Her heart is rattling a bit behind her breastbone, and her breath has narrowed to strange wheezes at the back of her throat, but on she marches in her crisp white Converse sneakers, her boy-sized dungarees, a shirt of white cotton eyelet that she likes very much. Dangling from her ears are hammered gold Indian earrings, three tiers of concentric circles like she herself once carved out of pear tree wood, the earrings purchased in Udaipur when she traveled there alone for her fifty-second birthday, and ended up having a lovely affair. She feels fetching today, dressed in something other than her workaday attire, the first time, perhaps, since the winter day she interviewed Theo. Je me sens sexy? she asks herself. Non, she does not exactly feel sexy, well, perhaps there is a soup?on of sexiness still in her bones, in her sculptured face, and this morning, in her queenly bathroom mirror, she felt her old beauty was wearing very well.
And though she may be huffing and puffing, and likely needs both knees replaced, something that will never happen—she will not expire on an operating table—she feels a power today in her soul. That it might have anything to do with Theo’s dinner party, she refuses to consider. The phrase “our dinner party,” wends around uncomfortably in her head. Her agreement to participate merely a gesture of kindness to someone she cares about in some way or another.
Straight down Wooster until she reaches Grand, and veers to the left. It always is much farther than she imagines, the north-south blocks very long, and several west-east blocks, and now, when she has the fish store in sight, a few more steps and she will be within the cool confines of Haiyang Best, there is a small stumble, not a trip, but she feels the concrete coming at her all of a sudden, and then she is on a chair in Haiyang Best, Young Wong on bended knees, looking up at her.
Her first thought is that he looks nothing like his father Chang or his grandfather Hai, extraordinarily handsome Chinese men she used to flirt with, when both she, and they, were younger. Chang is rarely in the store anymore; he runs the transportation part of the business and is down at the docks, and Hai, when Paloma has seen the old man, he grabs her hand and kisses the back of it, and they exchange brief greetings, for they have known each other in the most basic of ways for half a century. When the old man is in the store, Paloma finds it great fun to watch him hanging out the front door gazing at the young pretty women who walk by, checking out their behinds, sometimes calling out, “You’re a beauty,” then listening to the titter of those young women’s laughs.
But it is Young Wong in the store this morning, which is how Paloma Rosen thinks of him, and with whom she has not developed any kind of relationship. There were times after leaving Haiyang Best, after all that happy flirtation, when she pondered about Chang and Hai on her walk home, but Young Wong, not once has she thought of him when she is again out the door, purchases in hand. When Chang introduced Young Wong to her perhaps a year or two ago, he said, “This is my son, the third generation of Wong men to care for Haiyang Best,” and she wondered how the son felt, being the third generation of caretakers, but not droll, or quick with the compliments, and not at all handsome, critical genes lost in the generational transition.
Now, sitting in the red plastic chair, looking at Young Wong on his knees, Paloma has a chance to observe his face up close, to study it under the color of exhaustion, or heat prostration, to use her age for her own purposes, while she catches her breath, and he asks if she is okay, can he get anything for her, does she need medicine of some sort, should he call an ambulance? Long moments pass during which Paloma shakes her head once, twice, three, four times—non, non, non, non—giving her the opportunity to see that Young Wong is not as ugly as she thought, that he has a fascinating sort of beauty, a face Picasso might have painted, all bulging eyes and skewed lips, unlined skin and crystal-clear warm brown eyes. The minutes inure to Young Wong’s benefit, for eventually Paloma thinks, But he’s beautiful, and how have I not seen this before, when I have come to buy fish? It is a face worth sculpting. He looks as if he might be a few years older than Theo Tesh Park, the physique though, is short and narrow, while Theo is tall and still thin, but shoulder-broad.
“Miss Paloma Rosen,” Young Wong says to her, no longer appearing like a Cubist rendition of himself, “Please tell me, what can I do for you?”
“Water first,” Paloma Rosen says. “Fish after.”
In Haiyang Best, Young Wong—Da Wong—trails after Paloma, one arm outstretched in case he must steady her, the palm of the other crossed over his apron, over his heart underneath, still beating hard from the tough old puo puo’s near collapse. She drank down two glasses of cold water and her color returned, her cheeks no longer concave, but slowly reinflating, softly wrinkled silk being pulled taut. He wouldn’t mind touching that skin, seeing if he can transfer its texture to paint when Sunday comes and he’s free of fish, free of this place. Her blue eagle-eyed stare is back, her mouth the exotic color of the bold fuchsia flower he once tried to paint from a picture off the Internet, but he should not leave her alone for a minute. If she collapses again and dies, it cannot be here in Haiyang Best. And so Da follows behind while she roams his aisles, such majesty in her walk, those blue eyes so smart when she flicks her head in his direction to make sure he is in pursuit, a clicking that he hears coming from her and thinks might be her brain actually working away.
He wonders what she would think if she knew there were times she was the subject of Wong family dinners, Yéyé’ Hai and his fùqīn, discussing seriously the nature of a country in which a woman like Miss Paloma Rosen was alone. Despite their cluck-clucking, when he was young, Da heard in their voices respect, affection, pleasure in the way her name rolled oddly on their tongues, their desire to say Miss Paloma Rosen over and over again. When he grew older and still they were talking about her, he realized their tones reflected the intimidation she made each man feel, for they thought her a strong woman, nearly a siren calling to Da’s forebears to desire something beyond their own tight world. Of course, neither had moved beyond their tight world, and neither knew much about Miss Rosen at all, except for what they imagined in their own heads, just as he, Da, does not know anything about her. But with her in the shop, the time they just spent together, with worried Da on his knees, those dinners when she was the topic are on his mind, how she was such a luminous curiosity to Yéyé’ and Fùqīn.
“That loup de mer, Young Wong,” Miss Rosen says, pointing to a huge black sea bass, laid out on ice with his cohorts, its eyes glassy—all-seeing or no-seeing, is what Da wonders perpetually, constantly, day after day.
“It is twenty pounds,” Da Wong says. “Cleaned, but not gutted.”
“Parfait,” says Miss Rosen. “I like to eviscerate myself.”