Hanging Time (24 page)

She flushed, her eyes flashing anger for a second.

Jason didn’t know L.A., had no idea where she lived. He bit his lip, worried that he had blown it in the first five minutes. “Was that manipulative?”

“A little.” She nodded, frowning, then brightened up. “Oh, well, let’s go.” She turned toward the exit.

He followed her, relieved. Emma had never been a person to hold grudges. He didn’t know what she was like now, except that she was in a hurry. She covered what felt like several miles across the airport to the short-term parking lot at a race walk, finally stopping beside a red Mustang convertible.

“Nice.” He wasn’t looking at the car. He was watching Emma fumble in her huge new braided handbag for her car keys. He realized he missed her even more than he thought.

He shook his head at her hair. Emma always said she’d never color it. Once a rich honey-wheat color, her hair was now unashamedly movie-star blond. Her perfume was different, too. Spicy.

More winded than he liked to admit, Jason dropped his gear. He didn’t know what to make of her. It was like meeting a stranger with a familiar smile.

“Tired?” she asked.

“No,” he said quickly.

She found the keys and unlocked the trunk, looking up at him almost shyly. Showing off her car. “Like it?”

He held back a choke, managed a moderately convincing “Uh-huh.”

As he had once told his friend Charles, there wasn’t a
thing not to like about Emma. Except now he no longer knew who she was.

She inclined her head modestly. “It’s leased.” She jumped in and put the top down, then turned to him questioningly, as if she suddenly remembered something.

“Any objections to my driving?”

He shook his head. How could he object?

“Good.” She pulled out, had no trouble finding her way out of the airport, and was soon speeding south on the 405.

This, also, was an adjustment. Jason had been married to Emma for five years, but even on long trips he’d never thought of asking her if she wanted to drive. Now it occurred to him that she might have minded.

He looked out at the scenery, which wasn’t impressive. He didn’t know where they were headed, and didn’t ask. They drove for almost an hour before Emma turned off onto a road leading through a small canyon that dead-ended at the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly the red Mustang was stopped at a traffic light facing a beach crowded with volleyball players. Emma turned to him with another of her smiles.

“Canyon Beach. Like it?”

“It’s great, really terrific.” He nodded. Yep, really terrific. A million light-years away from New York and definitely too far from the L.A. airport to take a taxi. This was more than the fragile male ego could take. Emma drove back up another hill and pulled to a stop on a steep incline that made him slightly dizzy.

A few minutes later she was unlocking the door to her rented house. “Come on in.”

The way her eyes were glowing with pride made Jason suddenly realize why she had wanted him out there. It wasn’t to explore new laser treatment to get rid of the tattoo on her stomach. Unh-unh. It was to show him this.

He could see the ocean from the front steps. It was just at the bottom of the steep hill. Up there, they were perched high enough for a New Yorker to get a nosebleed. Jason looked around.

It didn’t take a genius to see that the house was hanging by a few sticks from the side of the cliff. He couldn’t get the images of mudslides, fires raging down from the canyon
above, huge earthquakes dumping the entire Tinker-Toy town into the Pacific, out of his mind.

To make matters worse, the house was not without charm. The living room melted into the dining-kitchen area. The bedroom was up several steps to one side in a clever way that allowed both living room and bedroom to have views of the sea. Another sleeping loft was carved out of the cathedral ceiling along the back of the living room. Below it was a glass wall that looked out on a rock garden planted with blooming rosebushes.

The furnishings were simple, in earth colors that suited Emma’s complexion. Throughout the place a southwestern feeling pervaded.

“Like it?” she asked when he had seen it all. It was the fourth or fifth time she’d made the query since he arrived.

Jason arranged his mouth for another, “What’s not to like?” kind of answer. So, she had to get him out there to show him how gorgeous it was. How the sun shone down on her and her red convertible, bathing her in golden serenity and the well-being of the truly self-sufficient, while he rotted unhappily by himself, locked in with the crazies of New York.

Her eyes were almost pleading. What did she want from him? Forgiveness? His blessing? He looked away, already worrying about having to sleep up there in the loft.

“It’s great. Really terrific. I’m just—flabbergasted at how great it all is.” Seeing how great it all was had given him a headache. He needed a drink, too.

She nodded, picking it all up right away. “Must be strange, huh? Want to go out for a drink?”

“Yeah.” The frown behind his smile eased just a little for the first time. He wouldn’t turn down something to eat either.

She was looking him over. His blazer and khaki pants were wrinkled. He hadn’t changed his style, probably never would. “You look very thin,” she concluded. “Better eat something, too.”

“Yes.” Everything about their relationship was different, yet the feeling of togetherness was still there. He didn’t know what to think. To take his mind off the subject, he
glanced over at the telephone. Emma followed his gaze, a little frown beginning to organize itself between her eyes.

He turned away from the phone. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

For once in his life he decided not to call in for his messages.

A
t five past twelve on the Sunday afternoon before Labor Day, April slid into a seat at a tiny back table at the Dim Sum Tea House. Next to her a chubby young woman with badly permed hair cooled a spoonful of noodles in her mouth, then fed the half-chewed mess to her baby. April looked away as the baby spit it out.

George Dong shook his head and resolutely studied his menu. “Delightful. What do you feel like?”

April smiled politely. Like going right home. Right away she didn’t like him. She didn’t care if he was a doctor. He had to be a fool, taking her to the kind of place where mothers make baby food in their mouth, then expecting her to choose something from the menu when it was a dim sum place. It was a no-win situation, like a trick question she couldn’t possibly get right. She glanced at the menu. It was a long one.

“I don’t know yet.” She decided the polite thing was to consider the menu. She’d been a cop long enough to know Dr. Dong was solemnly studying her as if she, too, were an item on the list.

She was wearing blue trousers, as usual, with a white blouse and red jacket. She had wanted to wear her white vest and jacket, very chic; but Skinny Dragon Mother, who came upstairs uninvited to give her advice before she left, said white was bad luck, the color of death.

“Led good ruck cuwa, wedding cuwa for blides.” Sai Woo absolutely insisted on red.

There was no point in telling her blides wore white in
America. It was a good ruck color here. Sai would only have argued that bad Chinese spirits can go anywhere, don’t respect borders.

A surly waitress with a protruding gold tooth unceremoniously dumped a pot of tea on the table. April poured some in the two tiny cups. In her cup one lone tealeaf drifted gently to the bottom. She hadn’t waited long enough for it to steep. Probably meant she’d blown her whole life.

A few seconds later the same surly waitress stopped beside their table with a rolling metal thing that looked like a hospital supply cart. The top-shelf offering was bamboo steamers filled with some unidentifiable gelatinous mass.

George waved her away. He turned out to be the second kind of Chinese body type—five seven, maybe five eight, his physique undefined and on the pudgy side. His lightweight navy warm-up suit with red stripes down the arms and legs didn’t help. April guessed he wanted to look sporty and athletic, not overdressed for the occasion. His round face was studded with wholly unremarkable features, small mouth, small nose, deeply set serious eyes that didn’t want to make contact with hers. April was unimpressed and couldn’t get her mother out of her mind.

“Be nice,” Sai Woo had warned. “Tomolla, I don’t wanna hear you stick up.”

“I’m not stuck up.”

“Everybody say you stick up.”

Yeah, well. Chinese didn’t trust the police. Even one of their own. April spotted another cart heading toward them through the crush. She watched the steamed buns filled with barbecued pork that were her favorite disappear along the way. Suddenly she felt old and remembered her mother’s other warning:
Smart girl loses innocence but not hope. Stupid girl loses everything
.

Nowadays when April went to Chinatown, she saw it with a more critical eye. When she had lived and worked there, she never thought about the garbage that shopowners threw on the street. It was nothing to see fish guts floating in fetid puddles in the gutters along with crumpled newspapers, rotten fruit and vegetables, rags. Roaches and rats ran around like honored guests. Now the place looked like a
slum to her. Why couldn’t they clean it up? What was it with Chinese and garbage?

The cart got to them. No roasted pork buns were left.

April shook her head at the ancient fried wontons that remained. This was some place for a first date. The noise level was deafening. There were too many people in a very small space, and dozens more blocking the sidewalk outside. Along with frying smells, the air was charged with the powerful odor of old garlic from what felt like ten thousand eager Chinese mouths, all shouting and eating a mile a minute. This dim sum parlor on Doyers Street, a tiny cul-de-sac off Mott, was packed all day every Sunday. Chinese from all over the tri-state area came into town for their weekly food pilgrimage, brought the family, and ate all day long, pausing long enough only to buy more food to take home in their overburdened American station wagons.

“You wanted that?” George asked, looking her in the eye for the first time.

April shrugged. “When she comes back.”

George stopped the waitress and spoke rapidly in Chinese, telling her to bring a cart of the best dim sum, not the stuff that had been sitting there in the kitchen, waiting all morning for the noon rush. “Hurry up, and don’t stop on the way—” He turned to April. “How about a beer?”

At her nod he added, “And bring us two Tsing Tao.”

That done, he picked up his chopsticks and fiddled with them. “So, your mother knew my mother in China. Know anything about that?”

“Might have known each other, but they didn’t come from the same place,” April replied. “We never met.”

“They call each other sister-cousins,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, well, if they’re sister-cousins, how come they live in the same city and were out of touch for twenty-two years?”

His smile lit up his face. “You’re the detective.”

He had a nice, cultured voice. Without intending to, April smiled back. “Maybe some kind of feud. Maybe they’re not such good friends.”

“Then why introduce us?”

“Could be spite,” April speculated. She was known to
be stuck up, hard to please. Her rejecting the doctor son of an old enemy would make the enemy lose face. On the other hand, if the doctor rejected her, Sai Woo would lose face. All around it was risky. Pretty much a no-win situation.

“Could be desperation.” George laughed, opening his mouth wide enough to reveal white, even teeth. “Anything for a grandson to carry on the name.”

“My mother would settle for a granddaughter. Where did you go to school?”

“Queens. Then Columbia all the way.”

April guessed he meant college, medical school, and all that other training. She frowned. And then he came down to Chinatown to practice when he had never been stuck here in the first place? That didn’t make sense. Why would he return to a place he’d never been? Most ABAs who got to college and learned to blend married Caucasians if they possibly could. They didn’t exactly come stampeding back to live with the immigrants just off the plane.

“You live down here?” she asked.

He shook his head.

The steamed buns came. April bit into one. “Ummm. Food’s good.”

He drank down some of his beer, nodding. “You have to be in the right mood though.”

Ah, so that was it. He hadn’t known what kind of girl she was, and didn’t want to be seen with her if she wasn’t up to a better place. She flushed, feeling put down by the Ivy League graduate. Last spring she’d laid eyes on Columbia University for the first time. She had a missing person from there. Seventeen-year-old girl. The girl was killed in California, and April Woo was the one who located her.

All right, so maybe she was a cop, a street person, not a doctor, not exactly a first-class medical school graduate. Okay. Maybe she
was
just a cop. But in a month she’d be a cop with a college degree herself. And if she had anything to do with it, she’d be a sergeant in the department, too.

“Is that a tennis bag?” She jerked her chin at the bag at his feet.

“Yes. You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m a cop. It comes with the territory. How did you get to be a doctor?”

He smiled again, sipped more beer. “I studied for a lot of years. And my parents wanted a docta.” He twisted his face into old style. “You know how that is. Ten thousand pounds of steaming guilt a day. ‘Have dumpring. Study book. Be docta. Take care palents.’ I really didn’t have much choice.”

Another cart came by. This one was filled with pearl balls and shui mai. April took the shui mai. She’d heard that in old China dim sum was served in tea houses for breakfast. The words “dim sum” meant “touch the heart lightly.” She tried to concentrate on the meaning of the words and the delicate taste of shrimp and dried mushroom. Yes, she knew exactly how much ten thousand pounds of steaming guilt a day weighed on a child’s shoulders. She liked the image and his joking about the accent, liked the gold signet ring on his finger.