Dim Sum Dead (22 page)

“Don’t you trust your own judgement in people, my dear girl?” Lee Chen asked.

I felt the fever of fear drain away. I had to be certain. I couldn’t let this thing go.

“Tell me the rest, Lee. What did you do?”

“I met with the girl. She told me she would sell my precious family treasure to me for a price.”

“Twenty thousand dollars,” I said.

Lee Chen looked shocked. “How could you possibly know that?” she asked. Her voice held a note of panic.

“She was desperate for that money,” I explained, watching her. “Did you agree to pay her price?”

“Yes. She said she must have the money right away for her boyfriend. He was in some trouble, she said. Immediately. I told her I had the cash and would bring it to her.”

Lee Chen looked so small. Oh, God, could she have pushed Quita? Did she have such anger in her?

“But when I returned,” Lee said, “she did not have my family’s mah-jongg set as she had promised. She said I must give her the money first. I told her no and left.”

“When you returned,” I said quietly. “It was three o’-clock, wasn’t it? You argued.”

“No, no,” Lee said. “We said unpleasant words because she did not have my property, that is all.”

“Do you have your purse here, Lee?” I asked. I had gone too far not to be absolutely sure I was right. But if I was right, what had I chosen to do?

“What? My purse?” Lee was startled at the turn in the conversation.

“Yes. Could you lend me twenty dollars?”

“Twenty dollars? Of course I will. But what is this about?”

I sat there, waiting for her to fumble with the clasp on her small black-leather bag. She pulled out a wallet and unrolled a tidy stack of bills, all twenties. All, I noticed, with little frowny cartoon faces written in blue pen on the corner.

Ray had drawn that graffiti on those twenties. I had bugged him about it and made a big deal out of defacing the money he’d picked up for the party payroll. But those twenties didn’t pay for party supplies. Eight of those twenties I had lent to Quita McBride as she watched her world come crumbling down. Quita’s lover was deserting her, her boyfriend was kicking her out of his home, her husband had never really been her husband at all, and his estate was as good as gone.

I looked at the twenty-dollar bill Lee laid neatly down on the table on top of my mah-jongg fortune hand. The stupid face glared from the corner of the bill.

In my life, I have always tried to avoid causing anyone any pain. In fact, I am moved always to protect those for whom I care from any and every pain, if I can. I am actually overwhelmed at times by my fear that some sly pain might seep through my hypervigilant protection and cause damage before I can stop it or soothe it away. I feel panicked at the responsibility of it.

I realized, here, sitting in Lee Chen’s rose garden at night,
that I probably would never choose to have children of my own because of this fear. How do you raise a child and protect them against every pain? The world is filled with hurts. I would go mad to prevent every single slight and insult and injury and illness and heartbreak. Soon, I suspect, I would simply be driven crazy by all the sharp things out there in the world. That is how fearsome I find the thought of someone I care for suffering.

I looked again at Lee and the marked twenty-dollar bill. When Quita’s purse was found empty, I knew the twenties I’d lent her must have gone somewhere that last evening of her life. I thought she might have given the money to Trey. But Trey wasn’t interested in such small change. Those missing twenties had bothered me all along. And now, at last, I had tracked down those bills. Lee Chen had to have taken this particular bill from Quita after the party. But why?

I continued looking at Lee, sitting across from me, so silent. She hadn’t told me everything at all. And despite her pain, which I was clearly making worse, I found I had to push harder now. I needed something above and beyond just masking Lee Chen’s pain, and even my own. I needed the truth to come out.

“You told me when McBride asked you for the mah-jongg case back in Hong Kong long ago,” I said slowly, “you were submissive.”

“Yes.”

“Like a good wife, Lee.”

There was silence.

“You were married to Dickey McBride in China.” Catherine Hill hinted that Dickey was still married to someone from long ago. “And you are married to him still, isn’t that true?”

Lee did not answer.

“I know that Quita was upset about many things on Wednesday night, but one of those things was particularly distressing. The lawyers were going to prove that Quita had never been legally married to Dickey. And why didn’t he marry her, I wonder. Could it be because his marriage to you
had never officially ended?”

“And? If that is true—what then?” she asked, her eyes openly hostile. Her voice a harsh challenge.

“Then, I think Quita must have been very angry with you, Lee. When you came back to see her, it was three o’clock. Quita did not have the mah-jongg case. She had used it as bait to trick you to bring her the money she demanded.”

“She was a lying whore,” Lee said. “I spit at her. I told her who I was, that I was Richard’s wife. She called me all kinds of horrible things, hurtful things. She threw money at me and said, ‘go away, old woman, and let me be.’ She promised if I withdrew my claim, she would be generous with me. She would send me more twenties.”

“And you pushed her. You wanted her to die,” I said.

“She was a very bad lady,” Lee said, as if she was tired of explaining to a child why she had been forced to step on a beetle. “She made her own terrible life.”

“And you ended it,” I said aghast, finally believing it to be true. “Why?” I shouted.

“I have been ill, Madeline. I don’t talk about it to my daughter.”

“You’re sick?”

“And who will fight the whore to get Richard’s money for his daughter, my Yang, and her daughters, too? Who will make the lawyers give the money? No one. I have never told a soul about Richard. Not even his daughter knows who her real father was. And there was that whore, standing on the stairway, telling me she would never stop fighting to get Richard’s money, even if it meant keeping the case open in the courts for years and years and all the money in Richard’s accounts were drained dry with the cost of lawyers and fees.” Lee was breathing hard. “And that whore said she would tell my daughter that Richard had been her father. I yelled at her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She kept telling me the most vile rubbish, and I could not let her do those terrible things she said.”

“So you pushed her?” I demanded.

“Yes,” Lee yelled.

“You wanted Quita to die?”

“I wanted her gone forever. I was in that place for a reason. I was in that place to end her miserable existence. I was in that place to push her hard, so her head would hit the corner of the step. I am not a strong woman, but it was the will of God that she must die that night, and that is why I was there. Do you see now? I do not care what happens to me. I am dying. It does not matter if death comes a little sooner for me. But my poor child must be spared every pain, Madeline. Can you see how important that is?”

It was perverted, twisted, inside-out logic. In a dark flash I felt the center of my soul shift. I saw it clearly—how sick and monomaniacal the whole idea of sparing others pain could be when pushed to this level. And if that was the lesson to take from my own dismal part in this drama, maybe that’s why I was destined to live it out. It made me weak to see it from this view. I swallowed hard.

“Someday,” Lee said, wheedling and insane, “you will have a child of your own. Two children, did the tiles tell us? And you will understand well what I had to do. You and I are so much alike, Madeline.”

“No.”

“You will understand someday. My daughter had to be protected. She had to be spared the shame of knowing she had such a dishonorable father and such a dishonored mother.”

“No, Lee,” I said again.

“Yes, Madeline, yes,” she said, her voice pleading. “This is not about me and my pain. I care nothing about that. This is for my daughter Yang and her beautiful children. I had to see to it that they would never have one second of pain

S
unday morning in Los Angeles. One of the places I like to start Sundays is the ABC Seafood Restaurant on the corner of Ord and New Hope in Chinatown. The noise and bustle of its Dim Sum rooms, the lively flavors of a dozen varieties of steamed dumplings, the sounds of Chinese languages, the faces of the hundreds of Chinese-born customers, transport me to a land where life is much different from the one I’m sentenced to live out here in LA. It’s Hong Kong, freeway close.

I needed a cheap, quick escape from a night that brought no comfort or rest. I couldn’t stay home with my thoughts. Dull from exhaustion, I sought the comfort of routine. Sunday mornings at ABC.

This Sunday morning was more dramatic than most in Chinatown. In order to welcome the Year of the Snake, many of the large Dim Sum palaces, like ABC, had made contributions to neighborhood organizations. These groups brought their musicians and their lion dancers. I stood out on the sidewalk, waiting for Honnett to show up, watching the New Year celebration swirl around me.

Half an hour ago, the lady inside the large restaurant had taken my name and handed me a paper number. Meanwhile, the waiting crowds were gathering outside the front door of ABC Seafood. Not far away, the gunshot ricochet of firecrackers snapped. Firecrackers, I knew, chased away the mythical monster, Nian, which once terrorized the people.

These traditional rituals had always fascinated me in the past, and I prodded myself to focus, pay attention to the dancers on the sidewalk. One man was holding up the large stylized lion head, while his costumed legs were covered in ruffled golden pants to resemble the lion’s front legs. The second man, in matching gold ruffled pants represents the animal’s hind legs. Together they performed in front of the street crowd, dipping low and leaping high. The lion dance is a remarkable combination of performance art and sport. It takes years of training and practice before one can be good enough to give a public performance. I had heard that many lion dancers are also practitioners of Kung Fu.

“
GONG XI FA CAI
!” a voice yelled to me over the popping of firecrackers and Chinese drum music.

Even with the sound and the fury of the outdoor celebration, I recognized Arlo’s voice.

“Hello,” I said, looking over at him, my heart crunching only a little. All the way on the other side of the earth, my troubles knew how to track me down.

It had been four days since I’d last seen Arlo, sitting at La Scala Presto, waiting for his burger. I had been both disturbed and relieved he had never called to hash it all out. After our recent history, breaking up and getting back again, it had felt less shocking, somehow, this last parting. Like earthquakes whose aftershocks diminish until we hardly feel them.

“How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.

“Holly,” Arlo said. “I threatened to blow up the ladies’ room at the Hard Rock Café if she didn’t tell. She knew I was just crazy enough to do it.”

“You always manage, somehow,” I said. “Well. What’s up?”

I could only imagine. He wanted to give it another try. He’d discovered God, a new therapist, hypnosis, the healing properties of tofu. Something had changed him and now we should try again.

“I quit my show,” Arlo said, his tousled brown hair played up his boyish look.

That got my attention. In all the ins and outs of our relationship
over the years, he’d never blown a job. No one quits a pilot in mid-production. People get fired, but no one walks away. “What happened?”

“I figured you are always right, so I must be wrong.” He smiled. “I was too obsessed with the sitcom, with the whole business. So I walked off.”

The end of his speech was slightly obscured by a particularly loud drumbeat as the Chinese drummers moved closer to where we stood.

“So what do you want, Arlo?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking at his boots, smiling a little. “Maybe I want a hug good-bye.”

I leaned forward, wondering if I’d heard correctly. He held me for a moment and let go.

“Yep. Simple as that. I want to be your friend.”

“Are you asking for another chance? Because—”

“No, no, no. I get it. We’re not going to do that again. I just always thought you’d be in my life, somehow.” His eyes crinkled in the corners as he stood there on the street curb in Chinatown, smiling at me, as the lion dancers swooped in the background.

“We can try it,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “If you’d like. What are you going to do without your pilot?”

“That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” he said.

The outside loudspeaker emitted a blare: “Ninety-three.”

I looked at the scrap of paper in my hand. Ninety-three.

“That’s my number,” I said.

Arlo put his hand on the back of my leather jacket and guided me through the crowd watching the dancers. He opened the door of the restaurant and walked me in.

It was noisy and crowded inside the door. The hostess was talking into a microphone mounted on a podium. “Ninety-three?” she said. “Ninety-four?”

“Ninety-three,” I said loudly, catching her eye.

She gave us a small, professional smile, and beckoned Arlo and me to follow.

Inside the entry, dozens of customers waited for tables. Almost every face looked to be Chinese. They squeezed in
near the large aquarium tanks in front that were filled with live shrimp and abalone and lobsters. Two little boys, their black hair in identical bowl-style cuts, stood fascinated to see one lone shrimp at the bottom of a lobster tank.

Arlo and I followed the hostess into the main dining hall, a bright room of red and gold, lined with mirrors and crowded with diners. The roar of two hundred people, talking and clicking chopsticks against plates was loud and animated. Many of the tables were large rounds, covered in spotless white cloths, holding families of twelve, from ancient grannies to tiny infants. The hostess led us in a serpentine pattern through the room. We ess-curved our way around steamy Dim Sum trolleys pushed by petite Asian women in uniforms and were soon left at a table in the corner.

“I’m actually expecting someone, Arlo,” I said, looking across the square table at him. He seemed to be making himself at home, pouring hot tea from a pot into two small cups.

“Remember how you broke up with me?” he asked, finishing his chore.

I stared at him.

“Well, you probably do,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I was telling the story—hey, I hope you don’t mind that I was talking about it. Anyway, it turns out Katzenberg cracked up. They have offered me high six figures to write the screenplay.”

“What? You’re going to write a movie?” I was stunned. Arlo had been stuck in the mines of series television as long as I’d known him. He’d always talked about moving to features. He’d never had the guts to leave his huge paychecks behind. He’d never had the creative energy to write a spec screenplay while doing all his series work.

“They loved the part where you broke up with me over the sesame seeds on the bun. What can I tell you?” Arlo gave a wry smile.

“You want me to say it’s okay for you to write a comedy script about the way our relationship ended?” I asked.

Honnett walked up to the table and, without interrupting, pulled out the chair next to me. Arlo looked at him, and at
once Arlo’s chipper little “let’s be friends” smile faded.

Arlo turned to me. “A guy? You’re already seeing someone else? I thought you were meeting Sophie for lunch.”

I shook my head, wondering what fresh hell was this.

The thing is, the men knew each other. Arlo had met Honnett on a few occasions. Work occasions. But by Arlo’s startled sick new expression, anyone could see that everything had changed. The idea hit him hard. Honnett and me. This was clearly a whole new world of pain into which Arlo had unerringly plopped himself.

Ignoring Honnett, Arlo turned at me, his eyes reproachful. “You left me for a policeman? How does this possibly figure, Mad? I thought it was the
hamburger bun
—the food thing. I can be picky. I know this. It’s like a religious difference between us.”

I gave Honnett a quick look, to see how he was doing with this scene. He was clearly not having a picnic, but he wasn’t bolting either. I admired his ability to take the stress.

Arlo took my glancing at Honnett as evidence of the deepest sort of betrayal. I was sharing a look with another man. He had more to say. “Madeline…a
cop
? A lousy cop?” His voice was getting louder, but he did turn to Honnett, and say, “No offense.” Then back to me. “So how long have you been dating this guy? Must be months. How long have you been playing around?”

“Wait.” I looked at him, hoping to get through before I was truly never able to come to any restaurant I liked again, having had these bad scenes with Arlo haunting me in each and every one. “We’re not going to do this. I just can’t. I’m a wreck. Nothing was going on behind your back, whether you want to believe me or not. Please. You know we weren’t working. And it wasn’t about the bun.”

Arlo looked crestfallen. “What then?” He thought it over. “
The Empty Pot
? Was that it?”

I felt uncomfortable. But I suppose everyone needs to hear it one more time, spelled out. “Yes, Arlo. It was. Kind of. That little story symbolized what we were up against, you and I. The big gulf between how you think and how I think.”

“
The Empty Pot
,” Arlo explained to Honnett, including him suddenly in our conversation. Arlo thought he was being amusing to turn chatty to the man he had just been insulting. But I could hear the anger under his light words. “
The Empty Pot
is a charming little Chinese fable,” Arlo said darkly.

“I know it,” Honnett said. His first words.

Arlo looked startled, but quickly recovered his joking, angry delivery. “Maddie and I broke up over the moral of that story. It was purely a literary breakup. We’re still crazy about each other, except of course when it comes to food and literature.”

Who couldn’t help but laugh at Arlo? It’s what he lived for.

He went on. “Okay, Chuck. So you know the story. The emperor gave all the kids bad seeds so nothing grew in their pots. The question is, what would you do? I told Maddie I would cheat and go to an expensive florist to fill the emperor’s empty pot, which she took to mean I wasn’t honest or something,” he said, grinning at his own wickedness.

I sighed. How could I make Arlo go away? I knew of no way that wouldn’t be loud and messy. So I waited him out.

“Now Madeline had a different view,” Arlo continued. “She thought that little Ping had great strength of character to admit he had not grown any flowers. Honesty was moral, she said.”

I smiled weakly at Honnett, wondering if he might actually be steaming under his cool exterior. By his impassive expression, I couldn’t tell a thing.

“So,” Arlo said, turning to Honnett. “You know the story. What do you think it’s about? And if you say ‘honesty,’ I’ll know you are a bullshitter and just trying to impress Maddie.”

“Well, Arlo,” Honnett said, “it does take courage to admit the hard things, don’t you think? Things that you know are true, but you don’t want to accept? For instance—the fact that you and Madeline are completely over now. Finished. It’s painful to admit the truth to ourselves, isn’t it? I takes courage to do that,” he said.

Arlo shut up, finally.

Honnett continued, “But since you asked me, I do think the story says something else. I think it talks about the nature of emptiness, don’t you?”

“Emptiness?” Arlo repeated.

“Right,” Honnett said. “It’s pretty hard to look inward and acknowledge how empty we are at times, isn’t it? Without kids to love. Without a wife to love. Without a job to love. You know what I’m talking about, Arlo? Without God to love. That kind of emptiness is profound. And people tend to hide from it, rather than facing it and fixing their lives if they can.”

Arlo was silent. A first. And then he asked, “Are we talking about the same kids’ book, because…”

“Sure,” Honnett interrupted in a calm voice. “Ping’s power was not just in admitting he had failed the emperor’s test. He had the strength to own his emptiness. He accepted himself, even in failure.”

“Oh,” I said, and Honnett looked at me. It might have been the most romantic moment of my life, considering the circumstances.

“Well, I gotta be going,” Arlo said, scraping his chair back and standing. “This has been great. We ought to do this every Sunday.”

“Arlo…” I said, wondering what would come of us all, and not up to any more deep thoughts.

“Just kidding,” Arlo said. But we’re going to stay friends, right? You promised me that.”

I looked at him.

“Okay, I’ll just wrap it up quickly,” Arlo said. “One. We’re going to be friends. Two. You think my new movie deal is fine.”

Arlo Zar would never change. Or maybe he would. I only knew I wouldn’t be there to see it.

Arlo stood by the table for a moment, staring at me. “Well. Bye, Maddie,” he said, then he turned and left in a hurry.

“That seemed civilized,” Honnett said, smiling at me after Arlo cleared out.

I laughed. I always appreciate sarcasm.

“Sorry for all that,” I said, waving a hand weakly. “God. You okay?” I asked.

“Me? Sure. That was nothing,” he said. “Besides, I’m the one who gets to stay here with you.”

Honnett checked out the bustling dining room. “This is great,” he said, watching the nearest Dim Sum server approach with her steam trolley carrying dozens of little metal bowls of fresh Chinese delights. “Why don’t you just order one of everything so I can try it all.”

Ah.

I reached out my hand and took his, holding it on the table.

“You ready for some pretty lousy news?” he asked, holding onto my hand, not letting me pull it back.

“Okay.”

I had called Honnett. Eventually. What else could I have done?

I sat up all night. Long after I left Lee Chen’s house, I sat at my kitchen table staring at a candle, thinking terrible things about the terrible truth. Now that I finally clasped it, ugly and brutal, what was I to do with it? Was acknowledging the truth enough? Is “knowing” the end of it? Did I have to take any action at all? I made myself think it all through, consider every aspect.