Leo adjusts the phone at his ear, concentrating. An intent and vivid glint comes into his expression. James has seen this before, most recently at the Spiritual House, as his father picked up the slivers of fresh ginger and placed them atop the dumpling. A glint of greed. Leo says, with atypical politeness, “I’m sorry, but no one’s turned in anything like that.” He listens for another long moment.
James unfolds the note. On the one side, in Dagou’s handwriting, is a receipt for crab rangoons and a large wonton soup. On the other side is scrawled a note:
Meet ASAP, at the Other Restaurant. Leave separately.
The Other Restaurant is their name for Skaer’s Diner, down the street, which Trey Skaer inherited and runs now. James has never eaten there. He’s surprised Ming would set foot in the place, after being bullied by Trey throughout childhood, into high school. Whatever Ming wants to discuss, it must be top-secret if he’s willing to go to Trey’s diner.
Leo’s voice is casual and friendly. “Nope, you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Try Chicago? There’s got to be a hundred listings for Chao or Chow in that area. We don’t try to save people in train stations, or steal people’s luggage.” A pause. “Okay. There are a lot of towns in that direction. Try farther north, try Minneapolis. Sure. Good luck.” He clicks the phone back into the receiver.
“You know what that means!” he announces to the room. “It means they lost his Life Savings! She was tricky, she wouldn’t reveal the contents of the luggage. But an old man like that, nine times out of ten he walks around with his Life Savings in hundred-dollar bills. Hell, I’m going to search! It’s possible that someone’s Life Savings is lying around! If there’s any bag of money here, I want to find it. Definitely me, and not that nogood son of mine.”
“Don’t talk about Dagou that way!” Katherine cries out.
Leo Chao turns his gaze on her. Though he’s still smiling broadly, James is afraid. His father’s cruelty is also quick as a cat’s. But when he speaks, his tone is light.
“Katherine-Corcoran,” he says. “You are an attractive woman. Not sexy, but very attractive. I have nothing against you spending your time here. It brings in customers! But you are too good to wait around for a guy about to lose his job. Take it from me. You need someone with more resources, someone who knows how to appreciate you. Someone with experience!” His grin widens. Brandishing the bottle opener, he heads back to the office.
Ming’s hair is sticking up on top. He appears absolutely beside himself. “I told you to get out of here.”
Katherine’s small features are tiny with rage, but she’s glaring at Ming, not Leo.
Ming seizes the sleeve of her sweater. His hand is shaking. “You always think the best of him!” he says. “You don’t understand—you need to understand—”
“Understand what?”
“To understand the men from our family,” Ming says with finality. He lets go of her sleeve.
To James’s surprise, Katherine doesn’t respond. They are all silent. Katherine pours each of them a cup of tea, but no one drinks anything.
The Other Restaurant
Twenty minutes later, when James arrives at Skaer’s, the diner is almost empty. With its plate-glass windows, fluorescent glow, and stark counters, the place is reminiscent of the Hopper painting, but James is fairly certain this effect is not deliberate. He peers through the window; under bright light, a few lonely afternoon owls of Haven who don’t eat Chinese food hunch over the counter as if posing for the artist.
Inside, the restaurant is pleasantly warm. From a booth on the far side, someone waves at him. It’s Ming.
Ming has hung his overcoat on a rack near the booth. He’s smoothed his hair. A small, expensive-looking suitcase defends his side of the booth, and James remembers again that Ming has a flight this evening. Nobody reproves him for this, or insists he spend Christmas at home. He became independent long ago.
“This is like that riddle about the town with two barbers,” Ming says as James approaches. “You go to a small town with only two barbers. One of the barbers has a bad haircut. If you and I want privacy, we’re doomed to a shitty meal.”
“The food can’t be that bad.”
Ming shrugs and checks his phone. “There’s one good thing on the menu, and it’s the fish sandwich.” He waves his hand at the other side of the booth. “Sit down and order. Go crazy. Supper’s on me.”
James sits. A young woman brings him a menu, laminated in plastic, illustrated with colorful photographs: an open-faced sliced turkey sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes; a jaunty cheeseburger and fries. James’s mouth waters. He loves American food. Although he’s been eating at the dining hall for a semester, it’s still exotic.
Ming says, “I have to eat anyway before I get on the plane. Last flight to Chicago. How’s it going, little brother?”
James remembers something. “Yesterday I ran into some of the Skaer kids.”
Ming speaks without emotion. “Lucky you.”
The server reappears with Ming’s plate. She’s about twenty-four, with a messy bun of wavy orange hair so flame-bright the filaments seem transparent.
“Here it is,” says Ming. On the plate is a fried cod fillet sandwich, a lettuce leaf, and a slice of pickle.
“Have you decided,” she asks James, “or would you like more time?”
“I’ll have the breakfast special, with scrambled eggs and bacon, please. And hash browns.”
“Look at that,” Ming remarks, when the server has gone. “Real red hair. It’s hard to find a genuine redhead now. Too much interracial breeding.” He lifts the top bun and peers underneath, then replaces the bun and takes a bite. “Crisp, and light on the tartar. Perfect.”
“Ming,” says James, “why were you so mean to Katherine? What’s she ever done to you?”
“Katherine?” Ming clears his throat. “Nothing. No, not nothing. It’s just, she enrages me. She should get away from us, for her own good—but she won’t leave. Because she was adopted by well-meaning white people and raised apart from her kind, she’s stuck on us. She’s fetishized us. She wants to be us, for God’s sake, and what she should really do is accept who she is: a highly intelligent, beautiful, very lucky, well-brought-up young woman who just happens to look like us.”
“You’re insulting her and us.”
“Katherine and I are strictly business,” Ming continues. James can tell that this statement, for Ming, is both true and not true. “She and I talk, we even have a coffee now and then when she’s in New York, although she has to order tea, because it’s more authentic—” He frowns at James. “Why? You’ve got something to tell me?”
Has Ming forgotten that he’s the one who’s called this meeting? Has he forgotten the phone call at the restaurant? But since Ming’s older, James obeys. He leans forward, ready to speak, prepared to pour out all the events of the day before: Dagou at his laptop, adding names and addresses to his list of invitations to the Christmas party; the confrontation between Katherine and Brenda Wozicek; Alf’s second disappearance; Dagou’s broadcast.
But he finds himself unable to speak to Ming about Katherine or Brenda, or Alf. Or, for that matter, the phone call.
“Ba seems upset with Dagou,” he says instead.