“Do you know who that is?” he asks his brother, pointing.
Dagou shrugs. “No idea. A stranger. A stranger appears! She must have heard the invite on the radio.” He slaps James on the back. James grins. But he puzzles over the unknown woman. He has the sense he’s met her somewhere before. While collecting another round of empty plates, he sees her looking over at him and he hurries into the kitchen. When he comes out, she’s talking to Mary Wa.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Alice says again, when Fang points out she’s eaten no meat.
“May I get anything else for you?” James asks. “We made some plain dishes for the people from the Spiritual House.” He leans close to her, ostensibly so she can hear him, but actually because he wishes to be near. He speaks into her ear. “After the party, should I come over to your house?”
“Yes, please,” Alice says.
Now the room is filled with warmth and light.
Dagou is bringing out bottles of champagne. He leads Brenda to her seat, gives her a little bow, and uncorks a bottle for her.
On the other side of the room, Leo Chao in his Santa Claus hat has sent the stranger back to the nuns’ table, dismissing her questions with a few loud, cheerful remarks. He’s now popping corks and passing out bottles, talking and laughing. He stands, straightens, like a bear on its hind legs. There’s a hush; everyone turns to look.
Leo nods around the room. The bells on his sweater jingle as he holds up his glass.
“My wife, Winnie, would tell me to shut up. But she’s in the hospital! So I’ll talk!”
There’s some nervous laughter at this. Near James, Dagou shifts his weight.
“Winnie would disagree,” Leo goes on, “but what can I say? We disagreed about many things! She was always dragging me to church, even though she was a Buddhist. Always hoping some kind of spiritual teaching would rub off on me. Christmas party! Even from the hospital, she wants to remind me about the life of Jesus Christ.”
In the moment that follows this undeniably true statement, motionless but for the slight shiver of bells, Dagou clears his throat. He puts a hand on James’s shoulder. He’s touching him for strength. James looks around at him, concerned. Dagou’s sweating, swelling like a bullfrog, glowering at Leo.
“Why don’t you listen to her, then?” he shouts. “Just listen to her, for once!”
“Because she’s crazy. It’s all chemical!” Leo bellows back. “You’re younger—you don’t know about that time of life. It starts in her fifties, when a woman dries up. She does and says whatever she wants.” James almost smiles. Menopause doesn’t sound too bad, to hear his father tell it. “She drops womanhood like an old sock. There’s no reason to please anybody anymore!”
“You leave my mother alone!” shouts Dagou.
“Get some tranquility,” shouts Leo, a grin splitting his face. “Calm down and apologize!”
“I’ll never apologize!”
“Well then, time’s up. I told everyone, at the hospital! I’m selling the restaurant, and you and your girlfriend are going to have to look for new jobs!”
He points at Dagou, and the bells on his sweater sparkle under the lights.
Dagou is pale. James’s own hands grow cold. It’s hard to keep listening, though some deep instinct is telling him to be alert, for his own sake as well as for his brother’s.
Ken Fan’s voice comes clearly through the hush. “You’re sure you can’t sell it to Dagou?”
“Are you kidding? No, I’m selling it to some guy from the mainland, this guy I know in Chicago. Cash on the barrel! This guy, he wants it as an investment. He knows nothing, he wants to turn it into an ‘all-you-can-eat’ food factory. You know, unlimited ice cream, crab-legs Sundays, I don’t know how those places ever turn a profit, it’s probably money laundering, but it’s not my problem!”
Dagou is edging from the room. When James turns to follow, Dagou motions to him: Stay there. James knows he must stay and pay attention to what else is said. He doesn’t quite believe Leo; yet he almost wishes to believe him, wishes Dagou were on his own, free of the restaurant.
“Yeah, it’s time for me to move on to new things! Business abroad, business in Shanghai—I’m not selling my house, but I can’t be tied up here in Haven every day. This is our final Christmas party here, so drink up! And to my son, our host, the big spender? Good luck with your new job. You’re unemployed.” Leo raises his glass. “To the future!”
There’s some troubled murmuring.
Ken Fan calls out, “To Winnie’s health!” and more people cheer.
“Winnie is better!” Mary Wa chimes in. “They release her to rehab next week!”
There’s a great deal of clapping and shouting at her words.
“To Dagou, generous man!” chimes in Mrs. Chin.
“To Dagou,” echoes Alice Wa across the room, her face a mottled pink.
“To my brother,” says James, raising a glass, “who taught me everything I know!”
“To the Chao family, a part of our great town and our community!” declares Maud Marcus.
“To the Chaos,” pipes up Fang, red-faced under his striped hat. “To the Chinese brothers! For this surfeit of extravagance, and with warning!”
At the words the Chinese brothers, James cocks his head. Fang is referencing something. James senses an echo of, back to childhood, but he can’t place it.
“What do you mean?” James asks Fang. The toasts are in Mandarin now, going on over their heads. Eric leans politely in to listen. “This is a surfeit of good food, and it’s an extravagance, but what’s the warning?”
“Read the bones,” says Fang.
“To Winnie!” someone yells again. “To Winnie’s health!”
“What bones?” James asks, with Eric and Brenda listening.
“These bones.” Fang points at Eric’s plate. “Maybe they don’t know what they’re eating.”
A hush of fear comes over James. “The meat was a gift.”
“To Mary Wa, for her help over the years!”
“It’s from the Skaers,” Fang says.
“I know. So what?” asks James. “Dagou invited them. They couldn’t make it to the party, so they sent this. It was a gift.”
“Is it a gift if what they send is dog meat?”
For a moment, the chattering from the room presses in around their silent little group.
Fang blinks. “Oh shit. I was just—”
There’s a sudden hacking cough. It’s Eric. He’s not coughing; he is gagging.
Brenda touches his shoulder. “Eric?”
Eric stiffens. “Let me get out!”
James jumps up. “I’ll take you to the bathroom.” He snatches a glass from the table and heads toward the back. Eric follows blindly, coughing into his hands. Everyone turns to watch.
In the bathroom, James waits while Eric throws up in a stall. Eric has eaten a lot of stew, and now, seeing and smelling the half-digested soup of what he has eaten, and knowing what it might be (is it possible?), sends him into another round of vomiting. He retches and retches again.
“Fuck. Oh fuck.”
James remembers Dagou unwrapping the paper package of stew meat, aglow over the generous gift. Was it too good to be true?