Gateway (2 page)

“Hi, Edward,” she said. “I hope you like pasta.”

Edward smiled. He was missing a few of his teeth, and his skin was bad, but his hair was washed, his clothes were clean, and he’d shaved that morning, so he looked pretty good compared to many of her father’s itinerant workers. Her father hired a lot of them from local homeless shelters or work-release programs, but he’d also been known to pull to the side of the road when he saw someone holding up a sign proclaiming WILL WORK FOR FOOD. Daiyu couldn’t remember a holiday or a renovation project during which her family hadn’t been offering hospitality to some stranger down on his luck.

“I like pretty much anything someone is willing to put on the table in front of me,” Edward said.

“How much did you get done today?” Daiyu asked as they sat down and began dishing out the food.

“Put up the crown molding in that third-story bedroom,” her father answered. “Edward’s exceptionally handy with a saw.”

“Used to be a carpenter,” Edward said.

“How about you, honey?” her father asked. “Did you have a good day?”

“Kind of slow at work, but I walked around the Arch grounds at lunch. It’s almost all set up for the fair. Are we going tomorrow?”

He looked briefly dismayed. “I can’t! I promised Jordan I’d be at church all day tomorrow working on the new addition.” He glanced at Edward. “You could come help out, if you like. No money in it, but you’ll get lunch and dinner.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Edward said.

Her father looked back at Daiyu. “We could go Sunday.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care. If I feel like it, I’ll head down tomorrow afternoon by myself.”

Daiyu was serving Oreos for dessert when Mom called, and Dad took the cordless phone upstairs to have a private conversation. Edward dunked his cookie in his coffee and gave Daiyu an appraising look.

“Are you one of those Chinese babies?” he asked.

She smiled. “I’m hardly a baby anymore, but yes, my parents adopted me from China when I was six months old.”

“You think you might go back to China someday?”

“I’d like to,” she said. “Maybe after I’m out of college. At least once in my life I’d like to travel someplace exotic. The farther away, the better.”

Edward helped her clear the table, but they weren’t quite done with the dishes when her father came back downstairs and handed her the phone. Daiyu carried it halfway up the stairs and sat down on one of the worn-out risers.

“Hi, Mom,” she said. “How’s Gramma?”

“Pretty good,” replied her mother. “She’s getting stronger and less cranky every day.”

Gramma had had hip-replacement surgery, and Daiyu’s mother was out in California for the summer overseeing the recovery.

“Well, tell her she has to get well enough to climb steps, because she has to come visit us and there’s no bathroom on the bottom floor. Or tell her if she doesn’t want to climb the steps, we’ll just have to get her a bucket.”

Her mother laughed, and Daiyu imagined her face lighting up in amusement. Her mother was a calm, big-boned woman with wide brown eyes, thick brown hair, and an inexhaustible sense of humor, and amusement was her most common expression.

“Hey, I made do with a bucket when your dad and I were first dating and he was fixing up that dreadful place on Jamieson. I always told him he only married me because I had a functional toilet.”

They talked for another fifteen minutes before hanging up. Her father had already left to take Edward home—or, more likely, to one of the shelters downtown—so Daiyu finished up the dishes and then headed up to her room. It was long and narrow, with high ceilings and leaded glass windows, and once it was restored it would be a beautiful space, she thought. But right now the paint was peeling, the floor was in bad enough shape that she’d gotten splinters twice, and there was a faint scent of mildew. She knew that within a year, it would be airy and charming and full of light. That’s when they’d sell the place and look for a new project to renovate.

She spent the next couple of hours talking on her cell phone and sending text messages. Three of her close friends were out of town for the holiday, and the other two didn’t want to go to Fair Saint Louis. Fine. Daiyu decided she wouldn’t go either. No reason to revisit the jewelry booth. No reason to look at the jade ring again and then realize she didn’t want it. Because she really didn’t. She told herself she couldn’t even remember how it had felt on her hand.

TWO

DAIYU WAS STILL
in bed the next morning when Isabel called her cell phone. “What’s going on?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“Would you be willing to work for a few hours this afternoon? There’s a career fair at the Fox Theatre today. I’m going to give a presentation and hand out fliers. My daughter was supposed to help me out but she’s got the flu. I’ll pay you thirty dollars for the afternoon.”

“They do career fairs at the Fox?” Daiyu said, pulling herself out of bed and hunting through her closet. She didn’t have too many outfits that qualified as professional, and most of them had already been worn this week. “That seems weird.”

“It’s some special event for a women’s networking group. After the presentations, there will be a concert, I believe, but we won’t stay for that. Would you be willing to help me out?”

“Sure,” said Daiyu. “When do you need me there?”

“I’ll pick you up at three.”

After lunch, Daiyu put together an outfit of narrow black pants, a sleeveless gold top, and a pair of black Skechers. She’d learned the hard way that while it was important to look good at events like this, wearing comfortable shoes was even more critical. She was standing outside the town house when Isabel pulled up.

“You’re my favorite summer intern
ever,”
Isabel declared. “I can’t think of a single other high school girl who would have been willing to work on a Saturday, especially on such short notice.”

“I need the extra money,” Daiyu said, surprising herself. “I want to buy a ring.”

It was always a treat to go down to Grand Avenue and visit the Fox, an eighty-year-old restored movie theater that was now a prime venue for concerts and plays. The cavernous, high-ceilinged lobby was lined with massive terra cotta-colored pillars that seemed to hold up the intricately detailed ceiling; the floor was a slick, reflective marble. Daiyu always thought it deserved its nickname of “The Fabulous Fox.”

About fifteen booths were set up in the lobby. Daiyu stood behind the Executive Edge table and handed out brochures to the smartly dressed women who circled through, looking for better jobs with higher salaries. Isabel spent her time working the floor or slipping up the wide stairs into the theater to hear her competitors deliver speeches. At five, she disappeared for half an hour to give her own presentation. By six, the networking women were filing over to a buffet line for dinner, and Isabel and Daiyu were headed back out to Isabel’s car.

It felt like it was 120 degrees inside the black Lexus, and even the high-powered air-conditioning wasn’t going to have an impact anytime soon. “Do you want me to take you back home?” Isabel asked as she pulled out of the parking lot. “Or do you want to come help out at the voter registration booth with me? But that’s strictly volunteer work.”

Daiyu laughed. “I don’t want to work, but I do want to go to the fair, so if that’s where you’re going—”

“I have a guaranteed parking spot at the Mansion House,” Isabel said with satisfaction.

They parked five levels down in the dungeonlike lower recesses of the Mansion House, then climbed up the spiral ramps to the exit and welcome freshair. As they were crossing Memorial Drive toward the fairgrounds, Isabel lifted her eyes to gaze up at the top curve of the Arch, glistening silver even in the waning light of the summer evening.

“Gateway to the West,” Isabel said. “Prettiest landmark in the whole country, I always think. And I love the view you can get of the city when you ride up to the top.”

“I never go up in the Arch,” Daiyu said. “I’m a little afraid of heights.”

Isabel handed Daiyu a twenty and two fives, then strode off confidently toward the north end of the fairgrounds. Daiyu moved more aimlessly. Today there were thousands of people milling around among the tents and booths, eating cotton candy, sipping beer, sweating in the heat, talking, laughing, quarreling, strolling. It would get even more unbearably crowded near true dark, right before the spectacular fireworks displays over the Mississippi that ended the fair every night. Daiyu loved the great constellations of color that reflected in the silver of the Archand painted moving patterns on the broad and restless river.

She was trying to decide if she was hungry enough to buy herself dinner when a soft voice from the shadows asked, “Got a dollar to spare, miss?”

Daiyu turned to see an old man standing a few feet away, clearly not wanting to get close enough to alarm her. He was white skinned but smudged with dirt, bald but bearded, wearing way too many clothes on such a hot day. She could catch the odor of urine even though he kept his distance.

“I do,” she said. Her father encouraged her to give away five dollars to some charitable cause or homeless person every week, and she usually kept one-dollar bills in her pockets, ready to hand out. But she’d dispensed her last single Friday morning, so she handed him one of Isabel’s fives. “There’s a lot of good food at the fair, isn’t there?”

A smile magically transformed his face. “There is,” he agreed. “I want one of those hot dogs.”

She laughed. “That sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll get one too.”

“Thank you, miss. God bless you.”

As soon as he left, she checked her wallet and realized with dismay that she didn’t have any money except the bills Isabel had given her. Fair food could be pricey—she might easily spend ten dollars on a burger and a soda—and would the old woman really sell her the black jade ring for fifteen dollars? Maybe she should buy the ring before making any other purchases.

She tried to tell herself that she didn’t want the ring, and if someone else had already bought it, she didn’t care. She tried to make herself stop to buy a hamburger before looking for the old woman’s booth, but the line was long and she couldn’t keep her feet still. Before she knew it, she was drifting through the fair again, trying to be courteous as she pushed her way past strangers, stepped around baby carriages, and hurried past all the other booths that lined the fairgrounds.

There. Sandwiched between a lemonade stand and a funnel-cake vendor. There was the jewelry booth, hardly more than a battered table and a tattered yellow awning. The tiny old woman stood motionless behind the counter, dressed all in black even on this hot evening. She was staring at Daiyu as if she had not taken her eyes off her since Daiyu left the grounds the previous afternoon.

For a moment, Daiyu felt peculiar again. For a moment, she had the sense that this wrinkled old lady was more dangerous to her than the polite beggar would ever have been. Her hands curled into fists. She remembered the cool, silky weight of the ring against her finger. She stepped over to the booth.

“You came back,” the old lady greeted her.

“I guess I did,” Daiyu said. “Do you still have the ring?”

“Fifteen dollars,” the vendor said.

The red silk box was already in the woman’s hand.

As if she had been standing there since the fair opened this morning, waiting for Daiyu to return.

Wordlessly, Daiyu handed over the twenty-dollar bill that Isabel had given her. She waited until the old woman had given back her change before she slipped the ring on her finger. As she remembered, it was a perfect fit, heavy on her hand, but in a pleasing fashion, calling her attention to it, making her pause to admire it. She twisted it slowly in one complete circle to study the detail of the carving, the dragon’s precisely rendered head, its sleek scales, its stylized feet.

“I do love this,” she said under her breath. “I don’t know why.”

“It was meant for you,” the old woman said.

Daiyu laughed softly. “That’s what it feels like. Well. Thank you. Now I’m going to get myself something to eat and then go home before it gets any more crowded here.”

“You could do me a favor,” the old woman said suddenly.

Daiyu blinked at her. How odd. “What?” she asked warily.

The woman pointed to a tent about twenty yards away if Daiyu walked straight under the great silver wicket of the Arch. “A woman in that booth was interested in one of my necklaces. I told her she could wear it tonight and see if she wanted it. I don’t like to leave my table. Just take it to her—that’s all you have to do.”

“I suppose I could do that,” Daiyu said.

“I’d be very grateful,” the old woman said.

She held up a long silver chain hung with a pendant that looked as fiery as an opal but with a pinker cast. “That’s pretty,” Daiyu said, cupping her hand to take hold of the stone. Oh, what was wrong with her? The instant it rested against her skin, she wanted this piece, too. It felt lighter than the black jade, as if it was porous or constructed of molecules of some lower specific density, and as if those molecules were dancing in her palm. “What kind of stone is this?” she asked.