'I like this.' Mike struggled a little with the red-lacquered chopsticks April had put by his plate. Finally he stabbed a piece of duck and dipped it in the hoisin sauce before putting it in his mouth. 'I like this a lot. This is sexy.'
April laughed. 'Not like that.' She rearranged the sticks in his hand. 'You have to make a hinge with your finger. You know how to do this.'
'I like it when you make the hinge with my finger. Will you still be cooking like this for me when you're old and gray,
'Probably not.' She frowned, thinking of her mother, who dyed her hair, and of Mike's Mexican mother, plump and very Catholic, who probably dyed hers, too.
'Oh, come on,
don't fade on me. This is good, this is more than good. I cook for you, you cook for me. You don't nag me about my day, or tell me about yours. We can do this,
You can tell me about your case. Maybe I can help you.'
She ate some noodles. 'You like my cooking?'
'Yeah. I told you I did.'
'I hope we find this baby alive and well.'
'I know you do.'
'You know what Woody told me?'
'Who's Woody?'
'Didn't I tell you about Woody?'
Mike shook his head.
'Yeah, I told you about Woody. He's the new guy in my squad.' She made a face. 'He's from Anticrime, drives worse than you do. I'm lucky to be alive.'
'Good-looking guy?'
'Nobody's as good-looking as you.' April smiled.
Mike raised an eyebrow, pleased with himself. 'I don't like him anyway. What'd he say?'
'He thinks Anton is the one with the problem and that's why he beats her up. We found the stroller in
Chinatown. So we're thinking the baby's down there. Don't you like my cooking?'
'Yeah, yeah.' Mike shook his head and picked up the chopsticks. 'Am I going to have to use these every day?'
'Get used to it.' They ate quietly for a while. Then she touched his hand. 'Gotta go. I have to be in early tomorrow. Maybe I'll get lucky and break the case. That would make it a good week for both of us.'
'It's already been a good week for us,
,' he reminded her.
'True.' April put on her clothes and left Mike with the dishes, promising to do them next time. Just as she was heading out the door, he gave her the cell phone so they'd always be in touch. She thought it was so unbearably romantic she actually cried in the car on the way home.
CHAPTER 32
L
in Tsing hadn't been feeling well on Tuesday. But she hadn't felt well in so long she'd almost forgotten what it was like to have no sores and no pain. That morning she'd been hotter than usual and knew she had a fever again. The aunties always scolded her when she was sick and made her go to work anyway. She was sitting at the sewing machine, on the stool that was backless so she couldn't slack off or fall asleep, when Annie Lee marched over to her, face frowning.
Right away Lin knew more trouble was coming to her. This certain knowledge that her troubles were not over made her homesick for China, where she'd lost her mother and almost starved to death more than once. To save her life, her cousin Nanci had paid for her to come here to this land of golden opportunity, but it hadn't been so golden for her. Lin knew everything that happened after she got here was her fault, but fault or not, Lin did not know how she could have done anything any other way. She had traveled with the two aunties, who were at least as old as her mother would be if she had lived, more than thirty-five. Lin was half their age and by far the prettiest of the three. She had worked in a factory before, and knew that she could not do any of the jobs her cousin expected of her. She'd been convinced by the two aunties that she could get a good job right away even though she didn't speak a word of English, and further that she was obliged to do this for them to repay for the care they had given her after her mother died.
The aunties' confidence in Lin was rewarded by immediate good luck. Some people in the apartment where they stayed told her of a job that paid ten dollars a day and required no English. Lin could have it right away. She went to the place at eight in the morning. A Chinese woman, who turned out to be Annie Lee, talked to her and made her sew a seam to prove she could use a Singer machine. Within half an hour she was hired and had the two aunties claiming to be her dependents. Still, Lin had considered herself lucky to be independent of the cousin who made her feel stupid, told her so many lies about her future, and frightened Lin with her certainty about the bad things that could happen to her if she didn't listen.
But Lin hadn't believed her cousin, and she got in trouble right away. The very first day, after she'd sewed all her pieces, the Chinese boss, Annie Lee, asked her to get more work from the space upstairs. Lin went where Annie told her to go and picked up a stack of unsewn pattern pieces, balancing it on her head. The stairs were narrow. When she started to come down again, the big foreign boss was down at the bottom, blocking her way. He said something and laughed. She thought he wanted her to move away to let him pass, so she backed up a few steps into the space upstairs where broken furniture and rubbish were stored, along with the cut garments to be sewed. The pieces came in thick stacks and were tied up with long strips of the same fabric. She still remembered what the fabric was that day: yellow-brown corduroy the color of sesame-seed candy.
It had been August then and the air was stifling up in the attic space. The bundle of heavy fabric on Lin's head weighed her down. The red-faced man said something she didn't understand. He pointed to her head. She could see his mouth laughing. She didn't know what she was supposed to do, come up or go down. It was three o'clock. She'd been there only since the morning and didn't want to do the wrong thing, anger the boss, and lose her job after she had been so lucky to get it.
On the floor below, eleven sewing machines roared, chewing up the miles of seams like hungry animals devouring easy prey. The red-faced man came up the stairs and Lin stepped back, frightened that she would be fired and the two aunties who depended on her would be angry and they would all have to leave the place they lived. All these fears crowded into Lin's head. Her heart hammered in her chest as she searched behind her, looking for a place to hide from the man's view so he would not try to talk to her.
She did not think this was like the moments she had known before, when rough bosses in China teased the girls and did things to them that were not allowed but not prevented either. She thought the red-faced man wanted her to do some work she did not know how to do because she was so new in the golden city. But when the boss reached the top of the stairs, he did not seem angry. He pointed and laughed at the bundle on her head. He closed the plywood door on its squealing hinges and waved his hand at her to come with him to another stack of cut fabrics across the attic space. She let her breath out; she must have taken the wrong pieces. When she came to where he pointed, he reached over and lifted the bundle off her head. This caused her to let her head drop the way she'd been told by her mother and the aunties to do when men were talking to her. She'd been told not to look in their faces and tempt the devil. Later, whenever she had a fever, she saw herself like this, with her head turned away from trouble, then trouble coming after her anyway. She was busy warding off shame when his hand reached out and squeezed her breast as if it were a piece of fruit in the market. The vibration from the sewing machines roaring below was like her heart sinking to her feet, then beating helplessly on the floor as he took his other hand and seized her other breast. Time stopped.
It had been so hot that August day; all Lin was wearing was a thin T-shirt and cotton pants with an elastic
