Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves (11 page)

Behind the woks, against the wall, was the stainless steel backsplash that kept the kitchen wall from spontaneously bursting into a conflagration. That's where the swiveling, long-necked spigots that we used to rinse the woks out between courses came out of the wall. It wasn't spacious working quarters. I'd never been in a Chinese restaurant kitchen that was. It was fairly confining. That was actually a good thing, though, mostly. If I was in front of my wok, I only had to pivot around to the table that stretched nearly the whole length of the kitchen right behind me to get all the ingredients we needed under shelves that held platters and bowls. On either side of the wok stations, barrel-size aluminum pots simmered, bubbling, filled with stocks and soups. Make any arm movement too big or dramatic, and the sides of these pots would leave a blistering brand on an elbow. Not only had I seen that happen; I'd felt it too.

When I started cooking at the Eastern Palace, I knew to go, without being told, to the station nearest the door into the dining room. That's where the junior chef always works, turning out simple stuff. Shrimp fried rice or juicy scorched dumplings that can be scooted out to the dining area quickly. It was also the most cramped, with stockpots on either side. I'd cooked in that position before. It was part of the game.

Taking the low end of the wok totem pole didn't go unnoticed by my two fellow cooks. Jao-long and Li took it as a sign I knew how to behave in a kitchen. They showed me their appreciation almost immediately. They started calling me
bai mu,
slang for “stupid,” which they thought was amusingly even more appropriate in my case since it literally meant “white eyes.” In a Chinese restaurant kitchen, insults—constant barrages of insults—are not just the approved medium of communication. They are the
only
form of communication.

And not just insults or vulgarity. The kinds of trash guys talk in the locker room? The language oil derrick workers use? That stuff's like the affectionate baby talk a mother makes with her toddler compared with what comes out of the mouths of typical Chinese cooks.

If Jao-long needed a steamer basket close to where Li was working, he could have just asked for it. That would have been completely unthinkable for Jao-long. Or any other Chinese chef.

“Hey,
ba lan jiao!
” he'd yell at Li. “You, the guy with no discernible genitalia!”

Then, having gotten Li's attention, he'd ask for the steamer.

Li would toss the steamer to Jao-long, along with the advice that Jao-long ought to have sexual intercourse with his mother's ancestors.

I didn't jump in on these exchanges right away. I stayed quiet for a while until I figured I'd done enough time there to make my presence known. One evening, when we were busy, I spun and reached for the well in the tabletop behind us that was supposed to have held chopped green onions. It was almost empty. It was Li's job that night to be sure those wells were filled. In a voice just loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear, including the two waitresses who were there at the time, I told Li he masturbated and didn't wash his hands afterward. In the rich repertoire of Mandarin insults, it's an oldie but a goodie. He looked up at me, mildly shocked. Then he went to the cooler where we kept the chopped green onions, refilled the well, and told me to “
Qin wo de pigu
”—“kiss my ass.”

I was fitting in at the Eastern Palace.

All the shouting—along with the roar of the gas jets under the woks, the splashing of rinse water, and the clanking of spatulas and metal spoons—made the kitchen sound like it was continually being picked up and shaken. I kept my phone on vibrate. No way could I have heard it, even from my front pants pocket. It buzzed while I was in the middle of putting together a meal that one of the regular customers had ordered. He wasn't just a regular. He was a very wealthy regular. What's known in the Chinese restaurant trade as a
feide yourou,
a “fat fish.” Fat fish, when they became regulars, provide enough income for all of us to eat well. He was from Nanjing. The waitress from his table told me he wanted to be surprised that night. I was making his table a classic from that city, a delicate soup made of a light gingery broth and fine potato starch noodles and thin slices of congealed duck blood. It wasn't a difficult recipe to prepare. If the blood's added when the broth is too hot, though, it melts and ruins the whole dish. So I was taking my time to get it right. The customer was someone who would know immediately if I didn't. Half an hour later, the soup on its way to the table, the duck blood still beautifully congealed—well, as beautifully as congealed duck blood can look—I took a break. I went out into the alley, fished my phone out of my pocket, and checked the missed calls. There was only one. Langston was the only person I knew in town. I doubted my parents would have been calling from the high seas of Indonesia. And I didn't think Beddingfield College was ready yet to give me a ring and beg me to return. It was Corinne. I called her back. She answered on the first buzz.

“Is this the Exotic Asian Babe Escort Service?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she said. “This is the Exotic Oriental Babe Escort Service.”

“My mistake.”

“Happens all the time.” Then she paused. I was trying to get something from the tone of her voice. If there was anything there, I couldn't hear it. While I was still thinking about that, she said, “While I've got you on the line, though, what would you think about an all-expenses paid trip to Buffalo?”

“Buffalo in March,” I said. “Sounds attractive. I've been to Buffalo in January. How's it different?”

“The snow is a more charming shade of gray,” she said. Then she paused. I waited. “I need a ride.”

“Where to?”

“I heard there was some good Chinese food in St. Louis,” she said. “I was thinking about coming there to try it.”

I wanted to ask why she didn't get a flight. Or even buy a ticket on a bus. Or why she wanted to come to St. Louis. I wanted to ask. I didn't. It didn't seem like the right time for a long conversation. Especially after what she said next.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't have any right to ask you to come get me. You don't even know me. But I don't have anyone else I can ask.”

Then I finally heard it. Tension in her voice. No panic. But there was some anxiety. I heard, in my head, the Warm-up Suit back in Buffalo.
You think she going to get away with this?

There was another reason I didn't ask her any of the questions that were bouncing around in my head. There are times when you have to make your call quickly. Even a second's hesitation is deadly. That was definitely one of my rules. It's #4. When you shouldn't hesitate, don't. “Don't you think my girlfriend is outstandingly hot?” a guy asks you, and if you don't answer instantly, if you don't say without any hesitation, “Yeah, she's really good-looking,” even if she has a face that could make a freight train take a dirt road, you are going to be immediately in a place in your friendship with that guy that's never going to be the same. This was one of those times. Either be gallant and step up or never hear from Corinne Chang ever again. My call to make. But it was going to have to be made
now.

“Hey,” I said. “You do have a right to ask me to come. Remember when I promised if you ever needed a big, sensitive, but manly American guy to rescue you, I'd be there?”

“I'm not at a rest stop, though,” she said. Even through the phone, I could hear the relief in her voice.

“I can be flexible,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I've seen you sleep in the front seat of a Toyota.”

Rule #33: When cooking pork in a wok, it's 80 percent done when the pink disappears.

 

I asked for a few days off. I expected Mr. Leong to go through the roof. He took it well, though. A lot better than I thought he would. He didn't actually throw anything. It was some personal business, I told him. “No problem,” he said. Which struck me as odd because in the time I'd been working there, Mr. Leong's perspective on what constituted a problem had a fairly wide latitude. A piece of pork fat that fell on the floor could send him into a fifteen-minute harangue about wasting good food through such carelessness—or as he put it, “You guys no care, you no pay for food. Food costs. You know? Food not free.”

“Where you go?” he asked me when I told him I needed a few days away.

“I go get friend,” I said.

“Friend boy? Friend girl?”

“Friend girl,” I said. “But not girlfriend.”

“No problem,” he said again. “But you not come back, I find you cook someone else, I cut you into pieces.” He held up a thumb and forefinger pinched closely together to demonstrate the size of the pieces he had in mind.

I promised I wouldn't cook anyone else.

“You come back,” he said. “You, me, we have something to talk about.”

“Okay.” I didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

 

“I'm taking off for a couple of days,” I told Langston. The sun was out; even at midmorning, it was warm enough that I could feel dampness on the back of my T-shirt. We'd been pushing each other back and forth across the alley. We were changing up our rhythm spontaneously, stopping, speeding up, unexpectedly putting pauses in the movements to keep the sparring from becoming choreographed and routine. Except for Mrs. Trahn, who lived with her husband in an apartment on the first floor and who always came back from a walk this time of day, studiously ignoring us as she went past, we were alone.

We were both in much better shape than the first time we'd practiced together. We stopped now not because we were too winded but because we were both working the lunch shifts at our kitchens. We went back upstairs to the apartment.

“Why are you taking off work?” Langston asked. “You never take off work. The kitchen at the Eastern Palace is your Fortress of Solitude.”

I told him about Corinne. I told him about the magical meeting Corinne and I had at that rest stop in New Hampshire. I told him about dropping her off at her friend's apartment in Buffalo. I didn't mention the part about punching out the Chinese punk who asked me if I was a friend of Wenqian's. Or the threats he made.

“What are you going to do with her when you get her here?” Langston asked.

“I haven't figured that one out yet,” I admitted. “Might be that I don't have to do anything with her. Maybe she's just decided to relocate to St. Louis.”

“Yeah,” Langston said. “I can see that.” He didn't say anything else. I was grateful. He changed the subject.

“Leong say something to you about anything out of the ordinary?”

“Said he'd cut me into pieces if I didn't come back,” I said. “But that seems pretty ordinary for him.”

“Anything else?”

“He said there was something he wanted to talk to me about when I did come back. You have any idea what that's all about?”

The side of Langston's mouth twitched up. “I'll let him tell you.”

 

I would like to have thought that I hadn't given Corinne Chang a lot of my mental attention. That would have been less than accurate. I'd thought about her since I'd last seen her in Buffalo. I'd thought about the way she'd looked at me when we'd said goodbye. I'd thought about the four things I knew about her: (1) The puffy noises she made in her sleep. (2) The way she could listen. (3) The fact she was almost certainly lying when she said she was just taking some time off from her job. (4) The color of her underwear.

I also thought about the conversation I had with her jerk boyfriend on the phone. Or ex-boyfriend. I wasn't sure about that, either.

I had thought about it all. The only conclusion I'd reached was that the black bra and panties should definitely be higher on the list than in the place I'd put them.

Rule #41: While there might not be any good reasons to go to Buffalo, there could conceivably be a reason to go back.

 

Two days later, I picked up Corinne at a motel outside Buffalo.

The drive, from St. Louis across Illinois and Indiana, is not chock-a-block with scenic distractions. Which was good, because as I drove, I had enough distractions going on inside. I'd been busy since Corinne and I had parted. This was the first time I had a chance to be alone with my thoughts.

I wondered why I'd been so quick to agree to make this trip. I wondered if it had anything to do with the way Corinne had looked sleeping on the passenger's seat as we drove across New York. I thought it might. I made a list of the other people in my life for whom I would be out on the highway to Buffalo. That didn't take too long. I thought about guys I'd known, a few in high school, a few more in college, who had gotten involved with what Toby, my Beddingfield roommate, used to call “trouble drains.”

Trouble drains were people—girls—who, while attractive and fun to be with, had a way of constantly being in crises or troubling situations. And what was worse, they had a way of sucking the people around them—especially boyfriends—right into the swirling vortex of that trouble. Get too close to a trouble drain, Toby insisted, and sooner or later you'd be caught in the swirl. It started slowly, he theorized. So slowly that you were just circling around imperceptibly until it was too late, and then you were spinning, spinning out of control and heading right down that drain.

I thought about the threatening call I'd intercepted on Corinne's cell phone when I was busy minding my own business. About the way her friend Ariadna had looked away when the subject of why Corinne was in Buffalo came up. I lost my train of thought, thinking about the black bra and panties, but I brought it back on track. The Bald Warm-up Suit. The sound of her voice when she'd called to ask me to come get her. I rapped on the steering wheel and watched Illinois, then Indiana, then Ohio go past, cold and gray. I wondered if I was scared and decided maybe just a little, although I preferred, I decided, the word “concern” instead. I wondered if I was thinking of Corinne in a way I had not previously thought about most girls I had known.