Here Dagou glances furtively over at Ming, who refuses to look back. Ming, who’s come up with bail. Ming and Katherine, along with Jerry, are in favor of pulling out the legal stops to delay the trial for as long as possible, for at least a year.
“I just couldn’t wait anymore,” Dagou says to Ken Fan. “I want everything to be over with. So yeah, I opted for a relatively speedy trial.”
Ken says, “It will all work out. Whatever happens, it will all work out for the best.”
How can he utter that platitude? James wonders. He can’t mean that Dagou ending up in prison could be for the best. Dagou doesn’t notice. He thanks Ken profusely, perspiring. The day before, he and James went to Target to buy something to wear to Winnie’s event, because his shirt and slacks from the winter no longer fit him. He eats continually when he’s not in public.
“Listen,” Fang says, pulling James aside. He’s wearing the keen look James recognizes from the alley. Detective Fang. “There’s a stranger in the bathroom. Someone in dirty sneakers.”
“Is it a guest?”
“No, that’s what I’m saying.” Fang hesitates. “It was a stranger, in the other stall. I left the bathroom and waited in the hallway for a while, but they didn’t come out. Come look.”
They head to the bathroom. James checks inside, but whoever had been in the stall has vanished.
When they rejoin the group, Mary Wa asks James if he’ll be going back to school in the fall. James shrugs, and she reaches out to pat his arm. Winnie’s death has aged Mary. Her permanent wave is silver-tipped and her irises are faded. Still, she is solicitous to others. She asks Ming if he’s been sleeping.
“I’m still catching up,” Ming says.
Katherine also worries about Ming. The previous weekend, she pulled James aside to discuss what she called his “manic symptoms,” asking James to keep an eye on his brother when she’s in Chicago. “He’s fragile,” she said. “He’s much more distressed than he lets on. He should stop drinking coffee. He should stop looking at the internet.”
Ming needs to take a few days off, Mary Wa is saying now. This has been a terrible time for him, it is all an awful shock. Stay here with friends, at the Spiritual House, for a few more minutes. Even as she’s saying this, Ming slides toward the door. One of Ming’s tricks of being an escape artist, James surmises, is that no one expects him to stick around, even for his own good.
James walks Ming to his car.
“Fang says there was a stranger here, in the bathroom,” James says. “Someone with really dirty sneakers.”
“Yeah, well,” says Ming. “It’s the paparazzi. We’re all famous now.” He reaches the door of his car. “Villagers,” he mutters. He leans against the shiny black surface, closing his eyes and letting the fresh air stream over his face. “They’re coming for me, too, did you know that?” James remembers what Gu Ling Zhu Chi said: Ming is ill.
“Are you okay?” James asks. “You’re … changing, somehow.”
“What do you mean?” Ming barks, opening his eyes to glare at James.
“Nothing—well, you look like you might be coming down with something.”
Ming shakes his head, shakes off the thought.
“You need rest. Have you even gotten a full night’s sleep since you did all of that driving, Christmas Eve?”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a flight to catch.”
James listens. Ming is holding his breath. Then he says, “I don’t need sleep.”
“It’s the trial,” James says automatically. “It’s putting us all on edge.”
“It’s not the trial,” Ming says. “The trial is a procedure, and when it’s over, we’ll know where we stand. In case of the worst outcome, we’ll have the option to appeal.” Ming shakes his head again, very slightly. “It’s something else,” he mutters, not to James. He opens the passenger door of his rental car, puts his computer on the front seat, then circles to the driver’s door, still muttering. He doesn’t know James is listening, with his special new ability to hear.
“The villagers are out,” Ming is muttering. “Following the trail in the snow….”
Ming’s door slams shut. James watches the car disappear, turns, and goes back inside.
The Carpetbag
In the entryway of the Spiritual House, Dagou is kissing Brenda. He gives her one last, tender kiss, and leaves for the restaurant. James knows after arriving at work, Dagou will boil noodles and make an enormous batch of pork with scallion strips, chopped garlic, and jiu cai. He’ll dish out a large bowl for himself, scoop hot pepper sludge over it, and sit in the corner of the empty dining room, shoveling in the savory, spicy pork noodles. Eating, and being with Brenda, are his best means of steadying his emotions these days.
Most of the nuns return to their rooms or to the kitchen. Mary, Fang, and Alice say goodbye. Soon only James is left to do Gu Ling Zhu Chi’s bidding: he’s to carry his mother’s personal effects to his car and take them home.
As he follows Sister Omi into a storage room to retrieve Winnie’s possessions, the irony of what James is doing doesn’t escape him. For some time, his mother wanted to leave the house where she lived with his father. She planned and schemed to leave; then, in her final months, she achieved her desire to live in tranquility with the nuns. Now she’s dead, and James is transporting her personal effects back to the house she was so desperate to get away from. Still, it makes no sense to take her things anywhere else.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, because Winnie had so little, only one box and one bag, the carpetbag Dagou packed with clothes for the hospital. Someone must have brought it back to the Spiritual House after she died.
James goes through the box. Although his mother was able to scale down her belongings in Buddhist fashion, some of her old habits did survive her transition to a life of tranquility. There are very few personal possessions, but there are multiples of each. James counts two small statuettes of the Guan Yin—one gold, one robed in white—and two small incense pots. There are seven strands of prayer beads. Three of these James keeps for himself and his brothers, and the rest he gives to Omi. There are a couple of beautiful old shoehorns. Half-used toiletries, which he throws out, with doubles, which he gives away. Only items of the old country, irreplaceable, are singular. A pendant of Guan Yin seated on a lily pad. An ivory comb missing two teeth. A jade button.
Why had his mother lit incense, all those years? Because of her quarrels with his father? Because of Dagou? Because of the hatred and anger in her house?
When he’s repacked the remaining items into the box, Omi picks it up, somewhat unnecessarily, and follows him to the car.
James puts down the bag of clothes and takes out his keys. Omi sets down the box, seizes his hand, and looks up at him, her eyes filled with tears. He’s suddenly panicked by the grip of her bony fingers. He remembers hearing someone say that people who become Buddhists begin with too many feelings.
“Winnie was my friend,” Omi says.