Who can he talk to? Who is there to tell? Not his mother, who no longer has the strength. And despite her yearning toward detachment, she’s still a Christian in her heart: “Love your father.” Some Christian love, Ma, more like martyrdom! In the end, even you gave up, exhausted, and opted for peace. How can you tell me to keep trying, after what it did to you?
“I can’t do it!” he hollers into the night.
If only he could talk to James. He pulls out his phone and dials. But the call goes immediately to voice mail. He hangs up. Anyway, how can he tell Snaggle? Snaggle looks up to him, Snaggle believes he is a man.
He makes a U-turn at the next intersection and heads back into the older neighborhoods, toward Letter City.
He thinks about the afternoon when Brenda appeared at the restaurant, drawn by the help wanted sign or driven in by the rain. Brenda emerging out of a summer storm after more than a decade, her dripping dark curls clinging to her face, her wet lashes and blue-gray eyes gleaming with curiosity and hardness. Ordering only white rice and eating it with a spoon. Not even a fork, a spoon. From the kitchen, he stood noticing her lush body and those alive, oddly resistant eyes. Feeling an old tug of want, deep in his plumbing. The sight of her hurtled him back to senior year of high school. He’d been infatuated with her, but unsuccessful: a skinny Asian orchestra nerd while she was with the captain of the football team.
“You want that girl to eat your Chinese cock?” His father taunted him weeks later, after she was hired as server. “Why so slow? If you don’t make a move, I will!”
They were already fucking. Turns out that was—is—not the real problem. In college, after a well-spent summer at the gym, he found a small rainbow of women willing to try him on. Quietly rebellious girls, raised in comfortable homes, happy to trade their good intentions for a big, exotic music major who knew how to make a very good cup of coffee. For a while, anyway. He’s not afraid of white women, not the way his father thinks.
The problem was, and is, that he can’t afford to keep her. “I want someone to take care of me,” she’s always said—she’s never hidden it from him! “I want someone who can give me the life I always wanted.” She has described, to him, that life. Membership at a country club. Two boys and a girl. A house with a four-car garage in the new development, Southlake, and a second home in Marcos Island. “I’m over sex,” she’s said to him. “I’m over sex for the sake of sex, that is. In two years, I’ll be thirty-five. My goal is to secure a comfortable life through marriage.”
“I understand,” Dagou has said. He can’t buy her a first home. He’s blown most of his stash on the two months’ rent and deposit for the penthouse. Unless Leo comes to reason and ups his salary, he won’t be able to make any more rent.
How has he found himself enraptured, enthralled, by a woman to whom he’s only an Asian fuck boy who can cook? It just happened. He let it happen. He loves her! His heart is a rose in bloom. For the last month, he’s found it hard to look into her eyes when they’re together. He’s afraid of what she’ll see. A man tortured by desire. Not a rich man, not even a good man; only a man who is, for her, willing to entirely give over his life.
The windows of her house are dark and rimmed with snow. The car is not in the driveway. She’s out tonight, with a group of friends from high school, home for Christmas. He can see the faint tracks where she pulled out of the driveway and into the street. The city plows haven’t touched her street for days—this misbegotten neighborhood is not a priority.
Dagou pulls over and jumps out of the Ford. He stands on the rickety front porch and knocks. Rings the bell. Knocks again. Paces. His feet grow numb with cold. What now? He frowns at Brenda’s snowy driveway, recalls the shovel in the Ford. With relief, he heads back to the car and pops the trunk, paying no attention to the various objects there, and grabs the shovel. He wedges the backward blade into the trampled snow on the top step and goes to work.
He digs out the steps and the front path, starts on the driveway. It’s a cracked, narrow driveway, and the sharp-edged blade gets stuck on chunks of frozen weeds remaining from the summer. Her house is filled with warm colors, soft cushions, and glowing lamps—she’s even painted inside—but her awful landlord lets the property go to hell. Well, she won’t have to put up with it much longer. For a moment he allows himself to envision the two of them pressed up against each other in the gleaming penthouse, gazing out a wall of windows at Lake Haven. If he can only make the rent!
With his mind eight floors over Lakeside, heaving snow with the force of a train, Dagou huffs with panic and desire. The shovel slams into a crack, jarring his hands. Dagou spins the shovel over frantically and hacks out a section of impacted snow near the corner of the apron.
Seventy years old! If only he would retire, then their problems might be solved. But Dagou knows, more than anyone, that his father is beyond mortal time.
Headlights prick his eyes. Her snowy car turns into the shoveled driveway. The lights go off, the door opens, and she steps out.
She looks tired, and not happy, and although she doesn’t seem disgusted by his sweaty presence there in her driveway, her eyes don’t light up when she sees him. There’s a single poinsettia flower pushed into the top buttonhole of her coat. “That’s nice,” he says. “Where did you get it?”
“I went to fill the tank,” she says. “I bumped into Ken Fan. He told me about your mother. I’m sorry, Dagou.”
Dagou doesn’t want to talk about his mother now. “I went to see her. I can’t think about it. Listen, my Dad said something tonight, at the hospital, and it made me wonder if he was talking about you. About you and the restaurant. Are you thinking of quitting your job? I was going to just text you but I thought I would come by and—”
“Shovel out my driveway?” Is it a flicker of affection on her face? Or concern, or merely distraction? “No,” she says finally. “I’m not leaving my job. Not yet. But, Dagou, I’m so tired of being broke. Thank God somebody bought the drinks tonight. For all of us.”
Rounds of mixed drinks for half a dozen people, hundreds of dollars. It must be an old flame, home for Christmas. “I’m going to help!” he says. “Give me more time.”
Her smile is a little sad. She does not invite him into the house.