This Is a Bust (10 page)

“Well, I knew you, too.”

I had another full pint in front of me. At some point, refills
had come to our table without us noticing.

“I didn't graduate from Harvard, Robert.”

“You didn't finish school?”

“No, I went to college, but my certificate says I went to
Radcliffe. Harvard is the degree men receive.”

She looked at me and gave her glass a half turn.

“You know, Robert,” Barbara said. “The girls used to call you
‘Cracker Jack.'” She smiled for the first time in a while.

“How come?”

“You used to be so, I don't know, pro-America and anti-
Communist. You wouldn't shut up about it. So we said

you were like that sailor on the Cracker Jack box with his perpetual salute.”

“God, I think was.”

“What was I like?”

“You don't remember? You were like Miss Chinatown.”

“It seems like somebody else.”

I was halfway done with my drink.

“Barbara, I used to think we could've been something.”

“We were something, Robert.”

My glass was empty now.

“I took you to that Chinese New Year dance and I kissed
you,” I told her. “Then you kinda avoided me for a while. You went to Stuy in tenth grade and we never said much to each other after.”

Stuyvesant was one of the city's special schools for gifted
children. You had to take tests to get in. I wouldn't have even qualified to mop the floors there.

“Robert, I studied my brains out. Right through college.”

“I thought everything came to you naturally.”

“No, way! I was always reading. In fact, I had to stop taking
classes the summer before sophomore year in college.”

“Most people stop taking classes in the summer.”

“I was trying to get a double major done. Economics and
English. You know, one degree for my parents and one for me. So one day, I started hearing voices. I had some therapy sessions. The funny thing was they were paying me because it was an experiment.”

“They gave you LSD?”

“No! It was all about talking. I talked everything out and
they listened.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Believe it or not, I talked about you a little bit.”

She gave me a knowing look that made my leg twitch.

“Aw, bullshit.”

“No, I swear, I still have the transcript!”

“Is it in your apartment?”

“It's in a box in the kitchen. You wanna see it?”

“Sounds like a good-enough excuse,” I said.

I swung my arms back and stuck them into the sleeves of
my coat. We slid out of the booth.

—

I had never been to Barbara's house. Back when I had taken her to the dance, I had met her at the pinball parlor on Pell that's a dumpling joint now. Like most Chinese parents, Barbara's mom and dad hadn't liked the idea of her dating before college.

We went into the vestibule of her apartment on Madison.
The outer door was missing, and the inner metal-plated door looked like the hood of a Datsun after UAW workers had gotten to it with sledgehammers. I looked down at the floor as Barbara fumbled with her keys. The ceramic tiles were wet and dirty.

“This goddamn lock,” Barbara muttered.

“Lemme see,” I said. I shifted the pack of toilet paper to my
left arm and took over. I rattled her key the way I rattled mine and the cylinder turned. “I win.”

“That's nothing. I'll race you upstairs,” she said.

“No.”

The
apartment was on the third floor, behind a door that
was mummified with opaque cellophane tape and bits of red paper from 30 years of Chinese holiday decorations. Down the hall, past two tricycles, Neil Young was singing “Cinnamon Girl.”

Barbara got her door open and I followed her in. We were
immediately in the kitchen.

“This apartment's laid out really funny,” she said. “A long
time ago, they knocked down a few walls and put up another.”

She turned on the bare light bulb in the kitchen and it lit up
the entire apartment.

“How the hell,” I started, “did all of you fit in here?” There
was a kitchen, a living room, and a closet bathroom.

“We had cots set up in the
kitchen and living room. All of us
never slept at the same time. Our parents slept during the day.” She fumbled around with a kitchen drawer.
“Drink red wine?”

“Yeah.”

She got on her toes to reach for a bottle on top of the
refrigerator. Her short sleeve fell away to show the hump of a muscular shoulder.

“How'd you get that?” I asked. “You're like a marine.”

“I keep a five-pound barbell in my desk at work. A couple of
reps a day helps me deal with stress.”

She got us two coffee mugs and poured wine to the brim,
which was risky because both of them had chipped rims.

“Hey, watch it!” I said. “Don't spill any!”

“Well, don't dribble!”

I quickly drank my mug down an inch.

“I had thought that out of everybody down here, you would
never come back, Barbara.”

“Why?”

“You're beautiful. And you're smart.”

“What's that supposed to mean, Robert?”

“It doesn't mean anything here.”

“I didn't plan on coming back, not this way, anyway. Goes to
show, you never know what life will deal you.” She leaned forward on her elbows and put her face up to mine. “I didn't think I'd see you again.”

“Did you want to see me again?”

“I don't know, but it's so good to see you. Really, it is.” Some
pink was getting into her eyes. It was either the drink or she was about to cry.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I drank. A trickle of wine
slipped through a chip and traced down my neck. She put her fingers on the back of my neck and rubbed her thumb slowly against my throat. It felt tingly, slippery.

“Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come
out,” I said.

“I get three wishes, don't I?”

I gently nudged the table and drinks aside. Then I pulled
Barbara into my lap.

I propped myself up against the headboard, which was the back of the foldout sofa. My head was hurting. There wasn't much light coming in, but it was about eight.

Tomorrow was Chinese New Year.

I slid out naked and staggered to the refrigerator. I found
a bottle of Bud on its side under the crisper. I came back to the bed and sat on the edge. I picked at the cap with the tine on my belt buckle. I finally worked it off, but the bottle cap landed in Barbara's hair.

She moaned, then brushed her ear. I took the cap away with
my free hand.

“Robert, are you drinking?”

“Yeah, got a beer out of the fridge.”

“Argh, I was saving that for cooking.” After a few minutes,
she asked, “Do you always drink in the morning?”

“Only when I'm up before noon.”

I took a few deep swigs.

“Hey, that was really nice last night,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I finished the bottle and put
it on the coffee table.

“What are we doing? We're crazy!”

“This is not the first time for either of us.”

“But this is the first time. For us!”

“Let's celebrate with breakfast.”

“I'm so hungry.” She pushed half her face into the pillow.
“And there's nothing to eat here.”

“How about some pastries?”

“Yeah, let's go to Martha's!”

“Oh, whoa, no, not Martha's!”

“It's the best bakery in Chinatown!”

“It gets too crowded in there.”

“It's
crowded because it's good and it's on the way to 
the
train.”

“That
woman there gives me the evil eye, you know,

the one
who looks like she shovels gravel?”

“It takes a tough woman to make a tender pastry. C'mon,
let's get moving!”

—

When we came in, the morning rush was already over and Lonnie was by herself behind the counter. Dori was sitting in a corner, smoking a cigarette and reading the Hong Kong newspaper. They both stared at us. I became very conscious of the fact that we looked disheveled, more than usual for me.

Three teenage degenerates hugged the walls in the corner.
The one with the spiky hair smiled at me and picked his teeth.

“Looks like the cop finally saw some action last night,” he
said out loud to his friends. I wanted to put a bullet in his head, but he wasn't worth the paperwork I'd have to do after.

Dori smirked. Lonnie put on a very serious look.

“How are you today, Officer Chow?” she asked.

“I'm doing well, thank you.”

Lonnie gave me an expectant look.

“Oh, Barbara, this is Lonnie. Uh, she works here.”

Barbara smiled and said, “Hi.”

“More hot-dog buns today?” asked Lonnie.

“You eat those, Robert?” asked Barbara incredulously. “It's kid food!”

“Sometimes I feel like a kid,” I said.

“Every day,” said Lonnie.

“That's a lot of calories!”

“It's not so bad,” I said. “I mean, I walk it all off.”

“I think I'm just going to have a plain bun and a hot coffee,”
said Barbara.

“And you?” Lonnie asked me.

“Just an iced coffee.”

Lonnie turned and put the plain bun into a paper bag.

“Can you put that on a tray, Lonnie? We're going to eat
here.”

“Actually, Robert,” Barbara said, “I'm going to get that to go.
I
have to go back and do some work. But you stay with your friends here.”

“I, uh, sure. OK.”

She grabbed her stuff and left without even waving. I was
dimly aware of getting my iced coffee from Lonnie. I leaned against the counter and drove a straw into the lid.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Lonnie asked.

“Oh no, no, no. She's an old friend. We grew up together.”

Dori spoke up.

“That woman, she could do a lot better than a policeman.
She doesn't even want to be seen in public with you,

Officer Chow.”

“She just likes her privacy, like me.”

Lonnie cleared her throat.

“So, you don't have a girlfriend?” she asked.

“I'm not really the type to have a girlfriend,” I said.

“Lonnie!” shouted Dori. “You have to clean off the counter!”

“It's already clean.”

“Clean the part Officer Chow is on when he leaves. He
probably got it greasy.”

“I'm leaving,” I said.

“Bye, Officer Chow,” Lonnie said.

If I had stayed, I might have left a bigger mess for Lonnie to clean up. I glanced at those punk kids but they were completely ignoring me.

—

Then, suddenly, it was my least favorite day in the world. Chinese New Year and its endless photo ops for me. The actual celebration goes on for two weeks in Chinatown, 
but on the legitimate first day, they hold the parade with the lion dances. 1976 was the year of the dragon — it was supposed to be a year of tumultuous change.

The Brow sent us off with his annual remark: “I don't want
to see you put in for holiday differential on this one. This is no American holiday.”

On t
he footpost, I walked by a seafood restaurant on Bowe
ry whose big windows were crowded on the bottom with tanks of fish, crabs, prawns, and lobsters. The rest of the window showed off the crowded dining room and the all-you-can-eat buffet that was only open to people who could read the characters in the sign above it.

I saw a famil
y sitting there, two parents and a daughter and
her boyfriend. I knew he was the daughter's fiancé because she was showing her parents the engagement ring
on her finger while he sat back and sipped his water. I didn't break my stride, and I only saw them all for two seconds, but it brought home how removed I was from regular life in Chinatown. I used to wish that they'd left us in the war longer so that I could have gone on fighting until I was dead.

Then this thing with Barbara had happened. Maybe there
was
something out there for me. Not today, though. Barbara was tied up with some relatives for the day, and I had to go see my mother, so we would miss each other today.

—

Ten thousand small firecrackers, each representing a year of prosperity, had been strung across Mott Street in front of the Greater China Association's office. The president of the association and several other community businessmen stood together where the firecrackers dipped at their lowest point. I stood at the edge of the group. Whenever a press photographer wanted to shoot a picture, I was pulled into the frame. A dozen cops circling us kept the crowd at bay.

Although I had smiled for the pictures, I was irritable.
Every
time I heard firecrackers go off in the crowd, I looked around for someone to slap.

“Why so jumpy, Chow?” asked Peepshow, a cop who was off
to my left. “You people live and breathe firecrackers, right?”