these items aside, I’ll come pick them up tomorrow. Get me eight bunches of hollow-hearted greens, I need to snag them early. Charge them to the account. Oh, and one more thing,” he says, as James turns to leave.
“What?”
“One of the nuns called me. Ma is really upset. She went straight to her room after the luncheon, with a pounding headache.”
“Should I talk to her?”
“She needs her rest. But I got a text from Brenda.” He gestures at his phone on the coffee table. “Somehow, Alf ended up at her house in Letter City. Can you go pick him up? I’ll text you the address. It would make Ma feel better. She loves that dog.”
“Got it.”
“And when you’re at the store, talk to Alice. Ask her out!” Dagou says, as James heads to the door. “Don’t wimp out on me. It’s time you got laid.”
The afternoon is raw. The clouds lower, pale and unrelenting, sealing everything under a colorless vault of winter. Mary Wa’s store, a quarter mile south, lies on a slight incline. At the bottom of the rise, James begins to jog. At first he watches carefully, trying to avoid the puddles and slick, marbled ice, but when freezing slush floods his sneakers, he stops making an effort and simply gazes at the shabby homes and businesses. He passes an insurance agency, a spiraling barber pole, and the tropical fish store, half-hidden behind steamy plate glass.
He watches Alice through the window of the Oriental Food Mart. She’s on a stool behind the counter, hunched over her sketchbook, knees drawn up under her shapeless gray sweater. She focuses as if she isn’t in the store. When the door bangs, she darts a glance at James and folds the book against her chest.
“Hi, Alice.”
“Hi.”
With a rush of gratitude, James reaches for his brother’s script. “Would you please put these things aside for the party?” he asks, handing her the folded page from Dagou’s notebook. “Dagou says he’ll pick them up and pay tomorrow. And I need eight bunches of hollow-hearted greens. He said to put it on his credit.”
Alice reddens. “I’m not supposed to give Dagou any more credit.”
James stands rooted to the floor, feeling the blood recede from his own face and neck.
“I’m sorry,” Alice says.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got cash.” James reaches for his wallet, trying to think of something else to say. “You have to help me find them, though,” he adds, inspired. “I get them confused with pea greens.”
Alice slides her sketchbook under the counter. She leads him over to the cold room. James follows a pace behind her. He’s close enough to watch the tendons flicker as she flips the ponytail back over her shoulder. He sniffs cautiously at her cheap shampoo and then, unexpectedly, his dick stiffens. The sap of aggression, Big Chao’s blood. He wants to grab her from behind. Alice, somehow unable to hear the pounding of his heart, examines one bunch of greens, then another.
“Here,” she says. “This batch came in from Chicago two days ago. They should be all right.” She counts out eight bunches and leads him out of the cold room, shutting the door carefully.
“Alice,” James says, “when did Dagou start running up so much credit?”
Alice tries the door again. “Sometimes the latch gets stuck open or closed.”
James repeats his question. “I won’t tell anyone,” he says, although he doesn’t know if this is true. He must find out, must persuade her to tell him everything, even though this isn’t the way he would have chosen to prolong their conversation.
She shakes her head. He’s known Alice long enough to recognize when it’s impossible to talk her into doing anything against her mother’s instructions. But he can never predict when she’ll take it upon herself to disobey. There was that Sunday afternoon, when they were thirteen, when she raised the corner of her shirt and let him see a budding breast. He still often trips over this stuck moment in his memory. The line of her narrow torso and then the aureole, the pinkish quirk of flesh, the delicate nub of her nipple. “I want to see it again,” he said breathlessly, the following Sunday. She never showed him again.
They’re already at the cash register. “What’re you drawing? Can I see?”
He expects her to say no. But now she’s holding out the open sketchbook for him to examine.
He’s expecting nothing special, perhaps wispy penciled images of their surroundings: low metal shelves holding neat, meager rows of canned goods, small piles of Asian pears. He’s prepared for something tentative, or perhaps even skilled, but incomplete, a beginning—something to encourage.
Instead, the page is dark with ink. James sees an elaborate drawing, covering the entire sheet except for one corner. He makes out a series of chambers, long rounded rooms. Inside them, a community exists—one room has rows and rows of tiny beds, another laundry lines with identical dresses, tiny hats, clipped onto clotheslines. The chambers are populated with figures, not human shapes, but animals. Rabbits, badgers, rats, weasels. There are adults and children. Playing, conversing. There’s a playroom filled with little swings, slides, dragon-shaped riders on coils. There’s a coatroom. And here—James is sure of it—is the Fine Chao: dining tables outfitted with tiny lamps; a kitchen with hanging pots and pans. There is a pantry in which James can make out roots, leaves, and sprouts. And a room for cold storage, filled with shelves of what seem to be enormous seeds, kernels, or grains, organized by type, still encased in their protective hulls, and shelves of various-shaped but similar objects that prick upon his memory: insect wings. Glittering wings of all shapes and sizes, drawn in detail, so thinly inked they appear transparent. Toward the top of the page there is a horizontal line, and above the line, a mound.
“Wow,” says James. “This is—” He stops. He can’t share the peculiar sensations that have welled into him. He’s been given a glimpse into a world belonging to Alice, utterly private, but designed and arranged according to a pattern curiously personal to himself.