“Then she loves you for wonderful you,” Jin said. “As it should be.” After a few minutes he turned to Leo again. “But what if the baby is Pohl’s? Or another customer’s. Have you ever asked her?”
“She was never with Pohl,” said Leo, sitting up straighter and looking angrily at Jin. “I stopped that from happening by offering up my skull instead. Besides, he’s been gone from Shanghai since last January.”
“If you believe her, then I believe her,” said Jin, saying something in Chinese to the driver, who took an abrupt left on Jin’s command.
“You’ve known her much longer than I have,” said Leo. “Do I have reason not to believe her? She’s only five months pregnant. Pohl has been gone for over a year.”
“I’d believe her,” said Jin. “But I’d also make sure that baby has dark curly hair,” he said, pointing to Leo’s head.
“Really?” said Leo, who hadn’t dared question Agatha about such an indiscreet thing. When Agatha had told him in April that she was a month pregnant, he had felt a fighting combination of panic and joy. He cared for—perhaps even loved—Agatha, did not want their nights—and especially their days—to end, but the voice from childhood whispering Emi Kato’s name had never gone silent. With the news of the baby, Leo had to silence it for good.
“Do you love her?” asked Jin, smiling until his dimples showed. “Because I love her. So does every man who has ever patronized Liwei’s. Want me to marry her instead?”
“No,” said Leo. “I’m marrying her.”
“Despite the Japanese girl.”
“Emi Kato,” said Leo, as they got to the bridge. He waited as Leo and the driver bowed to the Japanese guard, and then said, “She’s not just any Japanese girl.”
“You can’t be dreaming of her still,” said Jin, scowling at the back of the Japanese guard and then leaning in the old rickshaw like he was the king of Shanghai. “It’s not a male trait. We aren’t faithful.”
“That just goes to show that you don’t know Emi,” said Leo, trying to mimic his pose. “She inspires a lot more than faith.”
“And Agatha?”
“She inspires something else all together.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Jin, letting out a low whistle.
Leo closed his eyes and let the whir of the city buzz through his ears, appreciative that Jin was paying for their rickshaw, which he’d realized was making turns all over the city so they could avoid work a little longer. It was funny what felt like luxury to Leo now—not a chauffeured Mercedes, but a splintered wooden cart.
They went over the bumps and holes of Shanghai, then called out to a group of young Chinese girls on a street corner playing catch with a half-dead fish.
“That’s truly disgusting,” said Leo, looking at them.
Jin yelled out in Chinese and one of the girls ran over and gave him the fish and he gave her the money to buy a live one. He threw the dead one at Leo’s feet and they both laughed and twisted away from it, until Leo kicked it into the gutter.
As they made their way to the edge of Hongkew, Leo’s ears started to buzz, and he turned around to see if there was a truck behind him. All he could see were children in the street and Chinese women doing their washing. “The city gets louder every day!” he shouted to Jin.
Jin looked behind them, too, and then stood up to see farther in front of them, holding Leo’s shoulder for balance. “But it shouldn’t be,” he said. “We’re almost out of Hongkew.”
“What?” screamed Leo, barely able to hear him.
Instead of repeating himself, Jin shook his head and yelled something to a man in an alley, but he couldn’t understand him, either.
Leo looked at Jin worried, and before either could speak, they heard an even louder noise and both turned their eyes to the sky.
“Is that noise not coming from the street?” Leo asked Jin.
Jin yelled at the rickshaw puller to stop. “I’m not sure!” he shouted back. After a moment of peering around them again, he stopped and pointed to the sky. “Planes.”
They saw the American planes at the same time. The heavy silver aircraft had been flying above the city for months, but always low and fast. This time they were coming in high but noticeably slower, which could mean only one thing.
The rickshaw puller looked up too, dropped the handles of the cart, and started to run. Just as Leo and Jin slid to the ground, the siren went off. The planes were carrying bombs, and they were about to drop them on the city.
Such a raid had been anticipated for months, and the Japanese had built trenches and foxholes around Shanghai, but there was no plan for the restricted area and there were no bomb shelters in Hongkew.
“Where should we go?” Leo shouted at Jin, following the rickshaw puller out of instinct.
“We don’t have time to get back to your house,” said Jin, looking around him as they ran. “And it’s no safer than where we are now.” He looked at Leo, who was frozen in the street, and screamed, “Just run! Start running! We can’t be uncovered like this.”
They were near a crowded market and Leo pointed to it, but Jin shook his head.
“Too many people!” he yelled, trying to be heard over the whine of planes’ engines. “They’ll all be trying to hide under the same tables. There won’t be enough room.”
Leo saw children running from the market and took a step back. Jin spotted a concrete building where a restaurant was being built near the market and motioned for Leo to follow. They sprinted over, kicked in a back window, and crawled inside, the jagged glass cutting up their legs. The floor hadn’t been finished yet and they slipped on the dust and concrete fragments, trying to find something to hide under.
As soon as they had righted themselves, they heard the first blast. Jin screamed, while Leo covered his ears and crouched down on the ground. “We have to get undercover!” Leo yelled.
“The ground is soft enough for us to dig!” Jin shouted back, getting down.
“We don’t have time,” said Leo, running over to a big wooden table and crawling under it. Jin joined him and they started digging with their hands and fragments of concrete blocks. When the bombs got louder, falling closer, the ground shook heavily at each explosion, and Jin yelled for them to stop.
“Forget it! Get down! Lie down flat on your stomach. Cover your good eye with your hands!” he said, grabbing Leo and pushing him to the ground.
Elbow to elbow, faces in the dirt, they waited in silence as the American bombs rained down.
Leo started to pray under his breath, for his parents, for Jin’s family, for Agatha and the baby, until the explosions were so loud he couldn’t even think straight enough to pray. All he could do was pinch his eyes shut and wait to see if he was meant to die that day.
He heard Jin breathing fast next to him and realized that suddenly it was quiet. The siren had stopped, along with the deafening blasts. The planes had passed over.