“Sold,” I say.
He wraps the pot in a cellophane cone with two loops of twine supporting the bottom, then finds a bag for my chips and my candy. “Speaking of your party,” I say, wriggling back into my glove, “do you have one to go to tonight? Or is New Year’s Eve’s not your thing?”
“I should be going to a party,” he says. “But I have to be here all night. It’s my parents’ store. I’m giving them the night off. But they don’t really even want me here. They didn’t work their whole lives just so I can do the same thing they’re doing. I have a high school diploma, plus almost thirty hours at QCC, studying to be a lab tech. I speak three languages. English, Tagalog, and Spanish. I should be doing something else.”
I’m at a loss for a response that’s not false or patronizing. “It’s a very nice shop,” I say.
“It’s not a nice neighborhood, though,” he says. “My dad’s been held up twice in the last year. I want him to sell the place, but they need the income.”
“How long have they had it?” I ask.
“Since 1970,” says C. J. “Not all at this location. They were in Queens for twelve years before they moved here. Lots of immigrant people work in Manhattan hospitals now, and they need a place to buy their stuff.”
“That’s a long time, since 1970.”
“Too long if you ask me,” he says. “We’ve been in the States for twenty years, ever since I was a little kid. We came when a lot of other Asian people came, after the law changed.”
“I remember that,” I say.
And I do, more or less. I remember Kennedy talking about the need for it—calling the old system of racist quotas intolerable—though it was Johnson who finally signed it. I used to be able to remember these things perfectly: Names and dates leapt to mind with no effort, along with a half-dozen rhymes, and maybe a pun or two. Now I find myself in a golden age of trivia—as evidenced by that board game Gian and all his friends love so much, with its polychrome plastic pies—just as my recall has started to fade: a gunslinger growing slow on the draw even as the Gold Rush is breaking out. The Hart–Celler Act! How could I forget? Emanuel Celler, Brooklyn’s long-tenured hero! Defending the huddled masses in the shadow of Liberty herself!
C. J. is watching me from over my wrapped parcels; I have let myself drift. “What’s that you’re watching?” I ask, diverting attention from myself, pointing at the small black-and-white television set on the counter behind him. “Dick Clark in Times Square?”
“It’s about to be the Tonight Show,” he says. “It’ll be a rerun.”
“Are you kidding me?” I say. “If you’re short on holiday spirit, at least show some civic pride.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m still mad at Johnny Carson for moving his show to L.A. It was so adult when he was here in Manhattan. It was for grown-ups. It had an edge. Now that it’s in beautiful downtown Burbank, or Bakersfield, or wherever, it just isn’t the same.”
“He used to do the show here?” C. J. says. “I never knew that. I guess I’ve seen some of them, those old shows of his. I don’t always understand them. Maybe he didn’t really have people like me in mind when he made them. Young people. Brown people. Anyway, I guess a lot has changed since then.”
“That is true,” I say. “A lot has changed.”
“Well, I don’t blame him for moving. L.A. is where the stars are, right? I’d go there myself if I could. That’s where my family came in—on the West Coast, anyway—but then we kept going, to New York City. I have no idea why. We should have stayed put. The Golden State. I’ve got a ton of cousins out there. I’m thinking of going back.”
“Oh, C. J., I hate to hear promising young people say things like that. This city needs you.”
“Lillian, no offense,” says C. J., “but you just met me. I haven’t been feeling so promising lately. To make our rent here, we’ve had to start staying open all night. My parents have to sleep sometime, so I’m taking a break from school to help. I’m scared for them. I don’t want my mom or my dad working here alone in the middle of the night. If the neighborhood gets any worse our customers will stop coming. We’ll just be here to get robbed. But if it gets any better the rent will go up. It’s not a good situation.”
C. J. is looking at the television, not really watching it. On the screen are crowds of people, laughing and waving, some holding hand-lettered greetings to the folks back home, others raising two fingers for peace. The volume is either off or too low for me to hear.
“Since you have a date with the Best of Carson, and I have a party to get to, I won’t bore you with the specifics. How much do I owe you?”