My God. He was flirting. “I . . . uh . . .” My face burned as my fickle words scattered like a school of fish in the deep water of his blue eyes. The moment stretched like a rack and I writhed upon it. Where was the banter I found so effortless with Kashmir?
“I apologize,” he said again, finally saving me from the silence. He spun his hat in his hands. “I am . . . not usually so bold. If you hadn’t dropped your purse, I likely never would have spoken to you. Isn’t it funny, what can happen by merest chance?”
“Indeed it is. Thank you—” I cleared my throat; something was sticking in it. “Thank you again, Mr. Hart.”
He stepped back slightly and made another little bow, suddenly formal again. “A pleasure, miss. Good day.” He put his hat on his head and tipped it. “I hope to see you again. Perhaps by merest chance.” Then he continued down the road. I watched him go, but he didn’t look back.
Of course, then it came to me, the reply I should have made. “None I’d so like to impress,” he’d said, and then I should have said “You certainly left your mark.” h. And I would have patted the coins he’d returned to me. Clever, you see, because an impression is a mark, and a mark is another word for coin. At least, it is in Germany . . . no, not till 1920; before that it was the Thaler. Hmm. Maybe it was best I’d said nothing.
He disappeared into a shop, one of a number of people coming and going through Chinatown, just as I was, though he knew every step of the way, and I was a stranger in paradise. I strolled down the street, wistful, looking at everything and everyone without knowing what I was looking for. Here, the Lotus Leaf restaurant, accepting a delivery of eggs, there, Wing’s Laundry, filled with steam, across the street, Joss Happy House Apothecary, a fenghuang painted on the sign. Farther down the block, a man in stained canvas trousers took a barrow full of plaster through an open doorway. There was a cat curled in the shade of a barrel, and a girl selling ugly Kona oranges out of her apron.
I was almost to the river when I realized what I’d read.
Joss Happy House.
I spun on my heel and practically ran back to the apothecary.
I peered in through the dirty window. It was dim inside, most of the light coming in through the open doors in the front and rear of the narrow shop. There were no customers. I hesitated outside in the street, but only for a moment.
The air in the shop was cool and sharp, scented with turmeric and dried leaves, and another smell, distantly familiar, that tickled my nose. The rear of the shop was a mess of barrels and boxes in haphazard stacks, nearly obscuring a cramped spiral stairwell leading down to a basement below. A scarred wooden counter stood to my right, and behind it, a plump woman with iron-gray hair and eyes cloudy with cataracts. She squinted when I came in, her tanned skin creasing like crepe.
“Zao an,” she said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“Ah. How can I help you?”
The walls were lined with rough wooden shelves, and those shelves with containers of all shapes and sizes—glass jars and bamboo baskets, lacquered boxes and paper envelopes holding all manner of ingredients: powders and seeds and roots and fungus, clear liquids and oils and organic shapes suspended in spirits, even a giant jar, displayed prominently on the front counter, containing a glittering golden serpent coiled in amber liquid. It did indeed seem to be an apothecary. Was this Auntie Joss, the woman who’d introduced my parents in an opium den? I had no idea how to ask.
“What is your ailment?” She reached out and took my hand in hers, running her fingers over my wrist bones, my thumb, my knuckles; she must have been nearly blind. “You’re thin. You have lost appetite? Low spirits? I have something for you.”
“Are you Auntie Joss?”
Her fingers paused in their exploration of my palm, and then she released my hand. “Everyone from Hawaii knows Auntie Joss.”
“I’m not from here.”
“Oh?”
“Are you . . . Did you . . .” I couldn’t figure out the words. “I do need a cure,” I said at last.
She reached under the counter and drew out a lava-rock mortar and pestle, setting it on the counter with a heavy thud. “What’s the illness?” she said, running her hands over the jars.
“Addiction.”
She dropped her chin and smiled like she had a secret, showing the tips of teeth the color of old ivory. “You do know Auntie Joss.”
“Only from a story.”
“An old story. Didn’t you know that selling opium is illegal these days?” She rubbed her thumb, almost absently, along the lip of the stone bowl. “The king has passed many new laws since your father left.”
My throat tightened. How had she guessed? Or had I said something obvious? But it wasn’t important—that wasn’t why I was here. I pressed myself against the rickety counter. The liquid in the glass jar sloshed gently, the snake’s coils rocking in the fluid. “You knew my mother.” My mouth had gone so dry, it was barely a whisper.