Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves (2 page)

 

It was bright when the dog started whining and woke me up at what seemed like about a week later. I glanced at my watch again. It was already past two in the afternoon. I'd managed to sleep twelve hours. I pushed my way out of the bag and found it wasn't damp with my perspiration. And I wasn't shivering. And my left nostril was actually taking in the chilly air of the cabin, free and clear. Cough syrup is magic. It could probably cure cancer, I thought. I let the dog out. Chris hadn't come home last night. He had been trying very hard to date a Dartmouth girl who was taking the semester off from school to work for the ski patrol. I assumed he'd succeeded—if not in dating her, at least in sharing some quality time with her.

I looked around his place. Chris had a sort of laissez-faire approach to housekeeping. It didn't seem likely that
Elegant Interiors Monthly
was going to be showing up to do a photo spread anytime soon. Even so, I straightened things up, trying to hit that fine balance between saying, by my housework, “Thanks for letting me stay; I'm picking up around the house to show my appreciation” and “Jeez, you're such a slob I couldn't leave here without doing major domestic surgery.” I dusted, using what was either a very well-worn T-shirt or the dog's toy. I washed dishes that appeared to have been in the sink most of the winter. My homemaking instincts satisfied, I packed up my stuff. I worked slowly, enjoying the sensation of moving around without feeling achy. My head felt like it was assuming normal proportions again. It didn't take long for me to be ready. When I pulled out of Chris's driveway and turned the nose of the Toyota south, though, the sun was already snuggling down into the upper branches of the hemlock trees all around. Sleeping late, then cleaning house had cost me a day's driving time, true. But by sleeping in, I'd found a lot of my energy again. I wished I could say the same about the third line of that theme song.

Rule #19: Never pick up strangers at a highway rest stop unless they speak Mandarin.

 

The entire city of Lancaster, New Hampshire, may have assembled to wave goodbye as it disappeared entirely behind me when Highway 2 took a long, smooth curve off to the right. I wouldn't know. I didn't feel any need to look back. I passed through Lunenburg, then Dalton, then Gilman, and then, off to my right, I went by the long black, spruce-lined pool of the Moose Reservoir. I wasn't in any real hurry. I didn't dawdle either. By the time I made it to St. Johnsbury, where the two-lane road connected with I-93, the daylight was just about played out. It wasn't quite there; only a few more moments until the time of the evening when you consider that it's dark enough to contemplate turning on the headlights. I realized I hadn't eaten in a long time.

When it comes to eating on the road, some people like to make a big deal out of those little Mom-and-Pop places along the highway that serve good old-fashioned home cooking. Blue-plate specials. Meat loaf. Swiss steak. Chicken pot pie. I don't have anything against Mom. Or Pop. When I'm traveling, though, going from one place to another and not just rambling around on some kind of road trip vacation but actually trying to get to a destination, I don't want to get off the highway and scout around trying to find a place that has the best corned-beef hash or pan-fried chicken. I just want to eat and get back to driving. I wasn't in the mood for anything much, anyway, even though I was breathing now through both sides of my nose. There were road signs for half a dozen different franchise joints. They didn't sound appealing. What sounded appealing were cinnamon buns. Ever since I'd thought about making either a late lunch or an early dinner back at Chris's and deciding not to, I realized, I had started thinking about those sugary iced, cinnamon-dusted buns that come in pairs, wrapped in cellophane. The cinnamon buns that are available only in the finer, high-quality gas stations and twenty-four-hour convenience marts of the land—and, I was hoping, at highway rest stops. Like the one I was approaching, outside Littleton. I pulled in. My mouth was actually watering. I told myself to be realistic. Chances of striking dispenser-machine cinnamon-bun gold out here on I-93 were fairly small. I might have to settle for a fried fruit pie. As with much of the rest of life, I tried to keep my expectations low. Tucker's Rule #52: Never ignore the strategic advantage in embracing low expectations.

 

She was sitting on one of the benches inside the rest stop. Other than her, the place was empty. She had a road map of New Hampshire spread out on her lap. A big dun-colored satchel-like duffle bag was beside her feet. Her pea coat, black, looked like it belonged wrapped around a sailor on deck for the dogwatch in the North Atlantic. She looked up when I came in, then dropped her eyes back down to the map.

Luck was on my side. The buns were right there. Sitting and waiting for me behind the glass of a snack machine. A bubbling water fountain that sprang up from the desert in the middle of Death Valley wouldn't have been more welcomed for a guy crawling across the sand. Push a dollar bill into the slot, press C4, and—with a whir and a click and a satisfying thump—dinner was served. Wrapped in their shiny cellophane sleeve, the buns looked glossy and ripe with life-giving sweetness. In another machine were plastic bottles of orange juice. Could it get any better? I doubted it. Between the buns and the juice, I would pretty well satisfy my growing body's need for simple and complex sugars for the next week or so. Moments later I was doing just that, slowly savoring one bun and licking a piece of icing off my upper lip while I stood and read a poster mounted behind a plastic frame about the history of that part of the Granite State. I learned that Littleton, New Hampshire, was originally called Chiswick, which is a Saxon word meaning “cheese farm.” I wondered why the Saxons needed a word for that. I learned that if you were living back around the beginning of the twentieth century and you wanted a stereoscope—and who wouldn't have?—you could get one made at a factory right here in Littleton. I learned that there was a restored gristmill nearby. And a candy store right in town that was reputed to have the longest candy counter in the world. I wondered who kept records for that kind of thing. I finished the second bun, tossed the last of the juice down.

I heard a buzz behind me. I turned around and looked at her. She was wearing jeans faded at the knees, sneakers, and that bulky pea coat, unbuttoned, with a bulky knit sweater, brown, underneath. Her black hair was hanging straight down from a gray stocking cap, and she was bent over the map, studying it, so her eyes were hidden by her bangs. Still not looking up, she fished into the pocket of her coat and came up with a phone. She glanced at it, then put it to her ear and spoke.

“Wèi,”
she said. And then, again in Mandarin, “Yes, yes, I'm okay. I'm in New Hampshire.” She repeated, “
New Hampshire.
Yes, I know.” Silence, while the other person was obviously talking, then, “Three friends who were going skiing here,” she said. “Yes, I got a ride from them.” Silence. “Because it was the fastest way out of town.”

Well,
I thought, momentarily distracted from contemplating the deliciousness of my recently finished meal,
this is interesting.

“I don't know,” she said. “They dropped me off, and I'm somewhere in New Hampshire right now—I can't find it on the map.” She looked down again at the map spread out on her knees. “But, yeah, I'll get there. I just don't know when yet.” She looked up, out the glass doors of the rest stop, into the nightfall. “Or how.” Another pause, then she nodded into the phone and said, “Yes, I will be. See you soon.” She ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her pocket.

I thought about it. Not long. Not long enough, anyway, to make any kind of wise, well-contemplated decision. About 1/100 of the time I'd devoted the night before trying to remember that third line of the TV theme song. About 1/10,000 of the time I'd thought about the Saxon need for a word for “cheese farm.” Which probably says more about me than I'd like to admit. And if the men's room had been in the other direction, I might have turned that way and just kept going. She was sitting, though, between me and the place where, now that I'd slugged down all that juice, I needed to be. I was going to have to walk right by her. And it was just the two of us, in that official New Hampshire Department of Transportation Rest Area, in the middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire (somewhere close to Cheese Farm). In late January. Almost dark. Dark enough that the trucks and cars passing by outside were all wearing their headlights now, cutting beams through the shadowy dusk that was seeping in and sucking out all the light that was left of the day. I walked up to her.

“So,” I said in Mandarin, “come here often?”

She didn't look up. She kept studying the map. I couldn't really think of a clever line to follow up what I thought was, all things considered, a fairly amusing and effective opener.

Then she spoke, still not looking at me. “You speak Mandarin as beautifully as a monkey playing the cello,” I thought she said back. I got most of it. I caught the word
“erhu,”
a kind of two-stringed cello-like Chinese instrument. I knew that because a month or so earlier I'd read a review of a Chinese movie, and the movie's composer used a lot of
erhu
music. I was pleased with myself at having that little bit of wisdom tucked away.

“Monkey played well enough for you to understand the piece, though, didn't he?” I smiled.

“Yeah,” she said in English, still not looking up. “But I took a whole semester of Understanding Bad Mandarin.” Her English wasn't accented. She'd learned it in her pumpkin seat. But Mandarin had been in there too. She'd learned both the words “cello” and “
erhu
” right about the same time in her life probably. If she had some kind of regional accent in Mandarin, I didn't think I'd be able to pick it out. I couldn't pick out her regional English either, except it sounded just a touch broad and flat and Canadian. If I could get her to say “about,” I'd have a clue.

“Not to be rude,” I said, “or intrusive. But do you need some help?”

“Yeah,” she said again. She looked up from the map on her knees and lifted her eyebrows. Her eyes were blacker than her hair. “I'm a fragile China doll, and I'm sitting here hoping a big, sensitive, but manly American guy will come along and take care of me in my moment of distress.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. I pulled my hand from my coat pocket and glanced at my watch. With my other hand, I felt my keys. The Toyota was calling to me. Miles to go before I slept. “Next manly American guy's scheduled to be coming through here in about thirty minutes. Might be a little late, what with the winter weather and all.”

I figured she needed some time to think about that. So I went into the restroom. When I came out, she'd folded the map and put it on top of the bag at her feet. She was gazing out into the evening, watching the traffic. There wasn't much. I thought about the situation again. This time not so long.

“Look,” I said, “I was kidding about the next scheduled sensitive but manly American. And I assume you think I'm a Wally Reed and all.”

She wrinkled her forehead. She did make eye contact, though.

I kept going. “And if I were you and looking for a ride, I'd think a long time about accepting one from anyone, least of all from some guy alone out in the middle of nowhere. If I were you, I'd be thinking this is scene three from a slasher movie, and everyone in the audience is watching you and begging you not to be stupid enough to get in the car with what looks like a ‘troubled loner.'”

She smiled, just a little bit, at the “troubled loner” part. I kept going. “But if you don't have some other plan for this evening, it's going to end one of two ways: either you are going to have an actual troubled loner come in here, and you're going to be in some kind of danger, possibly serious danger, unless you're concealing a Glock under that coat and know how to use it. Or two, the highway patrol is going to come by, and you are going to be picked up for—excuse me, nothing personal intended—‘solicitation' or for not having any visible means of support or some such thing, because they understand that nothing good's going to come from having a girl sitting out here all alone.”

She didn't say anything for a moment, as if she was thinking it over. “Could you repeat that in Mandarin?” she asked finally.

“I'll give you the highlights,” I said. But I didn't. I just called her a “big egg.” It's a slang expression in Mandarin. It means a “stupid person.” And I told her it was dangerous, very dangerous, to be sitting there. She sat there anyway, staring out at the highway, where the traffic was cutting sharper beams of light through the twilight that had completely closed in. In January in New Hampshire, night doesn't fall slowly. It drops in like a piano falling out of a tree.

She sighed. “What are the odds a slasher slash troubled loner would be able to speak Mandarin?” Then, before I could say anything, she added, “Bad Mandarin.”

“Long,” I said. “Long odds. Though not impossible.”

“I'm going south.”

“I know,” I said. “It's a divided highway. If you were going north, you'd be in the rest stop on the other side of the road.”

“What're the odds a slasher slash troubled loner would also be logical in drawing deductive conclusions?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said, “I
am
a troubled loner. But that means if you get in the car with me, your principal threat will be boredom from my dramatic angst and morose self-pitying and not from exsanguination.”

She reached over and took the strap of her duffle and stood up. “Fine,” she said. “But I'm accepting a ride from you not because I believe a word you're saying but because I just think it's unlikely I'm going to be in danger from anyone who uses a word like ‘exsanguination.'”