“Get the fuck out of my head.”
“There’s something I want you to do. Now, while it’s eight hundred thirty-eight.”
“You’re my imagination. I control you and I want you to go away now. Go now.”
“I want you to go to the restaurant. Into the freezer room—”
Ming leaps up, seizes the cord to the radio, and yanks it from the wall.
Silence.
Ming never did understand the reason his father kept the freezer room. Surely the occasional money he saved on meat couldn’t have covered the utility bills for that room. In all his father’s money-grubbing practices, the freezer room was the only one Ming could never make sense of. Leo was simply attached to the room.
Ming plugs the radio back into the wall.
Immediately his ears fill with static. After a moment, the voice emerges, full, triumphant.
“In length and breadth how doth my poodle grow!”
“You can’t know Faust,” Ming says.
“You think I can’t. Jerry Stern told me. That Jerry is good guy.”
“This is a dream.”
“You never took me seriously. I’ve got smarts. You’re ashamed of me, think I don’t know anything? I know my English. I taught this old dog new tricks! Listen to this! Hot dog! Work like a dog! Fight like cats and dogs. Call off the dogs. Lie down with dogs—get up with fleas! It’s a dog’s life. Wouldn’t wish that on a dog. Raining cats and dogs. Let sleeping dogs lie. Love me, love my dog. Lucky dog. Top dog. Dirty dog. Put on the dog. Shaggy dog story. Sick as a dog. Dog breath. Put a dog off the scent. Why keep a dog and bark yourself. Go to see a man about a dog. Blind dog in a meat market. Dog sniffing another dog’s butt. Dog ate my homework. Dog-eat-dog. Dog-tired. Dog sleep. Dog tags. Chowhound. Beware the dog—”
“Shut up!”
“If it’s in your head, why’d you plug the radio back in? You don’t need electricity.”
Ming can’t think of an answer.
“Admit it. You plugged in the radio out of need. You need to know something you can’t figure out yourself. Something only I can tell you.”
He stops, waits.
“I do want to ask you something,” Ming admits.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I want to ask you about my sister, whatever her true name is. My sister at the restaurant.”
“It’s before your time. And you know why she’s here. Not for her mother. That’s just a fancy lie. She came here to get three things. First, money. Then, my life. And finally, the ring. I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s what she’s been searching for all along. What is hatred that can’t be solved with money? Money and murder. What is getting revenge but getting money?”
(Ming hears an echo of his own voice, in the Other Restaurant.)
“You can measure the size of a man by how much money he wants. You, my son, you’re a man. Your older brother, chasing his bullshit ego around, chasing his penis now, he’ll always be a nobody.”
“And my sister?”
“She came all the way across the world. Not for a large amount of money. Not a fortune. But it was somebody’s Life Savings. Enough to purchase papers, transportation, a piece of property, just a small one in a nowhere town—start-up costs for a little business—”
“The restaurant—”
“And now she’s got some money. But not what she wanted. Not what she was truly after. So she stuck around, even after I was dead, even after she got the ring. Until she finally had a chance to talk with you, so that one person left on earth would remember who she was, what she did.”
Was this true? Did O-Lan have the ring now? “What was she truly after?”
“Ask your brother.”
“Dagou doesn’t know anything.”
“No, ask your little brother.”
Ming plunges on. “Don’t try to lead me off the scent. What did you do to her mother? You took money from her, didn’t you? You left her and her daughter, your own child, and you came to the U.S. What money was she after?”
“I’m saving the profits for you. Your inheritance.”
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s nothing to you. You will think it nothing. But you, you’re my son, and I want you to keep it.”
“Shut up,” Ming says.
(At that moment, he hears a familiar but unidentifiable sound from somewhere outside of the room, near the door. He’s cramped by an old fear, and his body seizes on the bed.)
“Admit it. You hate me, not because I’ve done bad things. Not because I know money is exchangeable for love, or life, or God. This is what you yourself believe.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
(Footsteps, pursuing him. Ming’s gasps come quickly now.)
“You don’t hate me for this. Nope, you hate me because you think I’m only a small-timer. If I’d managed to sleep with a woman who had a billion yuan, well, then you would find me a more suitable father. But my scale turns out to be on the level of a small business, something humble—”
“Get out! Get out!!”
(“Ming? Ming?”)
“I told you—”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears the clock radio turn off. There is a hiss of air. The station is gone.
Ming staggers to the thermostat, adjusts the heat.
A moth flutters by and he sniffs its wings, its radiant dust. He feels an intense physical discomfort. The dry heat presses in on him from all sides, as if he is encased in wool; the room is terribly stuffy. He’s gulping for air, he’s thirsty. He drops to his knees—that’s better. He crawls toward the bathroom, pushing away the image of simply putting his head into the cool wet basin of the toilet, guzzling its contents. Repulsive. Disgusting. He stretches out, rears up, and braces himself upon the sink. Slipping, almost falling, he reaches out for the faucet. (Something’s wrong. This is not his hand.) The moth flutters by. Following it instinctively, tracking its motion, he catches a glimpse of something in the mirror. He looks away, panting hoarsely, and then, with a slow, deliberate turn that requires all of his strength, he looks into the mirror again.